A Higher Power at Play: Recognizing and Embracing Divine Guidance
Life can sometimes feel like a series of mechanistic, predictable events, guided by social formulas and societal expectations. For many years, I believed that hard work and following the conventional path would secure my future. Spirituality and metaphysical concepts were foreign to me; everything seemed superficial and deterministic.
However, as I journeyed through life and collected various experiences, my perspective began to shift. Around the age of 24, I started noticing strange, seemingly impossible synchronicities. Initially, I dismissed these as mere coincidences. But as these occurrences became more frequent and undeniable, I began to question my understanding of reality.
A series of events led me to suspect that there might be an underlying, intangible realm influencing our lives. This realization marked the beginning of a transformative journey, opening my mind to new possibilities and a deeper understanding of life's mysteries. I began to explore spirituality, metaphysics, and various religious philosophies, finding guidance and inspiration in practices like yoga and meditation.
In this blog post, I want to share my experiences with the magical, divine, and intangible forces that have profoundly impacted my life. Through this journey, I've come to believe that there's a higher power guiding us, offering support and aligning us with our true path. My story is one of awakening, discovery, and surrendering to the unknown, which has led to incredible adventures and personal growth.
For many years, I wasn’t open to the idea that there was something more to my human experience. I was never introduced to spiritual or metaphysical ideas and frameworks; all I knew was that life processes were mechanistic and superficial. The only narrative around me was the typical one: work hard to have a good future, follow certain social formulas, and you can somehow predict your future “success.” I believed in free will, at least to some extent. But as years passed and I started collecting life experiences, I began to open my mind to the possibility that other processes were at play and maybe there was a more fulfilling way of living. What if all the hustle culture we have been conditioned to follow, the overplanning, the strategizing, and the mere hustle and hard work wasn’t all there is? What if there was a more effortless way to get results and achieve our dreams?
When I was about 24 years old, crazy things started to manifest in my life. Before that, there were certain events that were incredibly synchronistic, but I always saw them as “coincidences.” As life went by and I kept experiencing things that seemed too good to be true, things that I could have never planned or anticipated with my rational mind, I started to understand very slowly that there was another underlying reality. I began to suspect that maybe there was another realm in play. Some events and signals were so repetitive, evident, and mind-blowing that they led me to start asking questions. Is there more to life than what I’ve been introduced to so far? Do we have the ability to perceive things beyond the limitations of our senses? Is there a divine realm ready to guide us and show us all the support we need in life without us knowing it? You may be thinking, this guy was going nuts. Well, I was confused too. I had never questioned any of these things in the past, and there I was, asking all these existential and spiritual questions.
There was a very specific sequence of events that ultimately triggered all this curiosity and search. I remember I was living in Hong Kong at the time, working for a tennis academy. I was going to work every day in the morning as usual. On court, I wasn’t supposed to use my phone, but I had some small breaks when I could. Long story short, one day I checked my phone and saw it was 11:11 am. I didn’t think much about it—just 11:11. Then the next day, exactly the same thing happened. I didn't use the phone for the entire morning, and when I picked it up, it was 11:11. Okay, no big deal, just a little coincidence. New day, boom, again, didn’t pick it up for the entire morning, and it was 11:11. On that third day, I registered the fact that it was the third day in a row. Quite strange, but whatever.
I swear, a week went by in which the number 11 didn’t just show on a daily basis on my phone as I picked it up, but it started showing up everywhere. I traveled with a tennis player from the academy to China for some junior tournaments. Guess my row on the plane? 11. As I arrived at the hotel in Shanghai, I checked in and had room 1111 on the 11th floor. The next day, we booked a practice court by phone, and they gave us court 11. I remember arriving at my room that day, being mind blown. What the hell is going on here? I knew my sister had some interests in numbers, astral charts, and things of that sort, so I called her. "Andrea, listen to me, there is something really crazy going on." "What happened?" she responded, worried. "Nothing, don’t worry, it isn’t something bad, I’m well. It’s just this number that has been following me for the past weeks in such a way that I can’t deny there is something going on. I was ignoring it for a long time, but it got to such an extent that I want to make sense of what is happening." She asked me about the number, and we started doing some simple googling together. "Well," she said, "apparently, the number 11 in numerology is considered to be a 'master number.' It represents intuition, dreams, and the presence of spiritual guidance in your life."
I was like, what is going on? If you would have told me that a month ago, I would have laughed in your face and told you it was all crap. But I had collected too much evidence and proof to deny that there was something else going on. The sequence of events was so real and so tangible in my experience that I couldn't question it anymore—there was something else at play here. I wasn’t a skeptic anymore after this; I was now open to new possibilities. A whole world started opening up—something I could have never imagined prior to this sequence of events. The 11 story was just the start. It marked the beginning of a new way of interacting with life, a new way of perceiving reality, and a new way to see how things truly work.
I can't even describe how magical this process of discovery was. I soon realized that I was indeed being guided. Many new interests and practices arose naturally and organically in my life. I became deeply interested in spirituality, metaphysics, and religion, especially Hinduism and Buddhism. I immersed myself in yoga and meditation, reading and studying all day. The journey filled me with an incredible amount of life force energy. I felt like a child discovering the world, encountering new tastes, sights, and ways of living. For the first time, I felt aligned and in tune with the natural rhythms of life. Before this, I lived with constant anxiety and inner turbulence. But as I embraced this path, my inner challenges began to dissolve rapidly.
I wasn’t forcing anything in this process; I allowed my curiosity and the divine to lead the way. It wasn’t an effort for me; everything in the process was effortless. For the first time, I saw tangible results in my inner and outer life through effortless action. It seemed that the more I walked this path, the more clarity I gained and the more possibilities opened to me. The right people, opportunities, ideas, and environments started showing up in my life without me even actively looking for them. It was as if the more I trusted this journey, the more I trusted that there was a higher force supporting every step of the way, the more synchronicities, serendipities, and opportunities appeared.
This happened right at the start of COVID-19. Despite all the regulations and limitations we were experiencing as a collective, in my personal experience, I was living the most expansive times of my life. I ended up quitting my job and going on a journey—a journey that, to this day, I don't know how it was possible considering how strict everything was at that point in time. I moved to the Maldives for three months, fulfilling a childhood dream. Then I moved to Mexico to travel around with a friend and my girlfriend. After traveling all over Mexico, surfing, climbing mountains, and exploring amazing places, I got a job offer to move to Egypt. I had an incredible experience in which I not only fulfilled my professional goals but also traveled to dream places like Luxor with no people, which is nearly impossible, and the pyramids. After that, I went back to Europe to hike the Austrian Alps. While in Austria, I did my first Vipassana retreat, gaining clarity on my next steps, which involved engaging in a non-profit in Uganda. As soon as I finished the retreat, I booked a one-way ticket to Africa with absolutely no plans, and it turned out to be one of the most significant experiences of my life. We not only contributed to the kids in the project but also got time to explore the continent, which was amazing.
This was only the start of a long journey ahead. I attribute this to the connection I was able to form with the divine, with the intangible forces of life that are there to support each one of us. If I hadn’t come closer to that realization, I am 100% sure I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to manifest all these dreams in such a short period. I wasn’t the creator of these experiences; there was a deeper truth at play, a deeper reality and guidance at play. It all felt like I wasn’t the one driving the car of life; I was simply enjoying the journey as a copilot, having 100% trust in life and the directions it wanted to take me in. This trust was the fuel to keep going, the fuel to trust in the unknown and to let go of control and live in that state of “effortless action.”
I am convinced that our true, authentic path in life, our deepest purpose and direction, can only be fulfilled once we recognize that a higher force is the protagonist of life, not our ego or rational mind. When we surrender to the divine's guidance without resistance, we are gifted with the most amazing and resonant experiences for our true being and soul. Call me crazy or nonsensical, but if this is craziness, I hope you find your own type of craziness. I truly wish you would surrender to that higher force in life. Call it whatever you want, for it is a realm beyond labels—whether God, divinity, or universal power, the name makes no difference. What makes a difference is surrendering to it, for once we do, all our wildest dreams can be manifested.