{"id":3352,"date":"2011-10-06T08:56:07","date_gmt":"2011-10-06T12:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=3352"},"modified":"2011-10-06T08:56:07","modified_gmt":"2011-10-06T12:56:07","slug":"you-cant-find-serendipity-unless-you-get-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/10\/you-cant-find-serendipity-unless-you-get-lost.html","title":{"rendered":"You can’t find serendipity unless you get lost"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The cardinal navigational law of serendipity is this: You can only get to the magic kingdom by getting lost. You get there when you think you are going somewhere else and fall off the maps.<\/p>\n

Take the case of Mark Twain’s search for fortune in Brazil. He wasn’t yet Mark Twain. He was young Sam Clemens from Missouri, eking out a living in a print shop in Iowa, drinking red whiskey and dreaming of greatness.<\/p>\n

Up there in the guest house in Keokuk, Iowa, Sam Clemens read a book that described \u201ca vegetable product with miraculous powers\u201d that grew in Brazil. Sam was \u201cfired with a longing\u201d to go up the Amazon, secure a supply of this miracle plant \u2013 and make a fortune. He sailed to New Orleans on a riverboat whose pilot was the celebrated Horace Bixby.<\/p>\n

When he got to New Orleans, Sam found that no ship in port was sailing for Brazil, and no one could tell him how to get there. So he changed his plans, sought out Bixby, and used his gift of the gab to persuade the old river man to take him on as an apprentice pilot, which was a pretty good meal ticket in those days.<\/p>\n

Working on theMississippi river, he got many of the ideas for the books that made him famous under the pen-name he now borrowed from the boatmen\u2019s cry \u201cMark Twain\u201d, meaning two fathoms, safe water.<\/p>\n

The miracle plant Sam had set out to find was coca. Had he succeeded in his original plan, Keokuk, Iowa would have become the cocaine capital of America. Because Sam Clemens couldn\u2019t find Brazil, he failed to become the first cocaine dealer in North American history and instead became Mark Twain.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Mark Twain made a lifelong study and practice of navigating by coincidence. For more on this, read “Mark Twain’s Rhyming Life” in The<\/em> Secret History of Dreaming<\/em><\/a> by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The cardinal navigational law of serendipity is this: You can only get to the magic kingdom by getting lost. You get there when you think you are going somewhere else and fall off the maps. Take the case of Mark Twain’s search for fortune in Brazil. He wasn’t yet Mark Twain. He was young Sam…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,25,3,26,8],"tags":[642,641,643,350,644,640],"class_list":["post-3352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coincidence","category-conscious-living","category-imagination","category-life-direction","category-synchronicity","tag-brazil","tag-coca","tag-horace-bixby","tag-mark-twain","tag-mississippi-riverboats","tag-serendipity"],"yoast_head":"\nYou can't find serendipity unless you get lost - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/10\/you-cant-find-serendipity-unless-you-get-lost.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"You can't find serendipity unless you get lost - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The cardinal navigational law of serendipity is this: You can only get to the magic kingdom by getting lost. You get there when you think you are going somewhere else and fall off the maps. Take the case of Mark Twain’s search for fortune in Brazil. He wasn’t yet Mark Twain. He was young Sam…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/10\/you-cant-find-serendipity-unless-you-get-lost.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-10-06T12:56:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/files\/2011\/10\/Mark-Twain-river-222x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Robert Moss\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"You can't find serendipity unless you get lost - Dream Gates","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/10\/you-cant-find-serendipity-unless-you-get-lost.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"You can't find serendipity unless you get lost - Dream Gates","og_description":"The cardinal navigational law of serendipity is this: You can only get to the magic kingdom by getting lost. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3352"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3355,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3352\/revisions\/3355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}