Hi,
I'm Johnny John.
Spiritual lessons are lessons that we can use for spiritual growth,
To become ever more self-knowing,
Self-accepting,
Allowing us to create greater happiness in life.
But how do we discover them?
Today I want to show you the way of discovering your spiritual lessons through your parents.
In this talk,
You will be guided to see from a spiritual perspective as to why you may have possibly chosen these people who are your parents to be your parents before coming into this lifetime.
And also,
We will look at how we can use the intention of acceptance to discover our spiritual lessons.
Again,
I will be guiding you by sharing with you my own experiences so that you can use it as clues to find your own truth.
So let's begin.
So I have a lot of experiences that gave me clues that there is reincarnation,
A life before life,
And a life after life.
And I believe that there's some sort of planning that happens before our soul comes into life,
Into incarnation,
So it can meet all the people it needs to meet.
You know in my life experiences,
There are so many examples of when I would meet the right people at the right time.
Actually,
I have so many stories to tell,
But I'll save that for next time.
So if planning before coming into this lifetime is possible,
Then the planning of who will be our parents would be of utmost importance.
Because these will be the people who will be taking care of us,
Will be always around us.
Because of free will,
The ability to make choices,
We can be born into life and make choices and go astray,
Not meeting the people that we need to meet,
Or to escape from the people we're supposed to meet.
But who can we not escape?
It's our parents.
So many clues to our spiritual essence can be discovered through our parents.
We can begin questioning,
Why did we choose them as our parents?
What can they offer to us materially,
Spiritually?
Or personality,
Is that even a word?
Maybe they carry the same spiritual essence as us.
So one can ask the question,
What suffering states of mind do they have?
And then asking oneself,
Do I have the same belief patterns too?
It is often much easier to see other people's problems rather than ours,
So the use of parents as our mirrors is helpful in this respect.
One can also ask the question,
Is there something about my parents that I do not like?
Maybe they were chosen to piss you off and bring out the suffering states of mind.
Yeah,
I think I chose my mom for that reason.
My mom is like the complete opposite of me,
And our ideas would always clash.
She has her own ideas of what is right and wrong,
Of what is order and disorder.
But from learning to accept her,
I uncovered a lot of spiritual lessons about the parts of myself that I cannot accept.
At the same time,
She had qualities such as unconditional love that I learned from her.
But it took me many years to see what spiritual lessons that I can learn from my mom,
Because most of my childhood was spent fighting against her.
So most of the time I was dwelling an anger,
A negativity,
And she also had a lot of negativities too.
So we were focused on reacting to the negativity,
Rather than studying it,
Observing it,
Trying to find the cause and transforming it.
Realize that what parts of your parents that you do not like about,
Will always reflect back to what you do not like about yourself,
And also what you lack.
And like this,
One can start examining one's closer connections,
Such as friends,
Relatives,
To discover the clues to one's spiritual lessons too,
Because the closer connections we have,
We always have important clues to our spiritual lessons,
For it's most likely that these meetings,
Connections,
That are close and intimate,
Are planned.
So from our parents' close connections,
We can find many clues to our spiritual lessons,
And it will always come back to the theme of self-acceptance.
Let me share with you another way of discovering your spiritual lessons.
The other way to discover your spiritual lessons is to hold the intention to accept everything in life.
Realize that spiritual lessons are designed to take you towards accepting everything from the state of mind.
The more you can accept in life,
The more you will experience greater happiness.
What happens when you hold the intention to accept everything,
Is that you will discover the things that you cannot accept.
The intention to accept thus is a powerful tool that you can use to discover your spiritual lessons.
It is a catalyst to speed self-knowing,
Because without that intention,
We will simply dwell and focus on the miseries.
But with the intention to accept,
One will begin to observe and question why,
Why is there a lack of acceptance?
These questionings will help to develop self-knowing,
And help you greatly understand the nature of the spiritual lessons,
And how to get through them.
I guess I'll share with you an example for you to better understand.
After university,
I worked at this backpacker's place,
And there I met this person who would always piss me off.
No matter what he said,
What he did,
I just did not like it.
But my heart told me that I could learn from him.
But what can I learn from him?
So his arrogance,
His stupidity,
His rudeness?
One day I told myself,
What is love when I keep judging people?
So I tried to accept him for who he was,
And that was really tough.
Remembered every time I meditated or did yoga,
The anger,
The frustration towards this guy would just blow up in my mind and body.
I'm sure you've met people like that who can just bring out the worst in you,
Multiply that by five.
This guy was good.
But in the end,
As I finally learned to accept him,
I realized what I hated about him was what I hated about myself.
I just couldn't accept myself if I was arrogant,
Stupid,
Or rude.
I would never forgive myself for that.
But he was happy.
He loved himself no matter what.
So yeah,
That was the first time when I really seriously tried to accept something I could not.
And that process really changed my life.
Because if you can accept someone who you cannot accept,
For instance your parents or your friends,
Then you will be able to accept everyone else in the world that is like them.
So through our parents and the people around us,
We can discover our spiritual lessons.
That is why it's so important to have a life outside meditation.
To include life as a part of the bigger spiritual practice,
Because other selves can act as mirrors to find what we cannot accept about ourselves,
Helping us to complete our spiritual lessons.
So realize that there is an inner world and an outer world.
The greater work of self-transformation happens within.
And the outer world helps to draw out the spiritual lessons that are waiting to be discovered from within.
So from today,
Hold the intent to accept all there is,
And that intent will become a light which will reveal the darkness within,
To reveal the spiritual lessons.
Now how do we undertake these spiritual lessons once we have discovered them?
There are many ways,
But the practice of meditation will always be centripetal in whatever spiritual work you do.
Realize that we all have infinite wisdom within,
For are we not all born from the same spark of infinite intelligence from which the universe came from?
Through meditation,
You are tapping into that spark of infinite knowledge,
Infinite wisdom,
Which will help to guide you to overcome all your challenges in life,
All the darkness,
The mysteries in life,
So that you can gain greater happiness and enlightenment.
