“Earth as a School to Learn”
by Kelvin Chin
Life After Life Expert
There is what I consider a false notion promoted by some minds from the afterlife that Earth is some sort of “lower level” school for souls to learn lessons.
Lessons
I think we “can” be here to learn lessons. But that is far different from “we must be here” to learn lessons. In other words, I do not believe that Earth is a “structural place in the universe” where souls are sent to learn lessons.
My experience is that the universe is structurally a much more neutral and egalitarian place than that. It is a place where we each can make of it what we want. That we as minds have Free Will, which means we have an infinite amount of personal choice in our decisions all the time.
Levels
First let’s debunk the idea of “levels.” Whenever I hear someone talk about “levels of evolution,” “levels of consciousness,” or “levels of learning,” it makes me think about the principle that I call “The Importance of Being Important.” That basic principle refers to the idea that many people think they are better than other people. Sometimes they even create third parties (God, gods, angels, ascended masters) who — they claim — judge them as better than others.
I think we do that when we are feeling insecure, not happy within ourselves, and therefore want to feel better, more secure. Makes sense, right? To do that, we often make others feel “lesser” than we are. By making those around them feel worse, the insecure unhappy person feels better.
Thus — “The Importance of Being Important.”
I think this is something to guard against and not encourage. Because it forms the seeds of cruelty. Where we may start to go down the hurtful road of deriving happiness from making others feel badly.
It’s a slippery slope. Dehumanizing others by seeing them as “lesser beings” is an age-old tactic to make cruelty acceptable. Don’t fall into that trap. Whether it’s being promoted by someone on this side in the 1930’s or from the other side in 2019.
So, when I say that I don’t judge others internally, spiritually, in terms of “levels,” does that mean that I see everyone as “the same”? No. But I do not judge other people internally from a spiritual level.
Why? Because I can’t — I am unable. As compared to whom? Me? I’m still always trying to figure myself out — I am an ever changing being — so how could I ever “judge” someone else in that way?
How can I judge other people spiritually when I am on the Eternal Road of “figuring out myself?!” The road of Know Thyself.
Hypocritical, that would be? I should say so.
But as I have said in other writings, we can look at behavior and judge another person based on whether we want to be with that person, interact with that person, or not. We always have that choice, that ability to exercise our Free Will. With the goal of increasing our happiness. But that is not the same as judging another person’s internal state of being.
More Lifetimes — The Smarter We Get?
What about this common idea in spiritual circles?
“Don’t we get smarter, more evolved the more lifetimes we have on Earth 🌍? Aren’t we here to eventually graduate from the Earth school?”
First, let’s address the lifetimes thing. Yes, I think many of us have been here for many lifetimes, and many of us out of the 7.6 billion humans on planet Earth today in 2019 have not been here for very many lifetimes. Does that mean the ones who have been here for many lifetimes are automatically “smarter,” “more evolved,” or “more developed intellectually, emotionally, or spiritually”?
I think that is actually an easy question to answer.
Absolutely not.
The number of lifetimes one has had as a human on planet Earth does not necessarily mean you are smarter in any of those ways. Because how smart we are is dependent on whether we are paying attention or not.
And over the hundreds of thousands of years — perhaps millions of years — that humans have been on this planet, most of those lifetimes have been spent in what we might call “survival mode.” Gathering and collecting food, finding shelter, warding off predators and disease — enough to keep us alive. Surviving.
And when I have been in survival mode this lifetime, I definitely recall that it has been more difficult for me to be “self-aware,” “loving,” or “thinking of others.”
If we are candid, I think we would all admit that when we are in survival mode, that’s what happens to us. We become all-consumed with living moment to moment. Self-reflection becomes a luxury. Not a “must have.” That makes learning from our life experience very difficult. Even unlikely.
So, I don’t think it is a foregone conclusion that merely because one has had many lifetimes on this planet, that one has become by that mere fact — by default — a more evolved human being.
Is the number of lifetimes as a human being a factor at all? Yes. However, I think the more meaningful question is this. How many lifetimes has one had in a non-survival mode, where it is more likely that one has had the mental and emotional freedom — the flexibility — to be more self-reflective and self-aware? That is the more important factor than “number of lifetimes.”
Second, why are so many people so eager to get off of planet Earth? Why not enjoy the beauty and physicality of being here while we’re on this planet with its dense physical vibration? Enjoy the sunsets. Enjoy being in our dense physical bodies. Something that many of us will miss, I guarantee you, when we’re on the Other Side. Enjoy the feeling of water 💦 on our bodies when we’re swimming 🏊 or taking a shower 🚿. Enjoy the taste and feel of soft serve ice cream in our mouths — it simply is not the same when we don’t have a physical body!
Enjoy...and Perhaps Choose to Learn
Enjoy life. Whether we’re on this side or the other.
And when life here gets difficult, which it sometimes does, work through it. Use it as an opportunity to experiment. You might even say “learn from.”
“But wait,” you might say — “I thought you said you didn’t think Earth was a school?!”
Yes. Not a structurally created school.
But, in my experience, Free Will operates throughout the universe. And that means we can exercise our Free Will to “choose to learn” while we are here on Earth (or anywhere else for that matter). That’s my suggestion and what I choose to do.
But it’s a choice. Not an order from above.
Kelvin H. Chin is a Meditation Teacher, Life After Life Expert, and Author of “Overcoming the Fear of Death,” “Marcus Aurelius Updated: 21st Century Meditations On Living Life” and “After the Afterlife: Memories of My Past Lives.” He learned to meditate at age 19, and has been teaching Turning Within and coaching others in their self-growth for 40 years. He helps people understand their life challenges through their individual belief systems, and helps them find their own solutions. His past life memories reach back many centuries, and he accesses those memories in his teaching and his coaching in the same way all coaches draw on their own available experiences for perspective and effective analogies. He can be reached at www.OvercomingTheFearOfDeath.org or www.TurningWithin.org.