The Confusion Over “Signs of Destiny”
by Kelvin Chin
Life After Life Expert
This essay was written in May 2018 at the Hanover Inn while I was at an Alumni Council weekend at Dartmouth College.
Have you ever experienced yourself, or maybe heard stories from friends, where something unusual happened that may have been more than just the usual “coincidence”?
For example, this just happened to me. I seemingly randomly walked into the new student center at my college alma mater. When I was there in the 1970s, there was no such place for students to hang out. We either had our dorm rooms, or…outside (in the freezing cold, -30°F was common in the winter in Hanover, New Hampshire, so outdoor parties...not so much til Spring!!). I went right to the information desk and had a nice far-ranging conversation with the student working there. He of course told me the history of the student center, but we quickly got into personal stuff — my being on campus for the Alumni Council meetings, that I had just come from the building next-door where I had discovered to my pleasant surprise that the meditation center I founded in 1971 was still up on the third floor — although now decorated with fancy furniture, carpeting, dividing walls — a far cry from the Dean’s secretary Mrs. Johnson’s “sure, you can use the third floor but you’ll need to clear out the desks, chairs and other stuff that are stacked up and stored there.” We talked about his film production career after graduation, his playing offensive tackle for the football team, and my nonprofit work. He even suggested an on-campus organization that I should contact to help student-athletes with my meditation work.
An hour later I asked him his name.
His name has significant meaning for me. I thought, “wow, that’s interesting.” Not a usual name, and one that has a lot of meaning for me personally.
“Marcus.”
Many of us have had similar experiences. That very strange, highly unusual, seemingly random event or chance meeting that otherwise seems inexplicable.
So, we often hear people say, “It was meant to be. It was destiny that it happened. It had to happen.”
Was that a “sign” or evidence that there is something called Destiny?
No, I don’t think so.
And yet I actually think there is a good explanation for why these things happen. As well as a good explanation for why many people think these are signs of some sort of predestination.
Essentially you could distill it down to these two points: 1) yes, there may be communications coming to us from the Other Side, but 2) that does not mean that replaces or usurps Free Will.
Let’s try to unbundle that common conflation in the world — that these sort of “unexplained coincidences” are evidence of destiny or determinism.
First, let’s agree on one thing. That we are all minds or consciousnesses — some people like to use the word souls. I tend to use the word “minds” because it is not religiously or culturally charged. It’s more neutral. Feel free to use a synonym if you like.
And my experience is that our minds are eternal, or at least they last for a very, very long time based on memories that I have had. I’ve written about this idea of eternity in other blogs and essays.
So that means that our minds can and do exist after the physical death of the body.
My experience also supports the notion that personal choice exists. That Free Will is always operating. Each of us can always choose to make different choices in life, that no one has absolute control over us with “puppet strings,” or maybe even a better image — no one has us chained and enslaved.
Yet, the fact that minds “on the other side of the veil” may sometimes communicate with us on this side can often muddy the waters causing some people to use it as evidence of destiny. The idea that “whisperings from the other side” to minds on this side may create appearances of predestination.
Instead, I think they are just more examples of things happening caused by the desires and intentions of various minds.
For example, maybe one of my friends on the Other Side whispers to me as I’m walking across the campus to go explore the old meditation room on the third floor of Robinson Hall, which may also happen to coincide with a desire that I had already had myself. But the whispering simply prods me, pushes me in that direction that I was already leaning in this case.
Think of it this way. It’s no different from a friend who is in physical form walking alongside of you who says, “let’s go check that old room out.” To me, it’s the same thing. Whether you can see the person or not. Doesn’t matter.
But then it’s still up to me to choose to go or not go. Which is why it does not happen every time, because our Free Will is operating all the time
But, when the mind is more aware, the various desires and intentions are more likely to manifest. It’s all probabilities. Nothing is guaranteed. (Guarantee is implied in the concept of “Destiny.”) But the level of self-awareness of the minds involved definitely comes into play.
So, maybe somebody did whisper to that student working at the information desk, or whispered to a number of people to increase the likelihood that he would be working at the desk on the day I walked in. Who knows?
But, while the confluence of situations and events that led up to my meeting him may seem unusual from a certain perspective, it does not mean that there was a guaranteed meeting — a Destiny.
Why is this important?
Because I think a belief in Destiny is a source of suffering for many people — whether they realize it or not. It can cause people to “hold back,” to be passive in life. Hesitant. Always waiting for some “sign.” And when it doesn’t come, or if it seems to come, and doesn’t work out as expected — despair.
“Why have I been forsaken?”
“What did I do wrong?”
“What did I do to deserve this?”
Instead of taking action and assertively making choices based on the data at hand. And in the long-run, they tend to not learn from their lives on Earth — repeating the same old patterns often based on ancient cognitively inconsistent beliefs — and continue for lifetimes suffering in ways that might be overcome by continued conscious explorations and knowingly making a wider variety of more effective choices over those lifetimes. Without fear of experimenting in those many previous lives through those choices.
That is my reason for sharing these thoughts.
To perhaps, if they resonate, help us see life from different perspectives, different seats in the theater of life, so that we might perceive our long-held ideas and beliefs in a different light. Maybe a light that may bring more clarity to our life’s choices. And thus, less suffering and more happiness.
More contentment as we each travel in our respective journeys through the universe.
Kelvin H. Chin is a Meditation Teacher, Life After Life Expert, and Author of “Overcoming the Fear of Death,” “Marcus Aurelius Updated: 21st Century Meditations On Living Life” and “After the Afterlife: Memories of My Past Lives.” He learned to meditate at age 19, and has been teaching Turning Within Meditation and coaching others in their self-growth for 40 years. He helps people understand their life challenges through their individual belief systems, and helps them find their own solutions. His past life memories reach back many centuries, and he accesses those memories in his teaching and his coaching in the same way all coaches draw on their own available experiences for perspective and effective analogies. He can be reached at www.TurningWithin.org.