Sometimes the greatest words you’ve never heard might be Hints from Heaven.
What are they?
Hints, strange events, and traces of meta-meaning unspoken; first sensed then connected—like dots. It’s similar to deciphering a code or unveiling a message written in invisible ink. Once the message appears, it’s followed quickly by an over-arching sense of awe, confusion and for most, disbelief.
THE SIMPLICITY CONUNDRUM
Messages and miracles don’t happen these days, right?
I was trying to write a difficult story when I ran into a perplexing problem—a total roadblock. How do you simplify a complex story—one that involves quantum physics, cancer, dying, depression, hope against all odds and the ephemeral topic of miracles?
The story was about a terminally ill cancer patient, a licensed clinical neuropsychologist and international bestselling author that you will meet later in my book, The Greatest Words You’ve Never Heard: True Stories of Triumph.” He was a doctor—one that believed in miracles as well as the ability to look for, identify and make miracles for yourself and others.
PUZZLING PARADOX
Part of the story delved into the concept of synchronicity—finding meaning in causally unrelated (“acausal”) coincidences and events—events that greatly stretch the probabilities of chance and even belief sometimes. The doctor in the story believed that the concept of synchronicity helped him understand and survive his “terminal” disease. The trick, he believed, was to become aware of these events and coincidences in his life and seek meaning in them.
Some synchronistic events create puzzling paradoxes that seem to be beyond our understanding of reality. They conflict with the fundamental principles of our reason, but nonetheless, they happen.
Synchronicity was a term coined by Dr. Carl Jung to describe these types of happenings. During his many years of research and medical practice, he documented multiple cases that could not be explained by mere probabilities of chance. Dr. Jung came to believe that if you pay attention to these events, they could add meaning to your life. They might even help and guide you in a time of personal distress.
All of this was out of my league. Way out. But I was open to at least thinking about the possibility of synchronicity. The problem was how to explain it in clear, simple language and at the same time, incorporate the quantum physics, non-locality, and observer participancy elements that were also part of the story, then weave them so that the seams didn’t show.
Like I said, way out of my league.
EXAMPLES?
Some coincidences could be interesting little curiosities. You go to a bookstore looking for a particular book, but can’t remember the title. You walk down an aisle and a book falls off of the shelf right in your path. It’s the very book you’re looking for—odd, but nothing life-changing. Perplexing though.
But some synchronistic events can be life-savers, like the following two real-life events.
RATHER ORDINARY REASONS
“All 15 members of a church choir in Beatrice, Nebraska, due at practice at 7:20, were late on the evening of March 1, 1950. The minister, his wife and daughter had one reason (his wife was delayed to iron the daughter’s dress), one girl waited to finish a geometry problem, one couldn’t start her car, two lingered to hear the end of an especially exciting radio program, one mother and daughter were late because the mother had to call the daughter twice to wake her from a nap and so on. The reasons seemed rather ordinary.
“But there were 10 separate and quite unconnected reasons for the lateness of the 15 persons. It was rather fortunate that none of the 15 arrived on time at 7:20, for at 7:25, the church building was destroyed in an explosion.”
– From “Lady Luck: The Theory of Probability,” by Warren Weaver
THE ODDS?
What does this mean, if anything? What are the odds of something like this happening?
Is there possibly an undiscovered connection between minds that transcend the known laws of the universe? Are our minds connected to a “collective unconscious” as Dr. Jung believed? And, if so…
WHAT TO MAKE OF THIS?
One of my all-time favorite books, a classic called Man’s Search for Meaning written by Dr. Viktor Frankl, described a synchronistic event that changed his life forever.
Dr. Frankl had a successful neurology and psychiatry practice in Germany in the late 1930s, but he was Jewish. He knew he had to leave Germany soon or face death. He applied for a visa and after several years, it was approved. But there was a problem.
“I was asked to come to the US consulate to pick up my visa. Then I hesitated: Should I leave my parents behind? I knew what their fate would be: deportation to a concentration camp. Should I say goodbye and leave them to their fate? The visa was exclusively for me.”
– Viktor Frankl, Search for Meaning
THE HINT WISH
Dr. Frankl remembered thinking then that he’d wished for a “hint from heaven” to help him make the decision. Later that day, he picked up the visa and went to visit his parents to discuss it. When he arrived, he found his father in tears.
“The Nazis have burned down the synagogue.”
Dr. Frankl noticed a piece of marble on the table. He asked his father about it. It was a fragment his father had saved from the synagogue. It had some scorched writing on it.
ONE ENGRAVED LETTER
There was one letter etched into the marble. It was the beginning of one of the Ten Commandments.
כבד את האבא שלך ואמא שלך
Translation?
“HONOR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER.”
Dr. Frankl made his decision. He canceled his visa. It changed his life forever. He was sent to the death camps—yes I said “camps.”
Dr. Frankl survived more than one Nazi death camp, and Man’s Search for Meaning recounts that experience. He wrote the book in nine days. It was published in 1946 and is widely considered to be one of the most influential books of our times.
SILENT SERENDIPITY
Strange—undeniably strange and true. But nothing like that has ever happened to me. Not even a book falling off a shelf to land at my feet.
But maybe I hadn’t been looking close enough, because while finalizing the research for the story I was working on I happened across an article that I’d written a couple of years ago. Was stumbling upon this story synchronistic? I don’t know … but I hadn’t thought of this story for many years.
It was also about another terminally ill cancer patient—a woman I knew. I was asked to write a fundraising story about her plight. It had been exceptionally hard to write, but it was one of those rare moments when you feel humbled to be asked to do something that might actually make a difference—if only for a short time.
LIVING WHILE DYING
Trying to complete that story was a challenge for me, too. Remarkably, it was similar to the one I was working on about the doctor. The raw emotions involved, the brutal facts, the stark realities and worse, trying to communicate what it’s like to face the everyday issues of living while you’re dying—in plain, simple language—without getting lost in data or minutiae that really doesn’t matter.
Happening upon this previously written story at exactly that time helped me to remove the block and finish the story. It made me ask the question that, as I think about it, still makes my head want to explode.
Was happening upon my previous article purposeful or simply an accident?
THE PARADOX?
I struggle with the thought of it being purposeful. It conflicts with my view of reality. If it wasn’t purposeful, then it was an accident. But if it was an accident, it was a synchronistic event that only I could draw meaning from.
Could these hints from heaven, or synchronistic events, be the greatest words you will never hear?
I haven’t resolved the puzzling paradox yet, but I did run across words from Dr. Richard Feynman that helped me come to terms with it…
“A paradox is not a conflict within reality. It is a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality should be like.”
– Richard Feynman, American physicist
