Inner Guidance (5 page)

named Steve came to my desk one day with

a sheet of paper. He placed it facedown, saying that I should not look at it until class was over. During class, I wrote a quote on the board about how important it is to be free and strong and to think for ourselves. It just flowed onto the board, beautifully written—a full concept. A lively and deep discussion ensued.

After class, Steve showed me the paper. He had 29

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written a statement about how much pressure there is to go along with the group, to do the popular thing. He wondered if the whole reason we are here in this life is to learn to be individuals and gain a sense of personal freedom.

It was fascinating how closely the quote on the board that day seemed to address Steve’s issue and answer the question that he had posed. The year before, Greg had already alluded to this process, and apparently the new students coming in were experiencing it too. Steve told me that this was occurring all the time, both for him and other students.

He came back to class after school to talk to me. He shared that besides seeing that the writings on my board seemed to answer questions held by the students, he had also noticed another benefit of the quickening—one that others had experienced too: Steve said he was getting along better with other people, including his family.

Yet, Steve shared a new insight. He thought there was some sort of spiritual portal in this classroom.

Like a land with a spiritually heightened vibration, he felt maybe our classroom was ideally situated to serve as a gateway into some mysterious inner worlds.

I was not so sure about all that, but it encouraged me to have our special interest groups continue investigat-ing spiritual matters outside of class.

I trusted that soon the missing pieces to our esoteric puzzle would be found and all would be made clear. My commission in the meantime was to stay open, trust God, and let the process of inner guidance continue to show the way.

The students’ interest in our remarkable classroom experiences was further fueled by the fact that we loved the mystery of it all. The classes were full, and there was a long waiting list of those who still wished to Inner Guidance_CH 01-05.p65

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participate.

Then, one day, the librarian called me about her research. Searching for the quotes to find the authors and sources had become a sort of game. I couldn’t wait to hear what she’d share next.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but for a while now we have been searching for your last few quotes. So far, no one has been able to find a source for this recent material,”

she explained. “Did you give us everything you have?”

she asked. “Could you have any more clues you may have forgotten—or that you are willing to share?”

Now I was even more bewildered. How could the source of this material suddenly
not
be found?

Considering the massive resources they had available, this did not make sense. And we had been doing so well! My librarian friend promised to continue her search, yet her efforts remained fruitless. Week after week, I sent more quotes but received no positive replies.

I began to wonder once again if I could be writing the material myself.

Even the students questioned me. One astute young girl thought she had it figured out. “Are you sure you’re not writing this? Couldn’t you actually be the author, even though your conscious mind does not know?”

But as the information continued to stream into the classroom, I was more certain than ever that this was not true. I was not the author of this material any more than I had been the author of the quotes from the ancients.

Several students and I now gathered informally before or after school and discussed it. The students had latched onto Steve’s theory—that indeed a portal had opened into this classroom from some secret, inner library. It sounded like science fiction, but we had no other explanation, and they favored this one.

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Was this how other authors received their material?

Was it why people say there is nothing new under the sun? Who knew?

Perhaps all the knowledge of the universe was hidden away, only to be exposed by writers who found the secret to mining it. Was I mining this material in some way?

Did that actually make me the author, or at least
an
author, as some students believed?

No, I was not getting ideas or philosophy like other authors. I was receiving exact quotes that often I could not even understand.

One thing was very clear: we still had more questions than answers.

F
or weeks, a tooth had been bothering me, and I needed to visit the dentist. Unfortunately, the doctor had no appointments available in the evening, so I was forced to take time away from school. Reluctantly, I scheduled a time to see him during the day and asked the school to bring in a substitute teacher only for the afternoon. I prepared worksheets for the students—

material that we would discuss the following day. This way, the substitute would only have to hand out the papers and let the students work on them.

The substitute, Mr. Adams, a young man I had never met before, arrived over an hour early. I tried to direct him to the teacher’s lounge to wait until I left, but he did not want to go. He explained he came early to observe my class so he would be better prepared.

“How conscientious,” I agreed.

However, the group he would teach was one of my most advanced classes, where the so-called quickening was most evident. I regularly received lengthy quotes for the board during this class. Because of the writing Inner Guidance_CH 01-05.p65

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that I would not be able to explain, I tried to discourage him from coming to observe. I told him the classes he would supervise would be quite different from the one that was about to begin. I asked him again to go to the lounge and wait.

“Please?” was all he said. I was not happy about it, but he was so polite and insistent, what could I say? I asked him to sit
quietly
in the back of the classroom.

But at the first opportunity, Mr. Adams raised his hand to ask a question. Impatiently, I asked what he needed. Bright-eyed and full of interest, he questioned me: “Just curious! Who is the author of these quotes, and where did you find the information?”

Trying to avoid answering his question, I was somewhat curt. I gently reminded him that he had agreed to sit in the class and simply observe. But he would not be dissuaded and continued to press me for an answer.

The students appeared very tolerant of his presence.

Our Mr. Adams was like an innocent child in a room full of adults who all knew so much more than he.

An answer of some sort was necessary. “I read it somewhere and can’t remember the authors.” I knew this was certainly an understatement, at best, but it was the only answer I was comfortable providing. “We’re just studying the content—the philosophy.”

To my frustration, Mr. Adams wasn’t satisfied and persisted. “But do you remember the book at all,” he asked, “or where you read this material?”

Since many in this class knew enough of what was going on to recognize my bold deception, this teacher’s persistence caused a little snicker from the students.

By now, Mr. Adams could see that he was the only one who did not understand. Clearly, we were withholding something.

This was the worst possible scenario. Ours was a Inner Guidance_CH 01-05.p65

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very conservative community, and somehow we managed to carefully safeguard the spiritual aspects of what was happening in our little world. I now had to leave my afternoon classes to a man who was extremely inquisitive and who undoubtedly knew I was trying to conceal something from him. I lost my patience and simply put an end to his questions by telling him again that he was welcome to go to the lounge.

“I’ll stay,” he quietly replied.

Walking to the board to write a simple assignment for my class, suddenly I was inspired. Contrary to my intention, I quickly found myself writing a new quote on the board, almost before I knew it. I didn’t want Mr.

Adams to experience this, and was struggling inwardly, but it was going to happen anyway. Then I lost any desire to stop myself. For some reason, I felt clearly guided and safe.

The energy was intense in the classroom. The students were absolutely silent. All you could hear was the scratch-scratch sound of writing throughout the entire room. I glanced at Mr. Adams. His eyes were open wide, but he said nothing. I wrote and then stood back to admire this mysterious handiwork:

“We are all one Spirit; we should regard ourselves as a living part of the infinite life, and we must express divinity in each moment of our lives. Therefore, we are each a spark radiating from the great being called God.”

It sounded kind of like Emerson, so I spoke about it from the perspective of transcendentalism. My students hurried to finish copying it in their journals. Ever mindful of the presence of the visitor in our midst, we managed to have an excellent discussion of this quote.

My face burned with the energy in the room. One of the students offered to open a window. The room seemed blazingly hot!

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After giving the students an assignment to work on, I dismissed the class at the end of the hour. Filing out, many of them gave me little furtive smiles, but the group was uncharacteristically quiet. I nodded in acknowledgement of what none of us would say.

Something strange had happened here. The energy in the room had been
far
more intense than ever before.

One of the most profound of all the experiences had just taken place; it was as if a great reservoir had just opened energetically. And we had a substitute teacher sitting there, watching the entire event.

Or, by some means, was he actually a secret partici-pant who somehow had served to
heighten
the energy?

At the end of class, I handed Mr. Adams the sheets that he was to give to the last two classes. I told him the yearbook group would be coming to use the room at the end of the school day, but that another teacher would be monitoring them. I avoided looking him in the eye and kept our conversation to a minimum.

He asked no more questions, and I left.

W
hen I arrived at school the next day, I was anxious, concerned about Mr. Adams. Some of my students greeted me just inside the doors of the school, so I asked about the substitute and what had happened in my classes after I left.

“Did he follow the lesson plans I gave him and provide everyone with the handouts?” I asked as casually as possible.

“No, he didn’t do
any
of that,” one student answered.

“Then what did he do?”

With a big smile, this student tried to explain what had happened. “He asked us all about you and the quotes on the board and wanted to read our journals.”

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“What!” The students were generally very private with their journals. I could hardly believe they would offer them up to this complete stranger. “Did you actually let him read your journals?”

“Yes, and he loved it.”

I moaned. “What makes you think that?” I asked with a heavy heart, ever mindful of the conservative community in which we lived.

“He said he had heard about things like this before, but he had never seen it himself. After school he left, but then he came back while the yearbook class was meeting and brought you a present.”

“A present?” I asked suspiciously. “What kind of present?”

Another student volunteered. “We don’t know what it is. He had wrapped it up, and he put a letter on top and sealed it.”

By now we had arrived at my classroom, and there on my desk lay the gift from Mr. Adams. With the exu-berant encouragement of the students, I opened the letter first.

In it, he explained that there are unseen
spiritual masters who work with people inwardly for years before they ever reveal themselves outwardly. He said that he had read about this kind of thing but had never fully comprehended it until he visited my classroom. These masters guide, protect, and instruct us for our spiritual evolution. He said he was delighted to see the quotes around the room and told me that he thought I would be pleased with the underlined passages in the book he was giving me.

I ripped open the package next and turned the book faceup so I could read the title. It was
ECKANKAR—

The Key to Secret Worlds
.

“Eckankar? I have never heard of this,” I said quietly.

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“I have never heard this word before at all. Does anyone know this word,
Eckankar
?”

Puzzled students shook their heads. No one had heard of this word. There was hushed anticipation all around as I opened the book to the pages that Mr. Adams had marked for me. I read the boldly underlined passages on certain pages. Then I looked around my room, on the walls and on the chalkboards. There they were, almost word for word—quote after quote. And yesterday I had duplicated one of these very same passages on the board, right in front of the substitute teacher.