Earth School

To gain any kind of knowledge and skills, we must learn them. In fact, we must initially figure out where we can go to learn the type of knowledge and skills we need to acquire in order to achieve our desired goal or purpose. In this episode, we’ll discuss how you can gain that knowledge and those skills that can help you develop an ability to work with vital energy in Earth School.

The path to achieve happiness lies in gathering both outside, or acquired knowledge, and inner knowledge. We look for acquired knowledge outside of us — in retreats, workshops or seminars, as well as consulting mentors or helpers, and also reading material that can provide helpful insight and information. We seek to widen our knowledge about the true nature of reality and creation, and about the cosmic laws.

But, it’s not enough just to engage with such outside sources. For them truly to further our progress along our path, that acquired knowledge must be applied on a personal level, and digested, and evaluated internally. And then, we must put that knowledge into practice so it takes root in our personal daily lives.

Where can we learn how to conduct the ongoing self-examination necessary in order to get clarity about the sole reality and spiritual laws?

The very good news is that you actually can attend what many of its teachers call, Earth School. In Earth School, you will gain amazing knowledge and awareness that opens you to see through our own version of The Matrix, the illusory life that shrouds our awareness, obfuscates our clarity and blocks our access to cosmic laws.

Transcript

To gain any kind of knowledge and skills, we must learn them. In fact, we must initially figure out where we can go to learn the type of knowledge and skills we need to acquire in order to achieve our desired goal or purpose. In this episode, we’ll discuss how you can gain that knowledge and those skills that can help you develop an ability to work with vital energy.

In our last episode, we introduced the Pathwork Lectures as a very useful resource to learn about the fundamental relationship between the life force and cosmic, or divine, law. 

And the Guide in Lecture number 2 acknowledges that “most people find life on this earth incomprehensible.” They cannot recognize or understand its meaning and purpose “because they see only through their physical eyes.” 

The Guide goes on to explain that they haven’t yet gained the ability to see with new eyes, what the Guide calls, “spiritual eyes.” And so everything seems pointless and meaningless — the sorrow, the suffering, the loneliness.

Then the Guide reveals something that can be difficult to “grok” without some examples or illustration.

Here’s what the Guide says: “when you understand that this life is one of many learning periods, one link in a long chain, you will at first sense and later comprehend more and more fully the connections. Then your goal will no longer be immediate happiness through the fulfillment of every single wish in this existence. You will instead direct your vision toward the whole. Thus you can bear the deprivations of this life. And thus, you can pass the tests and fulfill the conditions necessary to enter a higher state of existence, a permanent happiness that cannot be taken away by any outside force.”

The Guide refers to this revelation as a set of basic truths. And once we recognize and accept these basic truths, then the direction of our efforts to improve our lives shifts away from fleeting Earthly happiness towards a lasting happiness that we experience on a deep energetic or spiritual level.

And the path to achieve such happiness lies in gathering both outside, or acquired knowledge, and inner knowledge. We look for acquired knowledge outside of us — in retreats, workshops or seminars, as well as consulting mentors or helpers, and also reading material that can provide helpful insight and information. We seek to widen our knowledge about the true nature of reality and creation, and about the cosmic laws.

But, it’s not enough just to engage with such outside sources. For them truly to further our progress along our path, that acquired knowledge must be applied on a personal level, and digested, and evaluated internally. And then, we must put that knowledge into practice so it takes root in our personal daily lives.

That is where the inner knowledge lives. We use what we learn through outside acquired knowledge to examine ourselves, get acquainted with ourselves, attend to ourselves and — most importantly build the discipline to overcome our internal resistance. This is the most important repeating choice that we get to make — the most profound expression of our free will — that determines whether or not we make forward progress in harmony with cosmic law, not just in this lifetime but in the long chain of the whole that the Guide talks about.

In a pivotal scene in the great allegorical film, The Matrix, Joe Pantoliano plays the character of Cypher who meets with one of the algorithm Agent Smiths. Cypher eats a steak dinner, unhappy with the difficulty of living in reality and wants to strike a deal to betray Neo and his comrades so that he can return to the illusory simulation of The Matrix with some added benefits of money and power, and his memory of reality completely wiped clean (meaning with no conscience, guilt or shame). He says to the Agent Smith, “You know, I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, The Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After 9 years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.”

In that moment, a harpist slowly strums the harp strings as a signal that he has sealed his devil’s bargain.

And that pivotal choice is ongoing throughout our lives. Truth or lies. Reality or illusion. And this is a very personal, individual choice. The Pathwork Guide encourages to ask ourselves: “What hidden part of me still does not react to the sole reality, the spiritual laws, even if only on a subtle, inner level? Where do I lack clarity about certain things in myself?” The Guide further instructs: “Such self-examination should go on all the time.”

Okay, so how do we do that? Where can we learn how to conduct this ongoing self-examination in order to get clarity about the sole reality and spiritual laws?

The very good news is that you actually can attend what many of its teachers call, Earth School. In Earth School, you will gain amazing knowledge and awareness that opens you to see through our own version of The Matrix, the illusory life that shrouds our awareness, obfuscates our clarity and blocks our access to cosmic laws.

One of its great current teachers, Byron Katie, describes Earth School as a place where we come to be enlightened by our own wisdom and where everything that happens is for us, not against us. She tells us that Earth School is not a physical place, but a state of mind. She says that we can enter Earth School anytime we are willing to question our thoughts and open our hearts. Earth School is the ultimate adventure, where we can experience the beauty and wonder of life in every moment.

In my imagination, I visualize getting on the bus to Earth School like the student wizards in Harry Potter catching the magic train to wizard school, the Hogwarts Express, that only they can see. Like the Hogwarts Express, only we can see the bus to Earth School, and each time we choose to board it, we are transported to a place that opens us to learn new powers that can change our life.

Byron Katie looks like the sweetest little grandma, with her calm soft voice, short white hair, and very polite and compassionate manner … She’s perfect! When you attend one of her video sessions and watch her begin using the process she developed that she calls simply, The Work, you get to watch magic happen before your eyes. As she begins choosing individual volunteers who bring her their problems, places where they are stuck in their life, into The Work, you might feel like you’re sitting with a bunch of neophyte zen students in ancient times watching their kind and gentle little master leave them speechless as he gently open the doors of reality with them. No place to run. No place to hide. Just wonder.

In Byron Katie’s process, The Work, we begin by answering four simple questions that a person applies to their thought, belief or judgment that is causing a problem or issue. Each person takes a new sheet of pre-printed paper for each problem and writes down their answers to each. 

These are The Four Questions:

As a sample she uses to illustrate how to address the questions, Katie says: “I complain about Paul because he lied to me.”

1.    Is it true? – yes, or no; if no, then go to question 3

2.    Can you absolutely know that it’s true? y/n (do you REALLY know, how do you know, what do you base that on?)

3.    How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought? (It makes me upset, I feel betrayed and like I can’t trust Paul)

4.    Who or what would you be without that thought?

Once a person has taken some serious time and thought to excavate their thoughts and feelings around those 4 questions and record them on the sheets of paper, they then are given additional instructions for how to look at their answers to the questions differently, trying on different responses to see what resonates or what additional insights might arise.

She tells us that Earth School is set up for the people we worry about. Isn’t THAT interesting?! Those, the ones we’re closest to — THEY are our teachers. And ALL the things we don’t like—those things are our teachers. And, as we do The Work on each troubling thought or belief that brings us suffering, we come to be very grateful for them, because they help wake us up — so that we begin to clearly see The Matrix we live in and the reality behind it.

After you spend some time in Byron Katie’s virtual classroom doing your own homework in The Work, you already will see and understand some things differently, like the phrase “pain is unavoidable, suffering is optional.” And you will know that you have consciously begun your work in Earth School. 

There are many different courses and curricula in Earth School. You may already know about, or be using, a tool of Earth School. But perhaps you didn’t know how or where it fits in helping you identify cosmic laws and how to work with them. The Work is just one such tool that is readily available, easy to understand, very inexpensive and can give you immediate feedback and insights as well as continuing revelations about the issue you worked.

By using a tool or process like The Work, you also already will be developing an essential skill in working with vital energy to dramatically enhance your life: “discernment” — also called energetic discernment or spiritual discernment.

We’ll talk more about the power of discernment and its role in identifying cosmic laws in future episodes. Thanks for listening.

 Resources:

 Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 2 — Decisions and Tests

https://pathwork.org/lectures/decisions-and-tests/

http://thework.com

 Copyright © 2023 by Joseph Kornowski