Life Experiences Are Our Best Teacher

“Your life must become your teacher, and you its devoted pupil. Here is a curriculum designed specifically for you, a curriculum only you can master. Only your own life experiences have led to the learning you have accumulated and translated into beliefs. Only your own life experiences will reverse the process.” (ACOL, C:23.29)

Jesus counsels us in A Course of Love to leave behind the learned wisdom of the past, a method that keeps us depending on others rather than listening to our Self and our heart. In this quotation for today, we are led to see that observation of our lives will provide the most fertile ground for our growth. He moves into theology when he asserts that everything that happens to us is planned to bring us back to God, and this return is what life on earth is now all about.

We can rest easy. Our Self will guide us now, if we have ears to hear. Our Self is the inner Christ, the entity that we share with everyone, for there are no divisions with the Self. Likewise, when we share with everyone, our very thoughts are not private. Believing that we keep our thoughts private is a ploy of the ego, which wants us to believe that independence is the best way to live.

And how wrong the ego is! Instead, we are encouraged in ACOL, by Jesus, to know that interdependence with our brothers and sisters will give us the most satisfying life. The only life that makes any sense. We are encouraged to know that when we look inward for direction, we will then look outward at the world, and our brothers and sisters, and then act with a certainty that we have lacked heretofore.

Our life experiences do teach us much. Even egoic living knows that. But our life experiences take on new meaning when we are told that all are planned with our greatest benefit in mind. We think that we control so much, but this is a mistake; we control very little, and when we come to this realization, our minds and hearts will be opened to a new way of living in a new world. We will begin creating the new, this new world to which Jesus is calling us.

What a blessing it is to know that life experiences are planned for our edification! We can rest in peace knowing that a benign fate is planning our ends, and that when we don’t resist, we will walk into the best future that imagining can devise.

Dear Father/Mother,

Thank you for this piece of information, this piece that tells me that You, along with my Self, have set out a future built on my daily experiences—all planned to take me back Home to You. This means that I am no longer driven to read the old tomes designed to return me to You. I don’t have to rely on others’ assertions; I can see in my daily life and its experiences all that I need to lead with my heart, a leading that will plant me in Your lap.

Be with me throughout this good day. I thank You for the better days that I have been having. As I lean into guidance from my Self, I walk a green earth. And I imagine that You are smiling down upon me, even as I imagine Jesus doing the same.

Thank You for my rich imagination, a potent reminder that You are always in the center of my being.

Amen.

Life Experiences

“You might ask, how do you learn what you have failed to learn previously? . . .Your life must become your teacher, and you its devoted pupil.  Here is a curriculum designed specifically for you, a curriculum only you can master.  Only your own life experiences have led to the learning you have accumulated and translated into beliefs.  Only your own life experiences will reverse the process.  (A Course of Love, 23.29)”

Affirmation:  “My life experiences will now reverse the failed lessons of the past.”

Reflections:

1 – Reverse the Learning of the Past

How do we reverse the learning of the past, the egoic learning that so misled us and made us miserable?  We must simply take the next step that seems right to us, as we listen to our hearts.  We can reverse any and all egoic tendencies, and in so doing we will learn anew and, this time, learn aright.

2 – Are We Learning Aright Now?

How can we know that what our life experiences are teaching us, now, is correct?  We can answer one simple question:  How do we feel?  Are we finding joy in the midst of everyday experiences, however painful they may be?  Are we happy, in spite of these inevitable difficulties?  And do the difficulties seem to be a breeze for us, where earlier they might have derailed us entirely?

3 – Follow the Heart

If we are following our hearts, there will be a noticeable decline in painful experiences.  What we need to learn will still be presented to us, and sometimes struggle will be involved, but when we turn to God in communion, our burdens will lighten immediately.  Not hours later, bur, if we believe strongly enough that God is helping us, the burdens will lift immediately.  We will know that this blessing has occurred when the day seems somewhat lighter to us, and we ourselves feel lighter.  We are, finally, listening to God, as well as our brothers and sisters.  There is no end to the ways in which guidance can come to us.  But come it will, when we turn gently aside from the egotistical ways that previously directed our path in this world.

4 – Reverse the Separated State

Our life experiences will then be in a position to reverse the isolated and separated state in which we have believed ourselves to be.  We will learn joyful lessons, so different from the misery that we brought upon ourselves by keeping God out of our lives.  We will attract the good by our attitudes.  Our calm and peace will envelop us, and we will turn to God instinctively, as the day progresses.  And as each day passes into a new one, we will find ourselves ever more ready to affirm God’s blessings.  We will know that we are on the right pathway, finally.  And if we are honest, we will recognize that we did it all to ourselves!  God is ever more eager for our healing than we ourselves are, as Norman Vincent Peale, an inspirational author/pastor of the last century, said.  In our own experiences, we can know that Dr. Peale was right.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

Help me to listen to my heart today.  If another intervenes between my heart and myself, may I know how to respond, because we are influences by others’ agendas.  May all work out for the best, as You have taught.

Be with me as I seek to learn from my life.  May my life experiences not be a drag upon me, but a joy.  May I regret nothing from the past, knowing that all that I have lived through has prepared me for each next step.

Amen.