8/14/02
The Spiritual Chicks^SM Speak Out!
Is life a school?

No, despite what many spiritual teachers say, life is not a school.  Do trees need Ph.D.’s to feel qualified to be trees?  Do lions sit around developing a curriculum to teach their cubs how to hunt? Do the stars go to star school so they don’t begin acting like planets? Of course they don’t.  All of nature knows what to do, from the different cells in our bodies to the galaxies that make up the cosmos.  And, even though we forget it, we humans are also part of nature. Why would the infinite intelligence that created the Universe produce a species lacking in knowledge?  It doesn’t make sense. 

Life isn’t a school.  It’s an experience.  All our schooling can’t explain how the law of gravity knows when two objects are close enough together to be attracted to each other or why we’re here.  But hiking through the mountains or spending a few hours at the beach in the early morning connects us to something greater than our intellects, to the power behind the form.  In such a relaxed state, we transcend our humanity and merge with all that is. No textbooks or flash cards are needed.  In many ways, formalized education is just like organized religion, a kind of virtual reality that keeps us from directly experiencing our existence.  In small doses, education and religion are kind of fun, like playing video games on a rainy day.  But as a steady diet, they condition us to think that we’re useless without our reference materials and that is simply wrong. 

Thanks to instinct, plants and animals know exactly what to do to be plants and animals.  They evolve by doing, by adapting to circumstances rather than trying to circumvent them.  Self-awareness seemingly separates us from trees, lions and stars.  But does it really?  The best educators know that people learn best through experience rather than through didactic methods.  That’s how the idea of internships came into being. When we learn by doing, we regain a sense of wonder, reconnect with our instincts and learn to adapt to circumstances.  As a result, our imaginations kick in and we can discover new ways of doing things. 

The idea that life is a school encourages a hierarchical view of reality.  A student starts in pre-school and makes his or her way up the ladder to college and then graduate school.  There are exams to test the acquisition of mostly useless knowledge.  There are grades that separate the smarties from the dummies, the good students from the bad students.   Such a view places God in the role of principal, of disciplinarian, of judge and jury.  But any rock knows that God is not that.  God is vertical, the essence of all things.  God is Life.  And Life can only be understood when we allow ourselves to experience it.