"What the seeker seeks the finder finds"

[OooPourUsACupLove]

"What the seeker seeks the finder finds" is a saying I thought was well known.

I've never been quite sure what it means. I thought maybe something like "beware of confirmation bias".

On a Sunday morning whim I just googled it and was surprised to get hardly any results at all. All I got was two Reddit posts that happened to use the phrase. (Almost a Googlewhack!)

Given how many billions of words have been written to the web, that could just be one of those infinite monkey moments.

So did I just make this whole "it's a well known phrase" thing up?

YABU - I've never heard that phrase before
YANBU - It is a well known phrase (and for bonus points, this is what it means)

I've never heard it! And I'm very widely read / travelled.

I’m in my 60s and love anything to do with language, idioms, dialects, local expressions etc and I have never heard of it.

Sorry op, another one who has never heard it

From "Prometheus Rising" by Robert Anton Wilson?

Never heard it before and it doesn't really mean anything

Ooo maybe....I've never read it but it's not entirely outside my frame of reference (as in, I have curious friends who are interested in counter cultures and esoterica as opposed to actual conspiracy theorists!). I will investigate further.

@SoEmbarrassed2024 don't be sorry, this is really cool/interesting.

If I really have made the whole thing up, the phrase and the meaning, I kind of feel like it's a ready-made book title/art piece just waiting to be made!

(Hmmm - I'm wondering if it's a phrase from another language. My mum speaks a few languages and quite often referred to ideas and proverbs from other languages in English)

Are you mixing it up with "seek and ye shall find"? That's from the Bible.

Not consciously - I know the Biblical phrase and wouldn't have confused the two.

But given my subconscious appears to have invented this, who knows what it started with!

It's a common theme in Prometheus Rising. Supporting the idea that we see the world through our own internal biases (reality tunnels)

I've found the quote, not the same but similar:

Whatever the thinker thinks, the Prover will prove. R.A.W.

Amazing - not quite the same phrase and the meaning does change a bit with thinker/prover rather than seeker/finder, but but the message (seeing the world through your own biases) is exactly right.

My DH has almost certainly read Promethesus Rising - maybe I picked it up from him.

Made me think of this QI episode 😂

I've not heard that particular phrase but it brought to mind this Abraham Lincoln quote: "If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will."

Not that I know my American Presidents' quotations - I remember it from the kids' film Pollyanna 😁