THOUGHTS: Murphy's Law or a Friendly Universe?

Anything that can go wrong......

I was searching then ….. still searching now - (and yeah I was posing - the boat was on autopilot)

Apparently when Einstein was asked what question he would most want to know the answer to if he could come back in 500 years he said “Is the Universe friendly?”

Is this a strange question from a man of logic and science?

Shakespeare - in Hamlet writes,

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”

Is this a strange perspective from a creative brain?

In a spiritual sense what about the perspective of Meister Eckhart?

“The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me”

or to phrase the same thing the Alan Watts way,

“Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.”

and also…… manifesting? Wtf.

Guess how many memes you can find telling you the Universe is Friendly? Loads of the stupid things. Guess how many telling you the above? Not many. Does the above statement bother you? If so, ask yourself why!

30 years ago life gave me a big kick, just one of those things that life does to all of us in different ways. I wish I had the ability at the time to listen but I didn’t. Instead I thought I should run away from everything and everyone and put myself in a challenging situation to test myself and ‘take my mind off’ things rather than asking myself questions.

Perhaps if I had minded Meister Eckhart at the time….

“Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.”

So I went into a Travel Agent with £300 in my bank. I said,

“Where can I get to where I am allowed to work and they speak English?”

He said, “You could get a one way ticket to Gibraltar?”

“I’ll take it” I said. “Next flight?”

“Two days time”.

Sold to the lady with the emotional problems and lack of spirituality who thinks the world is out to get her. Where were you when I needed you Meister Eckhart, my 13thC mystic?

So, on my own in rainy October Gibraltar, with little money. Bizarre. Did it take my mind off my problems? Absolutely. Did I manage to get away from my huge ego? Sadly, no, it followed me and here we come to the non spiritual section, the very scientific man made logic of

Murphy’s Law - Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong

Ahh memories of times long past

Initially I stayed in a B and B across the border in Spain,La Linea de la Concepcion, (The Line of the Conception - great name for a place don’t you think!) I found a job in Gibraltar by trawling up and down the shops asking everywhere. Then I met an American guy outside a phone box one day. The story isn’t going to end well so don’t get your hopes up. You can’t run away from yourself remember? Life is going to keep on kicking you in the same cojones until you get the lessons. If you only choose to take the ‘surface’ lesson then you are never going to get the hang of this manifesting business are you!

So, American guy, let’s call him Buck, (Names have been changed to protect the people who were not at fault ha ha).

Buck was an engineer on a 63ft boat called Murphy’s Law, owned by an ex-marine, lets call him Jesse. Now here was an old guy (I guess he was in his 60’s) with a huge huge ego that almost rivalled my own. Clash of the Titans was about to re-enact itself. He loved himself and I hated myself. So Clash of the Titans, Egocentrica edition was a complicated affair. I am not sure if I have untangled all the little nuances of learning in that mess. But let’s get on with the story.

Talk about being given a sign!! It’s all in the name

Buck and I fell madly crazily…. oh you get the picture, it doesn’t matter. I ended up working on the boat for six months, crossing the Atlantic eventually, after many adventures.

When you are on a boat called Murphy’s Law you are sort of asking for trouble really.

I think it might be the scientist’s way of anti-manifesting? Let’s see what Wikipedia says

Murphy's law is an adage that is typically stated as: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."

Though similar statements and concepts have been made over the course of history, the law itself was coined by, and is named after, American aerospace engineer Edward A. Murphy Jr.; its exact origins are debated, but it is generally agreed it originated from Murphy and his team following a mishap during rocket sled tests some time between 1948 and 1949, and was finalized and first popularized by testing project head John Stapp during a later press conference. The law entered wider public knowledge in the late 1970s with the publication of Arthur Bloch's 1977 book Murphy's Law, and Other Reasons Why Things Go WRONG.

In 1877 at a meeting of an engineering society, Alfred Holt said

“It is found that anything that can go wrong at sea generally does go wrong sooner or later, so it is not to be wondered that owners prefer the safe to the scientific … Sufficient stress can hardly be laid on the advantages of simplicity. The human factor cannot be safely neglected in planning machinery. If attention is to be obtained, the engine must be such that the engineer will be disposed to attend to it.^”

The Captain (Jesse) was a firm believer in this law. So, as the captain of his own ship, his own destiny, he would obsess about every tiny little noise. The human factor was me and the engineer searching the boat for every clank and twang, every point where one thing might be hitting another thing, rubbing against another thing (yep I thought of the double entendres too!) … talk about control freak…. voice over the intercom direct into the cabin, anytime of day or night.

“Report for duty”…… flipping heck, I disliked that man. He was so arrogant, so manipulative, he created stories to suit his narrative and convinced others they were true. What I didn’t get at the time was the reflection. If you feel that much dislike, oh it’s so useful. Look in the mirror, just look for the same part in you. It is only years later that I observe myself hounding the excellent mechanic at my garage

“Okay, so it’s making a noise a bit like a clown shoe cartoon type of noise”

“Okay, so when I turn left it makes this noise eeee aaaawwwww, grrrr, clunk - like that - what do you think that could be?”

The poor man has checked that car over so many times, and finally I see the control freak in me and I see the thrashing of my ego against other egos in the past and knowing that I was continually thrown up against these people until I saw that. My own arrogance, my own manipulation. I see the weird mentality of believing that we have control from an ego point of view.

So, manifesting? What can we do? You want a genie to pop out of a bottle and give you three wishes? What would they be?

To have infinite wishes? - you will be in a constant state of desire that will never let you go.

Money? Material things? - won’t bring you anything that a good kick in the cojones can’t instantly detract from.

Health? - possibly but the body degenerates eventually.

Eternal life? Goodness no thanks - kind of curious to see what happens next but losing everyone you ever care about is never going to be great

What about your wish being to have no more wishes, no more desires? An ego at peace? To see the ego clearly and to be able to walk away from it often. What would that look like?

If we take away the machinery aspect of Murphy’s Law and apply it to the ego? You will learn to see yourself reflected in others. If you do not see that you are EVERYTHING then you will keep meeting people who will show you. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, because you will make that happen and the Universe will reflect that to you through other people.

I always feel surprise that people want so desperately to see the Universe as friendly. I do not understand why? Everything that happens is good or bad because we think of it that way, otherwise it just is. We can look at the horror of what happens around us and we can see the tragedies and the sadness. We can feel the heartbreak, we can feel the joy because we are human and we understand the story. But one of the greatest scientists felt some doubt and wanted to know if the universe was friendly. One of the greatest writers knew that it was all in the story.

Have courage friends xx