12)  SIGNS AND MEANINGS

Ok, remember that I was talking about coincidences. There is a shorter word for those, “signs”.  A “sign” is a coincidence which is delivering a message to us, not a random event, but an event or appearance which is noticeable and important in some way to what we are about at this time. I mentioned before that signs normally come in threes because it takes 3 signs to narrow down the meaning.

Ah, new word, “meaning”. Another tough concept. Hard to describe, but we know it when we see it. Let’s see. “Meaning”. Definitely has to do with consciousness, another tough word to describe. How about this, the meaning of something on one level of consciousness requires going up a level or levels. In other words, if someone does something in the physical level of consciousness, one of the meanings can be determined by looking for what it means on the emotional level, one up. And then we can go up even further to find even “higher” meanings, perhaps mental, perhaps soul level.

Remember in high school English class, when the teacher would get us to read something, a story, and then ask us to verbally or in writing, describe what happened in the story? That’s the process of assigning meaning. And remember how some students couldn’t come up with anything and some came up with obviously wrong meanings? And then there were the “bright” students who would come up with meanings which held water, but a lot of times those meanings were varied and the teacher said that was “ok”.

So coming up with a meaning to a set of signs is a creative process, making up a story to explain the events. Naturally the meaning assigned will depend a lot on the person doing the creating, their background, their belief system.

“The meaning of life”. That one is easy. It is defined by the “spiritual” belief system of the person. It’s in there already.

And believing that there is no meaning is also a belief system, legitimate. And there are those who aren’t creative that way, can’t imagine a meaning, also legitimate. How about those who imagine meanings, but they have proved in the past to be wrong? Wouldn’t they claim instead that there aren’t any meanings?

To me a successful meaning is one which helps in some way, pragmatic. I suppose an idealistic meaning could be useful, but that sounds a lot like a “should”, perhaps making life more difficult. No, for me, a meaning needs to lean in the direction of the Tao, my path, floating downstream rather than struggling upstream.

Of course there is the short term meaning, like “let’s just have fun now”, which could be different from the long term meaning, like “I’d better take care of business now so that I can have fun later”. That meaning assignment requires experience and memory, wisdom. The art of life. I like to be guided by “balance and timing”, but more on that in a later posting.

Back to “signs”. What is the meaning of a set of signs? The first challenge is the recognition of a sign. Are we looking for signs? We can’t see them if we aren’t looking for them. But even if we are not, usually within a lifetime, everyone has a sign so dramatic that it can’t be denied to oneself, even if we won’t admit it to others because it sounds so crazy or doesn’t fit within our belief system. I have been amazed at the stories a person tells me when I bring up the sign concept—they tell me about a sign that they are afraid to tell anyone else, don’t want to sound crazy.

If someone asks me for a meaning of a sign they had, I am really hesitant, because it is such a personal thing. But I encourage them to try to remember the associated signs and help them to see the overlapping meanings. Of course, my own belief system of souls and reincarnation and karma comes into it. Can’t help that.

After the first challenge of recognizing a sign is the the second challenge, how open-minded and honest can we be with ourselves? What is the actual meaning? Sometimes not necessarily the meaning we want.

And lastly, what are we going to do with the information? Are we going to make a change to our life or use our “free-won’t”? In most cases, it isn’t that heavy, changing our life. But we can decide to try out the path suggested by the meaning or decide to ignore it, our choice. One other option, go against it.

I look at signs more as suggestions, not commands. I tend towards skepticism at first. I mean, did I get the interpretation right and where did the signs come from?

Where indeed! According to metaphysics, there does exist a lower-astral plane of consciousness where evil entities and demons live and would like nothing better than to make someone’s life worse. It isn’t good to tune into those entities. When a person says, “I don’t know why I killed him”, I believe them. They had help. These entities love to stir up negative emotions and are looking for those who are susceptible. Mr. Tunks, my metaphysical teacher said that those who had astral vision, could see negative entities sitting on the roof of a bar looking to start a good fight down below.

For me I can pick and choose which signs I wish to follow and my intention is toward love, not hate. I also have a general idea of how I want my life to go, so I ignore even positive signs if they don’t get me where I want. Admittedly I am not totally open.

I tried it once, in my 20’s. I was studying the Tao Te Ching and decided that any time someone wanted something from me, I would say “yes”, even if I didn’t think it was a good idea. What was amazing was how quickly things fell apart, not just for me, but for those around me. It only took 2 weeks for me to end that experiment. I realized that my opinions and decisions were somehow important to the universe. And that particular realization gave me “meaning” for my life.

One more thing. Interpreting signs is an act of creativity, something I am fairly good at. But some of those who can’t do it, look to others to give them meaning, and this is called “religion”. One man’s Tao cannot be another’s. A successful life is about doing the right thing at the right time, and that involves very personal choices, not found in someone else and not found in a book. And it isn’t even necessary to think about signs and meanings to have a successful life.