Schoolteacher

All too often, we teach and are taught how to avoid anything which is ugly, painful, distasteful, or upsetting to us. One of the most important things we need to learn is that our problems actually serve as beacons of light or as magnifying glasses, emphasising or pointing out our most crippling fears, our most restrictive attitudes, prejudices, and misconceptions which are holding up our progress-things we really must face up to and overcome if we are to grow. We run away from fear – as we should perhaps in waking life, but our inner life we need to face fear. See Masters of Nightmares

We need to understand that our problems represent the lesson we need to learn. We are all in the process of becoming wiser, better, and more God-like. The difficulties we face are like the gateway through which we must pass in order to proceed. Our problems are actually our teachers.

 Example: The meeting with the first woman in the dream refers to my teaching work with other people. It shows indecision over how I should approach this. To contact me through my mother means I will learn their needs through my emotions, or heart.

Having asked how, in fact, I ought to approach my outer teaching, it was said that there is not, in myself, enough to fulfill their needs. I have to offer teachings on mankind’s wholeness. This should be done by consciously opening to Life and Love, and teaching out of the influence this throws into my life. This is really about inter-personal relations with others rather than group work – i.e. the help given to individuals from inner guidance.

 Example: I had no other role model at the time, so I did a terrible thing to myself. Also I lost all respect for my elders as in none of them could I see that gentleness of love. My schoolteachers were thrashing children with rods. The world was killing each other in tens of thousands. My mother had psychologically castrated me out of her fears for me, and my father hardly ever even spoke to me. So I divorced the world, and of course lost that wonderful quality of compassion for the human struggle.

Example: I just retired from my job at an elementary school, so there were many female teachers. My dream was with a female teacher that I hardly know. She is a married mother of two, and quite a bit younger. During the dream she is seated on the ground in a beautiful sweater and matching skirt. I start telling her how much I adore her (a thought which has never entered my conscious mind). As we are both seated on the ground, I lean forward to kiss her. She responds. The kiss was perfect and I could actually feel the contact. I then awakened, and felt quite disappointed that the experience was a dream.

Example: As a teacher I had never realised before what an amazing education a child has, before ever it goes to school. Language itself is like a massive encyclopaedia of information. Then, the attitudes or feeling tone with which language and its concepts are passed to us, adds further volumes.

Here I had the feeling of my being stretching back endlessly through my fathers. This passed and I said, spontaneously, “Through the inheritance of our culture I have a soul. Without the self giving of men and women throughout the ages I would have no soul – i.e. identity – no personal awareness of my own. Because of language, and the accumulation of knowledge, I have a soul. This is mankind’s gift to me. Without it I would be like an animal.” See Programmed

By this I understood that I would have no self-awareness, and I saw more clearly than ever before, that this vital part of our being is literally a gift from the self giving, suffering, generous, adventure and love of all creative mankind.

“This is why people take an interest in schooling, in culture. Unconsciously they know what a wonderful thing we have received. Yet I have never wanted to give.” Here I began to groan with the pain of seeing, experiencing the wonder of what is given us, of what we can give to the future, to our own times. I cried out in tears at the simple beauty of giving of self, of trying, even if not very well, to better educate, help them to see opportunities, give them experience, so their own soul may be even more richly endowed than our own.”

I groaned and wept at the vision of what had been given, of what I could give. How I too could add my bit to this gift of a soul to children of all time.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Have I recognised the part education plays in our life?

Have I learned something, not to get a higher wage, but to become more human?

Did I go down the school/college path, or did I go my own individual way?

What life lessons have I learnt?

Did I learn on the rough path or an easy journey through Lifes education?

Who were the major teachers I learnt from?

See Life’s Little Secrets – Opening to Life – Diving into the Depths of Mind – There is a Huge Change Happening