Why Are We Here in Earth School?

Have you ever asked yourself: Why am I here? Why did I choose to return to earth school once again?

Here’s an answer that resonates with me: We come to earth school to have physical experiences, and from these experiences we learn valuable lessons that enable us to evolve spiritually. That -- in a single sentence -- explains why we come here.

However, earth school does not consist only of study and work. We also come here to enjoy the intensity and sensuality of the physical world. But when we come here, we deliberately choose to forget what we really are, to make the experience seem real. We even choose to forget why we come here.

We do not come to earth school by accident. We could remain in Heaven if we wanted to, but we choose to come here instead. There may be a waiting list of souls in Heaven, applying to come to earth school because the experience here is so exciting.

Before we come, we know that earth school will be difficult, frustrating and stressful. But we are confident that we can handle it because we have carefully planned and prepared for it. We have established the curriculum we will follow -- or disregard -- when we get here. We have identified the teachers we will meet up with. We have even selected our parents, where we will live, and the bodies we will inhabit while here. We have carefully preplanned everything to maximize our learning experience in earth school.

I certainly have learned incredible things here in earth school. The last 20 years have been especially rewarding, because during this time, I have undergone phenomenal personal change and spiritual growth. This physical world is a beautiful place, but I am no longer enamored with its illusions nor am I trapped in them.

One very important thing I have learned here in earth school is this: I am not the victim of other people, life’s circumstances, or God’s whims. Instead, I am the creator of my reality. I create every experience I have in life with my thoughts and beliefs. Indeed, I think we all come to earth school to learn how to be better creators.

We think of ourselves as individuals in earth school because we inhabit physical bodies that seem to separate us from each other. Despite this convincing illusion of separation, however, the fact remains: we are here together in earth school and the behavior of any one of us easily affects the rest of us. Cruelty and outbursts of temper can affect millions of others. If we are to achieve Heaven on earth, we must do so collectively.

We learn together and play together in earth school.

Our daily experiences in earth school mostly occur in the context of encounters and relationships with others. Before we are born, we agree to share our experiences here with other souls who will come to earth school about the same time as we do. During our lifetime, we meet up with them. Many of them become our best friends -- and our worst enemies. We learn together and play together.  We often throw sand at each other on the playground.

Sometimes we feel lonely in earth school. But we are never really alone. Our spirit guides accompany us throughout our stay here, whether we are aware of their presence or not. One of their primary jobs is to guide us toward the kinds of experiences we need in order to grow spiritually. While here, we often meet up with enlightened teachers. Many of us have found that Dr. David R. Hawkins is such a teacher. We have many great textbooks available to us, such A Course in Miracles. We have many electives to choose from, such as meditation, yoga and even religion, along with many other electives. And valuable tools such as the Internet are available to us here in earth school to facilitate our learning.

Your classroom can be located anywhere in earth school. Mine happens to be located in Panama. Why Panama? Could I not have learned my life lessons just as easily in Pennsylvania? I thought I came to Panama courtesy of the U.S. Army in 1990, but in retrospect, I can see that I really came here because it is a better place to learn my life lessons. For that same reason, I have been here ever since.

I came to Panama for the very same reason that we choose to incarnate into this physical world: it is simply a better place to learn our life lessons. I could have stayed in Heaven where everything is easy, just as I could have stayed in Pennsylvania. But in earth school I face challenges that don’t exist in Heaven -- and endless learning opportunities. By coming here, I am able to accelerate my spiritual growth.

It is essential to know why we come here. Otherwise, we may waste yet another lifetime in pursuit of illusions. We may fail to achieve our spiritual goals. We may fail in earth school altogether, perhaps leading to spiritual stagnation, chronic depression, alcoholism and even suicide.

But if we fail to achieve our learning goals in this lifetime, we can return to earth school whenever and as often as we want. I imagine we could hardly cram all of our learning goals into a single lifetime. Each lifetime in earth school is just a brief “flash in the pan” for us as eternal spiritual beings.

Through reincarnation, we can return repeatedly to learn things we failed to learn in previous lifetimes. We can return over and over until we have mastered every learning goal available to us in earth school. Once we have achieved mastery, we can graduate from earth school and move on to other places and other experiences in our never-ending quest for spiritual growth. We no longer need to return, but we can return if we choose to do so in order to help others who are still struggling with their spiritual lessons here.

Our time in earth school ends almost before we know it with the death of the physical body. We then discard all the trophies we collected while here, our bank accounts and investments, relationships, memberships, homes, jobs and an endless array of other things that once seemed so important to us. We even discard our physical bodies, all the health and nutrition and physical education classes we have taken here notwithstanding.

What we do get take with us when it’s time to leave earth school are the lessons we have learned and the often-poignant memories of our experiences here. These are the things that are truly important. These are the things by which we will know whether or not our experience in earth school was successful.