Back To School: Lessons From Living

September 3, 2006

Samuel: Greetings, dears.

Hi, Samuel.

S: Well, aren’t you perky tonight! Gracious, what a pleasure. However are you? Are you good?

Yes.

S: You living through it all? Just day by day by day. Nice for a change. And if day by day by day isn’t working, try hour by hour by hour. And if that’s not making it, minute by minute, moment by moment. Moment by moment does a lot.

So, tonight I want to talk about going to school.

Hmmm.

S: I think that was rather a personal remark there, wasn’t it? “Hmmm.” School. How many of you have been to school? Not all of you, but most of you? This is America, right? Most of you? School? And what is the purpose of it? [To a younger member of the audience] You still wonder, but for the rest of you what is the purpose of it?

Education.

S: Education. Probably.

Preparation.

S: Preparation. I like that a lot better. Preparation though for what?

Relationships.

S: Relationships, yes.

It gives us the ability to function in our society.

S: Give you . . .

By reading, by being able to do math, read street signs.

S: Gives you the tools that could allow you to function in this society. Aye, I don’t want to put any undue pressure on it there—not assuming that everybody does come out that way, unless . . . aye?

It prepares you to take care of yourself when you’ve become an adult.

S: Ideally it’s prepared you to function independently as an adult.

I remember some of the negative aspects of school in that it teaches regimentation in a lot of ways. It teaches . . .

S: An amazing number of people in here are agreeing with him right now. Gosh, I wonder what that’s about.

It teaches a certain amount of rigidity, that there’s right and there’s wrong, that there’s not room for different gray areas.

S: Wait! Wait! Wait a minute! Do you mean that there are gray areas, that things are not just “Here is right, and here is wrong, and there is nothing in between that one can do about that”? No, you don’t mean that, do you?

No, I don’t mean that. Yes I do! And it also stifles, in too many cases, creative thinking, and thinking out of the box.

S: And that is because?

There’s right and there’s wrong. I mean school teaches you how to think in accepted ways, in many cases.

S: And, of course, what he’s saying there is that when he went to school, that’s the way it was for him.

In my little one-room school house back in the woods.

In reference to what he’s saying though, you know, a lot of it depends upon the teacher, because the way the teacher teaches can be way out of the box and off the wall, and very limitless.

S: And may not say this is right and this is wrong. May say that “there is a bit of a gray area here, and depending on how you’re looking at it. It could be wrong is right and right is wrong. And there’s this little pink pill over here that will make you shrink down and be able to get through the rest of Wonderland.” Yes? Steven.

One aspect of school is that it teaches you a lot about, and builds a foundation for, comparative judgment in terms of grades, in terms of who is in the “in” crowd. It’s a place that we learn to compare ourselves in.

S: And what’s the benefit of that?

That’s a good question.

The benefit of that is to . . . you might not have known what was possible. I’ll speak of myself. I might not have known what was possible all by myself until I was in a larger group and saw a much greater variety of what was possible, and I didn’t even realize that “Wow, you can do that much. Well, maybe I could do that if I just dah dah dah dah.” So I can see a greater range of possibility in being with a greater number of people.

S: That’s good. That’s very good. Very helpful at that.

Mary Claire, is that your hand up there? Stuart? Thank you. Maybe I can see you a bit better now. And where were we? Mary Claire, right there.

For me, it taught perseverance, because a lot of times I didn’t agree with what I was being taught, but it taught me that that’s okay, I don’t have to, and I’ll do what is required of me to get that degree I want to get, that this culture says that you need in order to get what you want later on down the line.

S: And, in a sense, along with perseverance, that’s also the ability to set your goals and move through the now in order to get to that goal. And there’s a lot of power in that, and some things that you need to learn. Persevering. Because you are not stuck right here, you know that there is a greater purpose going on with it.

And also getting excited about the things that did stimulate me, that I did really value as well.

S: I like that.

One major thing I know school’s teaching me now is even though there are negative aspects, it’s really teaching me flexibility, how to move with a certain amount of constraints that are given to you, but how to be yourself and how to move with it. And then how to look for things that you do like, because even though I do feel that school systems really do try to put down your creative ability, I find that if you can really look, well, you can find it almost anywhere. Which also, with that flexibility, also gives me hope, because that means if I can survive this, then I can survive anywhere else. So flexibility and hope are two main things that I think school is teaching me.

S: Flexibility and hope. And that’s something you need in life, isn’t it, in both cases?

I’m going to go to David next, and then Lillibeth, and then Colleen, but wait just a moment.

Are all school systems the same?

No.

S: And, as Suzie pointed out, all teachers are not the same. Are all the studies the same? Is math where Kathleen learned it the same as math where Kathy learned it?

No.

S: Can you fairly well say that the student you were then is the same one you would be now? All teachers are not alike. All students are not alike. All of the lessons are not alike, even if they are the same subject. All school buildings are not alike. All school philosophies are not alike. All great purposes for schooling, however, should be alike, because they should see themselves as a portal, a means by which the student is able to move from one area, dimension, of life to another, with hopefully as smooth a process as possible. And what comes out of that, ideally then, is an adult, as you were saying, that is able to look at portals of life. “This is a door I can go through or not go through. This is what I wish to do right now.” Go through it and become something new because of it throughout your life, because you do that all of your life, don’t you? And the fact of it is, some of you were incredibly wonderful students, for all the wrong reasons. And some of you were really lousy students, not because you did not know, or did not understand, or could not do the work, but because you hated the system, didn’t you? And so you were bored and unhappy, and it was a lot more fun to stick pencils in the ceiling than it was to—that is one odd picture—than it was to put on your “grinder” hat and say, “All right, I’m going to just stick through this.”

School never ends. In your life your attitude about your schooling tends to come up in your adulthood with the learning situations, changing situations, portal situations. You hated school. You probably hate being put into learning situations and hate the change that comes with them. Or, maybe, hate is way too strong a word. How good it is to be able now to look back and to rewrite that story, some of which we’re going to talk a bit about tonight.

David.

Well, my school had two rooms instead of one. One of them was the Principal’s office.

S: Were you very familiar with that one?

For other reasons, I used to go visit with the Principal in order to skip class, and he would let me. The observation is that they can’t really teach out of the box, because if they did then that becomes the box. And another observation is for schools: what I got out of the academic part was fiercely independent and competitive. And it was actually the other opportunities that school provided through even recess, lunch, sports, teams, clubs, activities. That’s where you learn to get along with people and cooperation, which is kind of strange because that’s what really prepares you for the world. Being virtually independent, and guarding everything you do so nobody cheats off you does not help you or help the businesses that you’re in outside.

S: But what if someone is cheating off you?

You beat them up at recess.

S: Cheating off you. What is “cheating off you”?

In a test.

Well, in school your grade is more important than the fact that everybody would learn it together, so you don’t necessarily share very much. But if you’re in a work environment, the idea is for the whole group to move forward to be the most productive. You don’t need to have heroes in work. But that’s what school tends to foster.

S: Unless you are in one of those extra activities. Aye, that’s showing a bit of balance in there. I like that. That’s good. That’s good.

I was thinking back on it and it looked to me like school just provided all these opportunities, for balance, for setting and testing boundaries, and that could be academically, and that could also be personally. And it provided opportunities for expansion, for focus, for commitment, perseverance—you talked about perseverance—and for me, when I look back on it now, the things that I really enjoyed the most are actually what I’m doing in my career right now. And I used to paint murals and do all kinds of artwork, and it’s just been a segue into who I am now, so it was a foundation.

S: The perspective of one in the same situation is not necessarily the perspective of another. And that is a great gift. To surround yourself with other perspectives helps you grow—without a lot of pain, believe it or not.

Colleen, now.

Of all the things that seemed to be wrong—and I don’t think I went to the most creative school, and some people didn’t see this or see that—it’s been mentioned about teachers. But I’m not talking about just elementary school or high school. It’s through college and even graduate schools as an adult. And I’ve had more time recently to reflect back on some of these things, and I can look back all the way through, like I said, even when I was in my thirties in graduate school, and there seemed to be one teacher, one instructor, one professor, who was able to take me aside and see something in me that I did not see in myself. And sometimes, when you’re young and your family’s just struggling to put food on the table and pay the bills, you know, they might not be able to. I mean we all don’t grow up in families where, you know, they said, “You can be whatever you want to be.” I didn’t grow up in a family like that. We were just like getting by.

S: And everyone else in here did. Or maybe not.

But, you know, sometimes there could be a person who could be more than a teacher or mentor, but it sees [takes] that person to just see that spark in you. And even if there’s a lot that you didn’t like and had a lot of not-so-good feelings about, you can look back and see those people when you’re looking at patterns in your life, or gifts, or things about yourself. You can see that there were people who took you aside and knew something about you.

And then there’s one more thing: You never quit doing homework because . . . 

S: You come here. Homework never ends—that’s so true—because learning never ends unless you’re dead. And then it’s just a different sort of learning. And I say that because it’s very important. It is so easy to forget that your whole life is a part of a school. You are in school all the time. And when I said a bit earlier that some of the attitudes you had about schooling when you were much younger do leak over into attitudes that you have now, that’s something for you to take a look at. You’re always learning.

A little bit different than your schooling as you were growing up, however, might be that the attitude you want to come at it now with is that you are perfect, you have all you need, you are not having to stuff your brain full of all of this stuff you don’t know anything about, instead you are digging for treasure. You are an archeologist of sorts, very carefully bringing up what has been waiting for you—waiting for you to see, to “get,” to understand, to know, waiting for you to blossom and be able to see and understand.

And what I would like to do this night is to encourage you to share some of the things you have learned, because this is the time of year when many children go back to school—and those who are so far beyond children, they just happen to be in a child’s body—go back to school. Maybe you have a few words that could be helpful for them. Or, for the child you were, what would you say to you now? What would you, Lisa, say to Matthew? When you were going into your senior year, what should he know? These are the sorts of things, but I’m going to set it up around a few particular subjects, and maybe I’ll tell you why at the end.

It’s important to remember that you never stop learning. It’s good to know the way you learn. Do you know the way you learn, how you learn best? Do you learn by doing? Are you good just with lectures? You get it all down. Do you have to write it down and see it and speak it? Do you have to teach in order to get it? Do you know how you learn, because it’s very helpful in this life to know how you function best. Does it work for you to get up every morning at seven o’clock, and get yourself dressed, and eat breakfast, and put all of your papers together, and sit at your desk—just like a school student—because that’s the only way that you can get into the mode of learning and doing? Well, some of you are chuckling at that, but really that’s how a whole lot of people handle their, well, mostly drudgery work, but they put themselves into that mindset: “All right. Sitting here ready. Let’s go.”

Do you know what you are learning? And that’s where you tend to do poorly by yourself, because, you see, when you are in high school—and yours is not a typical high school—when you are in high school and you know that you are going to math class, you can pretty well count on learning math, right? And there may be amongst you those who sort of put on the math mindset when they’re going to math class, which is very, very different than the mindset they might put on at . . . what would be another class.

Literature.

S: Literature class. Do you think?

Or history.

S: Or history class, sure. Your mindset can limit you tremendously now as an adult. If you are going into your life with the idea that this is about—and here is the box, whatever that box happens to be. “Here is what this is about: this experience is going to be.” And not only might you be preplanning what you think you’re going to be learning, you might also be presetting how you’re going to be accepting it and getting it. “I don’t like math! I’m not going to enjoy this at all.” “Literature is too . . . what?

Vague.

S: Vague? [Laughing} All right, too vague. “There’s just nothing I can really latch on to, and tear into little pieces, and put them all in order, and be able to control them nicely, and know exactly what’s going on like I can in math.” You would think then that everybody who has major control issues would be really good at math, wouldn’t you? And yet in America, not so. Lots of control issues, not so much math.

And also in going in that direction, when you were in school you had favorite subjects, and you had subjects that were not your favorite. Can you think offhand of a couple of favorite subjects and a couple of non-favorite ones, just to keep up with where I’m going here. Then you would also know that something that might have been a favorite subject when you were in grade five, might have stopped being your favorite subject when you were in grade ten. All right? How far do they go?

Twelve.

S: Twelve. And you are finished with . . . ?

High school.

S: . . . high school. So if you go on to college it’s thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen grades.

No, they don’t say what grades they are. It is just college. Undergraduates.

S: All right, so you don’t label them as grades any more. All right. And are there things that when you went to college you thought you really were going to enjoy a lot, and you found out that you didn’t so much like them? And you may have found out that it wasn’t the subject, it was the teacher. Or it may have been a teacher that made a subject that you never liked alive and wonderful for you.

These are things that you are still working through every day of your life, and hopefully the lessons that you have learned outside of the one, two, three, four, five, six, up to twelve, up to college, up to beyond college, up to now serve you in your life, work for you in such a way that you are experiencing the joy and the fulfillment—joy and fulfillment are a motivating passion for life—every day. But if you find instead that maybe it’s not quite so joyful, maybe there is not so much fulfillment. Maybe school has been a little day-to-day rough on you, like maybe there’s a couple of lessons that haven’t quite gotten into the old head, down to the heart yet—at least it might seem so because you’re so particularly unhappy—maybe there are some things that need to be switched around in the way that you look at your schooling, because it’s something you never stop doing.

Tonight I’m talking about school, but I want you to be the teacher. And I want to begin first, just as a sort of a way to get you warmed up and connected. Many of you have just returned from Brazil, where you did a remarkably wonderful work, and many of you here that remained from Brazil were from here doing work to support that group. I would like to hear what you learned on that trip. Just a few here and there.

Interestingly, I had a dream about it last night.

S: Amazing how that happens.

Yes, and what I got out of that was what worked perfectly—and this is just putting one label on it, and there are so many other perspectives to it—is that there was very good synthesis and integration, at many levels.

S: Personally?

Personally and group-wise, of the form and the spirit, of the group together as a whole, and working on it at many different levels. And what I realized was—and you’ve said this forever—it doesn’t have to be hard, and it is just finding the right combination to make it easy.

S: Good. Good.

And what I learned from that was that as amazing and powerful a working as it was, it doesn’t have to be hard at all. If that doesn’t have to be hard, life doesn’t have to be hard, because I see that as a huge miracle, and life is filled with miracles, small and big, and nothing has to be hard.

S: Wow! That’s wonderful. A couple more, and then Jean and Bobbi.

It’s interesting when I think about how I just talked a little earlier about my experience in school. I learned on the Brazil trip how to persevere and how to—because I was sick—and to keep my eye on the goal of why I was there. That was the most important thing, and I would do this. And to get through each moment feeling good, because I’m here and this is so important to me.

But also it was an incredibly joyful trip, as well as knowing “I’m going to plug along, and I’m going to keep my physical self together,” but along the way just letting myself enjoy it, experiencing so much beauty, and beauty of people, of the scenery, of the life force energy, and it was a remarkable trip. It was amazing, and it coincided though with what I was saying earlier.

S: What is . . . there’s a couple of them, but pick one of the keys out of what Mary Claire said. What made that work?

She decided she was going to enjoy it.

S: She decided to enjoy it. Excellent. And another?

She kept her eye on the goal and didn’t get distracted by things that could have been challenging to that.

S: Excellent. Kept her eye on the goal for focus. Remember this. And determined that she was going to enjoy it.

Now, quick question about that: you determine that you’re going to enjoy it, but what if it’s a really yucky thing? Isn’t it sort of ridiculous to set your head saying, “I’m going to enjoy this,” when there’s absolutely nothing possible to enjoy about it? Ken.

No. In fact it’s the only way you get through. It wasn’t what I expected, but I’ll just deal with it and go on. And when you do that then you do deal with it and it’s not a big deal.

S: Right there. Right there. Lovely. Good.

After Mary Claire? Jean.

As you know, I had a terrible time emotionally about not going on the trip—I did!—and I learned to persevere through that and come out the other side, but that’s not what I really learned.

S: Oh yes it is!

Well, that may be true, but I had a great deal of joy out of listening to perspectives when everyone came back. I got a great deal of joy sending energy to Brazil. I got a great deal of joy talking to Bobbi on the phone from time to time, and most of the joy I got, I would have to say, came from her attitude that came to me in the beauty, and the unity. And the spirit of the trip was mine, and I didn’t even have to go. And it was a great lesson for me.

S: That’s wonderful. She had this thing that she really, really wanted to do, something that she fully related to, that was a part of heart, that she had been looking forward to probably lifetimes. And because of the ways that this world works, she wasn’t able to go, and was disappointed, saddened. But because she did not add to the sadness about it, because she did not add to it bitterness, anger—well, all right, but it was very fleeting—did not add to it, or quickly bypassed, self-judgment, because she did not make it “This is the only thing I have in my life and I cannot do it, and so my life is worthless,”—which probably sounds a little dramatic, but people tend to do that in so many ways—because she did not [do that], [even though] she wasn’t able to have the Brazilian experience, she was not cut off from the experience, and in some way gained in ways others could not.

It’s so hard when you are in school, whatever age you are, and something does not go the way that you wanted it to, and you feel so let down, so bad. It’s so easy in situations like that to forget that there is a doorway in front of you. When your heart is broken, it’s hard to see. When your whole life was wrapped up in this, and something happens so that instead you get that, it is possible to ever see that that may well be simply a detour to this, but you must not cut everything out because you did not get this. And how many times do you do that in your life? “I could not have it exactly this way, so I’m just not going to do it at all.” And so there is nothing to build from. Yes?

I mentioned the stories I heard. Well, I heard Bobbi’s story first, and then I heard several others. I heard Kathy’s, I heard Ken’s, I heard Paula’s. I heard lots of different stories, and the perspective was very unique to the personalities. It was almost like some of them went on different trips.

S: [Laughing] Some of them did.

But that even made it fuller for me, because I never would have seen that.

S: That’s good. So, Bobbi.

Often times I feel like when I’m learning, what I’m really doing is remembering or being reminded, and the Brazil trip for me was remembering what—and it’s hard to put this in words because it’s so beyond words—how fulfilling it is for me to stand on this earth and absorb new, gorgeous, beautiful places. It made it very hard to come back, because all I want to do is be out there doing that.

S: Well then, Bobbi, what brought you back?

A plane. Well, what brought me back are other things I love. My family, and my [spiritual] family, and other things in my life that I enjoy.

S: And it is because of the other parts of your life that you have the Brazil part—the traveling wanderer, the lover, the earth goddess—you feed that part and it all gets fed. You feed this part and more of this is available. There’s such power in remembering that, and such loss when that’s forgotten. [It’s] such an important lesson.

I’m going to go to Kathy, and then I’m going to switch out of Brazil.

One of the things that I was really amazed by was the huge amount of miracles that happened, and some of them were so profound that it literally helped me break through a barrier to trust that Source would be there, which is not a small thing for me. And because that trust was there, it opened up the door to just being, and more than any other time in my life, I could just be, and I absolutely just loved it.

S: You absolutely loved you. And it was that willingness to love you that created the heart-to-heart link with all of those other versions of you whom you love. There’s a lot of power in that.

Paula! Add something.

Add something about Brazil? Like falling in.

S: I was going somewhere like that.

It was an interesting experience. I think you’d spent the morning session . . . and part of it was telling us, “Whatever you do, don’t touch the [Amazon] river.”

S: “It’s dangerous! Don’t stick your toes in. Don’t put your hands in. Do not get in the river.”

And so I was walking from the boat to the shore, and somehow I got bounced off of the plank into the water, into the Amazon. And, you know, it was interesting because I never felt a moment of fear. I laughed. I laughed at myself. I thought “Gosh, I must be looking really gorgeous in the Amazon water!” And they wanted to take me back to the boat, and I said, “No, I want to go and pet the dolphins,” and I just kept going. And, I don’t know, it was an interesting experience. I think everyone else was more afraid for me than I was.

And envious.

S: [Laughing] And envious! Of course, you could have just taken a dive. You could have managed. What did you learn about you?

What did I learn about me? You can enjoy anything.

S: Good.

You can enjoy anything whatsoever, even if you’re wet and cold, it’s still okay. You can go on. It can be fun.

S: Yes, and I’m going to add a piece to that—forgive me for telling you what you learned; just correct it if it’s incorrect—you also learned that sometimes, even when you are doing the best you can to follow the rules and do what is expected, and follow the group down the plank—oh, if life were but a pirate movie! It is. I do wish now and again that you could hear the things that I am hearing when I make little statements like that, and you call back to me in your own mind, “Ah, it’s all about the booty!” Back to that though—you’re going right down the plank, doing exactly what you were told to do, minding your own business, being the best you could where you are with what you got at the moment, and [loudly] you fall right smack into—well, you can just sort of fill in the blank there at that point—in this case, the Amazon, but in your case it might be some other terror, some other vastly dangerous, monster-filled existence, because there are all manner of them if you’re looking for them. You find that you have a choice right there. All right, “Go back to Go”—the ship; “Straight to jail,” any of those. You can go backwards, because it is comfortable. I agree, it is not best to go back. Or you can keep on going. You can say, “No, I am doing something particular here. I want to continue.” And from that point on you have that power every time you remember.

In the meantime, while much of this group was in Brazil, somebody went to the holy land. How was it?

It was incredible. Truly life-changing. I mean, it was an experience that I can’t really describe. It was amazing, like the city itself was—the city of Edinburgh, Scotland that is—was just so . . . the energy there was so powerful and great. But on top of that was a festival that was filled with millions—literally millions—of people who were there for the sole purpose to perform in artistic and creative ways. People who were there for the sole purpose of playing with the muses and stuff, and I felt like I was on another plane of existence at that time. And I probably was, because, I mean, you would be walking down the street and people would be in full costume, reciting lines from their play, and then it was just an amazing experience all the way around. It was so, so powerful.

S: And when you were there . . . although for many people Scotland might not be the holy land, for many Guardians Scotland is, very much, because it is a place in which you have a powerful connection. In that sense, by going you might find that there is a part of you that never leaves, and in that sense there is a part of you that becomes birthed there.

If you don’t have an answer right now, think about it and give it to me later. What if you were born in the holy land? Now, I’m making a joke about that, the holy land, because it’s all holy, everywhere. You cannot pinpoint any one place. It’s a holy planet. It’s a holy life. It’s a holy end of life. So.

I don’t know if this is the complete answer, and I’m sure I will continue—as you said earlier—learning what was . . . that I was birthed there. I will find numerous ways, later down my path, of ways that I was born there, but one thing that really changed for me was I felt the first initiation into independence and adulthood. Like, for me at that point, it was the first time in my entire life that there wasn’t —even though physically speaking there wasn’t someone there to guide me. Even though there were chaperones, in numerous ways they weren’t really there.

S: He’s being really careful over here.

And so for me, with that experience, I was given opportunity, a vast experience in front of me, I just kept moving forward and finding that I can do this. This is something that I can do. And then also, with then finding that I could do this, I learned that I enjoy doing this. This was something that, for me, I have just lived in such a blessed bubble—truly, I have—so that the thought of actually becoming an adult—separated from my mother, my parents, this family here—has terrified me ever since I was probably in fifth grade. And the thought of college coming up had terrified me, and never did I think I might be able to do it alone, and then over there I did do it alone, and I loved it. And it just gave me lots and lots of hope.

S: That’s good. Actually, we could just end the meeting right here. That was lovely. That was a very good example of what school should bring you.

[To Stuart] Are you wanting to say something, or are you telling me that really it should end right here. Stuart’s going [makes gestures].

If you look back over your life, how many times have you been born? And how many times have you died? You are working in mastery. You are in master college, something like that. When you recognize that death is a beginning, not an end, and that you die—hopefully—every day. Well I suppose physically that’s obvious. Little parts of you are scattering about this cosmos all the time as you are dying in little pieces. But I mean what is you—just constantly changing. And the skills that you needed yesterday are not necessarily the skills that are going to help you today, and maybe not even be practical tomorrow. And it is your ability to say goodbye to the old and not hold on that allows you to experience the doorway of new life. Now, that new life might be new life without the sacred bubble or the tunnel vision of “Here is what I am. Here is why I’m here. This is what it’s all about. No matter what anyone or anything in my life says differently than that.”

“Wait, just a moment, Samuel! Before you keep going, let me get that clear just a moment. Are you saying that maybe the intense awareness that I have that I am here to live love and be a Guardian of life force in this world, to help be a midwife of sorts bringing out a much greater new birth, that that focus of my whole life might be a little limited? Yes. If that’s all you have in your life, that’s limited, and you will put . . . [do] you count eggs or count chickens?

But they hatch.

Chickens.

You count your eggs.

You count the eggs in your basket.

You count your eggs to figure out how many chickens you’re going to get.

S: All right, I think that one was a mistake.

Don’t count your eggs before they hatch. I think that’s what you’re going for.

S: That’s the one. Say it again.

Don’t count your eggs before they have hatched.

Don’t count the eggs because they might not all be chickens.

Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.

S: Like I said, getting so focused on any one section of your life, in which you believe that’s all there is, the only hope you have, the only good you have in your life, the only bad you have in your life. All you have is a limitation that’s going to endanger you. It’s very wrong, even if it’s really good stuff. And the aging process will change your perspective on what Bonnie says. And many in here agree.

You are on this planet to learn how to live, and you’re on this planet to learn how to die. And when you stop being afraid of both of those, you begin really learning, really succeeding, really changing in all good ways. The bubble is comfortable, yes indeed, but it’s not what you’re about. You are here to get up in the morning, and brush your teeth, and do all sorts of things in the bathroom that make you nervous if I talk about. You are here to call your friends, and write your emails, and go to work, and fall in love, and live until it’s time to start over again. And when I say start over again, I don’t mean you physically die—although that could go there—what I mean is you are ready to expand out once again, and see that going to Brazil or graduating from high school and visiting the holy land is not all there is; it is a blessedly wonderful part of a much greater whole, that it’s all about going to school—the school called earth. It’s such an incredible gift you have, such an incredible gift. Don’t let it slide away.

Poke me with a fork.

[Pointing to a large crystal at his feet] All well. Very happy.

Glochanumora.