Category Archives: Life-long learning continues

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”.

Any and All Relationships Express a Way of Life

Posted on by under a sense of community, A spirit guide shares a precious gift, intelligent spirituality, Life-long learning continues, self-transcendence

A spirit teacher shares His understanding of timeless wisdom.

He tells me that our dreams are worlds of parallel reality to
our so-called awake world, and are designed to teach us of
potential for illusion in our everyday experiences.

While dreaming, the dream world seems real, even though it
may not be in many or any ways similar to the world we live
in, upon awakening.

How can it seem real if it isn’t?

One thing we are aware of during a dream is our own existence,
even if it is experienced as no more than an observer. We
Relate to the drama. It seems to make sense to us, at the time.
We don’t stop to question its authenticity.

So, the dream could be telling me something totally unrelated to
the scenario in the dream itself?

Yes.

Then, how do I make sense of it?

When?

After I wake up.

Do you wake up?

What do you mean?

To wake up is to become aware that human existence itself is
an illusion.

But, I’m living a human existence.

Yes

Why?

To develop awareness of the power of relationship.

Singular?

Yes.

In that any and all express a way of Life?

Yes, the only Way.

Acceptance and Contentment

Posted on by under intelligent spirituality, Life-long learning continues, self-transcendence, Spirit shares words of wisdom

Spirit shares His understanding of timeless wisdom.
He tells me that acceptance is contentment.

How can I feel content about accepting something
that I can’t change?

What else would you feel?

Defeated.

In losing a battle you know or believe that you
never could win?

What else could I feel?

Satisfied with yourself that you did, if you did,
everything you could do to win.

And satisfaction is contentment?

In this case, yes.

Are we referring to a specific case?

Yes and no.

As particular and general?

Yes.

To Know Requires Faith

Posted on by under A spirit guide shares a precious gift, developing awareness, Life-long learning continues, simple spiritual insights

A spirit teacher shares His understanding of timeless wisdom.
He tells me that knowing is not a matter of faith, and yet
there can be no knowing without faith.

What has faith to do with knowing?

How do we learn?

Through experience.

Yes, but not through experience alone.

We reflect on past experiences and use what we
have learned from them as foundations for future …

Future what?

To guide us in our responses to future challenges.

And if what experience has taught you differs from
what others would claim to be the way to live?

This is developing beyond intellectual concepts.

Yes.

Then please explain.

Knowing is awareness.

Awareness of what?

Awareness of what seems to be true, for us, if for
no other.

Where does faith come in?

We each, in time, develop faith in our own knowing,
or awareness; of our own truth.

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.

Form as a Temporary Ilusion

Posted on by under A spirit guide shares a precious gift, developing awareness, Life-long learning continues, The essence of all is within us

Spirit shares His understanding of timeless wisdom with me.

He suggests that I let Life lead me where it wills to.
To resists is wasting my precious time, or at least my
temporary share of Cosmic energy.

We are each alone together on a journey of discovery.
Life is a treasure chest that has somehow dumped itself,
and scattered its precious contents of adventures and,
at times, even hidden them, but not without leaving
subtle clues, or not so subtle hints at where and how
to find what’s meant for each of us, alone to find;
our inner self, the perfect complement to what we now
seem to believe we are.

How would I recognize this inner me?

It will be as if looking into a magic mirror that
reflects only your essence, without form. The essence
is real and timeless; the form is no more than
a temporary illusion.

A Personal History Book

Posted on by under A spirit teacher tells me that, developing awareness, Finding our unique way, intelligent spirituality, Life-long learning continues

Spirit shares words of wisdom with me that seem so deep and yet expressed in words simple enough even for me, a simple seeker
and slow learner, to almost understand.

He tells me that knowing is not a matter of faith. We know
that wounds hurt for we have experienced their pain, both
physical and emotional wounds.

Physical pain is felt through our physical senses while
emotional pain is a mental state and is often learned and
developed through habit.

How do we learn emotional pain?

It’s a socially acquired skill.

If you offend me and I feel distressed, then I have learned
to feel distressed, and you’re not the cause?

Yes.

Who taught me?

You taught yourself.

Then, everyone would feel offended for the same reason?

Not necessarily.

Why?

You couldn’t offend me.

Perhaps you’ve developed immunity to offence.

There are other labels.

Such as?

Tolerance, patience, understanding, compassion, …
The list goes on.

You didn’t include awareness.

Yes.

Why?

The examples I provided each require a certain depth
of awareness.

The problem with that approach, or at least one problem,
is that it would seem to require a certain detachment
from the emotional state of the offender, as well as
from oneself.

Why would that be a problem?

It would suggest a certain lack of sensitivity.

Not necessarily so.

Please explain.

As we become increasingly aware of the path, then we can
listen to what some might call offence, calmly, and feel
compassion for the distress of the other. As Confucius
might say, “No blame”.

How is that possible?

As we develop an ever more clear vision, we can see in many
more directions than one.The present arrived from the
past and we each are as a personal history book that
those who have eyes to see can read, and we all can and
will develop eyes that see, sooner or later, and from
a unique perspective.

I’m not ready for that quality of insight, yet.

Yes.
aught me? urs

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.

We Each Change Everything

Posted on by under A spirit guide shares a precious gift, Finding our unique way, higher education, Life-long learning continues

Spirit tells me that I can only be or become
the person I already am; the person I have
always been and always will be.

I can understand that I am who I was and
will be, but can I become other than I am?

Yes. We change everything and everything
changes us. We are not what we were or
what we may yet become.

So, I’m both a who and a what?

You are not a who; you are who. And,
you can never be a what, whatever what
you may have in mind.

What am I if I am not what I am?

You are a woman.

But, that’s not unique.

The woman you are is unique.

In what way?

No other woman is you.

Being is not enough.

Enough what?

Achievement.

Being doesn’t require much achievement.

But, I want to achieve.

What?

I don’t know.

Nothing can be achieved without effort.

And acquiring something requires effort?

Yes.

And effort requires intent?

Yes.

And intent comes before effort?

Yes.

And what comes before intent?

Desire and a chosen way to achieve
what is desired.

And opportunity?

Yes, but sometimes we must create
our own opportunities.

How?

Observation and preparation, with
help from synchronicity.

Chance?

Call it what you will, but first
do nothing until you know what to do.

How to do nothing?

Practice.

Meditate?

Yes.
But, I

To Serve Comfort Needs

Posted on by under A spirit teacher tells me that, developing awareness, Finding our unique way, higher education, Life-long learning continues

Spirit tells me that there is more to life
than material existence can ever offer,
for it is as the lowest step on a ladder
to ever-higher levels of existence.

Peaceful co-existence can never come from
focus on form alone, while ignoring essence,
and all form possesses, or contains, essence.

Even a chair?

Even a chair.

What essence could a chair possess.

Purpose, or potential purpose.

To serve comfort needs?

Yes, Life itself serves comfort needs.

How?

By expressing itself within all forms
of life.

But, not all forms of life feel comfortable.

How do you know?

I’m a form of life.

Yes.

I don’t always feel comfortable.

Why?

How could that be possible?

How could it not be possible?

There’s something you’re not telling me.

What?

Perhaps we each define comfort differently?

As a quality or as a variable?

I could feel less comfortable?

Yes.

Yes.