When the Student is Ready....

Over the years I've often thought of the old adage "when the student is ready the teacher will appear" but it's only been in the last two years when I really hoped I was ready. I've needed that wise person to come into my life and help me to advance positively forward. Some people get where they know they should be with no assistance. God bless them. I wish I were one of them. I'm not.

In a previous post I mentioned that I made a "positive mind" audio tape that I listen to every night as I drift off to sleep. In that tape there are a few lines that specifically relate to me getting the teacher to appear. For instance, I say, "Amazing, wise and encouraging people come into my life to help me attain my hearts desire."

But when I've thought of the wise people who might come to me to impart their wisdom, I always pictured them in three dimensional form standing right in front me. I have definitely had my share of smart and helpful people aid me at various times, for various reasons, but outside of my father, who died over four years ago, I've had very few really wise ones. Where was this wise teacher? I was ready. Why weren't they here already?

And then I realized, profoundly, that these wise teachers are coming to me and they are coming to me in ways I never could have imagined. At least their words are. Some of their wisdom is reaching me through the time of a thousand years (like this mentioned in my "How Exactly" post) and some of it is coming to me from hearing conversations unintended for my ears.

The other day in the waiting room of my accupuncturist I overheard the last part of a conversation between the doctor and another patient who was just leaving. The patient said to the doctor, "There was a guy in our small town who always went around saying, 'When I win the lottery I'll do this, and when I win the lottery I'll do that' and everybody just shook their heads saying, 'Well, that's ol' Tom talking his big talk' But do you know that one day came and Tom won a bunch of money in that lottery."

To almost anyone else overhearing that idle conversation it would really be nothing much to remember but to someone like myself, in need of wise counsel, it was if I was the student and my teacher was saying, "Miracles happen all the time to people who truly believe, so keep believing!"

Also, all of the sudden, out of the blue, Joesph Campbell has been popping up everywhere I turn. First, just a couple of weeks ago, I found The Power of Myth in my mom's bookcase and pulled it out to read (I had seen segments of the PBS series several times over the years, but it was great to be able to read the book, which is the transcript of the series, slowly and deliberatively). Then once I began reading the book it seemed as if every time I turned around there he was again. I read a newspaper article and there was a reference to a book that was based on the work of Campbell. Soon after, I googled a favored phrase of mine, "there are no coincidences in life" which led me here and I saw a link to the name of a myth that Joseph Campbell often talked of. Finally, because I got such good insight from The Power Of Myth I went out and bought Campbell's, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which I have just started reading.

When the student is ready the teacher will appear. I think the Universe (God) is telling me I'm ready for my adventure, my quest, by allowing my eyes to see a book on a shelf and my ears to hear a passerby's conversation. Nothing apparently momentous in that but I can feel the shift.