"Life 101"

Have you ever noticed the universal nature of the kinds of experiences that inspire us to utter a fervent “Thank You, Father?

See if this bit of lyric from “Oklahoma” rings a bell... “I’ve got a wonderful feeling... every thing’s going my way!” There it is . . . the ultimate rationale for “party-time”... “every thing’s going my way!”

But are those life events that totally gratify our pleasure loving tendencies the only kinds of events it would be wise for us to develop an attitude of gratitude toward? And if not, why not? Is it possible that an event that flies in the face of our comfort zones can still, somehow, be enormously valuable to our humanity? Is there any benefit to be found in a time of struggle ?

I remember hearing a story that involved a man who fancied himself compassionate and an emergent butterfly whose paths crossed right in the middle of the butterfly’s birthing ritual of leaving its chrysalis for the winged freedom of its new identity.

Walking along a meadow path, the movement of the butterfly struggling to escape from the confinement of its chrysalis caught the man’s eye. He stopped to watch the drama unfold as the butterfly struggled to free itself through a small opening that appeared to the observer to be far too restrictive to accommodate the passage of the butterfly’s body and wings.

After watching for awhile, and observing no noticeable progress, the man decided to “help” the butterfly by using his pocket knife to enlarge the opening. Almost immediately the butterfly slipped easily through the expanded opening and crawled to a large leaf to rest.

The man waited expectantly for his “good deed” to dry its swollen wings and begin its new adventure. After an hour of patient observation the butterfly had made no discernible progress in readying its swollen wings for flight. Occasionally it would attempt to move them in a flying motion, but they were far to heavy and filled with fluid to respond. Finally the butterfly crawled to the edge of the leaf and fell to the ground where it lay for awhile before ceasing any further attempt to move its wings and eventually died. The well intentioned man scraped a shallow hole in the earth, gently laid the butterfly in it, covered it with earth and a few small stones and left confident that he had done his best.

Only later did he discover that a butterfly’s “struggle” to emerge from the chrysalis was a vital part of its passage into its evolved nature. The pressure exerted on the wings being manipulated through the small opening squeezed the fluid from them and prepared them for flight. No struggle . . . no flight.

The butterfly’s effort to free itself prepares it for its new life. Rising to the challenge is absolutely mandatory if it is to live and fulfill its destiny in its evolved state. Might there be a similar lesson hidden in our human struggles? Might the experiences we tend to classify as challenges and do our very best to avoid contain within them a seed of insight absolutely essential to our primary purpose for being?

Yes! Absolutely, but only if we are willing to play with the notion that we are here to learn the spiritual art of embracing all earth stimuli, regardless of its nature, with an authentic sense of equanimity. We are here to polish our spiritual capacity to peacefully co-exist with the Father‘s will being done regardless of the particular form it takes.

Emmanuel observes, ”You are enrolled in a school , why don’t you try taking the curriculum?” All of it! Not just the fun stuff, the pleasant stuff, but all of it, so you can fly regardless of conditions!

That’s it! Many of us who think of ourselves as being “on the path” also have a tendency to buy into the notion that along with that commitment comes a responsibility to always be “high,” to be an unfailing expression of a totally cooked, spiritually evolved humanity. The mythical kind that lay down a wave field of “vibes divine” so profound they instantly stone anyone crossing their path.

That brings up an option for us that is truly a blessing to recognize. . Rather than dedicating our spiritual energies to becoming “divine,” to attempt to transcend our humanity for some kind of other-worldly state of eternal bliss, it seems more likely that we are here to refine the quality of our humanity, to go beyond focusing on getting and staying “high” and dedicate our spiritual inquiry to the liberating practice of getting “free!”

And that’s a major distinction. From that point of view, Emmanuel’s observation on the purpose of our earth experience comes crystal clear, Assuming we agree that the purpose for being here is to master the spiritual art of liberating ourselves from all the self-imposed suffering we create with our resistance to certain categories of earth experience, then it’s clearly evident that our curriculum for awakening will inevitably include “everything” that happens to us not just the stuff we categorize as “fun!”

At some point in this journey of awakening it began to dawn on me that the fact that we took a human birth, you and I, is not some kind of mistake. Has it ever dawned on you that, regarding our spiritual evolution, we are in the exact right place at the exact right moment . This is just how it’s supposed to be. This unfolding scenario of form and circumstance we call our lives is a curriculum. We are in Life 101.

“Well who designed this damn thing?” you might be inclined to ask. Ahhhh, interesting question, I thought you’d never ask. As far as who designed this is concerned you have a choice. You can identify with the creation and be its victim, or you can identify with the Creator. “You mean . . .?” you might ask. “Yes!” When you ask who designed your curriculum, the answer is, “you did!” But don’t hear the “you” as “you”, a three dimensional earth-being with a fractional line of existence that begins with a human birth and ends with a human death.

It’s not you, Clyde, or you, Sally. No, this life script came right out of Cosmic you, Soul nature you, hanging out with the Oversoul of All Souls and crafting a curriculum which would be the optimum curriculum to provide you with a set of experiences, through which you could, if you were ripe to, awaken out of the illusion that you are only a separate entity, nothing more than a psycho/somatic package that can think and feel along for a brief ride through time and space. Can you handle the proposition that your entire set of life experiences is designed to give you a shot at awakening to your Ultimate Reality, your Sacred Nature, Christ in you your promise of Glory!

So, if we are going to find freedom through our life experiences, not in spite of them, It seems wise for us to make a commitment to hear what it is we are doing here . . . what is our curriculum. What is our unique function here in this space/time reality play. Each of us has our own curriculum which flows out of our psychic DNA, our karmic stuff. In the cosmic play of things we have agreed to it all! Every last nickel’s worth of form and circumstance that weaves itself together as our “lives.” There are absolutely no errors in the system. That’s hard to acknowledge many times in those moments of extreme duress when the Universe seems totally committed to raining on your parade.

But, when you stand up behind form, right there at the edge of form and the formless, if you just look there for a heartbeat, what you see immediately is an impeccable relationship of mutuality. You see that all forms are lawfully related. If that’s a tough proposition to get your mind around try it from Plato who said, “To know God is to know the laws, and to feel the goodness of the laws is to praise God.” That’s where the rub comes. It’s a real stretch to feel the goodness of the law, to celebrate the creative principle at work, when it has coalesced into one of the human experiences that typically serves as a rationale for a round of suffering. We are simply incapable of seeing the goodness of the law if our minds are drugged by the love of pleasure and the rejection of pain. “Such a mind,” Plato taught, “invents Gods or denies them, but never sees the laws at all.”

And there’s the bottom line. The truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing. The third Zen Patriarch said it this way in his “Verses on the Faith Mind, “The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent the Truth lies clear and undisguised, but make the slightest distinction and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.”

It’s your life. It’s your curriculum. Embrace it all to the best of your ability. Learn its lessons as deep as you can take them. Celebrate when the Prize Patrol knocks on your door and give thanks when Life invites you to the dance and then steps on your toes. Hang in there. Master the new steps that preserve your peace and serenity and then rest easy in the sure and steady knowledge that the song has yet to be written that you can’t learn to dance to.

Enjoy the Grace!
~ Chad

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