April 2011 ~ My Three Questions

During the weeks leading up to my April weekend at USM, I was busy summarizing my results and writing the animal chapters of my book. I spent a lot of time thinking about my three questions and the variety of answers I had gotten from all the different kinds of animals. As I was sitting in class on Sunday, it suddenly struck me as odd that I’d been asking these questions to dozens of animals, but had never asked my questions to people.

Suddenly, I wanted very much to know how people would answer my questions. But who should I ask? Where should I start?

At the lunch break that day, I asked my Spiritual Psychology teacher Dr. Ron Hulnick my three questions. Ron shared that his spiritual gift is “the ability to transmute challenging principles into understandable concepts, to make things more understandable. Like an artist sees a vision and translates it into form or reality, I do the same for concepts.” I remarked that he did this not just for concepts, but also experiences, giving people a spiritual and practical context in which to interpret and understand their experiences. Ron agreed with me.

Regarding his spiritual lesson, Ron says, “I have largely resolved most of the things I came here to learn, which really comes down to letting go of judgments. I used to be very angry and had a lot of rules about the way things should be and what was wrong with everyone. All of that had to go. That was my lesson.” He paused and said thoughtfully, almost to himself, “Clearly I have more to learn because I’m still here, but I don’t know what it is.”

Ron’s message to people is “You didn’t do anything wrong. Everyone is inherently worthy regardless of what they’ve thought or done, whether they believe it or not.” So many of us are beating ourselves up for something we thought or did that we judge ourselves for or think that we are unworthy or unlovable for doing or thinking. Ron’s message is that we are here to learn that we are all worthy and all loveable by virtue of the fact that we exist. It’s that simple.

After I talked to Ron, I got curious about how other spiritual teachers would see themselves and their spiritual journey in this lifetime, which led me to my life and my spiritual journey. So, I asked myself my three questions. When I did, I was actually surprised by my answers. On one level, I see my primary spiritual gift as loving -- loving myself and loving my family, especially my kids. At another level, I see my spiritual gift as the synthesis of many skills that I’ve developed over my lifetime. Right now, I see my gift as the ability to access and present spiritual experiences and information in a way that allows other people to access their own spiritual truth.

When I look back at earlier painful episodes in my life from my current perspective, I see that my spiritual challenge or lesson was (and continues to be) knowing who I am and loving myself no matter what. This means knowing my true, authentic self and loving myself whether or not I am receiving love or appreciation or approval from someone else. Many of the most painful moments in my life emerged from judgments I made against myself as not smart or pretty or friendly or artistic or whatever enough. I looked outside myself for approval and for proof of my worth and value. Sometimes I got it, sometimes I didn’t. But as look back now, I see each quest for approval as an opportunity to love myself and to give myself what I had been looking for from someone else. My lesson is to love myself the way I want to be loved, to love myself the way I love my friends and family – wholly, completely and unconditionally.

My message to people in its simplest terms is: “We are love. We are all connected. We are one.” The way I see it, our very essence is love. That’s what we are made of, whether we are a good person or not, whether we are a nice person or not, and whether we are a person a snake or a whale or not. We are all made of the same energy and that energy is love. There is no difference between me and you and a polar bear. We are all the same, energetically and spiritually. We are not only connected to each other, but we are one.

So here’s my question for you: what are your answers to my questions? What is your spiritual gift? What is your spiritual lesson? What message do you want to share with people?

“If I could tell the world just one thing it would be that we’re all OK.”
-Opening line from the song Hands by singer/songwriter Jewel