The Celestial Curriculum

Meditation 

“To learn who we truly are, we must learn who we are not.” Sara Robinson

The Greatness Within
All human beings, unless they’ve been irreparably damaged, have a sense of their own greatness. 

Whether we admit it or not, we know we were born to fulfill a special destiny no one else can fulfill. 

     In one sense our spiritual studies have provided us with the great relief of knowing that we are exactly the same on a psychological level.  Nearly all of us live with a fear of inadequacy that leaves us anxious, stressed, and exhausted at the end of most days.  This inadequacy may be expressed differently, according to our essential nature, but we all fear being unprepared for meeting moments which seem to be bigger than we are.

     A paradox exists, however, because while we are all the same in terms of how we interact with the world, we are also completely unique.  There is no other person on the planet exactly like you.  Think about that for a moment.  Let that thought sink in. 
     Why would you have been created exactly as you are—unlike any other human being on the planet?  You are here to realize your true greatness and fulfill your potential in the grand scheme of creation.  You have a job to do, and you’re in school to learn how to do it.

The School of Life

     This school is open 24/7 to everyone who is willing to learn.  There is one teacher, one student, and one teaching fulfilling a celestial curriculum designed to prepare each of us to realize our true purpose in life. 
     In scale our Work here is a special type of school for advanced aspirants whose life experiences have brought us to the point where we realize a need for a particular type of instruction designed to take us to the next level of consciousness.  The real teaching isn’t a set of facts I memorize and bring to you to learn.  It is something shared between us.
     The Presence in me is making an active exchange with the Presence in each of you—collectively and individually—so that together we can begin to see the truth of ourselves.  We have learned that you can’t be someone who knows and is learning at the same time.  So, we are learning to be watchful, rather than willful to make room for new knowledge to inspire us.
     Today we’re going to examine three lessons from what I’m calling the "celestial curriculum" to discovering the greatness within:  surrender resistance, make mistakes, and drop self-talk.

Surrender Resistance

     We have talked a lot about resistance as a natural opposing force.  Its nature is descending, rather than ascending, and its ally is our personality formed from our conditioning and experiences as a buffer to protect us from our sense of inadequacy.
     Resistance makes learning impossible, because the divided mind or personality that thinks it already knows can’t learn anything.  It meets a moment knowing what it wants and doesn’t want.  Desire sees its object and goes for it.
     There’s only one problem with this scenario, false desire only serves to perpetuate itself.  It cannot grow outside the limited boundaries of what it knows.  Truth cannot be identified or served within the confines of a divided nature. 
     This is the true meaning behind Matthew 6:24, when Christ says “No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to one, and despise the other.”  If we truly wish to know and serve the greatness—the Christ—within, we must surrender the parts of us which continuously produce and follow self-generated desires.  We will never know our true purpose, if we continue to provide ourselves with false purposes.
     Sadly, most people live out their days in pursuit of false purposes and don’t even recognize it.  They work hard all of their lives to gain powers, possessions, and the approval of others and live lives of what Henry David Thoreau called "quiet desperation."
     You and I have awakened sufficiently to see the necessity of dropping all of this and following a different path.  We’ve learned to question and watch resistance and its accompanying negative states, rather than react and engage.  We’ve also learned to suspend judgment, realizing that all of us are doing the very best we can in every moment according to our current level of understanding.