Teaching What You Came Here to Learn
It’s been one of those weeks where I feel overwhelmed by what I have to learn.
- I’m humbled by the work of masterful writers and inspiring spiritual teachers.
- The list of what I want to learn — whom I could potentially learn from — grows at an exponential pace that (on some days) seems to be leaving me in the dust.
- I compare my accomplishments to those I admire, model myself after, and with whom I wish to co-create, collaborate, just participate.
Sometimes, I come away from exploring the evidence of great brilliance feeling the exact opposite of inspired, energized, empowered — my ego insinuates its voice, takes advantage of the critical space opened by my self-judgment, and berates me with impressions of doubt.
You know these Questions — they’re not really questions at all, because the answers are merely nagging statements with the same agenda — to deny your self-worth. You have this same program that runs in the background like some kind of power-stealing resource hog — like spiritual spyware, waiting to pop up and block your channel:
- Who do you think you are, to…?
- Who are you to teach others, when you still can’t… when you still don’t…?
- Oh, you’re a good one, to be telling anyone what to do, when you…
- Somebody else — someone smarter, cooler, better than you — already has it covered…
- Shut up, before you embarrass yourself…
First of all, I can guarantee you that everyone who has decided to write, to speak, to teach the material you look up to and learn from has this same programming. It doesn’t feel like it, because you are an audience to their products, not so much their process… The optimal words are choose, decide, and anyway. We all run into our Ego’s co-dependent on-again/off-again companion, Miss Perfect, Queen of the Nags.
I must confess that one of the reasons I love to do readings for other people is that it gives me access to so many spirit guides — often those voices seem so much clearer than my own. It’s like having a second opinion, and then another source, and then another…
Clairaudient intuition isn’t just about listening, receiving; one of the most powerful components of channeling is the projective aspect — activating multiple chakras:
- The heart — the receiver of wisdom
- The throat — the amplifier
- The hands — the extra chakras that play the keyboard of energy transference in healing, automatic writing, corresponding
Often, what you most need to hear — the answers you seek — will simply come out of your own mouth. What you most want to know, you’ll find yourself saying to another.
There are patterns or themes to the readings I give — they seem to cluster in a miraculous way around certain topics, in some mysterious relevance of linear time-frames. When I encounter two or more people with the same questions, or spirit guides responding with similar messages even when the questions seem at first to be incredibly different, that’s often how I decide what to share in my posts each week.
When I then encounter these same messages in the words of my own spiritual teachers, then I immediately look at the questions I’ve been asking of my guides, of myself, for myself:
- How is this pattern of messages to others an answer for me — for my questions? Because the sources are inevitably the same.
This week, the readings have been about the double-edged sword of life lessons and life purpose — that the very things you learn the hard way, that you may view as your curses, your challenges, your struggles, are often deeply connected to the wisdom you are meant to share.
We teach best what we came here to learn.
Often, you will protest or even laugh when I tell you that the patterns of those things you struggle with are maps guiding you toward, into, through your life purpose.
Where you stumble, there your treasure lies.
What is the definition of success you’re waiting for that will allow you to arrive? What is the mirage on the horizon, whose distance seems so daunting, that you never begin the journey towards it?
You can look at someone else’s progress, you can study his maps and compare your course to his, but you can never substitute the actual footsteps, the work, the movement that moves you.
If you happen to be the person in the room who knows a crumb more than everyone else, then congratulations, you are the expert. But don’t worry about teaching from the position of the expert — simply profess to share what you are learning.
What is the Thing you think you’re not yet good enough at to teach? What’s the hardest lesson you’ve ever learned? What battle scars are you trying to cover that become badges of courage and honor simply because you choose to re-frame them and decide to make them so — anyway?
Seek Wisdom - Practice Love - Teach What You Came Here to Learn
Contacting Your Spirit Guides - 101
Free resources for Shift Your Spirits readers:
- Read the ebook by Slade Roberson especially for beginners who want to know who/what spirit guides are and how to communicate with them
- Listen to the mp3 preview of the Spirit Guide Attunement portion of the Talking to Your Spirit Guides class by Slade Roberson
- Try the meditation to Meet a Guide contributed by Jeff Lilly of Druid Journal
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19 Responses to “Teaching What You Came Here to Learn”
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I just want to say thank you! Since I discovered your blog a few weeks ago it has been remarkable how your weekly posts have spoken to me. I look forward to each one now because they are so on target!
Linda
Holy Cow Slade, you expect me to answer these questions right here in a comment? These call for some major pondering. “What is the Thing you think you’re not yet good enough at to teach? What’s the hardest lesson you’ve ever learned? What battle scars are you trying to cover that become badges of courage and honor simply because you choose to re-frame them and decide to make them so — anyway?”
I have copied them as stimulus for my next journal entry. As always appreciate your willingness to call things as they are for you. That willingness gives us all permission to embrace ourselves, scars and all. As a long time life coach I’m always amazed when folks comment on how much together I appear to them. I guess when they experience me as coach my flaws don’t show. But I aways tell them that we are all facing something that we don’t want to face and we all have our challenges. Thanks for the nudge to go forth and teach from the strength of my deepest wounds.
Tom
This feeling of inadequacy you speak of is what hits me every time I go into a bookstore, especially the big-chain bookstores with SO MANY books on the shelves it would take five lifetimes of continual reading just to scrape the surface of what’s there. That’s when I start to think that my writing & any book I may publish will get lost in the crowd, and I get those “Who am I to think I can compete anyway?” thoughts. This is usually after I have given a critique of a manuscript for a colleague, so then my thoughts go to “Who am I to critique anyone else’s work? Forget my qualifications! Who am I???” And those thoughts naturally bleed over to the rest of my life: “Who am I to teach anyone? What an ego I’ve got to think that I have anything of value to teach the world!”
Thoughts like this feed on themselves & perpetuate more thoughts of inadequacy, of course. When I finally realize where my head has wandered, I stop & remind myself of when I was about eight years old and my father taught me how to skip stones in a little stream by our campsite. It took me several tries to get my tiny pebble to skip, but it was worth the effort to me because I loved to watch the ripples spread outward & affect even just a small portion of the whole stream.
It’s a nice image to return to to remind myself that I don’t have to effect the whole stream, just my little portion of it. Any ripple — however small — is worth the effort.
Love & Light,
Jewels
Fantastic post, Slade, as always.
I have observed the same phenomenon - that readings and clients seem to come with themes, and that often these themes are something I myself need to look at or pay attention to or have been needing assistance around.
I often find that I learn the most while I’m teaching - like you say, what I need to hear comes out of my own mouth. I often write blog posts to explore what I need to discover for myself.
There is one thing I want to teach that I don’t yet feel ready for - I definitely feel I need to be “there” before I go and teach it. Hmmm. I’ve been contemplating this, and this article of yours might just be a nudge to move forward anyway. That’s kind of scary and exciting … yikes. Stay tuned …
Blessings,
Andrea
Thank you for answering the very question I needed an answer to.
…I mean, that I needed to be -reminded- of the answer to!
Linda,
Thank you for affirming that these themes and messages are reaching others in a timely way. It means a lot to me to hear that!
Tom,
I think it’s particularly challenging to hear your guidance when you’re comfortable being the guide (the coach). Do you ever find yourself feeling “Gee, I wish someone would coach me!” Or, you feel that you’re always playing the role to your strengths, from the things you feel truly successful with/ have a handle on… As a coach, you’re in a unique position to take a topic and create a course within the structure that you’ve already implemented with your clients — what if you plugged in something you’re still unsure about, into that framework, and taught it to yourself as you would to another?
To some degree, I feel this is what all healers do / are doing, but I know for me personally it helps to approach my challenges as Potential New Course Material.
Jewels,
Don’t doubt your story-telling talent for a minute! Even your brief comments here are marked by such an obvious gift for evoking time, place, emotion — your imagery speaks volumes, with so relatively few words.
I must tell you that the trip to the bookstore, looking around at all those titles — the exercise that results in your self-doubt is almost identical to one I share with the writers I work with to empower and motivate them! Briefly, the actions and circumstances are the same, but the intent is to capture a sense of the opposite of what you describe: when you feel overwhelmed by the daunting task of writing and publishing, when you feel like it must take a superhero to accomplish your goal, go to that bookstore and look at all those spines and see how they mirror you — each of those titles is physical evidence that what you hope to achieve is entirely, absolutely do-able.
Not only have a few people “lived” through the experience, TONS of people have. And you’re one of them.
Andrea,
When I read your blog, I am always struck by the evidence of your process of teaching-as-learning — it definitely comes through! I feel you really understand how to transform that line between teaching/learning in your personal writing.
Now I’m dying to know what this subject of yours could be! I have two of my own, in this moment, that I suppose I’m holding close to my chest… Let’s gossip soon!
Jonah,
You’re very welcome! Even though your comment is brief, I received strong messages for you, while driving in the car today.
Your angelic guides are very loud, very clear, and very active. I would classify them as elementals (earth angels, devas, faeries — you know). There’s a female in your world — more of a sister, soul-friend than like a romantic “girl friend” — anyway, your elemental guardians dig her because she is their namesake.
This question you speak of — talk it over with her. She’s a very clear channel for you, and whether you guys realize it or not, she’s an adept angel intuitive. She’s a co-creator/ co-teacher. Are you sharing your thought process with her?
Slade,
Well, flattery will get my attention every time!
Seriously, I never thought of the act of looking at all those books on the bookshelf as an empowering experience, but I will certainly shift my perspective next time I hit the monstrous, two-story Barnes & Noble in my area.
Just so you know, when I’m there I sometimes manage to follow the advice of an old writing instructor who — after hearing of my overwhelming experiences — encouraged me to go to the area of the bookstore where one of my books is likely to be found. As per his advice, I follow the shelf alphabetically to see exactly who my book would be sandwiched between. Johnson (not THE Johnson, thank goodness!) & Jonahs, last time I looked, but the names change periodically. It is definitely less overwhelming to know that those names could easily change to include mine. Well… maybe not “easily,” but certainly with persistence….
Jewels
Slade, you asked me….Do you ever find yourself feeling “Gee, I wish someone would coach me!” Not often because I am coached by other coaches frequently.
You also asked.. “Or, you feel that you’re always playing the role to your strengths, from the things you feel truly successful with/ have a handle on… As a coach, you’re in a unique position to take a topic and create a course within the structure that you’ve already implemented with your clients — what if you plugged in something you’re still unsure about, into that framework, and taught it to yourself as you would to another?”
I have done that and yes it adds a certain feeling of exciting experimentation to the material. You’re right a course is the best place to be totally upfront about our own growth opportunities.
It’s more difficult in an individual coaching relationship because the client often needs you to be a rock that they can lean on. But I could see the opportunity presenting itself in certain situations.
Interesting thought…. I often feel slightly hypocritical when I offer a friend some salient insight or something perhaps overlooked to afford them a more positive perspective. Seems I can do this rather easily when many other things come with a great deal more difficulty for me. I might review the conversation later and while I feel good about helping a friend (who often receive what I say enthusiastically.. I make a point to interject sparingly and avoid a didactic approach) I wonder why the hell I cannot take the same advice. Feelings of inadequacy and esteem come up often with my own issues but for some reason I seem really good at making those close to me feel good about themselves. Too bad I can’t figure out a smooth transition to apply that to myself.
Thank you Slade. You’ve hit the nail on the head for me again, and at the exact right moment. And again it’s an article about self confidence and doing things to spite the nay-sayer in the back of my head. I know it’s something I need to work on but my voice is loud, persistent, intelligently manipulative and extremely distracting. I am working on it, it’s just slow goings. I need reminders like this every so often.
Although I don’t do readings or any kind of professional counseling, sometimes when I’m trying to help a friend through a problem I can listen directly to my heart (soul, intuition, what have you) and before I know it I’m telling them something I hadn’t even though of. Whenever I’ve done that it’s been similar to what you describe, when I think on it later those answers apply just as well to my dilemmas as theirs, no matter how different they may be. Maybe I should go find some friends with good problems, I certainly could use some guidance right now. ;P~
Thanks again for the point in the right direction.
Jen
isn’t it funny that when we help our friends with their problems and we give advice that we have our own epiphany? Something telling us that hey you have just answered your own question !
Wow Slade, I’m just full of appreciation for your work right now.
I was guided to your site last night, just as I was coming out the far side of a “dark night”/void experience. It was a relatively brief passage through, but darker than some of the “longer” experiences! I know I was specifically guided, because I clicked through from Spiritual Blog Reviews, a site I bookmarked a while ago, but have only glanced at once before. So, apparently I was nudged to click on that bookmark I never click on, and your site was the top story
[Yeah, my guides are kinda grinning/nodding/chuckling as I'm realizing how specific the guidance was!]
I’m just loving the clarity of your writing, and especially in those areas that I haven’t been feeling expert in with my clients lately. (I channel directly from a team of teacher guides who sit in counsel with a client’s team of guides.)
But I was granted a great clarity in noticing what you seem to be so specifically adept at… rather than saying “Why can’t I do that??” (old pattern) I was stimulated to look back at myself and notice from a new perspective what I’m specifically good at. In other words, so many of us that are here to guide/learn/teach have a very specific niche that is our specialty… BUT on the pathway to discovering that specific frequency tone (or range), we’ve played with a lot of other notes or other instruments that might NOT be our forte. (wow, so many mixed musical metaphors coming through!)
Anyhow, I’m completely stimulated, energized & inspired to do the complete reworking of my own site that I’ve been avoiding… and also inspired to let more people find me, finally
So, again, THANK YOU… and I’m looking forward to digesting the rest of your site… and your site for writers.
blessings,
Kellan
This so struck accord with me–it’s something I’ve been thinking about just recently.
It was kind of chilling reading the almost same words I’ve been hearing in my head but not believing. Thank you! It never ceases to amaze me how when I have a question going around in my head I find the answers. I love your site.
Slade, something that I have noticed on my blog is how several of my blogger friends will all independantly of one another choose to write about the same idea or information at the same time. We all connect with the same Source and that is where so much of our inspiration comes from.
I recently told one of my commenters that I wrote one of my articles because it was what I was learning still, not because I was an expert but because I was the student sorting through my thoughts as I wrote the article. Some of my best stuff comes through that way.
Sometimes when I go to a bookstore it is with a specific book in mind to buy. Many times, I have no clue. I ask my guides to lead me to whatever information, I need to read or learn. Books literally drop off the shelf or are totally across the store from where they should be waiting for me to find them. I love the adventure of going into book stores and asking for wisdom to come my way.
Slade, this is a very powerful article. I appreciate how you let us peek over your shoulder as your process things for both you and us. One of the things I appreciate about being middle-aged (56) is that I don’t look in awe at the masters as much as I used to. I think it has more with my learning to appreciate and accept myself. Of course I still have attacks of inadaquacy daily, but do my best to move through it and take action.
My challenge remains to live fully in my own power, warts and all. That implies for me that I am willing to speak, to write, to live, and to work imperfectly. When I do that, my life purpose naturally shines through. When I don’t come from that place of wholeness, I feel small and often resentful.
Forgive the delay in keeping up with comments the past few weeks. I’ve been away from my yearly Beltane Retreat and slowly but surely re-entering correspondence space.
Sabine,
Speaking truth to yourself through the reflection of another is a powerful way to channel information. It is easier to do this for someone else because the sense of separation actually works (for once) in your favor. It gives your insight/wisdom the opportunity to come through without the confusion of attachments. I can of course relate to wanting someone to “do it for me” — and they do! This is really about a perspective on how we collectively participate in one another’s healing/ teaching/ learning. Not every lesson and every insight that comes through you may be for you, but someone out there is returning the favor.
Jen,
If you asked me to pin down one underlying theme or current to all that I discuss here, it would be a sense of spiritual self-esteem. I feel the repetition of insight here boils down to — do it for someone else when you have the opportunity… keep the vibes moving for others and you will be taken care of as part of that whole.
Sonn,
Answering my own questions is one of the greatest benefits of doing the one-on-one consultations, readings, and coaching. Absolutely!
Kellan,
The energy of your appreciation shines off the page. Wow, man, you… glow!
Thank you for saying so, it’s great to meet you and connect with the work that you’re doing. Since my forte is clairaudience, all the mixed musical metaphors definitely work for me.
April,
That is the synergistic magic of the collective consciousness, spirit channeling, and the power of our technology — pretty awesome how it all works, huh?
Patricia,
I love to do Bookstore Divination — it may be my favorite lifelong hobby. My Joy guides in particular go nuts in bookstores.
Deb,
What’s that saying about youth? Something about its being wasted on the young. I’ll be 39 this summer, and I’ve never once felt anything but more and more comfortable at the soul level as I age. I would have to agree with you that much of the experience of acquiring wisdom is taken care of by time. When I graduated from my undergraduate degree, my writing professor Coleman Barks told me that his parting advice for me was “just grow old (and keep writing).”
What is interesting about “life lessons” is that we don’t have to have them if we just remember what we have already forgotten. We already have EVERYTHING we require inside of us to know our love and who we truly are. I see it as “Teaching what we came here to remember”.
It’s simply a matter of remembering. If anyone had a chance to read “The Holographic Universe”, then they would have read a very interesting comment about how we all are like holograms. We all have all of the information of the universe encoded into us. (if anyone knows how holograms work - and how cutting a film of a hologram in half - each new half still contains the entire hologram….). We are ALL like this as souls.
Anyway, that’s just my two cents.
Bee,
“Teaching what we came here to remember.”
Wonderful — I like that!
I do indeed see our individual spirits in relationship to the collective as holographic, or as cells that contain the full blueprint of the larger organism.