The School Of Life

Let Go -

Or be Dragged.

Zen Saying

There are many sages and spiritual teachers who have said that this Life is like a school, and we are all here to learn the lessons we need to learn in order to know who, and what we are. Most people, however, walk through their days completely unaware of the truth that each moment is presenting them with something to learn; be it patience, forgiveness, trust or whatever else we may need in order to wake up. A great question to ask whenever we find ourselves going through challenging circumstances is, "What is this situation trying to teach me?" Or, from another perspective, "What am I suppose to learn from this?"

The truth is, everything that occurs in our life, from the 'ordinary' day-to day happenings, to the big events, is teaching us something that we need to learn, regardless of whether we like what's happening or not.

Usually we have no awareness of this truth, and so we blame something, or someone outside of us for whatever we are going through, often keeping ourselves stuck in unsatisfying patters that keep re-occurring over and over again. When we refuse to look at what life is trying to teach us, we might notice that the same experience keeps showing up in different disguises. For instance, if we tend to be impatient, always in a hurry for things to unfold quickly, we might find that life will continually unfold in a way that seems to frustrate us at every turn, until we learn to relax and lets everything happen in it's own time. Or we might be carrying around a very heavy charge of anger, only to find that situations and people seem to show up that constantly piss us off and throw us into a rage. Of course, this anger is like a poison that slowly eats away at us, until we stop being a victim, stoping blaming someone else and take responsibility for our inner-state.

The highest perspective is to remember that this Life is like a giant school, where we have come to learn the lessons we most need in order to be free, and to see every moment as an opportunity to expand our awareness into more loving-kindness, compassion and letting go. One of the ways to do this is by simply asking, in each trying situation we find ourselves in; "What am I suppose to learn from this?" Through this one question, we begin to free ourselves from a state of victimhood, and open to the lessons that are unfolding for our highest freedom and happiness in every moment. If you doubt this, take the next week or two, and just assume that everything that happens is designed to wake you up to what you need to learn in order to be competely free and at peace. Then watch how life becomes infinitely more flowing and friendly towards you.