Friday, March 11, 2005

Thought of the day - Synchronicity Part Two

Paradoxically, there is also a strong belief in an internal locus of control amongst Conscious Creatives. You, and you alone control your own destiny. Life truly is what you make of it. Those who believe in Health and Sustainability are not Fatalists. They believe in free will, and they believe in the soul.

We attract certain events and people into our lives through the course of our actions and behaviour. If you are open and aware of the signs, then you will see how, ultimately, the universe is moving, collectively, in a certain direction, and get onboard. It is just a matter of being able to tap into that flow, or 'primordial urge' as Jung called it, and move with it.

This is what creativity is all about, and what Creative Wonders represents.

How often is it that you take something as a sign? As a symbolic, haunting, yet very real indication that you should change your behaviour, or at the very least keep it on file for future contemplation. It could be a close brush with death or tragedy, it could be a dream, or deja-vu. It could be reading this newsletter. Inexplicable, external factors influence our behaviour, and cause us to re-evaluate our immediate situation.

Advertising operates along the principle of semiotics. The placement, message and frequency of these signs blend into a part of our heuristic background - an environment cluttered with ads. In the same way, our heuristic interpretation of reality is determined by similar repetitive semiotics.

But it is when these signs resonate with an archetype of the collective unconscious that they become symbolic, and meaningful.

Thursday, March 10, 2005

Thought of the day - Synchronicity Part One

Understanding LOHAS
Synchronicity and the Internal Locus of Control

A big part of understanding Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability is being open to the idea that everything in this world happens for a reason. There are no coincidences.

You are thinking about someone that you haven't seen in months, the phone rings, and it's him. You finally end a bad relationship and immediately another partner comes into your life. The exact song you are thinking about comes on the radio. You are in a bookstore and the exact book you need falls in your lap.

Synchronicity. Carl Jung saw it as a peek under the curtains into the underlying order of the universe, when no causal connection can be demonstrated between two events, but a meaningful relationship between them exists. In these cases, Jung felt that a wholly different type of principle is operating. The collective unconscious is something we are all connected to, but numb to, from the noise in our media, the poison in our food and our awkward daily mechanical rituals. With enough obligations to keep us occupied we begin to live in a world of heuristics, and take shortcuts with out senses.

Living in a world of heuristics ceases to be living. We shut down, and robotically carry out our lives. The windows of synchronicity close, and our glimpse into the collective unconscious narrows. But every so often we remember to breathe, slow down and reflect, and meaning returns to the course of events happening around us.
Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) is a belief in the inter-connectedness of global economies, cultures, environments and political systems, but also in the interconnectedness of mind, body and spirit within individuals in order to achieve full human potential. Lifestyles of Heatlh and Sustainability is about opening your eyes and your mind to these events, and processing its meaning.

Think of the breakthrough discoveries that have happened throughout history. Physical theories and laws are continuously being overturned. Copernicus was branded a heretic for his claims that the Earth is not the centre of the universe. They proved the Earth to be round, not flat. Orbits are elliptical. Time is relative. Germs are everywhere. Humans evolved from apes.

These are all radical departures from contemporary thought at the time.

It's the same as being a Conscious Creative. Lifestyles of Heatlh and Sustainability is more than a marketing buzzword for a quarter of a billion dollar industry, it is also an awareness, and acceptance that there is more to life than meets the eye.