The Road Less Traveled: Grace, the miracle of serendipity
Posted on September 21, 2011 by radicalreadings
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What we are talking of here in regard to paranormal events with beneficial consequences is the phenomenon of serendipity.
Webster’s Dictionary defines serendipity as
“the gift of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.”
There are several intriguing features to this definition.
There are several intriguing features to this definition.
One is the terming of serendipity as a gift, thereby implying that some people possess it while others don’t, that some people are lucky and others are not.
It is a major thesis of this section that grace, manifested in part by “valuable or agreeable things not sought for,” is available to everyone, but that while some take advantage of it, others do not.
By letting the beetle in, catching it, and giving it to his patient, Jung was clearly taking advantage of it. Some of the reasons why and ways that people fail to take advantage of grace will be explored later under the subject heading of “resistance to grace.”
By letting the beetle in, catching it, and giving it to his patient, Jung was clearly taking advantage of it. Some of the reasons why and ways that people fail to take advantage of grace will be explored later under the subject heading of “resistance to grace.”
But for the moment let me suggest that one of the reasons we fail to take full advantage of grace is that we are not fully aware of its presence – that is, we don’t find valuable things not sought for, because we fail to appreciate the value of the gift when it is given us.
In other words, serendipitous events occur to all of us, but frequently we fail to recognize their serendipitous nature; we consider such events quite unremarkable, and subsequently we fail to take full advantage of them.
Peck, M. Scott. (1978). The Road Less Traveled. p. 257-258
Peck, M. Scott. (1978). The Road Less Traveled. p. 257-258
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The Road Less Traveled: Grace, a definition | Radical Reading's
The Road Less Traveled: Grace, a definition
Posted on September 22, 2011
I have described a whole variety of phenomena that have the following characteristics in common:
(a) They serve to nurture – support, protect, and enhance – human life and spiritual growth.
(b) The mechanism of their action is either incompletely understandable (as in the case of physical resistance and dreams) or totally obscure (as in the case of paranormal phenomena) according to the principles of lateral law as interpreted by current scientific thinking.
(c) Their occurrence is frequent, routine, commonplace and essentially universal among humanity.
(d) Although potentially influenced by human consciousness their origin is outside of the conscious will and beyond the process of conscious decision-making.
Although generally regarded as separate, I have come to believe that their commonality indicates that theses phenomena are part of or manifestations of single phenomenon: a powerful force originating outside of human consciousness which nurtures the spiritual growth of human beings. For hundreds and even thousands of years before the scientific conceptualization of such things as immune globules, dream states, and the unconscious, this force has been consistently recognized by the religious, who have applied to it the name of grace. And have sung its praise. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…”
What are we to do – we who are properly skeptical and scientific-minded – with this “powerful force originating outside of human consciousness which nurtures the spiritual growth of human beings?” We cannot touch this force. We have no decent way to measure it. Yet it exists. It is real. Are we to operate with tunnel vision and ignore it because it does not fit in easily with traditional scientific concepts of natural law? To do so seems perilous. I do not think we can hope to approach a full understanding of the cosmos, of the place of (WO)man within the cosmos, and hence the nature of (WO)mankind itself, without incorporating the phenomenon of grace into our conceptual framework.
Yet we cannot even locate this force. We have said only where it is not: residing in human consciousness. Then where does it reside? Some of the phenomena we have discussed, such as dreams, suggest that grace resides in the unconscious mind of the individual. Other phenomena, such as synchronicity and serendipity, indicate this force to exist beyond the boundaries of the single individual. It is not simply because we are scientists that we have difficulty locating grace. The religious, who, of course, ascribe the origins of grace to God, believing it to be literally God’s love, have through the ages had the same difficulty locating God. There are within theology two lengthy and opposing traditions in the regard: one, the doctrine of Emanance, which holds that grace emanates down from an external God to (WO)men; the other, the doctrine of Immanence, which holds that grace immanates out from the God within the center of (WO)man’s being.
Peck, M. Scott. (1978). The Road Less Traveled. p. 260-261
