I had a job teaching religious truth to young children. They sat in an arc around me whilst I wrote on a transparent white-board. I taught them various aphorisms, and thinking that they would find them hard to understand, repeated them. Some of the kids started to say to one another- 'Again- he just said that- does he think we're stupid or something?' I started to get nervous and thinking that I might not hold my job. Reflected from behind me and blending in to take up the white board was the face of an angelic authority who had seen what was happening.
'That's not how you teach religious truth now, is it?' he scolded. Suddenly we were walking in a garden outside, filled with mysterious flowers and bathed in sunshine. 'Look at this flower, look at this trickling stream. Do they not speak the truth in their own simplicity?'- I could see that I had been being unnatural and over-complicating matters in my own nervousness. But how to be natural under pressure? A song was coming from the angel and from the garden- something about the meaning of life and how we can grasp it by being aware. It was beautiful and inspiring.
Beside me was Tashi, my former pet Tibetan spaniel and she was starting to be absorbed by a round creature in this garden. It was sucking her inside itself, and I rolled it over to stop this, but as Tashi squealed it was perhaps already too late as she was swallowed already.
Note- The problems I have had with teaching jobs may be due to my blocking of my own natural teaching instincts in patronising assumptions that I would be misunderstood. The solution is not to simply gush forth with esoteric wisdom, but to help others to see that life is teaching them too, all of the time.
A Diary of Dreams
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