Do we make meaning or discover it?

[Sash]

Serendipities are interesting, and it's definitely a topic I enjoy philosophizing about.

What is a serendipity? Does a serendipity exist unless there is a consciousness to perceive it as one? Why do we feel that our thoughts and actions are affirmed when we experience serendipitous occurrences?

A psychologist might bring up confirmation bias, and that certainly could influence the way the two events are interpreted, but only in hindsight. It wouldn't account for event 2's occurrence in itself, especially in the case that it was unsought for.

Hard science might look at serendipities as connections manufactured in the left-brain, the factory of sense-making so to speak. A scientist might point you towards studies showing that a person with a damaged left brain has great difficulty comprehending and forming coherent speech, and therefore, deduce that the perception of coincidences or closely tied events happens in the brain, and more specifically, the left one. 

This leads to a key question: are serendipities a function of the universe or merely mental processing? If it's the latter, then does that make the coincidence any less significant?

Let's say two people have a discussion with friend A about traveling to a city and then in the following week, they get invited to a concert in that city by friend B, who has no prior knowledge of the intention to travel or the discussion had with friend A. One of them either is unaware of any connection or brushes it off as chance, whereas the other suspects that some external force or intelligence has intentionally curated this experience. What separates the two modes of thought? What can we assume about the way these people differ in their approach to life? Are the people in the latter category more prone to possessing the quality of faith, and therefore, generally more optimistic, open-minded, and adaptable?

 

[teraflu]

I had a very similar question myself and had a bit of information shown during the last psychedelic experience.

I don't know how much it touched your topic i just wanted to share the experience.

From my personal point of view in this short life, I see serendipities as something that is already planned. It looks like everything = all the lives, at least my life is already written in akashic records and everything that will ever happen has already happened. From the point of view of the Creator or the spirit guide (i think it's the same), all the experiences that we have were pre-planned. Major ones for sure, but sometimes the small ones also. Creation happens at the spot, from the current energies and in collaboration with the ones that are open to co-create reality at the exact moment. Your soul has chosen the path you need to walk before this body was even manifested into existence. All the major people you meet are the ones that you already made a contract to meet before you met them. Except the mass of people that you meet daily, they are like side - actors, might be they are not real people. And all the chapters we experience in life are just like theatre scenes. We come, we act in collaboration with other, they act in our performance and when its over we let go and move to another chapter completely new.

 

But that is only my personal experience. It might be not true at all for other ones.

[Sash]

@teraflu I guess this all boils down to: does free will exist? I'd like to think that beyond the ability to merely act out our predestined life, we have the ability to look back or even look ahead and change the script. It can still be argued however, that even that meta perspective of understanding one's predestination is predestined itself.

This is a reach in speculation by maybe free will and predestiny sort of work together like a pendulum, with one influencing the other and vice versa, the awareness of that creating some kind of exponential butterfly effect over time. 

If you were to access the Akashic records for instance (total understanding of past present and future and how they connect and why), knowing that a certain major life-changing event was going to happen to you, granted you did not want to resist it but rather add to it by preparing yourself, would you be adding on to it in some way? It is interesting to think about how one might live their life if they are aware of the things they are predestined to do before they happen. I almost see it as like unlocking another level of free will altogether.

 

 

[axiom]

There is no free will. There is no meaning. 

All meaning is just a fantasy concocted by the energy that seeks completeness in spite of already being complete (the apparent self)

[DocWatts]

The main point of confusion here seems to come from failing to distinguish between meaning and purpose.

Meaning in this context refers to the process of relevance realization which we use to navigate and manipulate our environments.

Meaning is part and parcel of how Reality is phenomenologically disclosed to us, and is responsible for the automatic ways that our minds carve up an undifferentiated Reality for the purposes of survival. Our tendency to see the world as consisting of objects exists because the boundaries we draw have meaning for us; they are not arbitrary.

A creature that is unable to make meaningful distinctions between the food it needs to survive and a predator charging at it through the bushes will not be able to survive. Meaning is a byproduct of being able to skillfully cope within one's environment, and is present for all complex life; as such it's baked into the structure of how we experience Reality and is not something that is 'chosen' by us (however we do have some agency as to the particular types of meaning we experience).

Purpose in the context of this discussion refers to the long term goals, projects, and relationships that make a person's life worth living.

Unlike meaning which is part of how Reality is disclosed to us, purpose is something that's cultivated over a lifetime and is something that we have at least some influence over. As such, purpose isn't something that's external to us, nor does it originate inside of us without any input from the outside world. Rather, purpose can be better understood as an embodied interaction that arises from the challenges and opportunities that arise from within a particular social context.

Edited November 21, 2022 by DocWatts

[thisintegrated]

We discover it through discovering ourselves.

[A_v_E]

Emergentism + méta dynamic

You cannot say anything about will. Because this is still happening, living, moving and evolving.

You cannot debate of the density of an explosive while it is currently exploding.

If you think you are free it's true if you think you are not also true.

Stay in not knowing and assume both states and others states you are not aware of.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mmKay]

@Sash

Think twice if you really want the anwsers before you watch