The following are excerpts from Decoding the Spiritual Messages of Everyday Life with minimal edits to help them stand alone. They illustrate what I mean by a spiritual message.
Rachel’s awakening came when her world had been turned upside down. Rachel came from a Jewish family that had strong spiritual beliefs. She had left all that behind when she was in her late teens. Then, when she was forty-six, she began to have experiences that she believed were divinely orchestrated. “They seem to come at times of despair or confusion,” she said. “Some of my first experiences and awareness had a connection with numbers, maybe because I needed something tangible that had meaning to me.
“The event that had the greatest effect on me involved the number 313. My son, Peter, was killed on 3-13-93. So, naturally, every time I see that combination, I can’t help but think of him—and now of God, too. There were four or five things that happened with this same number in relation to Peter. One was that the number 3:13 was clearly visible as the time on a clock in one of the last photographs taken of him several weeks before his death.
“But by far the most powerful incident happened on the first anniversary of Peter’s death. I was anticipating it with dread, not knowing how I would get through it, and I desperately needed help. That Saturday morning at 8 a.m.—almost the same time my doorbell had rung a year earlier with the news of his death—my bell rang again. A friend who was staying with me answered the door for me. A conservatively dressed man handed him a booklet. When I looked at it, all I saw was one line: ‘There are new heavens and a new earth that we are awaiting according to God’s promise and in these righteousness is to dwell (2 Peter 3:13).’ My son is Peter number two (his father is also named Peter), and the numbers matched the date of his death. To me, this was a message—a hello telling me that my son was fine. No one could tell me that God wasn’t trying to comfort me and to help me move on through that day and all the days that would follow.”
This experience seemed too uncanny to be a coincidence. In Rachel’s opinion, it had been choreographed just for her at the exact moment she needed it. It convinced her that her son still existed—that his tragedy wasn’t really a tragedy but a part of his journey that wasn’t over yet. He was doing fine. The spirituality that she had been taught as a child was once again relevant to her and gave her life a deeper meaning.
Rachel’s message, like hundreds of other messages that I’ve studied, contains four characteristic elements—elements that suddenly came together in a meaningful way:
Once she received it, many positive things began to happen. She still missed her son tremendously and thought about him every day, but she was less depressed. Her relationships improved as she tried to be more compassionate and helpful to others because this is what she believed a spiritual person should do. She did better at work. In short, she started living, and life gradually took on meaning once again. All of this was made possible by the little extra push that she got from acting in line with what her message seemed to be suggesting she do and trying one more time to move on with her life. (chapter 3, pages 42-43)
Here’s how a spiritual message compelled Martha, a successful physician, to develop her emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence in tandem. “I had finished a written examination for my medical boards,” Martha told me, her voice trembling as she recalled the experience. “Unbeknownst to me, somebody had copied my answers and both of our exams were disqualified. I was told that I had to take the exam over. I cried. My dad said that if I fought this decision, I would never win. I was close to the head of the general medical clinic where I was working, and he knew how the board worked. He too said, ‘You are not going to win. Nobody is going to listen to you. Are you joking?’ “
At the time, I was just getting interested in spirituality, and a friend who knew far more about spiritual matters than I did encouraged me to fight for my rights. She explained that it was important spiritually for me to defend myself when I was in the right. She said that although it was right to trust in God, I shouldn’t think that God would always take care of me without my trying to take care of myself. Because of this advice, I decided to find a lawyer, go against the odds, and fight the decision. I just wanted to show that I hadn’t done anything wrong. But I was also very scared.” When I discussed this with Martha, we agreed that the principle of mine that captured what she had in mind at the time was “Place your hope in no one but God.” That was the only thing that kept her going through her ordeal, a desire to act on her faith and truly place her hope in God.
After several agonizing months, Martha and her lawyer went to Chicago and met with the examination board and their lawyers. “My lawyer proved everything to their satisfaction,” she told me. “They quickly apologized to me and released my grade. All of my professors at school were surprised. I learned from this that I should always say something in the face of a wrong, not just go away and hide. It was my right to win the case, but I had to take action to assert that right.”
Martha’s message was written into a material situation (the conflict with the medical board), gained force through a heightened psychological state (her fear of confronting authorities and her desire to rely on God), and was announced by an unexpected external event (her easy success) that drew her attention to an inner spiritual impact (a new feeling of inner strength). Her message confirmed that she had been right to put her hope in God, not passively, but actively, by speaking out in her own defense. There was no reason to be as fearful as she was.
As a result of this experience, she felt encouraged to take more stands to promote her own interests and leave the results in God’s hands. We don’t develop the virtue of courage merely by meditating on courage, but by acting with courage in situations that are difficult for us. That’s exactly what Martha set out to do—develop more courage by putting her hope in God in those situations that filled her with fear. Each morning, she would think about what she might be afraid of that day, plan a way to assert herself, and remember to put her hope in God. What are some of the actions she took? She prepared herself to speak in a group, assert herself with colleagues, and not be intimidated by patients who were demanding. She pushed herself to ask for a raise, confront a coworker who was taking advantage of her, and voice her opinions with friends. Her efforts over the months and years that followed led to greater self-awareness and a greater overall emotional competence. She also developed a greater understanding of what she had a right to expect from putting her hope in God and what she didn’t. She was developing her spiritual intelligence and improving her everyday life at the same time. (chapter 10, pages 181-184)
“Before I heard that it was my spiritual duty to work and to make a living,” Beth told me, “I didn’t feel like working. My husband supported us. Frankly, I didn’t believe in myself. But when a trusted friend, who was almost like a spiritual adviser to me, said that it would be good for me, both psychologically and spiritually, to support myself, I started to look for a job. Since then, I have experienced miracles that confirmed for me that God is not only encouraging me in this direction but watching over me as well.
“When I started job hunting, I was going from door to door, just hoping to find a job. I really didn’t have any skills. After a few weeks, by ‘chance’ I got an interview with the director of a big financial newspaper. Actually, what happened is that when I called, the secretary had just stepped out of the office and the director himself answered and gave me an appointment for the next day. He hired me on the spot. I have to add that I didn’t know much about finance. For me, that was a sign of God’s hand in what had happened.”
Getting a better job than she expected was enough for Beth to believe that God was helping her. Her experience underscores an important point about how messages work—they rarely sweep into our lives and solve our problems as they did with C.J. More often, they help us by solving one problem (in this case, Beth’s insecurity and difficulty applying herself to her spiritual life) by nudging us into a material situation (like Beth’s job) where we are faced with challenges that force us to grow in ways that will help our spiritual development too. In her new job, for example, Beth would have to develop her writing skills, set realistic goals, and meet deadlines. She would have to learn to interact under pressure with all kinds of people in different situations while remaining true to her own values.
Over time, she became more creative, industrious, focused, and independent. She learned to like work and felt far more alive than when she had been huddling comfortably at home. These same skills helped her apply herself better in her spiritual life as well. I asked Beth what made her attribute her success to spiritual forces and not to the regular forces of the job market. She acknowledged that other women who had pushed themselves to go to work might have reaped material benefits that were even greater than hers. What convinced her that spiritual forces lay behind her success was the fact that things had gone much better than she had a right to expect.
In addition, the event marked a turning point in her life from which her spiritual understanding had increased over the years. “I started to look at things from a more spiritual perspective,” she explained, “meaning that in each event in my daily work life, I started to look for a lesson, a point of spiritual wisdom. As I did, I started to believe in myself. I was more courageous in front of others and less scared about the future. My faith in God allowed me to be serene and look at situations more objectively. For example, when I knew that my firm had to lay off some employees, I wasn’t scared. I became unafraid of diseases or death for myself and even for my children. Also, since I was working on my own shortcomings, I became more indulgent of others and less demanding of them. My relationship with others got better as a result. It was all because of my greater faith in God.”
What is important in a message, then, is not the size or even the nature of the material effect that signals the arrival of a message, but the deeper effect it has on our own thinking, which depends on other factors that we will identify as we go on. What ultimately confirmed Beth’s experience as spiritual—and enables us to think of it that way—is not just her intuitive belief that it was so, but the way it marked the beginning of a new chapter in her life in which she developed both psychologically and spiritually. (chapter 2, pages 30-33)