Magnetic Fields of the Soul

One of my favorite books for over 30 years has been Dag Hammarskjold's Markings.  In 1953, Hammarskjold was elected Secretary-General of the United Nations, and he was re-elected in 1957.  He died in a plane crash in 1961 while flying to negotiate a cease-fire between U.N. and Katanga forces.

Hammarskjold described his journal as "a sort of white-book concerning my negotiations with myself and with God."  In it, he records how he "marked" his own spiritual conduct, how he measured the integrity of his soul, how he regarded his life as a call from God, and his premonition of death.

One of the 1952 entries in his journal describes an experience that most of us have had at one time or another:

Now you know.  When the worries over your work loosen their grip, then this experience of light, warmth, and power.

From without---a sustaining element, like air to the glider or water to the swimmer.

An intellectual hesitation which demands proofs and logical demonstration prevents me from "believing"--in this, too.  Prevents me from expressing and interpreting this reality in intellectual terms.

Yet, through me there flashes this vision of a magnetic field in the soul, created in a timeless present by unknown multitudes, living in holy obedience, whose words and actions are a timeless prayer.

---"The Communion of Saints"---and---within it---an eternal life.

Carl Jung writes of a "collective unconscious" that influences each succeeding generation, whether they know it or not.  Over a period of 20 years beginning in 1948, 5209 people in Framingham, Mass., were studied, along with the next generation (their descendents), and a third generation, to determine if happiness was "contagious."  What the researchers found was that the happiness of individuals (i.e. peace, joy, contentment) depends on the happiness of others with whom they are connected.  They concluded that happiness, like health, is a collective phenomenon--when an individual becomes content, that contentment spreads to those around them.  The "contagion," interestingly, does not apply to people at work, but only to true relationships.  So, working side by side with other people does not mean we absorb their moods, but rather, "happy people tend to be located in the center of their local social networks and in large clusters of other happy people."  In other words, the health and well-being of one person deeply affects the health and well-being of others in the network, up to three degrees of separation.

Dag Hammarskjold "knew" this phenomenon from experience, even though at the time, there was no Framingham study to express what he knew in terms he could intellectually describe.  He intuitively called it a "magnetic field of the soul."

When we are spiritually open and transparent to God, it makes us also spiritually open and transparent to others, "making space" for them to be themselves without fear of rejection.  In God's presence and warmth, we grow more fully into ourselves and allow others to grow in our presence to be more fully themselves.  No wonder we are happy!  No wonder that happiness is contagious!