Over the years, teachers and lessons have come to me in many forms and fashions. Francis has been one of the most powerful teachers I’ve ever had. Last fall I asked for a new energy teacher and a few months later, I was sent Francis. And I’ve learned lessons from writing on the bathroom wall – see my blog for that story. It’s always amazing (but never surprising!) where my next teacher or lesson will spring from.
Several years ago, I guess God thought I was spiritually stagnant and had ventured too far off my path while working in the corporate world, and He decided that my personal and spiritual growth process needed to be accelerated. So I was sent a teacher… the hardest teacher I’ve had, to date. He was sometimes a lover, sometimes a friend, always a teacher. And over the years of our acquaintance, I learned a lifetime of lessons…. Hard lessons… sometimes gut wrenching, broken-heart-to-the-core lessons. And, always, the key for me was to learn the lesson, to (as the Doors sing it) ‘break on through to the other side’ and to know that the bigger the challenge and often times the hurt, the bigger and more amazing the lesson was.
My lover/friend/teacher was a champion for the underdog - he was the one who helped anyone in need that crossed his path. He was a constant demonstration of living a life of service. As a mutual friend put it recently, ‘he helped the ones that everyone else had given up on.’ And through this, he taught me that generosity isn’t really about tithing 10% to your church, or donating to a charity. It’s about having $20 in your pocket and giving half to a stranger that’s stuck on the side of the road out of gas. Even when it’s your last $20.
The hardest lessons for me over the years were the in-my-face-I’m-a-basket-case lessons, the ones where, upon honest self-examination, I was shown that I had a lot to learn about my intellectual and emotional balance. It’s not about the situation, or other person, being right or wrong – it’s how I respond to it. As Wayne Dyer says, our best teachers are those that push our hot buttons for it shows us we have not yet mastered ourselves. Well, I learned repeatedly that I had not yet mastered myself on many levels. And now, many years and many lessons later, I’m a different person in many ways. Thanks to my friend/teacher/lover.
I knew from the day I met him that he was someone that normally I would not have considered getting involved with, and I didn’t know why I was. There was a spark of magic, a spark of power that I saw buried deep inside, and from the first day, I was on a mission to help that light come to the surface. Little did I realize at the time, that was God’s hook for me to stay involved, that for me it was really about my healing and bringing the healer in me back out into the open. And it was my first lesson from my teacher/friend/lover… on judgments. And on seeing value in everyone, even those that live in vastly different worlds, have a vastly different set of values, and a vastly different philosophy for living life.
I learned huge lessons on forgiveness, almost instantaneous forgiveness. I had already learned that not forgiving someone only hurt me, but then I got a chance to practice it… and practice it, and practice it… until each time, in acceptance of my lover/friend/teacher as he was, there was nothing to forgive. And this can always be applied to hurtful situations. Not always easily, but it can always be applied.
I learned huge lessons on non-attachment. Another Wayne Dyer quote served me so well…”I leave you free to be yourself, to think your thoughts, indulge your tastes, follow your inclinations, behave in ways you decide are to your liking.” Relationships are not about ‘needing’ that person. It might be about wanting that person, but not ‘needing’ that person, or ‘needing’ them to be certain way.
My teacher/lover/friend and I circled through each other’s lives on a semi-regular basis. Usually he would call me when, during his service to the ‘underdog’, he’d get bitten and come to me to lick his wounds for a while. During his darker times, I would teach him about meditation, about prayer, about breathwork and energy work, and it got to where he even sought these things out on his own. My goal was to plant some seeds and see how they grew.
For a long time, at the end of each cycle, I was usually hurt, sometimes shattered, but I always learned a new lesson, and was able to ‘break on through to the other side’. And the better I learned the lessons, the bigger the lesson the next time might be. It was a rough ride sometimes. And after I learned each lesson, I always asked God, ‘ok, I learned the lesson, can I let it go now.’ And for years I always knew that the answer was no, and that eventually we would circle back through each other’s life again for yet another lesson to be learned. Until a year ago.
We had cycled through another round and just kind of drifted apart, and at the end of it once again I told God that I thought I had learned my lesson and asked if I could let it go. And this time the answer was yes. I was given a thought, one single thought, that shifted my entire perspective on the relationship and allowed me to let it go, to move on knowing that it had completed its course. After that I no longer thought about him, no longer felt like calling him, seeing him, hanging out with him. I cared about him, but knew I was done. The only remaining connection was that I would send him distance-healing energy, light and love each weekend when I drove to and from Houston.
Three weeks ago my phone rang at 4am. It was my teacher/lover/friend’s best friend calling me in tears saying ‘He’s gone. Our boy is dead.’ And in that moment, I regretted that I hadn’t stayed in touch. And I thought that maybe I hadn’t learned my lessons as well as I’d thought or I wouldn’t have needed to maintain that distance. I’ll miss my sometimes-lover, but mostly I’ll miss my friend and teacher. And I will always give thanks for getting back on my path of spiritual growth that our friendship led me to.
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