I have been interested in the psychology of “letting go” most of my life…I was introduced to it when becoming familiar with Oriental Philosophy as a young man…and found it one of the most valuable skills I’ve learned in life…it is primarily concerned with the letting go of both inner and outer clutter which can open a window to a lightness and freer consciousness…clutte could include not only material things but also socially imposed beliefs and meaningless or unwholesome relationships.

Quantum mechanics describes everything we do has an effect on the world and call this process the “butterfly effect”…it includes how helpless we are personally in changing anything although we do have an effect on everything… the “butterfly effect” occurs in ways beyond our awareness and comprehension….it is the best known explanation of our being interrelated and interdependent with everything in the world..by projecting the big picture it helps us understand the creative intelligence of the universe in which we are all active but subconscious players.

If I sneeze – will that affect the future? Yes it will. The fact that you are reading this blog right now instead of doing anything else is affecting the future in profound ways. Because of your decision – everyone in the future will be different people than they would have been had you made a different choice.

Let us look at the example of the moment of conception when you have hundreds of millions of sperm heading for a single egg and only one of those sperm gets to be the one who carries half the DNA for the new person. What would happen if a different sperm fertilized that egg when you were conceived? Would you still be born? Nope! The person who would be born would no more be you than your brother or sister.You wouldn’t exist and someone else would be born in your place – assuming your mother even got pregnant at all.

For you to have been conceived – trillions of events had to occur exactly the way it did. Otherwise – you wouldn’t be here.For you to have been conceived – everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – had to happen exactly the way it did. If your father had started 1/4 second earlier or later, had the temperature been 1/2 degree warmer, had any random noise occurred other than the random noises that did happen – even change of what your parents were thinking about – and you cease to exist. In fact – what your parent had to eat and drink a week before and what they watched on TV was enough to change events just enough that a different sperm would have been the one to make you exist. The moment of conception is extremely sensitive to initial condition.

And – of course this doesn’t apply to just you – it applies to everybody. For any of us to have been born, everything at the moment of conception had to happen exactly the way it did or we wouldn’t be here. And it also applies to all our ancestors. Our parents, their parents, all the way back to the beginning of life on Earth. If any event happened differently than it did – no one who is alive today would exist. If you went back far enough – the human race might cease to exist but for the air passing over the wings of some prehistoric butterfly.

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” ~John Lennon

Synchronicity opens up the question as to whether our minds are also related to a universal intuitive intelligence…could it be that our subconscious possess the same powers or is an extension of an intuitive universe ?… which would also help explain the feeling of Oneness…Albert Einstein refers to intuition as”sacred”.

Or is synchronicity just a coincidence? Who hasn’t had it happen in their life? You think of someone for the first time in years, and run into them a few hours later. An unusual phrase you’d never heard before jumps out at you three times in the same day. On a back street in a foreign country, you bump into a college roommate. A book falls off the shelf at the bookstore and it’s exactly what you need.

Is it only the law of averages playing itself out? Or is it, as Carl Jung believed, a glimpse into the underlying order of the universe? He coined the term synchronicity to describe what he called the “a causal connecting principle” that links mind and matter. He said this underlying connectedness manifests itself through meaningful coincidences that cannot be explained by cause and effect. Such synchronicities occur, he theorized, when a strong need arises in the psyche of an individual. He described three types that he had observed:

1) The coinciding of a thought or feeling with an outside event;
2) A dream, vision or premonition of something that then happens in the future;
3) A dream or vision that coincides with an event occurring at a distance.

Some scientists see a theoretical grounding for synchronicity in quantum physics, fractal geometry, and chaos theory. They are finding that the isolation and separation of objects from each other is more apparent than real; at deeper levels, everything — atoms, cells, molecules, plants, animals, people — participates in a sensitive, flowing web of information.

Physicists have shown, for example, that if two photons are separated, no matter by how far, a change in one creates a simultaneous change in the other.

“Intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”~Albert Einstein

We are born with an inner compass giving us clues as to what is happening and which direction to move…it is called intuition…unfortunately it largely ignored and instead we are encouraged to follow external social beliefs and expectations…it is a major life event when we decide to trust our intuitive feelings and allow them to play an important role in guiding our life.

Intuitive feelings are received by images and ideas without knowing exactly how and where they came from. We simply know it is not from our conscious mind. It involves additional subconscious sensors to perceive and receive information from outside the conscious mind. It is often referred to as gut feelings, sixth sense, inner sense, instinct, inner voice, spiritual guide.

The conscious mind and its five senses can only perceive a very small part of what is happening…it is incapable being aware of the large picture or all the interconnection of life and the Universe….however our subconscious can offer us the missing sense of relatedness and oneness… and this source of awareness is by our intuitive intelligence.

“Perhaps you can think of times in your life when you hove been completely engrossed in an activity… and were excited as much about the process as the end result. It can be described as forgetting or losing the self, time, space, and totally in the “now”

It is a wonderful feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture. Because it feels so good, it is intrinsically rewarding. It is a state in which you become utterly absorbed in what you are paying undivided attention to the task.. It can be interrupted by reflecting too much on what is happening…. the very thought “I’m doing this wonderfully” can break the feeling of absorption. Attention becomes so focused that you are aware only of the range of perception related to the immediate task but losing track of self , time, and space.”

“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.” ~ Eckhart Tolle

The experience of feeling trapped is common among everyone at one time another…we could be trapped by an unhappy job or a disagreeable boss…some are trapped within a stressful family or marital relationship…others by financial debt or by an addictive habit…and the more we try to escape the trap the more painful it becomes…what are the possibilities of freeing our self from such traps or even transcending them ?

Paradoxically, we are usually trapped because of a need to escape or resist the trap…it is our assumption we should be in control of our life and move in any direction we want…the trap is a clear message we are not in control or have a “free will” as generally believed in our society.

We can invest all of our energy and determination to be free but of no avail…however there can be a moment of complete exhaustion when we give up, accept the trap, and much to our surprise the trap suddenly vanishes….the trap turned out be nothing more than an intense effort to control and resist the problem…when we are free of the judgements and goals of the trap, we are than free to look around for the many alternative decisions to which we were blind while we were totally focused on the dilemma of being in a trap.

Source: Flow Like Water

“He who lives the Tao acts in his life and dealings as water acts in nature. Water does not resist, yet it conquers all; it is tasteless — suggesting the invisibility of the Tao — yet life-giving. It moves through all that lives and in movement remains clear and pure. It is supple, flexible, and humble; it does not compete” ~Taoism

It was once thought that all life on earth needed 3 things: light, warmth and water, but today scientists have found living organisms deep within caves that never receive light and even bacteria buried deep in the sub-zero ice caps of Antarctica. Life doesn’t need light or warmth but one thing is now known to be essential: water.

Water cannot be contained. Sooner or later it escapes and travels on a journey of its own inclination. A river flows, not in a fixed route, rather it follows the contour of the land and, if the landscape changes, the river changes course. The river follows the easiest route, the path of least resistance. Its course may change many times, it may even reach an impasse and form a lake, but eventually it finds its journey’s end: the sea. Even man-made waterways, such as canals, don’t contain or control water. Glass contains water but cannot keep it. If you ever look at a truly old piece of glass you can see that it has lost its smoothness: you can observe that the surface has what appears to be ripples, like ripples on a pond. The ripples always follow one direction: downward, towards gravity. A pane of glass will actually form a droplet of glass that eventually drips; it just takes a couple of thousand years to do so.

Along the way our journey will take many turns. We encounter what seem to be insurmountable obstacles that loom like mountains, but like water we find the valley or canyon to flow around the obstacles. At times the river will disappear, deep underground. We may lose sight of it, perhaps for a long time. But, it must resurface eventually, as all rivers do before they reach journey’s end.

Our journey will not always be a smooth one. We encounter rapids and you may even have to take enormous leaps of faith before tumbling down to where we want to be: but like a waterfall, when we reach the next step along the journey our power and energy will be many fold. We will also experience many stagnant pools along that path where the flow of the river is almost imperceptible. But the flow of the river does and it will again flow freely and cleanly.

The journey will be a rewarding one. Our spring, that tiny step toward self-fulfilment, will turn into a river, perhaps even a great, mighty and wide one. And we won’t be alone. A river is not a single entity; rather it is formed by a meeting of many springs: a meeting of minds. Our journey’s end will be a confluence of water.

Don’t try to constrain your river of self-development. Don’t build canals to take the river where you think it should go, or aqueducts to take us over obstacles. Let the river of your journey find its own route. Can the greatest man-made canal ever compare to any river. A river moves, changes, adapts and grows bigger. The water in a canal moves slowly, the course it follows never changes, and it never will grow bigger or wider.

A river follows the path of least resistance. This isn’t laziness: it is just expending energy where it is really needed. Our journey must explore every field, valley and wood. Don’t expend energy on getting to your destination; spend our energy on exploring the world around you. All rivers eventually flow out to the sea. They all reach journey’s end and we will too.

“How could drops of water know themselves to be a river? Yet the river flows on. “~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I’d love to live
the way a river flows
carried by the surprise
of its own unfolding
~John O’Donohue

“There are defeats more triumphant than victories.” ~Michel de Montaigne

Steve Jobs, though wildly successful, also failed often and badly. Therein, lies perhaps the larger lesson of his life: Sometimes you have to fail to succeed.

No one emerges at the top. Even those born lucky eventually get a turn on the wheel of misfortune. Anyone with a résumé of accomplishments also has a resume’ of failures, humiliations and setbacks. Jobs was fired by the company he co-founded. Yet it was during this period of exile that he picked up a little computer graphics company later called Pixar Animation Studios, the sale of which made him a billionaire.

This is to say, to fail is human. To resurrect oneself is an act of courage.

Jobs himself recognized his failures, he recalled sleeping on the floors of friends’ dorm rooms and walking seven miles to a Hare Krishna temple for his one good meal of the week.

Fear of failure isn’t only an adult concern. From an early age, we are plagued with anxiety about performance. This seems a natural-enough evolutionary development. The less accomplished eat scraps and enjoy the company of human leftovers.

J.K. Rowling’, the “Harry Potter” author, eulogized her own valuable failures. “Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way.”

But what is the valuable lesson in failure? …could it be the realization that all creative effort occurs in the “here and now”?…and pursuing success as a future goal is only a distraction blocking insight ?…and also in the “here and now”, there is no experience of failure but instead only a continuous passionate interest in discovery ?

“Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.~ Robert Louis Stevenson

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” ~Albert Einstein

Dr.Seuss would say that his stories and art were based on a logical insanity, a phrase that sounds like a paradox but really isn’t. As he explained “I start with a two-headed animal I must never waver from that concept. There must be two hats in the closet, two toothbrushes in the bathroom and two sets of spectacles on the night table.When his stories introduce a logical aspect,it tends to satisfy the rational brain and permits the reader to enter into the fascinating imagination of his story .

Seuss’illustrations heighten the insanity side of the formula. His animals are alien-looking, and though soft and furry, appear to have no bones or joints — “My animals look the way they do because I never learned to draw”, he once said suggesting that his art is like that of an innocent child.

What’s more, his physical objects seem to have a rather unsteady relationship with gravity and with their surroundings. Homes don’t nestle on mountainsides, but perch on the edges of cliffs. Cars drive down impossibly windy roads, their tires barely staying in contact with the surface. Plates and fish bowls balance in ten-foot high stacks, each item wobbling out of place, the whole construction a whisker away from total collapse,all of which delights the imagination of children. Yet within each story, this madness has a logical factor, and never betrays its premises. As in all successful narratives, once set, the premises can’t be changed in mid-story. Nonsense does not mean anarchy.

But nonsense literature and art adds a beneficial twist: it encourages children to think and see the natural world not as it is to the rational mind, but as it could be. Rather, nonsense teaches children the salutary mental habit of not-ruling-things-out. Once you’ve accepted, even for half an hour, the premise of a talking cat in a tall red and white hat, you’ve taken a tiny step towards staving off, or even reversing, the process of mind-narrowing that otherwise afflicts us all as we get older.

Obviously, Seuss’ tales and art prompt their own ideas. Could a race of beings live on a speck of dust? How small would they have to be? Would they ever fall off? Could their voices be heard if they shouted? What language would they speak? Such questions are natural for children, but the ability to think about nonsense can transform the way that all of us understand the world. When Today, science presents us with a whole collection of counter-rational and apparently impossible propositions: that time runs slower when you move very fast, that atomic particles can be in two places at once, that the shortest distance between two points is really a curve. What nonsense. But true, nonetheless.

“Your theory is crazy…but not crazy enough to be true.” ~ Niels Bohr

“The GAIA ( Greek Goddess) is a theory of the Earth as a living organism – where the living and dead materials are interrelated.” ~ Dr James Lovelock

Overall, the Gaia Theory is a compelling new way of understanding life on our planet. It argues that we are far more than just the “Third Rock from the Sun,” situated precariously between freezing and burning up.

The theory asserts that living organisms and their inorganic surroundings have evolved together as a single living system that greatly affects the chemistry and conditions of Earth’s surface. Some scientists believe that this “Gaian system” self-regulates global temperature, atmospheric content, ocean salinity, and other factors in an “automatic” manner. Earth’s living system appears to keep conditions on our planet just right for life to persist!

One useful analogy that has been proposed for understanding Gaia is the California redwood tree, Sequoia gigantea. These trees which stand in great groves along the northern coast of California and elsewhere can stand as high as 300 feet and weigh as much as 2000 tons. Some of them are more than 3000 years old.

Redwood trees are like Gaia because 97% of their tissues are dead. The wood of the trunk and the bark of the tree are dead. Only a small rim of cells along the periphery of the trunk is living. The trunk of the tree is similar to the Earth’s lithosphere with a thin layer of living organisms spread across its surface. The bark, like the atmosphere, protects the living tissues, and allows for the exchange of biologically important gases, such as carbon dioxide and oxygen.

There is no doubt that a redwood tree is a living entity. While much of the Earth may be considered “non-living”, the fact that all of these non-living parts are involved to some extent in living processes suggests that the whole Earth is alive, just like a redwood tree.

“Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.” ~Seneca(65 AD)