Spiritual Portal

When I was at school I used to think what it it would be like when I got out and the 'freedom' of being an adult. Yet when I did get out of high school then I started thinking how i could prepare myself to get a good job so I spent years in college. After getting out of college I thought now I can get a good job. Yet even when I was performing music and had several jobs there were lessons constantly at work and performing with musicians.

When I started hearing various speakers at SRF describing this life as a schoolhouse and that earth was a place for spiritual retards I began to understand what this life was all about. Most people do not have a guru or a master so their life becomes lessons in hard knocks. For many of us here; we have masters. A true Master can arrange lessons so that they are not overwhelming and lessons are really just a result of our karma. When similar life experiences in different guises reoccur- we can be certain that there is something we are supposed to be learning from them.

Did some speaker at SRF really say spiritual retards?

yes.... Brother Turyananda.. i heard him say it myself. He had a dry sense of humor. Often filled with satire. I do not believe i ever saw any minister at SRF that made people laugh as much as him. I also heard him say: 'How can the young people advance spiritually when they listen to groups with names like the Electric Prunes and the Grateful Dead ?' Personally I thought it was halarious and I like the Grateful Dead. Once he made fun of me and his joke about me was so funny that it made me laugh so hard that it broke me out of a despondent mood. So go figure.

Swami Pramananda can make a whole auditorium laugh without interuption. Somewhat like a continuous spiritual orgasm.

Well he might just have a point there with those 2 groups.

I had a very vivid dream the night before last that I was in a strange prison, which then morphed into a cross between my old high school and something else, but still felt like a prison.

When I was in high school, I always felt like a prisoner.  I had to wear only what was allowed on the almost uniform "dress code".  We had to sing songs before lunch about God and Jesus (Christian high school).  Sit down and listen for an hour and half at a time.  I was miserable there and couldn't wait to leave.  I even sleep deprived myself my senior year to make time seem to go by faster.

Life, however, I do think is an actual school, only a prison if you imagine it to be, because it becomes what you imagine it, for better or worse.

I love life!  I love experience!  I love people, and animal and plants and all the elements!

The lessons never cease, but are always rewarding and enrich the quality of future experiences!

To Life!  The great school!

Life is also a tight shoe, and an endurance test. Are people better off listening to Nirvana than to the Grateful Dead? The names almost imply the same state of being. High school is a modern tragedy. A youth wasted on meaningless work. If there is no meaningful work to give high schoolers, work that would make a contribution to the world, then there isn't really much point in the mandate of high school.

More than a preparation for service/jobs/work i see high school as a preparation for the world we face as grown ups. It is really no different in the sense that we graduated from high school only to enter college or the school of life which continues throughout our lives.

Art added something here (see kingfisher111 above in this thread.) that was quite similar to what Amma recently said when i saw her. That is that we should be grateful to be here because we have a chance to learn.
 

"Life, however, I do think is an actual school, only a prison if you imagine it to be, because it becomes what you imagine it, for better or worse.

I love life!  I love experience!  I love people, and animal and plants and all the elements!

The lessons never cease, but are always rewarding and enrich the quality of future experiences!

To Life!  The great school!"   ~Art

It seems to me that high school has been usefule to little.

Yes, something has been good, learnt to speak and write properly my own langauge, also the discipline and some reasoning abilities has been useful for the years at the college. But then, why not go to college directly and save 5 years of our life and retire earlier? I did not enjoy all the other stuff, It would have been much more productive to study college subjects or to develop some other skills and go definitely to work at 18 or 19.