When the student is ready… We’ve all heard it hundreds of times – when the student is finally ready, the teacher is going to show up and set things right… maybe lead us triumphantly into the promised land.

But have you ever had a teacher come tapping on your shoulder, ready and eager to reveal to you all the secrets of the ages? Most people will laugh and tell you that, no, their teacher is really, really late for their appointment.  Don’t be too hasty, however, to answer this question. If you’re like me – like most people – you may have unwittingly turned away more teachers than you’ll ever realize.

In the first place, have you ever wondered why a teacher would even appear and take you on as a student? Anybody can understand why you’d welcome a teacher to guide you forward. But how do you know when one appears? And what does a teacher look like, anyway? Well, it’s probably not like you were expecting.

If you’ve been thinking of a wise looking personage draped in a bedsheet and carrying a little wad of flowers, you’re almost certainly going to be disappointed.

In real life, most teachers aren’t even people. When was the last time you over-ate and got indigestion?

Or drank too much and felt hung over the next morning?

I’ll bet you never thought of those feelings of discomfort as your teachers. But there they were, tapping on your shoulder, offering you their wisdom, and you may have ignored the lesson they wanted to give you.  Instead, you may have downed a quick stomach-soothing potion or popped a headache pill – some kind of “quick-disconnect” to keep from suffering the results of your own actions. Well, pay attention here. As long as we use quick-disconnects between our actions and their results, we’re refusing to learn from the most common form of teacher.

So do we really welcome lessons?

We all say we’re trying to learn, to improve, to master life’s lessons. We claim that we’re seekers after truth. Yes, that’s what we say…  But not all of life’s lessons involve noble-sounding eternal truths. Life has lots of things to teach us. And so it scatters lessons everywhere amidst our day-to-day affairs.

Often the most important lesson we can learn today awaits us in the humble, nitty-gritty details of life, down in the dirt. And we never have the opportunity to meet that lesson till the day we stumble and fall, and we’re lying face-down in that dirt where the lesson is waiting.  For a lesson like that, we won’t ever learn it until we’re reduced to that level. Only then are we in a position to receive that particular wisdom from life.

Even then, we may not be ready. We may actually meet that problem again and again, each time treating it as an annoyance brought to us by the perversity of life. But that problem can teach us important lessons.  Something has to change, however, before we’re ready to learn from that teacher. Only when something changes – something within us – only then can this “problem” become a teacher.

We all have lots of teachers waiting patiently to teach us their lessons. In fact, there’s a whole faculty crowding around to share their lessons with us. These teachers are all dressed in the rags of problems. But their lessons involve wisdom about:

• Money,
• Love,
• Honesty & honor,
• Confidence,
• Persistence,
• Self worth,
• Health,
• Habits,
• Appetites, and
• Trust.

Although this list is not complete, these ten areas cover most of the problems we all wrestle with on a daily basis.

For years we have probably been trying to avoid, weasel away from, or eliminate problems like these. For years we may have been treating those problems as unwelcome, unfriendly inconveniences. Something to be escaped from as quickly and painlessly as possible.

In fact, I’ll bet you have never looked at your money problems as a teacher. Nor ever seen your marriage agonies as a kindly instructor of spiritual growth.

Well, life’s teachers may not always be gentle, but they ARE endlessly resourceful. And the only reason they ever seem harsh is because they are simply bringing to us what we unwittingly ask them for.  That upset stomach, or that hangover… admit it now, don’t we know – before we start – that this sometimes happens? But we go forward anyway, gambling that this time we may not have to pay the price. Or thinking that there’s always a “cure” that will cancel out the results of our own careless, unwise actions.

We do this everywhere, whether it’s in matters of money, love, or personal relations. We deliberately ignore the results of our own actions, refusing to take responsibility for what we bring on ourselves.

So if we want a real, live human teacher to appear and instruct us in the mastery of life’s mysteries, we’re going to have to meet them half way. Because they’re the advanced teachers. First, we’ll have to graduate from the simple stuff before they ever appear.

But the truth is, we may never see one of the flesh-and-blood teachers. Why? Because we so resolutely resist the ‘simple’ lessons that the Universe may be thinking, “Why waste a ‘real’ teacher on the bad students? These bottom-of-the-class dunces are constantly whining, complaining, dragging their feet, and refusing to learn from the results of their own actions.”

But the real teachers are there. They’re standing back waiting for us to become ready. And what does it take to be ready?

First, are you still ignoring the teachers you already have? If so, you might consider paying more attention to your problems and listening to the lessons you’re already being offered.

That’s it… just listen

Stop the constant, desperate struggle, and just be still. It’s amazing what you can learn when you’re not fighting, not resisting and struggling to escape, not denying.

Every problem we have is a product of our own thinking, our own feelings, our own actions and habits. And that problem is there to do us a service. Its intent on one thing only.

No, not to torture us, but to teach us.

The teaching, however, will seem like torture for just as long as we continue to struggle against and resist the lesson embedded in the situation.

Fortunately, there are a couple more shortcuts to recognizing the face of these teachers. There truly are simple ways for finding the lessons, for learning them and for leaving the struggle behind.

Mastery Method #1

I’ve already mentioned the first way. That’s simply to stop fighting and listen. Just asking in simple honesty, “What is the lesson in this situation?”

You already know about any number of spiritual or mental practices. You’ve read about meditation. You may be doing it on a daily basis.

But how are you using it?

For the longest time, I was trying to use meditation as a tool for solving my problems. That approach did not work consistently.

Then one day I realized that meditation is not for solving problems. In fact, as long as you’re focused on solving, you’re not receiving anything. You’re not learning.

Try this approach instead and see how much more effective it can be.

Go into your meditative state in your favorite way. That may be chanting, centering, self hypnosis, or repeating a mantra silently. However you like to do it, spend a few minutes becoming still.

Now, instead of floundering around, trying to create the solution to your problem, simply imagine yourself PAST the problem. The difficulty no longer even exists in your life. Feel the peace and the simplicity of your life without the struggle. Let this feeling of being past the problem wash over you and fill you. Feel how you would be living your life when the problem doesn’t even exist.

Then give thanks for this feeling. Let waves of gratitude roll through you, then open your eyes and go about your business. Every time that problem confronts you, just remind yourself that you already know how it feels to live with that problem behind you.

What happens to the problem? Sometimes, believe it or not, it’ll just dissolve and disappear from your life – never even requiring you to solve it.

This most often happens when you find you’ve lost interest in the behavior that causes the problem. Somehow, you are no longer attracted to overeating or drinking too much. Whatever behavior is connected with your particular problem, it may simply fade from your life.

Other times, the solution will come to you during the daily routine of your life, and it will always be far simpler and easier than you ever imagined.

In any case, the best approach to learning from problems is to recognize that you are the one who supplies the energy to them, and you are the one who can withdraw the life from them. You are the source of their power. When you begin ignoring them, you starve them, and they go away.

This approach is simple and elegant.  And it’s vastly disappointing to anyone who loves to talk about all the drama and difficulties in their life. You’ll need to get past this addictive need for drama.

Mastery Method #2

One of the basic truths of psychology is that each person is nearly blind to her or his own weaknesses, even though others can see them clearly.

You can see others’ peculiarities, and they can see yours. Most people, therefore, try to avoid being unmasked by others.

However, there’s a better way to use this principle.

Why not form a mutual aid group dedicated to helping each other see themselves through the eyes of the rest of the group?

This type of group is, in fact, extremely common among highly successful people.

It’s called a MasterMind Group, and virtually every successful man and woman who ever lived has formed or joined such a group.

Let’s say you’re struggling with the marketing aspects of your business. You know your product or service extremely well, but you don’t know the best way to reach the public.

As a member of a MasterMind Group, you find that everyone freely shares their skills and insights with each other. So when you belong to one of these groups, it’s a simple matter to ask the other members for advice on marketing. In effect, you’ve just told the group, I have a weak area that I need your help with.

The strong marketers in the group, on the other hand, may have a blind spot in the area of product development, so you freely help them.

Everybody gains because everybody is there to help the entire group to grow.

Thus, you have access to a whole group of teachers. And your only obligation is to serve as one of THEIR teachers.

Hah! I’ll bet you never expected to discover that you’re somebody’s long-awaited teacher, did you?

Life’s funny that way. Everything you think you know sooner or later turns out to be backwards: your problems are your teachers… you are someone else’s teacher… what else is waiting to be turned upside down?

Why, next somebody may be telling us that life can even be beautiful.

Cheers,
Charles

 

Related Posts:

1. Interview with Russ Hamel, a Teacher of Life Skills