Dr Teria Shantall submitted this article on Synchronicity and meaning Have you experienced meaningful coincidences, coincidences that brought a sharp understanding or insight to your mind, a synchronicity of events that you feel contained a message for you? Frankl recorded many such experiences in his own life. When offered an American visa during the time when the Nazi round-up of Jews began in his country, Austria, and living at the time with his elderly parents, he wished for what he called: a hint from heaven. Accepting the visa would mean leaving them behind, bereft of the protection that his prominent position as Director of the only Jewish hospital in Vienna afforded them. His parents very much wanted him to leave to be able to continue his important work in America, but could he leave them? That night, on his return home, he saw a piece of marble with a gilded Hebrew letter on it. Asking his father what it was, his father explained that he found it in the rubble of a synagogue that had been destroyed by members of the Nazi party. The Hebrew letter on the piece of marble referred to one of the Ten Commandments, his father said. Frankl eagerly asked which one of the commandments it was. His father answered: Honor your father and mother that your days may be long in the land the Lord God will give you. Frankl immediately grasped that he had his hint from heaven. He stayed. He was later rounded up and taken to Nazi concentration camps along with his parents, newly wed bride and brother. Upon arrival at Auschwitz, the infamous death camp, he carried his first manuscript and lifes work in the inside of his coat. That coat was taken from him, despite his protest. But, in being given a coat of an inmate that had already been sent to the gas chambers, he found in its pocket, the torn out page, of the Jewish prayer book, with the injunction: Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is the One and Only God. He wrote: How else could I interpret this coincidence than as a challenge to me to live what I had written; to practice what I had preached? Then there was the amazing incident in the camps when he cried out to heaven whether all that suffering had any meaning. From somewhere he heard a Yes! to his anguished question. At that very moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse and this Scripture came to his mind: And a light shines in the darkness. On the mound of earth he had dug up, a dove suddenly perched and looked steadily at him. It was as if his wifes encouraging presence came to envelop him. These incidences of synchronicity sharply strengthened Frankls conviction that meanings come to us; that situations speak to us and that, if we respond to it, it floods us with a sense of meaning. There is, in fact, a golden thread of meaning in our lives. Like a Presence, it is always there, always waiting, always coming to us. It is always to be found, anywhere, at any time, under all circumstances, by anyone of us! How great such a Truth, the One Truth Frankl spoke about! It explains the fact that meaning is always discovered, found, embraced and experienced, testifying to its objective character. Truth is truth. It is! It cannot be created, put out there by us as a theory, a specific point of view, even as a religion of our own making. It is beyond us, immeasurably above our own full grasp of it. Therefore it is not under our control. We cannot manipulate it, force it to bend to our idea of things. It escapes dogmatism and is therefore never judgmental, hurtful, violent or oppressive. It knows nothing of prejudice, bias, racism, hatred. It is indeed pure love, holy, God! Love is open, it is free, it has no shadow of turning, no deceit or any dark side to it. It is utterly complete in itself! That too, is the nature of meanings that come to us, that we are invited into, that we are called upon to heed and embrace and then experience. Meanings, as emanations from the Divine, are pure words; like purified silver, clear to the world, refined sevenfold (Psalm 12:7). Frankl testified to the fact that our conscience is a divine gift of being able to hear the voice of the Transcendent, speaking to us in every situation of our lives. Conscience, this kind of grasp, is something that grows in refinement and sensitivity. Following the cues of right and meaningful living, we gain in human stature. We become, take on the image of what we have been created to be. What man is, he is not yet but ought to be and should become, Frankl stated. This option is open to every person in his or her singularity and uniqueness. The challenge is to find this thread of meaning throughout our entire lives. The call: Adam, where are you? comes to all of us. We are to discover ourselves in relation to the very purpose of our lives. This is Logotherapy! This is what we seek to teach. A training in Logotherapy is first and foremost a training in the very art of living. Having mastered that art, we, like Frankl, come to a place of service, of full availability to others in need. All that a training in Logotherapy does, is to sharpen these capacities in ourselves! Teria Shantall
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 07:40:14 +0000
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