“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)
