Is Life a Gamble?
FROM CHAPTER NINE: IS LIFE A GAMBLE?
SYNCHRONICITY
If you are on the fence about whether life is a gamble or not, consider those moments in life when everything comes together in a matter of seconds but have no explanation; experiences that cannot be explained by cause and effect. Are they chance or intelligence? Is it God, or do things just happen? Synchronistic experiences give us reasons to ponder these questions. Carl Jung coined the term synchronicity to describe what he called “a causal connecting principle” that links mind and matter and said that this underlying connectedness manifests itself through meaningful coincidences.
Synchronistic events reveal an underlying pattern of harmony and meaningful connections between the inner and outer world. Synchronistic experiences are key to our understanding that all things are connected and come from the One. It is God letting us experience, for a moment, the underlying order of the universe that connects time and experience in a brief moment of awe. We love for mysterious things to happen, and synchronicity for us is magic.
FREEDOM
If we believe that outside forces impose limitation, hardship, suffering, and bondage on us, life can seem like a gamble; we never know what is going to happen. Another way of looking at it would be, believing in a vengeful God in the sky playing tricks on us. With the realization that God is Love, how could we ever think that God could be vengeful? But yet, there still seem to be those outside forces. How could those things keep happening to us if it were not because of those forces?
Our limitation lies in the choices we make, the thoughts we think, both conscious and unconscious, and the actions we take. So does our freedom from limitation. Our freedom binds us, and our freedom frees us. But it is up to us.
God gave us volition and free will, and we are immersed in a Universal Law that creates by the very nature of our being everything that we are. Freedom is our birthright because it came from God; God would never impose bondage on us. God does not seek to control us or limit us. But we have to find out who and what we are and how these Laws create for us. We are never forced; God leaves us alone to discover for ourselves, and in the discovery we find that we cannot change the nature of these laws, but we can change ourselves.
WHO’S PLAYING DICE?
Einstein said, “I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world.” He believed in a hidden variable theory (hidden order) and an underlying reality in all things. For me, the hidden variable is belief, and the underlying reality is God, and the words themselves give me hope. Ralph Waldo Emerson seems to disagree with Einstein about God not playing dice. In his essay Compensation, Emerson says, “The dice of God are always loaded,” and for him it seems the wins and losses are all about balance. He goes on to say, “For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something else.” From this I recognize there is balance and fairness in the universe, or a level playing field where give and take comes without mistake or chance.
from the poem: Creation’s Sea
“The waters will wash away from your heart
The memories you can’t forget.
Pictures of all those yesterdays;
Broken dreams that you regret.”