Finding a Penny

Thoughts on finding a penny and reporting it on facebook:

This is an exercise in programmed attention and luck. It has only a little to do with pennies per se (although I do like pennies and collected them as a child). The idea is: " If I am more conscious about finding pennies and 'things of value' on the ground, then I will be more likely to find pennies and 'things of value' in the future" The basic concept is not scientific at all, but the analysis is. When I find something of value on the ground I report it on facebook. This conscious activity helps direct my awareness toward finding more things and perhaps influence the likelihood of those events in the future.


 This is similar to the idea Terrence McKenna has about the Eschaton (or end state of the Universe)... Instead of being pushed forward in time away from the Big Bang, he thought we are being pulled foreward in time towards the Eschaton. So, to adapt this model to our lives, we are pulled toward the goals and thoughts and unconscious desires we hold in our mind. Perhaps, if we can direct the content of our thoughts, we can modify the direction of our life, both on a practical level and perhaps even on a supernatural level. In other words -- if you "feel lucky" you just might be more likely to actually GET LUCKY. The results are inconclusive, but I do find a lot of pennies and dimes and strings of beads and playing cards on the ground (if I am in the zone and aware)


Since I have been consciously doing this a close friend has started finding money and things of value and she never finds anything. It is all about attention. Sometimes I will be standing in a group of people (at a bus stop, or in a store) and I will see a penny on the ground and I wonder WHY nobody else even noticed it. Awareness and Attention? Luck? Magic?


Once, at the bus stop at Jefferson and Vermont I was very distracted thinking about dental surgery and lamenting my fate, and someone else found a penny on the ground right in front of me.  I was very irritated and disappointed at that.


copyright (c) 2018
William Schaeffer