The student is ready

"When the student is ready, the teacher appears," is an ancient spiritual law attributed to Buddha and Theosophists. Those words have echoed in my thoughts quite often over the past six months and I can't help but wonder what these words mean to me, and why I keep thinking about them. What does it mean to be a student? And who is the teacher? What if everyone we encountered in our lives was a teacher? What if every friend you or I ever had, family members, the cashier at the store, our biggest enemy-what if all of these people were teachers in our lives? What if the small details of our lives were teachers? When we run an errand, or stand in long lines (the not so fun stuff in life) what if we are meant to learn something in those details? Would we respond to each of these people, situations and events in a different way? Would we slow down and shift our perspective to try and find the lesson? What if our souls (if you believe in that) or your subconscious (if you believe in that) or some spiritual karmic law (if you believe in that) calls various types of people, situations, and events into your life and my life to bring us to a higher level of love, inner peace, acceptance, and compassion?

This past Saturday, I felt irritable and didn't know why. On reflecting now, most likely it was because I had seven prepubescent boys coming to spend the night for my son's birthday and I was stressing out trying to make sure everything was clean and that we had everything we needed.  The first part of my day was spent repeating the words "clean up" to my boys, or "stop that" or "go to your room" when they refused to listen.The second part of my day was consumed with long lines and traffic. People were not cooperating with "my will." They were not moving fast enough either. Looking back now, I wonder could those people and those situations have been potential teachers? And maybe the lesson was patience, and acceptance-accepting the moment as it was, and breathing my way through it. I remembered to do that maybe once the entire day-but hey-at least I remembered.

This is my day to day life, and most likely your day to day life. We get stuck in the mundane details of cleaning, and working, and running errands, and waiting in traffic, and long lines, and dealing with difficult people sometimes. It doesn't make up our entire day, but it is highly likely that it may make up some small portion of it. During those day to day life tasks, I find it is rather easy to fall into a very human habit called frustration. We may even sometimes swallow every one of those miniature trials as a bitter pill and remain stuck and learn nothing from those experiences. 

I find though that when I do slow down in those moments, shift my perspective, take a few deep breaths, and even sometimes say a prayer, I can look at it as my homework, another lesson given to me by the current teacher in front of me. It is another opportunity to accept the moment for what it is AND as it is. It is an opportunity to show compassion towards myself for the valid frustration I am feeling as well. In other words, when I am ready and open to learn, I will learn. If I am not open to learning, I will not learn and the moment will have been wasted.

The teacher is always there, definitely in the details, but also in the big stuff. My boys are my teachers. They teach me patience and constant and never ending humility. My closest relationships are also teachers. They have taught me what unconditional love is. The broken relationships in my life that haven't worked out have also been teachers because those people taught me what love is not. They taught me to set boundaries, develop a backbone, and to also forgive. What is life teaching you right now about yourself? Where do you get triggered and who triggers you most? Is it always the same kind of person? Does that person remind you of someone from your earlier years you have unresolved issues with? Sometimes those lOr perhaps it's not a person, perhaps it's a thing?