My Perspective on Signs: A Work in Progress

For me, healing and spiritual growth are one and the same. When we move closer to our truest, inner-most self — free of all the delusions and mistaken identities — we also move closer to God. Or perhaps I could say, we uncover more of our God-Nature within, and we get to experience that intimate closeness and connection in our lives. 

If you’re here, I imagine that you share a similar orientation. Maybe you conceptualize spirituality a bit differently, or you prefer not to use the word God.  But something about this belief rings true — that tending to our deepest places and liberating ourselves from the prisons they impose is a profoundly spiritual endeavor. 

As a result, I think that many of us long for a spiritual guidance system, ideally one that provides infallible divine dictation to ensure that we never take a wrong turn. With so much at stake, our own personal liberation waiting in the wings, I have noticed that this desire can have a tendency to become imbalanced. 

Enter the concept of signs. Now, it’s not that I don’t believe that signs exist. Or that real divine guidance isn’t available. What I take issue with is our, at times, dysfunctional relationship to things like signs. More and more, I am noticing in myself and others a kind of narrow and even compulsive reliance on and interpretation of signs. And I am beginning to call this into question.

I think at some point on the path of spiritual growth and discovery, or perhaps at many points, we go through a process of maturation. Very often this looks like examining the beliefs that initially played an important role in our transformation. Sometimes this results in the ideas we have come to hold as sacred falling off the pedestals we have built for them. And while this can be an uncomfortable and disorienting process, from the rubble we can uncover a deeper, more nuanced, and yes, mature, understanding of the true essence of these beliefs.

Sheryl Paul, a Jungian trained counselor and author, has informed much of my recent thinking around this topic. She says that for many of us, looking for signs is a coping mechanism. It’s a technique that our psyche tethers itself to, in order to cope with the inherent uncertainty of life. And while it may feel comforting momentarily, it inevitably leads to more of the same desperate seeking. Because ultimately, certainty simply does not exist.

Through this lens, using signs as a way to create a false sense of knowing is actually a bypass. It’s a bypass to avoid the anxiety that is inextricably linked to the reality of uncertainty, ambiguity, and just not knowing. 

And let us not forget — God and the nature of life is also ultimately mysterious. At the end of the day, there is no way to know with 100% confidence what we should do, where we should go, or what destiny is ours to receive. 

In my contemplation of these ideas, I can’t help but to sense a profound connection between the unknown and God himself. How else could true faith be born? How else could we learn to trust fully in the Divine unfolding of our lives? 

This acceptance and embrace of uncertainty, I believe, is the true meaning of spiritual surrender. It is the act of letting go, and trust falling into something so big and so expansive that certainty can simply not be contained within it.

Holding space for this mystery, for not knowing, is holding space for God to exist in our lives. 

You might say that on the spiritual path, there is a certain amount of wrestling with God that is required. A certain amount of struggle and confusion that is necessary because this is what strengthens one of our most potent and prized spiritual tools — our ability to discern. 

More and more in my own wrestling, my discernment is leading me to let go of my reliance on signs. It’s been a tricky process, as I don’t think I realized how deeply engrained this compulsion ran within me. But I think that very often, these signs are actually my own neuroses disguised, wearing the weighty garb of destiny. They are an attempt to soothe the anxiety that goes hand-in-hand with being vulnerably human in the sea of great mystery.

I read once from Richard Rohr, Franciscan Friar and Priest, that God said that he doesn’t give signs. Father Richard explains that this is revealed to us in Jesus’ teaching around the story of Jonah. The story tells of an ordeal that Jonah faced — being eaten by a whale, descending to the bottom of the ocean, living in the creature’s belly, and eventually freeing himself to be forever transformed by his experience. Jesus says of this story, “The only sign I will ever give is Jonah.”

Father Richard explains that this teaching makes clear that there is no substitute for experiencing our lives. Especially the trials and tribulations, because these churn the fertile soil of our growth towards Him better than anything else. 

Our desperate seeking for signs is often our mistaken attempt to avoid this suffering. To bypass the very ordeals that are necessary and required for our deepest and most profound spiritual development and healing. 

Our greatest spiritual task is to be present for the unfolding. Not in a frantic search for what we “should” do. This is how we miss life entirely.

I suppose this leaves us with one final important question — how then, if not through signs, does God make himself known to us? How do we receive His guidance? His will?

Like most ultimate truths, I think the answer is very simple. 

Through love.

God makes himself known to us through love. He guides us through love. And his will for us is love.

Everything else is one great, big tragic and beautiful mystery.

Now in his 80s, Richard Rohr revels in his deep and intimate relationship with God, exclaiming to the trees and to the sky, “I don’t need to know.”

His trust so full. His faith so complete. He simply doesn’t need to know.