The early Taoists from between 5,000 and 3,000 BCE explained existence of the Cosmos as “Circumstances begetting circumstances.” Given enough time, anything can happen “of itself.” Like spontaneous combustion. “

Mutual arising,” it might be called. It may also be thought of as a “fortunate coincidence.” “Synchronicity” is a word coined by Carl Jung as “an acausal connecting principle” where an external event and an internal event, (like a dream, or an idle thought), would make a connection, have an effect, without a cause. For example, we might dream of an old friend we had not seen in years and get a letter from them in the morning mail.

Things “just happen,” sometimes for no reason. It helps to be alert to that so as not to be “nonplussed,” or “undone” by the inexplicable disruptions of our life, which does away with the idea of “God playing dice with the Universe.” We have to deal with the damndest things–and nobody is “out to get us,” and we are not “cursed from birth with the worst possible luck.”

Circumstances are begetting circumstances all of the time, and it is our place to live with a minimum degree of expectations and a minimum number of opinions and explanations. This is called “adapting ourselves to our circumstances that are changing all by themselves routinely as a matter of course.

Having to have reasons for everything is the foundation of religion, where “the gods” (Or God) can be held accountable for everything, good and bad, and whose good graces can be guaranteed with the proper amount of the right kind of sacrifice and attention. Religions around the world are held in place by imagination, superstition and projection. Another example of circumstances creating circumstances.