Page 9 of All the Way to the River

W hat if Earth is nothing but a school for souls?

What if this planet is the toughest and most elite accredited academy for spiritual ascension in the entire universe?

What if our souls voluntarily elected to come here to undergo the wild experience of being spiritual entities contained within the forms of great apes, processing reality through the weird and flawed filter of human perception?

And what if we pass our days moving through an extraordinarily complex educational curriculum that has been carefully tailored to push each soul toward its highest growth, evolution, and ultimate liberation?

What if we each agreed long ago to show up in these exact bodies at this precise moment in history—to be dropped into our exact families and influenced by the specific cultures in which we were born, to be blessed or burdened with certain gifts and limitations, to be faced with a series of singular troubles and tests—because there was something our souls could not have learned any other way except through this precise curriculum?

(Or as Mark Twain put it: “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.”)

What if everything in Earth School is working exactly the way it’s supposed to be working, in other words—by teaching us things we can learn in no other way?

What if everything (and everyone) that we label as “difficult” or “an obstacle” or even “dysfunctional” is in fact a deliberately designed construct meant to awaken us to our true natures—a divine crowbar, you might say, that is sent by the cosmos to knock down the doors of our ignorance, demolish our illusions, and give us the opportunity to move past our fears, find our innate courage, propagate wisdom, and help us to remember that we are of God?

Of course we cannot know if this is how fate works, because none of us know how fate works.

But in my life, I have certainly found that the Earth School model is a useful thought exercise during times of darkness, pain, and betrayal—for it takes me out of a victim mentality and offers up a worldview that feels far more empowering and fascinating than the limiting, anguished cry of “Why me?!”

A more fruitful question than “Why me?” could be “How might this terrible situation be perfectly designed to help me to evolve?”

Because what if that’s really what it’s all about?

And what if we are all here to help each other evolve?

By any means necessary, perhaps?

My friend Barb Morrison—a fellow recovering addict and old friend of Rayya’s—calls this notion “Greetings from the Boardroom” and imagines it more or less like this …

Long before we were born, our souls gathered in a giant cosmic conference center and decided what curriculum we each needed to sign up for in order to best learn the lessons we would seek in this lifetime.

Some of us asked for tender assistance—for patient guides, devoted friends, loving parents, faithful partners, wise spiritual teachers.

Some of us volunteered to provide that tender assistance.

But some of the really brave students—the ones who wanted to make the most of their experience in Earth School—asked, “Okay, who will volunteer to be my abuser this time?” or “Who will be my alcoholic family member?” or “Who will be the lover who betrays me?” or “Who will be the child who breaks my heart?” or “Who will be the one who dies and leaves me all alone?”

Now here comes the miracle.

To each request, some benevolent soul on the other side of the boardroom raised their hand and said, “I’ll do that for you, my love. I’ll do that.”

And so our teachers arranged to meet us.

They agreed to bring us gifts not only of kindness and compassion but also of pain and trauma—by being exactly the people we needed to crash into at some prearranged moment so we could be broken open enough to perhaps learn something essential from the encounter, graduate from that lesson, and evolve ever closer to the light.

Wouldn’t that be incredibly generous of someone, to do that for you? To help you grow like that?

And what if a moment of clarity came—right in the middle of your suffering and struggling—when the two of you recognized each other from the boardroom?

What if you were like: “Oh, wow, I remember you!”

And all you could do was laugh, or weep, with gratitude?

And then—having served your purpose (having delivered or received the critical lesson)—what if you both released each other from your respective jobs?

What if you set each other free?

Wouldn’t that be magical?

My friends, my friends—wouldn’t that be something ?