Many NDErs talk about Earth as a kind of school or spiritual development camp we attend for the education of our souls. Like parents sending their kids away to boarding school, think of your earthly experience like God and you thinking it is a great idea for you to move away from your heavenly home for a while to attend a special boarding school (Earth) to learn much more about the important and complex topic of love.
The primary curriculum and lesson plans for your evolving soul while at Earth School all revolve around love: how to be love, give love, and receive love. Every day you face numerous people, situations, challenges, and sometimes crises, where you can choose to respond with various forms of love like kindness, compassion, patience, tolerance, generosity, forgiveness – or respond with forms of fear like jealousy, anger, revenge, intolerance, or hatred.
Through this special Earth School and all its varied experiences and lessons, you learn how to love others and how to love yourself. Not only do you learn it intellectually, you get the world’s most intense and immersive internship experience in learning how to love by applying your education to your everyday existence and seeing the consequences of your choices.
“Earth life, I found, is designed as a university, a school where we learn from our choices and our mortal experiences. I recognized that my most painful experiences taught me the most. It was enlightening to understand the bigger eternal picture – to know that I was not a victim of circumstances… I learned that being charitable, patient, and forgiving toward others are some of the most important character traits to be acquired – learned in the school of life.” Dr. Joyce Brown
“I was told that the earth is like a big school, a place where you can apply spiritual lessons you have learned and test yourself to see whether you can ‘live’ what you already know you should do. Basically the earth is a place where you can walk the walk and live the way it should be done. It was made clear to me that some people come to the earth to work on one or more aspects of themselves, while others come to also help the world as a whole… We’re under continual pressure to make decisions that have a spiritual base. We may be taught on the ‘Other Side’ what we are ‘supposed to do,’ but can we live it under the pressures of the earth? From what I saw and hear on the Other Side, everything is about relationships and taking care of each other. We aren’t expected to be perfect, but we are expected to learn. All of our experiences in a lifetime follow some sort of pattern, and we often learn the same lessons, but in a different way and under various circumstances. This is how we know what we are here to learn and test.” Jean R.
“Earth is the hard part. This is the University of Earth. I was shown that I applied and was accepted to this school. God doesn’t cause bad things to happen. Before we come here we pick our lessons and plan how we will live our lives – just like we do before we go to college. He is always with us. When we learn our lessons and finish the job we came here to do, we get to graduate and go back home. Whether we die quickly or slowly, we all have to review our lives before we get to graduate.” Mary Beth Willi
Earth is not only a living laboratory where we can learn love theoretically, but actually put it into practice on a minute-by-minute basis – or not.