Your Classroom This Lifetime

My dear friend Linda Foley liked to use the analogy of a classroom and it’s always stuck with me. I took it and ran with it, thus the details below. I’ve used this analogy with some of you, but for some, this will be new…
 
This lifetime you came into a specific classroom; there were certain lessons you wanted to learn. Think of it this way: maybe you came in this lifetime to learn i.e., advanced algebra. Now for the sake of this metaphor, advanced algebra could be anything- from forgiveness and compassion, to personal growth and advanced consciousness. (Don’t get hung up on what the course entails, just follow my analogy.) So this lifetime, your course lessons are all in regard to advanced algebra. Those lessons will help you graduate to the next level.
 
There’s no right or wrong in your course load, everyone chooses based on the soul growth they most need.
 
Sometimes those around you are taking similar classes but with different professors, so you recognize a shared language in the growth you’re each achieving.
 
Sometimes the lessons may overlap; maybe someone you love is taking geometry and you’re taking algebra, so there’s a basic understanding of math, but you’re both going to see things a little differently.
 
Now, the issue comes in when you have a relative, a friend, or a partner whom you adore and who you see struggling with their course load. To “help,” you leave your classroom and head down the hall to theirs. Maybe they decided to take beginning biology this time. So you’re sitting in a biology class, even though those are not your lessons, while trying to whisper the algebra lessons to them. Not only are you disrupting their lessons that they came in to learn, but you’re not learning your own lessons because you’re sitting in the wrong class.
 
This is what happens when you think you know better than someone else what they need. When you try to fix them or change them or make it better for them. 
 
You’re not making it better; you’re actually hindering their progress. And not only that, if you continue to do it and they don’t get to pass their biology class, guess what, they have to come back in and do it again. And so do you because you didn’t learn your own lessons!
 
Do you really want to do that to someone else? Make them potentially have to repeat a lifetime to learn the lessons that they really wanted to learn? If you keep trying to control them and how they learn and what they learn, that’s exactly what you’re doing. You’re taking away their free will and you’re trying to lecture them into a class that was not something they wanted to take in the first place.
 
Sometimes, as I said in the example above, you are in a completely different field from those you love. You may be in advanced physics and they are in English 101. Or vice versa. Just because you may have decided to take an AP or advanced class, doesn’t mean you’re better than them, it just means you’ve been around the block and you wanted/could handle a harder course load. But maybe in their previous lifetime they had a hard course load and so this time, they wanted more ease. You can’t force them to learn what they didn’t sign up for. Just like you wouldn’t want someone trying to force/control you and your lessons.
 
If you keep trying to carry them along and do it for them, that’s codependence. You need to take your classes, and trust that they're doing things the way they need, to learn the lessons they need. 
 
Can you love someone enough to let them make a “mistake?” They are learning from what they do, just like you learn from what you do. If they ask for your advice, then you can offer it. But you cannot protect others from potential pain- it might be what their soul needs to grow. 
 
That's actually the greatest act of love that there is; giving others the space to do what they need to do, in the way they need to do it.
 
And remember, just because you might’ve chosen tough courses with difficult people, it doesn’t mean you made a mistake or that you’re being punished or that you’re bad or wrong or undeserving. It simply means you wanted to challenge yourself. It doesn’t take away from the fact that you are inherently worthy and deserving of love. You are incredibly worthy and deserving, because you exist. Sit with this.

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