22 Feb What Life School are You Learning Your Lessons In?
[Today is Part Three from guest blogger Barbara McCollough, LICSW on the topics of Life Purpose (for that post click here) and Life Lesson (for that post click here.) Today Barbara takes us on another exploration. If you want to find out more about what your Life Purpose is contact Barbara directly by clicking here.)
There are three aspects found in the fingerprints that are immutable. They were imprinted in the womb and do not change for your entire life. We have talked about life purpose and life lesson. Today I would like to talk about life school.
Your life school is your spiritual foundation. And if we think of it as being like an educational institution, we are all here on Earth University and although we take courses in several areas we choose a major, that which our soul has chosen to master in this lifetime. This spiritual base underpins all areas of your life.
There are four life schools which correspond to areas of human development beginning with the most basic of feeling safe in our bodies and on the planet, (the School of Peace), to the development of awareness and intellect (the School of Wisdom) to the recognition of love and empathy (the School of Love) up to the desire to serve others (School of Service).
We all grow throughout our lives in each of these four areas and none is more important than another, but the school we are in represents an area that deserves our special attention.
School of Peace
If you are in the School of Peace, your goal is to feel safe in your body and on the planet.
It is easy for us to think that we feel certain ways because of our histories. Certainly a history of having our boundaries violated would exacerbate feelings of anxiety or panic, but this is true of anyone in the School of Peace regardless of history.
Their challenge is to be able to move through panic to find body ease and to develop a life of balance between hard work and being able to take pleasure with family, friends or recreational hobbies.
As people progress in working with this school they are able to find a deep sense of peace within and gain a full appreciation of the joy of being alive. For the person in the school of Peace, achieving this inner state is key to the fulfillment of their Life Purpose.
School of Wisdom
The challenge of the School of Wisdom is to take the risk of personal exposure, to move from observer/evaluator into action. For people in this school, true fulfillment comes from getting off the fence, diving in and risking full engagement with life. In doing so, your transformational path will open to you.
I want to pause here to go deeper.
How do you think it would make a difference in just these two examples to know which school you are in.? If you have a history of being violated in any way, you may find it easy to identify with the challenges of both.
However, if you are in the Wisdom school but assume you are in the Peace school, you may think the antidote to fear and anxiety is to go inside and find inner peace. But the truth for the Wisdom school student is that the antidote to paralysis and fear is action in the world, to risk being out there.
To apply the prescription of the Peace school to the Wisdom school would inadvertently aid and abet the hiding that characterizes this school. A good example of how you are unlikely to be able to identify your own school.
The School of Love
The issue with the School of Love is emotional authenticity. Many people assume it is about being able to express love but it is actually the challenge to express whatever you are feeling authentically, even if it makes you and the other uncomfortable.
It is much easier to hide behind a false “niceness”, being willing only to display happy emotions, but in the School of Love one works to be able to express the uncomfortable as a means of getting to the authentically loving feelings.
I know it is not hard to imagine how if you have had a history where speaking your own truth resulted in physical or emotional harm, this would be a challenging school to be in. And yet it is through working on emotional authenticity, saying what you feel no mater what others think (even if in small things)to start) that you can open to loving and being loved.
School of Service
And now the School of Service. Like the School of Love most people immediately have an idea of what this school is about. True, it is about serving others but it is also about serving self and finding the balance between the two.
This school requires balancing on a razor’s edge. Slipping to one side , over serving others, leads to servitude (and thus resentment), slipping to the other leads to aloofness, self absorption, serving self to the exclusion of others. The goal is joyous service; when the two sides are balanced both giver and receiver are enriched.
It is easy to see the particular brand of this for anyone who has a history that includes abusive or manipulative circumstances; being overly attentive to others was an adaptive response to ensure your own survival.
This can easily evolve into a habitual (and safe) way of being in the world. This is a particularly difficult one to confront because we live in a culture that not only fails to question but even rewards over-serving of others, especially by women.
Or its opposite, in seeking to avoid this over-serving we allow ourselves to become cut off from others, which takes many forms in addition to keeping oneself physically separate such as drug use, alcohol abuse , or workaholism.
I hope I have shown that we all have different developmental needs depending on our life school and without knowing what that school is we cannot compare prescriptions for becoming free.
If you’re iterested in having your hands read by Barbara click here to get in contact with her. Her rates have recently gone up but if you tell her you came from the Safely Embodied Blog she will give you her old rate. Here’s to your life!