6 May 2012
Teapots happen … again (50’s dinner party edition)
Last weekend a couple of good friends of mine threw a little 50’s-themed dinner party, and as part of it they encouraged us all to bring a “white elephant” gift to share.
50s party hijinx
When the time came to exchange gifts, no one really remembered how to proceed, so we wound up simply writing our names on a piece of paper, putting them in a hat, and then drawing a name each. As we did so, we remembered that there was supposed to a process that involved going one at a time, and giving opportunities to steal and swap gifts, etc.
Although I hadn’t yet drawn a name and had no idea what I would be getting, I felt that the best solution was to just skip all the game aspect of the gift exchange, and simply keep what we drew, period – you get what you get, random coincidence rules. It was a simple solution and we’d already started drawing names, so everyone agreed and the drawing commenced …
50's greasers drawing names for the gift swap
reading the name I drew (Kari smiles seeing it's her gift I'll get)
And here’s what I won – a gift that was intended for me, but expected to have been acquired through the normal White Elephant gift game process of stealing and trading gifts – but was instead obtained by unaided coincidence:
Bemused, happy, but not even surprised anymore ... teapots; they happen.
(if you’re new to the blog and don’t understand why the hell a book abotu teapots makes for an interesting coincidence, read this: https://teapotshappen.com/about/ )
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Wow! I guess this gift and method of exchange was what was meant to be! I am so Happy for you!
Jan
May 7th, 2012 at 9:02 ampermalink
Great pix; great coincidence! Again, your posts always seem to arrive when I have a random thought “wonder when Teapots will have an unpdate.?” Had that thought a few days ago.
BARBARA CZACZYNSKI
May 7th, 2012 at 11:08 ampermalink
fantastic!!!
jane/faerian
May 7th, 2012 at 4:02 pmpermalink
Greetings! I really like your blog. I’ve read everything I could find in it. I discovered it through Laura Bruno’s blogroll.
I really do think you’re a synchronicity magnet, as someone said! And I really admire your ability to be spontaneous and tune into the Flow.
I’m writing because I am researching the connections between neurological disorders / injuries and psi. I, myself, am recovering from neuro damage from prescription medication. There seems to be an epidemic of neuro damage going on, and sometimes there appears to be a link between neurological problems, consequent healing, and having a psychic opening of some sort. I think it’s possible that the neuro issues are a cosmically-orchestrated attempt to rewire people quickly in the direction of being more capable.
If I’m understanding, your California mystical experience may have occurred somewhat close in time to your MS diagnosis. I was wondering how you are doing with the MS and whether any of these ideas ring true for you or are of interest to you.
Here is a short blog post I wrote on these issues —
http://neuroscienceandpsi.blogspot.com/2011/12/gaia-theory-neurological-damage-and-psi.html
Please email me. Best regards, Sheila Joshi
[email protected]
Sheila Joshi
June 6th, 2012 at 9:05 pmpermalink
Fascinating – I had an extensive conversation about EXACTLY what you just wrote me about, maybe two hours before you submitted the comment.
I was talking to my friend (Jacque, pictured in the red dress in this 50’s post above) – and I both have had experiences and symptoms that correlate with brain damage of various types – and I often wonder how much these events allowed me to significantly reframe my experience of reality and self, and “tap into the flow,” so to speak.
I’ve often noted that I seem to have been bound and determined to damage my brain from all the way back to the womb – I was born with my umbilical cord strangling me, and during pregnancy my mom could only lay in one position or I would kick – likely due to losing brain oxygen, I suspect. I’ve had several serious concussions, plenty of short term incidents of brain hypoxia, and at least one of what I consider to have likely been a ‘transient ischemic attack,’ while on a high dose of psychedelics.
That possible TIA was actually the very event I was discussing with my friend earlier this evening – in its aftermath, I experienced a “dark night of the soul”, a depression that in retrospect I believe may have been part of what some refer to as the ‘ego-death’ process. However dark that was, I came out from it renewed somehow, as if from a cocoon that had broken my bone structure itself back down to mush, and reformed me into something that moved through life in a fundamentally different manner than I once did.
(for example – I was once the hardest nosed of hyper-rational reductionists – see http://www.zoominfo.com/#!search/profile/person?personId=2187929&targetid=profile for example … and now I’m blogging about mystical teapots, in spite of some lingering self-consciousness and skeptical reflex spasms. heh).
And so, in spite of inconvenient memory problems and other quirks, I usually see my probable brain damage and associated symptoms in a positive light – perhaps Aldous Huxley was correct about the brain’s function being primarily a “reducing valve” that simplifies the infinite Now down into a manageable trickle, handlable for the meager analytical part of our minds. If that was so, perhaps a little bit of brain damage is more liberating than it is reductive? It’s a pleasant idea, anyway – and it gibes well with two recent studies of magic mushrooms – one which found a high incidence of spontaneous mystical experience from active ingredient psilocybin, and one which surprised doctors who found that psilocybin seemed to silence neural chatter, rather than open floodgates of over-communication, as they had expected.
So I’ve had my share of neuro-affecting incidents – and I have also had a lot of strange things occur over recent years (including some which I suspect relate what some call ‘Kundalini activity,’ and which honestly are too damn weird for me to feel comfortable posting about publicly, even on this blog – but I look forward to hearing your take on them). Also, while I fell off from blogging on here, the coincidences have not stopped – I’ve only been blogging about those coincidences that seem to cry out for it – ie ones that actually involve teapots.
(I guess I have just gotten used to high levels of coincidence – although I still think they are “more than mere,” I have come to see this kind of connection as normal, for the most part, and just how things work, in spite of my inability to understand it in a rational manner.)
Anyway, I’ll quit rambling – I’m very interested to hear what your research is about, as I have spent a lot of time trying to understand the strangeness that is reality, and have come to some tentative conclusions or at least notions that seem very likely to blend well with yours.
Gabriel (‘Max’)
Teapots Happen
June 6th, 2012 at 10:53 pmpermalink
Oh – and incidentally, I also think there is some promise to CCSVI – the theory that MS may be in part caused by neurological blood flow issues and hypoxia, rather than auto-immune attacks.
Teapots Happen
June 6th, 2012 at 10:54 pmpermalink
Wow! So much to respond to. I’ll respond in part here, in part in email.
I don’t know much about MS, but I have heard of Zamboni’s work with CCSVI, and I too think it makes a lot of sense! But, instead of a surgical approach, what about neuro-feedback to alter the blood flow, oxygen flow, and iron levels? Or I wonder about oxygen therapy or even hyperbaric — sparingly, I have concerns about using it regularly.
That is unbelievably cool that you were just talking to your friend Jacque about the same stuff within 2 hours — I think it’s safe to say we’re getting a go-ahead from the universe!
You do seem to be on some sort of path that involves tinkering with the brain and opening to more expanded ways of being. Very interesting about the umbilical cord and other incidents. You may have been seeking a certain level of consciousness or quality of relationship with the universe in these ways.
There is no limit to how much the brain can heal. Every day, there are new discoveries about neuroplasticity. We now know there is neurogenesis throughout the lifespan. With intention and attention, you can sculpt your brain. There are lots of new studies about doing this via exercise and meditation, but, in fact, everything you do is neuro-rehabilitative — from self-talk to nutrition to what you spend your day doing.
I know what you mean about getting blasé about synchros. It might be a developmental progression. That’s what Deepak Chopra says — that getting a lot of synchros is often an early stage of a spiritual opening, and then other phenomena get added in. That seems to be mostly how I’m starting, and, now the little synchros are so common that I only analyze them when they make me gasp or grin 🙂 Have you looked at Robert Perry’s book “Signs”? I found it gave me a framework for thinking more deeply about what synchros are communicating.
Thanks for sharing about your dark night of the soul / metamorphosis post-probable-TIA. You phrase the result so beautifully. And it fits with the picture that’s emerging as I hear about different kinds of spiritually transformative experiences.
I don’t want to clog your comments section, so I’ll continue in email….
Sheila Joshi
June 7th, 2012 at 11:13 pmpermalink
My teapot broke again this week 🙁
I barely touched it!
Tonight, on a complete whim,
my synchronicitously telepathic husband and I decided that our courting bluebird couple needed names.
We looked at each other and we both immediately and simultaneously said, “FRED!”
I just intuitively knew that bird HAD to be named Fred…we both even thought he looked and flew like a Fred! It was so natural. The name just fell out of both of us at precisely the same time!
We weren’t so lucky on the female: I chose “Wilma” (of course) and “Marge” for my husband!
Fred and Wilma they are! 🙂
We tried to recreate this again, but as usual, the universe doesn’t work when you want it to…
sharon woods
June 13th, 2012 at 11:11 pmpermalink
I was in the Midwest for a family visit.
I had a long drive ahead of me and I was already pretty tired. So I pulled into Gander Mountain to take a gander at what they had, and it was frankly more dreamquest than need that pulled me into that store. I should preface this with the fact that I had not been in a Gander Mountain store in 2 years, frankly because the nearest to my home is in a town we don’t travel to often, about 45 minutes away!
I combed the shelves and found all kinds of wonderful things, but my husband mentioned that he wanted a camp chair to stargaze in. I found the kind he wanted: it was the perfect chair! But something caused me to hesitate in buying it: a voice in my head, my own inner dialogue, chided humorously: “don’t buy it. Because if you do, you’ll find out that your quirky soulmate of a husband has gone and bought the same chair!”
So against my better judgement, the chair stayed at Gander Mountain.
Several hours down the road to home, I had a call from my husband and we had the following conversation:
Jeff: “I went to Gander Mounter and guess what I bought?”
Sharon: “A chair?:
Jeff (laughing loudly): “Yes! How’d you know?”
Sharon:( laughing hysterically) “Because I was just at Gander Mountain myself an hour ago, and you just made my whole day!”
It turns out that we both at 2 separate Gander Mountains in 2 separate states and were within an hour of buying the exact same model of chair that I almost left with!
sharon woods
September 16th, 2012 at 1:53 pmpermalink
It’s a great synchronicity chain!
Have you noticed that all teapots coincidences happen in connection to your wife? Do you understand the meaning of it? (’cause I do!)
Zayka
August 1st, 2014 at 10:35 ampermalink
I would love to hear your take! I only recently decided that the original teapot I was drawn to in the thrift store was definitely deeply connected to her (she was the unnamed friend that I brought it to, trying to figure out why I wanted it so strongly) … And we have teapot decorations/reminders/totems at key points throughout our farm where we live today … But I never noticed that the teapot-synchs DO tend to happen with her, til you mentioned it!
Teapots Happen
August 1st, 2014 at 11:48 ampermalink