Monday, December 9, 2013

The Chance to Grow

The Chance to Grow

In physics, we learn that nothing in the universe happens only once. Infinity goes in all directions. There is no singular point or moment. What I take from this is that there is never a need for regretting lost chances in life. If I don’t play the Lotto today, for example, there is no reason for regret. My chances to win the lotto are no better or worse any time I decide to play. The old adage, opportunity knocks but once, is simply not true depending, I suppose, on how you define opportunity.

When I review my life, as many are wont to do around this time of year, I am aware of events and the cause/effect process that leads me to describe these events as messages meant to get my attention. They tend to include interesting synchronicities that, in retrospect, are hard to ignore. In my other blog post (Turning Blue in Southern California), I noted several of these events, what I will now call “opportunities.” For several years now, I have had an interest in neuroscience but did not research the topic extensively until beginning in late December, 2012. I was initially encouraged to do so by a person at a local university who asked me to speak to an incoming class of scholarship recipients about how to make the most of their university experience. My intention was to give them up to date information about how the brain works in relationship to guided imagery and self-hypnosis. That deal fell through after I put the presentation together. Consequently, I modified the presentation and offered to present it to the college of hypnotherapy I attended. In April, 2013, it was agreed I would present the information to the American Hypnosis Association’s monthly class in late June. At the beginning of May, I had a stroke…now, I’m not at all saying that my study of neuroscience brought on the stroke. That had origins and synchronicities elsewhere. But, you have to admit, it IS a strange coincidence! Having that information enabled me to do two things: relatively quickly resolve my mis-identification of my condition from a TIA to an ischemic stroke and to easily overcome the common response to stroke which is depression. This allowed me to focus on recovery as well as understand how this happened to me. This led me to make many more changes to my thinking as well as to my life.

I suspect that change is the only constant in the universe, but change that revolves around a sphere of expansion. Infinity goes in all directions. The universe expands in all directions. We grow through our challenges in all directions.