July 23, 2008

  • Synchronicity, Suicide, and The Eyes

    parcheesi

    Synchronicity- basically, my life.  Click that for the technical discussion.
     
    It happens all the time.  I run into someone I've never met before (a bus boy who looks like Johnny Depp), start up a conversation out of the blue (would you be ok with dressing up like Jack Sparrow for a fundraising event I'm involved with), and things totally fit into place immediately (not only are the last four digits of our phone numbers identical, but he was looking around for something like this to do).  The weird coincidences are not always this dramatic or obvious, but I've noticed they are pretty constant.  I'm like a magnet.
     
    Or, I go see my mother-in-law at the hospital.  Someone asks her what her boss's number is.  The last four digits of his phone number exactly match the last four digits to the phone of the hospital room she's in.
     
    When we shuffle a deck of cards and see patterns (I used to play solitaire a lot and would get some insanely intriguing patterns), *we* see the patterns.  The cards do not.  The three of spades doesn't go, Oh, look, I'm sandwiched between the two of spades and four of spades again by ~chance~, imagine that.  So the events themselves don't see themselves as coincidence.  We are the ones who see the events as coincidence.
     
    Chance is a funny thing.  If it doesn't happen at just the right time, it's no longer chance.  If it misses you by just a few seconds, any kind of luck or synchronicity is lost.  Also, if it happens too soon and sits around and waits for you, it's no longer chance, because it was bound to happen anyway.  So for events to line up in your life in the 'nick of time' or whatever, chance becomes synchronicity.  It becomes meaningful in a personal way.
     
    One of the most memorable days of my life seemed like chance.  I was having a horrible time trying to get out the door to go pick up my grade schooler after school.  I'm usually an early person.  But for whatever reason, I couldn't seem to control time that day, it all got away from me, and I was super late going out the door.  And first on the scene of an accident that just happened down my street.  Even one minute earlier out my door, and that girl would have died, because I would have just missed that accident, and no one else would be driving by until it was too late.  For her, that was synchronicity.  For some, that is the 'work of angels'.  Whatever you wanna call it.
     
    Some people want to believe this is all accidental.  This earth.  Us.  The big bang.  The way the wind blows.  The fact that millions of people die from famines and catastrophes.  The fact that so many others live wealthy lives and never have to change a trash bin for themselves.  Just one big accident.  The only reason it has meaning is because we (accidents) give it meaning.  Somehow.  I've given that a big thought and think it's ludicrous for an accident of any kind to beget meaning.  Events beget meaning because they cause or affect more events later.  Events eventually affect living things.  If the living things themselves are accidents, then there should not be the capability of meaning being attached anywhere.  So some people believe nothing that happens is accidental.  Every smallest thing is part of the whole, and the whole is one.  The only thing that trips us up is being conscious of the conflict we feel over suffering.  For some reason, suffering is the trigger that wakes us up.
     
    We even call strokes CVAs, or cardiovascular "accidents".  An accident is an unforeseen uncontrollable event.  A lack of intention, as one online dictionary puts it.  I fell down and scraped my knees all the time when I was a kid.  I had an accident.  But the events all follow and lead to what happens, and the only 'accident' is that I was not conscious of a chain of events happening until it disrupted me and forced me to notice.
     
    Signs at work say accidents can be prevented.  Transportation science says accidents can be prevented.  But who can prevent multiple wildfires started by lightning?  Is that an accident?  If there are no humans there to observe and practice ways to prevent something, can we still call it synchronicity?
     
    There is no 'good' or 'bad' to synchronicity.  And accidents aren't always bad.  I accidentally wind up in the right place at the right time and something good happens.  Completely unintentional. 
     
    I am able to comfortably carry conflicting views without it bothering me, much like the Electric Monk in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.  I don't know if this is a byproduct of my Asperger's, but it makes thinking about things a lot more fun, and I can work on ideas like they are big puzzles.  One of my ideas is that our linear experiences on this planet in this 3D medium in our bodies is like a learning program.  The physical teaches us symbolically through the emotional about the spiritual, which are ultimately conflicting viewpoints by themselves.  I don't believe the universe is a wind up clock, a pair of dice, or even a singular happenstance with no ultimate meaning once it's all over.  I don't believe the will to live and the fight for right is born of purely physical material.  I'm not into 'mother earth', I'm not a 'Jesus freak', I'm not anything.  I've looked over all of it, east to west, over tens of millenia, and I think it's basically all the same thing, just in different points of view.
     
    Basically, we are sacks of wet minerals chemically interacting with amino acids.  When the poets tell of the stars in the heavens singing, that's us.  When the rocks lift their voices to the skies, that's us.  We are the voice of this universe.  Or part of the voice.  I also count all the 'voices' on the planet, and all the 'voices' that have ever come to be able to express themselves in any way whatsoever in this universe.  Anything that experiences suffering in any way is a voice of anguish, down to cells and viruses.  I look around on this planet, and I see a plethora of beings experiencing life in every conceivable way.
     
    Some think we are the universe becoming conscious.  I don't think so.  I don't think consciousness is new.  I think it's new to us.  We are just discovering it, defining it, thinking about it.  It always was, just like kindness has always been kindness, and sorrow has always been sorrow.  I think these are universal concepts, things we discover, not invent.  Humans didn't invent kindness.  We recognized it when it happened.  We gave it a name so we could discuss it.  Same as math.
     
    When events happen that are 'good' or 'bad', we recognize them.  They disrupt us and get our attention, unless we are so deep in our heads that we aren't noticing.  And then when we experience them, we call them luck, chance, synchronicity.  We don't realize it was coming all along.  Or we call it fate, and say it was meant to be, and accept that against all wildly impossible odds, whatever happens is our destiny.  I'm not sure I quite grasp the whole 'soul mate' possibility, and sometimes it's hard to grasp destiny being terribly ironic.
     
    This is where we grind to a stop and ask-- ah, but was it engineered to happen, or is this the wind up clock you don't believe in?  Is this a consciousness caring about us, or punishing us to make a point?  Is my agonizing howl to the heavens on a dark lonely night a waste?  Does my sorrowful existence have meaning simply because I exist and I deem it so?  Or does this really MEAN something?
     
    And if my existence here is meaningful, why do I look around and see so much sorrow?
     
    That's the key.
     
    At some point or another, a great many people contemplate letting go of it all, committing suicide.  And many do it.  That also crossed my mind at a very sad and painful time in my life.  But, my mind being aware that it is like that Electric Monk, I took the time to think about a few things before I just 'believed' them.  I really don't know for sure what will happen next, as they say.  I had to break it down into probabilities and figure out the pros and cons of each one.  I broke it down into the three most basic equal points of view- "I" no longer exist after this body dies (as per atheism), I do exist after this body dies and go to some kind of reward or punishment (as per religion), or I do exist after this body dies and 'move on' either through more lives on this earth or as some kind of energy being (just because that's the way things are).  I wanted to be very careful with this just in case I did kill myself and turned out to be quite wrong and instantly regretted not being able to change my mind.  As long as I'm in this body, no matter how bad the pain or sorrow, I can still choose.  I don't know if that's possible later.
     
    So, number one, what if "I" no longer exist after this body dies?  Looks like a totally easy way out, doesn't it?  No more pain, HA!  Take *that*, universe!  But... if there is no me to experience the cessation of pain, logically my pain never stops...  "I" never feel relief from my pain.  That's a stumper, didn't see that one coming.  The only experience I have is in this body, so I ~can't~ experience not being in it.  Talk about a bucket of ice water in the ol' face.  So it's like this life I'm living IS eternity for me, because in essence, I never experience a before or after, all I know is this.  I will never, ever, EVER be able to escape my pain killing myself.  For all I know, this linear string of experiences will exist for me forever somehow.  If you like really gnawing the philosophical gristle, chew on that one for awhile.
     
    So, number two, what if I kill myself and there is reward or punishment?  Or monsters?  Lots and lots of monsters?  Maybe I just can't see them while I'm in this body.  Maybe this body is what is keeping them from being able to get me.  This is where the little kid point of view starts to kick in and really make sense.  Maybe this instinctual fear really is an instinctual fear for a reason.  If there really is reward, and I took myself off the 'game board' of life because I refused to meet my challenges, isn't there some kind of background belief in nearly every religion that suicide is 'bad'?  It's the chicken's way out.  It's the rebellious way out, the tongue sticking out at God or something.  Oh, crap, if God really exists, and he invented all this and put me on that game board for a reason, and I remove myself and therefore drastically change future events via my absence, what then?  (And this is a legitimate question-- let me jump forward and mention that because I made the decision to stay, not only have I saved a life in a car accident, but I've completely changed the life of a child born to a heavy drug and alcohol abuser (as a step parent), been available for many smaller needs, crises, and emergencies when no one else was, and was there to comfort and feed a number of others in times of distress.)  So, um, is it a sin to give up?  To throw in the towel and stomp off saying life's not fair?  Will I really be punished?  Will I miss out on some really cool stuff, even though half the time it seems kinda corny?  Maybe if I just wait a few years and see how things turn out, surely this awful time can't last forever.  Unless I stop it all now and force it to last forever...  Egads.
     
    So, number three, what if I kill myself and come back as an ant?  Ok, ok, who knows how long that joke as been around.  Gotta build up your karma so you can climb your way outa this hellhole or something.  Every time you slip up you get 'sent back'.  Like Parcheesi.  How deep do the implications in that game go, roll the dice (chance) and make decisions based on the roll (how we choose to live our lives), with the goal being to escape the rebirth cycle (mistakes send you 'back') and climb the ladder to 'home' (nirvana?).  Suicide isn't exactly a brownie point in the ol' karma.  It's more like a stain.  Life is tough for everybody, suck it up.  Or start over again until you learn the noble lessons and get it right so you can move on.  Everything we do in these lives, whether you believe in reincarnation or simply continuing to exist after these bodies die, adds onto our whole selves, a continuous collection of memories and experiences.  What is the point to this?  If this is really happening, and we really go on according to our behaviors and whether we've learned anything, then giving the universe the raspberry kinda backfires.
     
    In conclusion, no matter what the viewpoint is, self death doesn't appear to be a 'way out' of responsibility for our actions, or a logical response to escaping our suffering.  Apparently, no matter what we decide, suffering doesn't just magically 'go away'.
     
    So what is this all for?  I'm not going to reiterate the whole eastern/western religious dialogue about our existence here.  I'm going to skip to the basics and make way more sense.
     
    This is all about me having an opportunity to do something life changing for other people.  This is all about me being worth my salt and the air I breathe.  This is about me deciding to stop being selfish and learning how to care about something and/or someone besides me.  I might not be very good at it, but I'm here to practice.  I'm here to notice that I can either cause pain or care about pain.  I've done both.  I hate to admit I'm very good at both.  I've noticed some people don't seem to realize the difference, but that we're all headed the same direction- we're all going to die.  And it doesn't matter in my eyes what we believe as much as what we did with the time we had while we are here.
     
    I really don't know if 'bad guys' are going to go to some kind of hell.  Honestly, I kinda think a lot of us would like some really nice people to go to hell just because we hate them.  Isn't that funny?  We can believe in punishments like that, but we don't realize we are stacking up our own charges against ourselves.  It's weird how we can be like the Electric Monk and believe in Good and still hope Bad against each other.
     
    This is across the board.  I don't care who you are, you are going through the exact same steps I am in this learning program.  It starts out with fire being hot and we burn ourselves.  It eventually turns into a 'heated' argument, or a 'hot' temper.  The same thing with cold.  Cold can kill if we have too much of it.  It kills our cells and we get gangrene.  It eventually turns into an 'icy' stare, or a 'cold' heart.  Everything we learn about Good and Bad we learn from experiences we have in these bodies.  Sometimes good and bad get mixed up.  Sometimes we'll do anything for drugs or friendship or money, because those things feel good.
     
    I have noticed what saves us all from utter destruction is our bodies.  They have to sleep, which takes up a pretty big chunk of our lives.  They have to eat, which, if you do the math, involves work or theft or whatever it takes to get food, which originally involved a great deal of time digging through the dirt or herding animals around or having to hunt.  Just because some of us get it easily in a restaurant or store doesn't mean it takes up less time, because now we have to work all day, or spend time learning to be a proper thief.  I once heard of a group of guys in our area that went to all the trouble to steal big air conditioners off of commercial buildings.  One of them was seriously injured and tried to sue a retail giant.  Woulda been so much easier to unload trucks and get workman's comp, but nooo....
     
    Anyway, we're all doing pretty much the same thing.  Breathing, eating, sleeping, and filling up the rest of our time multiplying, working, recreating, and generally annoying each other.  It seems so empty when you zoom out a little too far and see the bigger picture.  We're not all that different from worms writhing around in the soil.  We've only elevated 'awareness' to an art form, and I'm not sure the people around me are all that aware.
     
    So when something 'clicks' in your life, and you start seeing coincidences bunching around you like some episode of the Twilight Zone (like in Tim Allen's I'm Not Really Here), it's probably because you're being especially dense and the universe is having to get in your face to get your attention.  But if nothing is clicking in your life, have I got a surprise for you.  All you have to do is ASK.  I swear.  But there's a hitch.  Once you ask, you might get to find out what you want to know the hard way.  You might feel like your life turns into a roller coaster and you feel really resentful about it.  And then you'll get indignant and miss it all, because you'll be sitting there with your arms folded, your lips tight, and your jaw gritted, determined not to let *anything* dig you out of that nice little rut you call a belief system in your head.
     
    This next part is going to be the first time I've ever publicly shared what I'm about to say.  And I don't care what you think about it.
     
    Somewhere in my 30's I started digging through the public library for anything and everything I could find on actual paranormal experiences of any kind.  If it was weird, bring it on.  I had a sudden very strong feeling it was important to find out who I am, and whether this is all guesswork, or are we really getting somewhere?  I started with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and branched out in all directions from there.
     
    There was one book I can't recall the name of where a woman was having terrible nighttime horrors about drowning and would sleep in her closet.  I've drowned in a few of my dreams, so I became very absorbed in her quest to find answers.  A hypnotherapist regressed her into past lives, which I wasn't sure I could deal with, but during one regression she stopped at an in-between place.  When the therapist asked her where she was, she said she was in a room with the Eyes, and they were asking her questions.
     
    I threw the book across the room and curled up in my bed under my covers.  I never expected to run into anything like that in a ~book~.  I thought it was just my imagination all those years.
     
    I have a lot of experience with Eyes.  They started showing up when I was pretty small, and they frightened me very badly.  They mostly came in dreams, never really saying anything, but looking at me, and I knew I was supposed to be able to know something.  But I was terrified, and in all my dreams I ran.  I blamed the beginning of this on a Spaghettios commercial, and clowns.  (Is that why so many people are afraid of clowns?)
     
    When I was about ten, I dreamed of a white horse with a big blue eye on one hip.  It looked like the CBS logo, sorta plain, but very much an eye somehow.  She could turn and look at me with it.  She gave birth to a colt which had two blue eyes on one hip, and they could blink.  The colt turned and the eyes looked at me, and I ran screaming into the house and tried to hide in my room.  The eyes left the colt and came after me, right behind me, so I had to bury my face in my hands.  I'm not sure how it happened, but my hands were pulled away, my eyes were opened, and the blue eyes pressed right up against mine.  I have no idea how I didn't die in my sleep that night, I was so terrified.  I woke up almost in a state of shock.  But I knew without any doubt that I had been seen, looked at, and chased down by another Person, and forced to look back.  I never told anyone this.
     
    Many years later in my very late teens, my family was having an argument.  I was very angry myself, but walked off into the laundry room to start a load of laundry.  As the washer filled up and I stared at the water (typical aspie), I suddenly asked myself- Why am *I* upset?  The argument didn't even have anything to do with me.  It's not my stuff.  So why do I care?  Maybe I ~don't~ care.  And with a whoosh I suddenly felt free somehow, and it felt very good.  So as I closed the lid and turned, I gasped at two blue eyes without a face looking right at me not 2 feet away, a little above my own eye level, with a twinkle like someone was laughing at a private joke and smiling at me, and as soon as I saw them they closed and vanished.  I ran into the other part of the house and sat stunned and terrified, and didn't go back into that laundry room for some time, a couple of days I think.  I hadn't seen the eyes since the dream with the horse, but I recognized them immediately.  And this time I wasn't dreaming.
     
    So when I got to the part in that book about the Eyes, yes, I freaked out again.  That was MY secret.  As long as it was mine, I could convince myself it never happened.  But if someone else saw them too... omg, there really are eyes that watch me.
     
    At that time I was going to nursing school in a technical college where my youngest sister was getting her office management certification.  I met her between classes and asked her (for the first time in my life I was saying it out loud), if she'd ever seen the Eyes.  I about fell over when she turned white and said yes.  She'd been seeing them all her life, too.  And it turns out, so had my daughter.  They both described different eyes, but nonetheless, they were 3 dimensional eyes without faces that would appear and startle them.  Once we all got over the idea that we weren't alone with these experiences, we compared notes and came to the conclusion they weren't bad, and they seemed to come at times when we were supposed to 'know' something.
     
    Since then they've shown back up in my dreams a few times, this time in faces, and always looking right at me without speaking, and I would know it was time again to turn another corner in my thinking.  I've become so used to accepting this now that I no longer fear them, and I have a strong feeling I am blessed to see them.  I have no idea why, except I sometimes wonder if it's possible that before I came into this life that I arranged to have clues to help focus me at key moments.  I know that sounds weird, especially if you aren't used to the idea, but I've had a feeling since I was small that I'm here to say something, and I'm the only one who can say it from my viewpoint.  What am I supposed to say?  I don't know.  Maybe all I have to do is share what I've learned.  I just know it's important.  I used to think I'd write books and be on a best seller list, but now I realize that's not what this is about.  It's not about selling my thoughts and marketing myself.  It's about being honest and freely sharing to the whole world on search engines.  For the first time in human history, we can all share our brains and our souls almost instantaneously around the world.  I can ask anything I want and find it at my fingertips.  Maybe this is what I was born to do and be, along with all the stuff I've been learning along the way.
     
    Maybe there are a bunch of us out there feeling alone and wondering if anyone else thinks or feels the way we do.  Maybe there are a bunch of people like me looking for stuff I'm saying.  I see the referral hits coming in on my trackers like crazy on certain posts I've made, every day from all over the world.  Can it really be this easy to make a difference in someone else's life?
     
    YES.
     
    And I feel it is my calling to say it's time for all of us to stop being afraid now.  It's ok to feel how we feel, no matter how different we are.  It's ok to tell the truth, no matter how hard our lives have been.  It's ok to be honest and stop hiding who we are, and it's ok that we are on the autism spectrum.  It's ok to share what we think, how we think, and to say we LIKE it, no matter how bad or terrible some people think this is.
     
    And I think that goes for ALL mental diversities and brain and nervous system challenges.  So what if someone has OCD or Tourette's?  So what if ASD and ADD people are different?  GOOD.  We *need* them.  We need each other in all our different ways so that we can put our heads together and finally figure out why we are really here.  Because if we keep trying to 'fix' each other, we're going to evolve the nastiest form of global genocide that human history has ever seen.  Part of our function is to rise to challenge.  What makes us human is rising to challenge.  Take away our challenge, and humanity loses its soul.  If there is any point at all to synchronicity and angels and whatever you believe in, it's that we all count for something.  And if this is all a big cosmic accident, just keep in mind that the geek factor and the hyper workaholics are building this modern world for the rest of us to enjoy.  I don't know about you all, but I don't think air conditioning and the internet are accidents, and I appreciate them both every day.  God bless geeky people who invent things and obsess over details and workaholics and artists who slave away over form and function.  Without mental diversity we'd still be scratching in the dirt for food.
     
    I think the synchronicity is that with nearly 8 billion brains on the planet now, things are really gonna start happening.  I've seen so much change in my lifetime, my dad saw so much in his, and I'm seeing things now even science fiction writers never thought would be possible in their lifetimes.  I know life still sux for so many people, but I'm really excited about this.  Will poverty, disease, and famine really be wiped out in our lifetimes?  Probably not, but does that matter if we all still hate each other?
     

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