It has long been said that Earth is the greatest school of all, and life itself the only real curriculum— class is always in session.

Enrollment in Earth School is open to everyone. The tuition is the spiritual coin of one’s energy, time, intention, and at­tention. The only prerequisite for enrollment is an open mind that knows there is more to know and a willingness to step into the unknown, over and over again. There are no age re­strictions in Earth School, and it is only through the portal of one’s own curiosity, inquisitiveness, courage, commitment, and faith that one can continue to advance.

On the day we are born, we enter the Earth School without know­ing a thing. The soul may come overflowing with wisdom accumu­lated along the eternal journey, but the intellect is a blank slate. As we mature chronologically, emotionally, and spiritually, advancing in our understanding of the “rules” of living in a human skin, the message we are given is that the more we evolve, the more we need to know. If we are to live fully connected to meaning and purpose, we must continue to explore life and unfold our minds. This means, irrespective of age, we shall never reach a point where we can stop learning.

Learning happens when we step out of our box called the “known.”

Metaphorically, many of us live our entire lives in a box. There is much comfort to be found in the confines of a box when we know where the edges are—but there is certainly no growth, no evolution, no deepening of our spiritual nature within that box. It’s frighten­ing to step into the unknown, yet that is where learning—and new creation—takes place. If in the creative process we use only our past as a reference point for our future, we just create more of what we have already created, another version of the same thing. It is nothing more than the law of cause and effect at work. If we desire to create a new experience, we must introduce a new cause, and new causes will never be found in past experiences.

This reality creates a conundrum—to learn more, we must be willing to leave the zone of the known and step into the void. Each time we advanced in school, from the first grade to the second grade, all the way through high school and perhaps college, we were re­peatedly required to enter through doors of uncertainty, trusting we would be provided with whatever we needed to progress to our next stage of growth. Then things change. As we mature into adulthood, we get quite com­fortable in the relative known. This is also when “stuck-in-the­rut-itis” sets in. So we settle in, and life on the merry-go-round begins. We know exactly where it is going, and that would be nowhere. This is when a part of us begins to die. The rut is a grave—we just don’t know it. No matter how far we may or may not go in school, the anal­ogy applies. The ultimate school is life itself. From the day we are born—when we enter the mystery of not knowing—until the day we leave the planet, the only way to grow is to step into the unknown, time after time, where new lessons await us. The key to learning lies in the un­known; curiosity and inquisi­tiveness unlock that door.

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