Foreword

by
Barbara Harris Whitfield

This is an amazing book. Reading it is an exceptional experience. Not only will you be introduced to Robert Perry's important new model for understanding highly synchronous events, you may actually be led, as I was, into an astonishing personal encounter with the phenomenon he sets forth here. Even if you question the clarity or relevance of divine guidance when you first pick up this book, by the time you reach the last page, you're sure to open your mind to the possibility—even the likelihood—that God or the Universe has been trying to communicate with you all along. You just haven't been paying attention! That was certainly my experience as I traversed this original, imaginative, and inspired work.

This isn't the first time I've been transported from the material world to the spiritual realm. In 1975, at age thirty-two, I underwent a near-death experience (NDE) following spinal fusion surgery to correct a debilitating congenital condition. In my book about that occurrence, titled Full Circle: The Near-Death Experience and Beyond,1 I chronicle the "life review" that totally changed me. My life review appeared as thousands of bubbles, each revealing a scene from my past that offered not only a glimpse of what happened and what I was feeling, but also an awareness of how others felt. I was held by a divine intelligence—God—and filled with a sense of being connected at a higher level of consciousness to everyone my life had touched.

In the years since that profound encounter, during which I've done extensive research on the aftereffects of the NDE, I believe that same Divine Intelligence has communicated with me through synchronicities that serve as arrows intentionally pointing me in a certain direction. In my latest book, The Natural Soul, 2 I refer to these synchronicities as "cosmic postcards," because I perceive in them that something "Higher" is signaling us.

Perry's model is more complex, bringing to the exploration of highly synchronous occurrences a depth and wisdom that extends beyond my own work and that of other researchers and writers in the field. In this book, he investigates what he calls Conjunctions of Meaningfully Parallel Events—CMPEs—referring to them less formally as "signs," but assigning the term a decidedly different meaning than usual.

As I read Perry's book and his new model unfolded in front of me, my thoughts began heading off in opposing directions. Reacting from the left side of my brain, where the part of me that reasons like a medical school psychiatry researcher resides, I thought, "Oh Boy! This could be the bridge to proving that meaningful coincidences go beyond chance."

The other side of my brain, however—the side that thrives on direct experience—went into gridlock when faced with his definitive and precise model. This was just too much to take in. I became concerned that analyzing something so sacred would only serve to secularize it and make it less profound. So I found myself resisting the concept of CMPEs, telling myself that Perry's model is too narrow in its acceptance of its own phenomena. Its rules might heedlessly negate many of the coincidences in my life—those parallel occurrences I had previously considered significant. And its interpretive methods might strip out meanings my right brain wanted to embrace. Even so, I persevered in my reading, all the while hoping for and anticipating a moment of enlightenment—a moment of really getting what this model was saying about this form of divine guidance.

My perseverance paid off! As I reached the later chapters, I was won over by the strong evidence presented by the book's examples and began to see the benefits of Perry's model. Finally, while reading the last chapter, I experienced a powerful CMPE—an undeniable sign of my very own—which Robert later confirmed and interpreted with me. Its message affirmed that CMPEs are in harmony, not in conflict, with the synchronicities that have been guiding my journey since the time of my NDE and life review.

Twenty years ago, I titled my first book Full Circle as an expression of what I yearned to achieve in my personal spiritual journey. I had e-mailed Robert Perry about this just hours before reading his Chapter 11 with its opening sign by the same title. This triggered that "aha" moment I had been waiting for. I contacted him to express my excitement, and he applied the guidelines from the book to do an analysis of my "sign," demonstrating to me how much more deeply his model can go in interpreting highly synchronous events.

My CMPE wasn't just an arrow pointing a way. It was a demonstration of layer upon layer of spiritual wisdom, comparable to what I learned in each revelatory scene of my life review. In fact, it felt like a remarkable continuation of that profound experience. As this wisdom moved through me, I could actually watch as my personal worldview was changing. There was a kind of domino effect that is perhaps best described as a "revelation"— a true sense of completion that answered the longing expressed in my book's title.

The sign's message, as Robert revealed it to me, became an experiential understanding of God being my partner in this lifetime—and patiently waiting for me to realize this. The experience of reading this book has brought me a sense of certainty that God has been with me the whole time, talking to me through synchronicities; but until now, I only saw their surface—the pointing part of the arrow. Until now, I was missing out on their deeper meanings.

I have since experienced additional CMPEs. What is most remarkable to me is that they fit exactly the model Robert describes. I am even seeing how different CMPEs are related, as explained in Chapter 7, in that two of my signs clustered together to become synergistic, demonstrating that one and one equals so much more than two.

I now see this model of CMPEs as having tremendous potential usefulness.

(1) On a personal level, they can touch each one of us by demonstrating that, although we haven't always been paying attention, God has always been talking to us, loud and clear.

(2) Based on my experience, I believe CMPEs may have valuable applications in psychotherapy, which I intend to explore in my own private practice.

(3) Scientifically, this model holds great potential. The CMPE model is demonstrating the testable end of the synchronicity spectrum. There actually is a prospect of real research going forward about this.

I resisted this model in the beginning, and, frankly, gave Robert Perry a pretty hard time about it. I thought this model was reducing the significance of other synchronicities that didn't fit the pattern. Now I see that I can continue to honor my wonderful little cosmic postcards, while also recognizing the more encompassing capabilities of the CMPE model. At one end of the synchronicity spectrum are my small coincidences—the means by which a higher power cheerfully waves at us to get our attention. And at the other end of this spectrum are CMPEs—a cosmic DSL fiber optic line that clearly and distinctly communicates to us God's deeper broadcast.

Understanding the deeper meaning of my own CMPE catapulted me into a powerful experience of shedding any lingering remorse I accumulated during my journey. I am filled with the wonderful awareness that God is holding me, here in this life-now-just like God was holding me in my life review. We don't have to leave this world to experience this sense of being divinely cared for. It's the same on both sides. All we need do is learn to listen. This book is teaching us how.

Barbara Harris Whitfield
Atlanta, Georgia
October 2008

1 Barbara Harris (Whitfield) and L. Bascom, Full Circle: The Near-Death Experience and Beyond (New York: Pocket, Simon and Schuster, 1990).

2 Barbara Harris Whitfield, The Natural Soul (Pittsburgh: SterlingHouse Books, 2009).

Next: Introduction

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