No Coincidences, Only Connections
By Rodney, New York
The day after returning from being the guest speaker at an Eckankar seminar in Trinidad and Tobago, I severed the ligament in my left index finger and a vein in my left hand. As a professional guitarist and music educator, I work with my hands every day. This injury was potentially career-ending.
My hand would not heal on its own. After consulting with an orthopedic surgeon, it became clear that I’d need surgery to ever have a chance of playing guitar again.
My life’s practice is to turn worry into wonder. Rather than worry about outcomes, I began to wonder how Spirit would offer Its lessons and blessings through these experiences.
The Loss
Ten weeks before my hand surgery was scheduled, my four-year-old granddaughter, Ava Jane, died. Ava had a fast-moving strep-pneumonia infection which led to sepsis.
Ava and I were one in heart. Her passing was the most difficult moment I have ever experienced. I knew that Ava is Soul, an eternal spiritual being who cannot die. I knew she was free in the spiritual worlds. But now I painfully felt her absence from my physical life.
In the operating room, moments before the surgery, I was placed under general anesthesia. Although the anesthesiologist says my brain had no awareness or consciousness during the operation, I had a profound and wonderful conscious experience:
Ava came running into my arms and gave me the tightest hug. She was as I had always seen her—with a smile that could light any darkness. Her deep, sparkling eyes filled my heart with gratitude and wonder that she was my granddaughter.
Ava looked into my eyes and said, “Granddaddy, you can do this. Granddaddy, you can do this.”
We hugged again.
The next thing I remember, I was waking up in the recovery room, saying, “I saw Ava. I saw Ava.”
Divine Coincidence
The doctors seemed stunned by my certainty that I’d seen my granddaughter. My excitement about Ava must have given them courage to talk about what had happened for them while I lay unconscious on the operating table.
As a usual practice in many operating rooms, music plays in the background while surgeons and staff perform surgeries. What’s not usual is for the music coming from a radio station over a surgery-room sound system to have a connection to the patient on the operating table.
But in the recovery room, my doctor told me his extraordinary story. “The strangest thing happened,” he said. “When I began your surgery, I put my scalpel on the knuckle of your hand. At that moment an announcer interrupted the music playing in the background with the words, `Next up, Rodney Jones, “Groovebone.”´ And your song began to play. I stopped the operation and said to the surgical staff, `Uh, that music we’re hearing on the radio now. That’s this guy.´ And I pointed to you.”
After sharing his story, the doctor shook his head as if still perplexed and walked out of the recovery room. Simultaneously the anesthesiologist came in and said, “Wow. We heard your music.”
My left index finger is the “groovebone,” the anchor for all my guitar playing. The fact that my recording of “Groovebone” played over the surgery-room speaker was simply an impossible coincidence. The hand of Spirit had connected the pieces of my life for the upliftment of all concerned.
Through the Eyes of Soul
I knew that the inner visit with my granddaughter and the radio station playing my music was the result of the Mahanta, my spiritual guide, connecting my inner and outer life. This waking dream in the surgery suite reminded me that I am never alone. Although the connections in life often slip by unobserved, this one had been dramatic enough for all of us to notice.
In my post-op follow-up visit with the surgeon, he asked if I thought my music coming on the radio during surgery was a random occurrence. How was it even possible, given the millions of songs and stations and timings?
I shared with the doctor my cherished truth that life is not a random walk, a belief that matches the title of a beautiful booklet by Harold Klemp, the spiritual leader of Eckankar. My doctor and I acknowledged the miracle that had happened. And how life contains infinite miracles, awaiting our discovery and acceptance.
How Had I Seen Ava?
When we dream, it is not our physical eyes that see, for we are asleep. Who or what is it that sees and hears and experiences our dream? Since my brain had been unconscious during the operation, who saw Ava?
I am Soul. Soul is always awake. As Soul, I am a timeless, deathless being who wears the physical body and mind like clothes. Ava is Soul. I am Soul. We met heart-to-heart and Soul-to-Soul because of our bonds of love.
Greeting Ava and having an entire operation-room staff share in a spiritual experience are examples that we are all on a spiritual journey. Our Soul journeys are filled with adventures, joys and sorrows, lessons and blessings. They are opportunities to turn pain into love and grief into gratitude.
For most of us the journey of Soul is a winding road. We may wander, but I do not believe we are lost. Rather, we are exploring choices and perspectives, attitudes and beliefs. For me, this is a miracle of life.
In sharing, serving, and loving, I find and know myself most deeply. So I encourage everyone to ask, What has my Soul journey taught me about life’s deeper nature? And to share your answers with others. One person’s story may have the piece someone else is looking for.
I would offer that our lives are like a river leading to an ocean where treasures are yet to be revealed and discovered. Some are on the surface, while others require diving down into the dark depths to find them.
By shining the light of Soul, my true self, I am able to discover treasures on the river’s bottom that hide in total darkness. With the light from my heart, I can see them like diamonds—glistening and reflecting back to me.
Years ago, in contemplation, these words of truth came to me. I have come to see it as one of the key diamonds of wisdom in my life:
Nothing in life happens to me.
Everything in life happens for me.
Sri Harold Klemp, the spiritual leader of Eckankar, offers this view of the events of life in his book ECK Essentials, on page 8:
“This is the golden contract: that every encounter, without exception, is there to move Soul along spiritually on Its way back home to God. That’s every encounter, every event, without exception.”
I trusted this truth when Ava left this world, and I trust it now.