The following pages describe some of the more common, and more important, numbers that turn up in our lives, such as house and telephone numbers, and how your ancestors travelled similar life courses. I will also discuss how you can find lost objects with the help of numbers, and the general meaning of double-digit numbers. By understanding this information, you will be able to apply the underlying principles to the numbers elsewhere in your life.

Ancestral Influences
For most people, the family name has been carried on through many generations, usually on the father's side. Your last name represents a strong connection you have with your ancestors, as well as a similar spiritual path. As you learned in Chapter Six, your Spiritual Transit is taken from your last name. In other words, when you have your last name in common with others, your spiritual path also develops along similar lines.

However, the level and intensity of spiritual experiences is very personal, and it cannot possibly be compared with that of someone else.

For example, our friend Thomas John Hancock and his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and so on, all are identified by the name Hancock. Each one of them had an O Spiritual Transit from age seventeen through twenty-two, forty-five through fifty, and seventy-three through seventy-eight. During these times in their lives, they experienced their spiritual evolvement in an emotional way; they were connected to the recognition of beauty, and to the responsibility towards family and community; they had a desire to paint or to otherwise express their feelings; and they had warm, nurturing human relationships. There is confidence, yet also melancholy and emotional prayer during the O Spiritual Transit.

How strong and intensely each of them experienced this probably varied widely, and, even to the close observer, might have made the similarities totally unrecognizable.

Your last name reveals many other generic aspects. Contemplate and study your last name closely. Does the name have a certain letter or number represented more than once? How does the name read if you look at each number?

The name Hancock reads as follows: An 8,1,5,3,6,3, and 2, which total 28, reduce to 10, and further reduce to 1.

The family line on the father's side will likely show a number of financially capable (8 Cornerstone) people, many of whom own their own businesses (1 and 8, as well as two 3s), probably promoting or selling something, and relying heavily on their verbal abilities and sense of humor (3 and 5). Family and responsibility (6 as a second vowel) were also a priority. They were often quite aware of the needs and emotional states of others (2, actually an 11, since the K is the eleventh letter of the alphabet).

Among his ancestors, Tom Hancock may discover some pirates, or otherwise social outcasts, as well, because the name reveals a considerable amount of adventurism (1 and 5), and a lack of conventionality (1, 5 and 3).

One thing almost all of them had in common was the desire to do their own thing (the sum of 1, and the letters with values of 8, 3, 5, and 1).

Once you have a good understanding of the numbers, you will enjoy meditating on the name(s) that identified, in different times through history, your ancestors.