Hi, I’m Dan Hoffman, or “the new Dan” as some of my co-workers here have called me in reference to my predecessor. I’m the new assistant editor for Mysterious Ways.
In recent years I have begun to trust more my intuition about the rightness of a thing–the sense there is a higher order at work, whether of a spiritual nature or just something beyond the power of language and rational thought to express. I am talking about what characterizes many of our stories in Mysterious Ways–and about what, indirectly, led me to work here.
I had just quit my job as a server. A recalcitrant case of tendonitis made standing for eight hours virtually intolerable. The future didn’t seem bright. This particular Sunday evening I went to my regular meditation group, which by then had become a habit. It was not my habit, however, to speak up during the open sharing session that concluded each evening–a time in which members could talk about their lives to the rest of the group. But that night I felt moved, and spoke of the chronic pain that had forced me to quit my job.
On my way out, a woman from the group approached me. She was a massage therapist, and she considered herself a healer, someone who worked on her intuitions and could sense what a person’s body was saying about his or her state–psychic, physical or spiritual. She offered her help, at whatever cost I could afford. This feels right, I thought.
In our first session, she could tell I was a mess. Constant worry takes its toll on the body. “I sense you need to forgive—someone, or yourself,” she said to me. This came up in the second session too. “Sometimes, the gesture of forgiveness needs to be made first, and then you learn what it truly is,” she said. There was no way she could know… but she was absolutely right.
That night I replied to an email from an old friend that I had let go unanswered for months—there’d been some hard feelings between us. As soon as I sent it, I could feel myself letting the weight of it go.
By my third session with the therapist, I was doing a lot better. The tendonitis had improved, and I was soon to have my second interview at Mysterious Ways. “This could be your time,” she said. On my way out, I asked her when I would see her again at meditation. “Oh, I was just testing that group,” she said.
“So you were only there one time?”
“Yes–and it wasn’t a coincidence, Dan,” she said.
And it wasn’t a coincidence I could tell this very story during my second interview with Mysterious Ways, a story which likely helped convince my fellow editors I was the right person for the job. After all, I had witnessed firsthand that sometimes, we can’t see what the signs are trying to tell us—until something or someone opens our eyes.
