Life School: Why Life Is Your Greatest Teacher

One of the first dynamics we become aware of as small children is reward and punishment. We learn that our actions have consequences, either directly or through what our parents teach us. So, very early on, we learn to adapt our behaviour to stay comfortable and keep things under control.

As we grow, we have to learn almost everything we need to function. We are taught how to manage the external world, and most of us become reasonably good at it.

But what if everyday life also offers us another kind of learning? In my experience, it does, and I’ve found that much of what happens to us helps us understand more about who we really are.

What Losing My House Taught Me

In the articles on Self-Awareness, I described how I lost my house and the dream I’d had a year earlier, which, looking back, was showing me what I believed about my right to be there. The idea of Life School really began for me in what happened afterwards.

In my early thirties, I had become curious about why life felt like such a struggle, and I had started to understand and heal some of the more painful parts of my experience. But the penny still hadn’t dropped. I still saw the world as something to protect myself from. So when I lost my house, I couldn’t understand how my life had come to this. I felt as though the world was punishing me.

Over the following months, as I worked through the grief and self-blame, I read, listened and began to pay attention. Eventually, I became willing to look honestly at the choices, beliefs and circumstances that had brought me to this point.

I realised this wasn’t about blaming myself. In fact, this distinction became incredibly important. I was beginning to understand that I could take responsibility for my part in what had happened without condemning myself for it. I had made choices based on what I believed and understood at the time. Now I could see things I hadn’t been able to before.

This realisation changed a great deal for me. Instead of asking why life was doing this to me, I began asking what I could learn from what had happened. I learned things about myself I might otherwise have taken years to understand.

Your experiences will, of course, be completely different from mine. It might be a relationship that isn’t working, losing a job, a decision you regret, a pattern that keeps repeating or a growing sense that something in your life needs to change. Whatever the circumstances, what happens can help us understand ourselves better if we are willing to look at it.

Learning Before Things Become Painful

I also noticed a pattern. My biggest insights about my life came when things became painful. I learned this way because I tended to bury my head in the sand until the discomfort left me no option but to look.

Then I read somewhere that we only learn through pain because we have not yet understood that we can learn through love and trust just as well. The information is usually there long before the pain arrives, but we are not looking for it, so a situation has to become quite serious before we notice. Once I saw this, I asked my Higher Self, the part of me that sees through love rather than fear, to help me learn the other way.

I still have painful experiences. What has changed is that I no longer wait for a crisis before asking whether there is something I could see differently.

What I Mean by Life School

I first came across the idea of life as a school in The Heart of the Soul, and I wrote earlier in this series about its impact on me. The idea I took from it was that every experience carries a lesson for our growth, and nothing we experience is wasted.

I see it a little differently now. Sometimes there is something to learn, and sometimes we may not yet be ready to see it. At other times, we may need to accept what has happened. That can be every bit as difficult as finding a lesson.

What I do know is that whatever happens, we can choose to learn from it. This is what I mean by Life School in this series.

There is a difference between believing something happened because we needed a lesson and choosing to learn from what has happened.

When I lost my home to mortgage debt, I did not need to believe it had happened to teach me something. But when I was ready, I could look at the beliefs and choices that had contributed to it and make different decisions.

This is how I now think about Life School. We do not have to force a lesson out of everything.

And it is a perspective I apply to my own life, not other people’s. I cannot know what somebody else is supposed to learn from their suffering, if anything.

You may believe life has a larger purpose, and I remain open to that myself. But you do not need to believe it to use Life School.

For me, it is a way of asking whether an experience has anything to show me, and whether I want to respond differently next time. This shift has helped me take more responsibility for my choices, understand myself better and move forward when life has been difficult.

What We Bring to What We See

The world is not punishing us, and I do not see difficult experiences as tests we have passed or failed. Yet what happens can reveal something about how we see ourselves, other people and the world.

It’s like sitting in a cinema. If we wanted to understand why a particular image appeared on the screen, we would not only look at the screen. We would also want to know what was being projected onto it.

Life can work in much the same way. We never meet it with a completely blank mind. We bring our beliefs, expectations, past experiences and assumptions with us. The world can act like a mirror, reflecting some of those things back to us.

So when something disturbs my peace, I look at both the situation and what I may be bringing to it. Something may genuinely need to change or require action. But I can also ask: What am I believing here? Is an old fear or expectation shaping how I see this?

Sometimes the situation is the problem. Sometimes our interpretation adds to the difficulty. Often, it is a mixture of both.

For me, Life School means being willing to look at both.

Being Willing to Look Again

I have written at length about willingness in the articles on Self-Awareness, so I won’t repeat it all here. But it is important in Life School because we can’t learn much about ourselves if we aren’t willing to question what we already think we know.

How we see a situation has been shaped by years of experience, beliefs and habits, which is why our reactions can feel so automatic and completely justified. We may be convinced we know what happened, why somebody behaved as they did, or what something means.

Willingness means leaving room for the possibility that there may be another way of seeing it. We don’t have to know what that is yet, nor do we have to decide that our current view is wrong. We are willing to question whether it is the only one. In my experience, this is usually enough for some learning to begin.

Seeing Experiences Through the Ego or the Higher Self

I explore this fully in the next set of articles. For now, the essential point is that we can view any experience through the ego, the fearful and defensive voice within us, or through the Higher Self.

Through the ego, I see people to blame, things to defend against, and evidence that I am not enough or that other people cannot be trusted.

Through the Higher Self, I see something different. I recognise another person’s fear. I see my own part more clearly. I feel less defensive and stop needing what happened to mean so much about me.

Instead of asking how to fix the situation or change someone else, I pause and ask:

• Which thought system am I viewing this through right now?
• Is this fear talking, or love?
• What would my Higher Self have me see here?

When I lost my house, I was viewing it entirely through the ego. I felt shame and self-disgust. I felt punished and unloved. When I became willing to see it differently, things began to change, slowly, not because losing my home had somehow become a good thing. The years that followed taught me more about myself than anything before them, and they eventually led to a peace I had not previously known.

How Our Feelings Show Which Way We Are Seeing

We have a second clue to the thought system we are using, and it is always available: how we feel. Our emotions can tell us something about the thoughts and beliefs we are holding, a topic covered in its own set of articles later in this series.

Peace, gratitude and warmth can be signs that we are seeing something from a clearer, more loving perspective. Persistent resentment, guilt, fear or anxiety can be signs that there is something in our thinking worth examining.

It does not mean painful emotions are wrong, or that every difficult feeling is evidence that we are listening to the ego. Grief, shock, fear and hurt are natural responses to what happens to us. Sometimes the emotion reflects the pain of the moment.

We do not have to judge it, suppress it or immediately try to think differently. Sometimes the most loving thing we can do is allow ourselves to feel what we feel without adding another layer of judgement or resistance.

When the intensity has eased, we can become curious and ask:

• What am I believing about this situation that is making me feel this way?

And then:

• Is there another way I could see it?

Learning Without Criticising Ourselves

Life School is not about becoming perfect or never reacting badly. It is about learning from our experiences and becoming more aware of how we respond.

My ego still shows up when something happens that I do not want. I can become defensive, angry or convinced that somebody else is wrong. The difference now is that I am more likely to notice what is happening and ask my Higher Self to help me see the situation differently. Sometimes I manage it quickly. Sometimes I do not manage it at all.

When I recognise that I have reacted from fear or an old belief, I do not need to criticise myself. I can look at what happened, consider what I might learn and decide whether I want to respond differently next time.

This is what Life School means to me. We do not have to get everything right. We can use our experiences to understand ourselves better and, where we can, make choices that bring more peace, compassion and love into our lives.

“Life School is not about becoming perfect or never reacting badly. It is about learning from our experiences and becoming more aware of how we respond to them.”

When you begin to explore life as a learning experience, you might rightly wonder What is life trying to tell me? and that is where we go next.

Continue Exploring

Living From Your Higher Self is a journey of understanding and practice. These ten articles are designed to be read in any order, but together they provide a complete framework for living with greater peace, purpose and self-awareness.

Articles in The Life School

Life School: Why Life Is Your Greatest Teacher

What Is Life Trying to Tell Me?
Not Everything Happens for a Reason

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