Category Archives: higher education

Ego and Self Serve Each Other

Posted on by under A spirit guide shares a precious gift, developing awareness, Finding our unique way, higher education

Each day I randomly draw two Tarot cards to prepare myself for what to expect re my relationship with Spirit. Today’s first card was The Nine of Cups, expressed by a very self-satisfied person firmly guarding his treasures. The second card was The Nine of Swords, depicting a tragic figure tormented by regret.

Spirit tells me that contentment is the Middle Way, in which Ego and Self flow into and sustain each other, as do Yin and Yang, or Force and Form, the outer Pillars of The Tree of Life. Consciousness, the central Pillar serves to harmonize them without denying their uniqueness.

Stay Between Doubt and Belief

Posted on by under A spirit guide shares a precious gift, developing awareness, higher education, intelligent spirituality

My Spirit Teacher shares gems of wisdom with me, but

It isn’t always easy for me to tell a gem from a rock.

I’m almost persuaded, a thousand times or more, that

He’s leading me on; setting me up to believe something

Is so because it seems to be so.

And then, as a master trickster might, almost without my

Noticing how, He reveals a fatal flaw in my thinking.

My mind’s comfort zone of smug awareness is suddenly

Shattered; my physical, intellectual, emotional, and even

My  spiritual worlds collapse together into a state that,

As some might say, you could peel me off the floor.

How does He do it? I don’t know, but He does, and yet,

Somehow I always seem to recover, after limping  as

From a field of battle, licking my wounds as an injured

Dog might, into solitude.

And, then, when I almost don’t care to ever believe in

Anything again, I seem to slip back into thinking certain

About something.

And then, once again; surely I would have learned by now,

That Spirit is watching and waiting, and almost luring me

On, fully prepared to set into motion; to launch yet

Another attack on my vulnerability to believe in  absolutes.

Challenges Raise the Bar

Posted on by under A spirit guide shares a precious gift, developing awareness, higher education, intelligent spirituality, Life-long learning continues

A spirit teacher shares timeless wisdom with me,                   but it seems to require never-ending intellectual,       emotional, and spiritual development. I obviously              don’t have what it takes to absorb what He seems                     to think I can. I struggle, as many others surely do,                  to live within constraints not entirely of my own        choosing.

Spirit claims that I do choose and am trying to avoid
accepting responsibility for choices I freely make.

But, how free are we to make choices when often
the choice I seem to need to make is the lesser of                   two or more unacceptable options?

Spirit is unimpressed with my whimpering. It                  doesn’t move Him. Constraints, He tells me, are          necessary to future progress in any discipline or                 area of human development, including spiritual,     intellectual, or physical, in that they provide                challenges to our present level of skill, as well as            serving to soften our ego’s otherwise smug sense                     of satisfaction in the moment of victory.

Challenges that we have struggled to face and            overcome, He claims, seem to whisper in our inner              ear, “Perhaps we should raise the bar”.

Unlimited Degrees of Love

Posted on by under A spirit guide shares a precious gift, A spirit teacher tells me that, developing awareness, higher education, spiritual intelligence

A Spirit Teacher shares His understanding of timeless wisdom.

He tells me that we each express love by caring for and respecting
those whom, or that which, we claim to love.

But, there may be unlimited degrees of quantity and quality of care
and respect.

Yes, and there are unlimited degrees of love.

And quality?

Our capacity to love expresses the quality of our soul’s development.

Can we control love?

No. What we don’t express, we don’t have to express. Love is limited
only by the personal restrictions we put on ourselves. We each possess
the potential to love unconditionally.

Then, why don’t we?

We fear losing control.

Where Does Chaos Rule?

Posted on by under a sense of community, A spirit guide shares a precious gift, Attitudes can be seen, developing awareness, higher education, simple spiritual insights

A spirit teacher shares His understanding of timeless wisdom.

He tells me that there was a time, not very distant into
the past, when children everywhere learned, at a very young
age, to understand and to speak a particular language, and
the language they learned to understand and to speak became
their language, and more; much more.

From a child’s perspective, language is a means for sharing
his or her world with other people, their people.

Also, many of us learned to believe in a particular religion
at a very young age. Whether we were aware of it or not, we
also learned social rules specific to that particular religion.
as separate from legal or traffic rules. The religious rules
we learned served as a social code, to guide the way we would
learn to live our life.

Many of us no longer live in a community where we all understand
and speak the same language, or accept the same religion, and
the same specific social rules that specific religions teach.

Perhaps even the same traffic rules may not apply to all
communities?

Yes.

Where does Chaos rule?

Chaos never rules except as a transitional force between
one set of rules and another, or between individuals or
groups of individuals adjusting to the larger realities of
Life, and learning to understand that no rules are necessarily
acceptable to all people in all places, or for all time,
unless they serve and make sense to all people.

All languages and all religious social customs or rules serve
or did serve a purpose, when societies lived separate from
each other. They provide or did provide a sense of community.

Today, for many of us, it is the language, religion, or social
customs of others, not our own, that contribute to disharmony
and conflict in our relationships within a world community.

Our attitudes may invite Chaos to rule, when simple respect
would serve to unite us.

Where

Abusive Habits Become Addictions

Posted on by under A spirit guide shares a precious gift, Attitudes can be seen, developing awareness, higher education, Life-long learning continues

A Spirit Teacher shares His understanding of timeless wisdom
as it applies to human nature in every situation and in every
culture; past, present, and future.

How can wisdom be timeless?

Because human nature is also timeless, in that it is grounded
in emotion.

That may be true, but …

It is true.

How does timeless wisdom apply to abusive behaviour?

Timeless wisdom inspires healthy emotions, thoughts,
and actions. Abuse of others or of self is neither
healthy nor life-sustaining.

Should we forgive those who abuse us?

How dan abuse be forgiven? That would be an unhealthy
response. What good purpose would it serve? None at all.
In fact, it might even encourage more abuse.

Abuse, He tells me, is unhealthy behaviour regardless of
who is abusing whom, or even whether the one being abused
accepts ill treatment. That would express self-abuse.

How then can we respond in a healthy way to abuse when we
can’t protect ourselves from it?

We make choices, and perhaps past choices helped to create
the abusive situation.

Why do you speak of an abusive situation and not of an
abusive person.

There are none.

Please explain.

WE develop abusive habits or we don’t.

As an addiction?

Yes.

I Am The Way I Am Because

Posted on by under A spirit guide shares a precious gift, developing awareness, higher education, life worth living

Spirit shares His understanding of timeless wisdom.

He tells me that I am the way I am because
that is the way I am.

The only question that seems to make any sense is,
So, why am I as I seem to be?

Your original nature has been modified
by experiences and reflection on those experience,
resulting in a personal interpretation, or
misunderstanding of the causes and consequences
resulting from previous experiences.

We learn from experience, and yet, some of us
learn quicker than do others.

Pain and pleasure seem to be necessary components
of our learning how to live in this World; and to
discover what works, or seems to, and what does not,
in different situations.

We learn that consistency of response is
inappropriate. What works with one situation does
not seem to work in another. We must also,
He tells me, learn to measure the quality of our
response to any given situation.

What ever made me think that living should be
easy? Perhaps that’s why the way I am is, or
seems to be, confusion, personified.

How to Live and Why

Posted on by under a sense of community, A spirit guide shares a precious gift, higher education, intelligent spirituality

Spirit shares gems of wisdom.

Spirit tells me that to live in such a way that brings
a sense of satisfaction and pleasure requires us
to seek to serve others, because in serving others
we also serve ourselves.

Survival of oneself depends upon survival of others
and upon the survival of the environment which
sustains us all.

But, He continues, we cannot care for anyone if we
do not first care for ourselves, because if we have
no love for ourselves then we have no love to share
with anyone or anything else.

It’s as simple as that.

Messengers and Teachers

Posted on by under A spirit guide shares a precious gift, developing awareness, higher education, intelligent spirituality

Spirit shares gems of wisdom with me. Why? I don’t know,
but I’m glad he does.

He tells me that I’m not the one who’s directing His
traffic, nor is He directing mine, except …

Except what?

Not what, but how and why? We each serve a higher
purpose than our own.

I’m free, He tells me, to choose to listen to Him
and the teachings that He would share with me,
or not to listen. He’s a messenger and the teachings
He shares with me, for whatever reason, are far
beyond a one-to-one personal correspondence. they are
also meant for whomever cares to hear them and to
consider their value. They were never, He repeats,
designed for me, alone.

Why me at all?

You seemed to be ready.

Can you be both a messenger and a teacher of the
messages you share with me?

Is a teacher not as a messenger to his or her
students?

Yes. I see. The teacher must first have received
the messages she or he now shares with students.

Yes.

The Way it Is

Posted on by under A spirit teacher tells me that, higher education, Life-long learning continues, simple spiritual insights

Spirit tells me that we each are as rays of the sun
but not separate from the sun in any real way other
than the direction we may choose to face. The sun,
He tells me, has power to pull its rays home.

Life, too, is like that. We each live an individual
existence only in our own mind and, perhaps in the
minds of some others. But no number or individual or
group illusions alters the reality of the illusion.