A Blessing in Disguise: 39 Life Lessons from Today's Greatest Teachers

INTRODUCTION

Today’s world presents unique daily challenges for most people on the planet. Although you may not know it, these experiences are often meant to teach you psychological or spiritual lessons. Do you feel ready to face these challenging lessons? How many times have you wished you had more help and solutions for your problems? You may have discovered that the path of your life’s journey is not well lit. Or, perhaps you’ve found that the lessons that you are meant to learn from your existence are not clear to you. Sometimes there is a hidden lesson or opportunity buried in your challenge, which is a blessing in disguise.

In this book, some of the greatest teachers of our time share their incredible personal stories. As modern-day spiritual alchemists, they have digested and transformed the events of their lives. Now, by generously sharing their stories, they’re transforming their lessons into healing and meaningful experiences for you. Their wisdom and humor will illuminate your learning. When great difficulties arise in your life, it is common for your faith to be shaken and to ask: Why me? Why did this happen to me? I am a really good person. Many of the contributors to this book have visited dark times and places and reemerged stronger, with more inner peace and wisdom, strengthened faith, and a deeper understanding of life and of themselves. They have realized their life challenges are actually blessings in disguise. By reading their stories, you can learn how to do the same.

The Universe provides opportunities for soul growth through life lessons. Perhaps, as many life philosophers have suggested, our life here represents an earth school for our souls. Every day, we have opportunities to become more honest, kind, and patient, as well as to rid ourselves of anger, jealousy, and hate. In this life model, the lesson often presents over and over until we finally get it. When we make that leap and understand the lesson, deep healing occurs.

How do you know if you are facing a major life lesson? Maybe you’ve been knocked to your knees by tragedy. Perhaps you date or marry the same person over and over again. Or alternatively, maybe opportunities repeatedly arise for you to realize your own power, to speak up for yourself and set boundaries, but you refuse to speak up. Perhaps you don’t land the job of your dreams. Sometimes you have no idea about the meaning of the lesson. You suspect that it is only a torture experiment by your spouse or your boss. In fact, it may take years to gain some basic understanding of the situation.

It takes courage to examine your life under the microscope, to shine a light in those dark corners of your life and make the necessary adjustments. Your life may need to be pruned, fertilized, and watered to make room for new growth and love. Today you may feel that the goal of life is for everything to stay safe and stable. Furthermore, as some of the authors point out, sometimes you need to change your job, friends, spouse, and attitude to honor your soul’s path.

Life lessons are all around us. Watch for them. Learn from them. You are a hero in your own hero’s journey. Your lesson might be a blessing in disguise.

The real-life stories in this book were written by a diverse and amazing group of psychologists, physicians, artists, lawyers, writers, and spiritual teachers. In compiling this book, I asked the contributors to contribute a story, essay, or poem about an important or memorable personal life lesson. The luminaries are from a variety of careers, religions, countries, and philosophies, so their stories offer something for everyone. I selected these writers because of their life experiences, wisdom, honesty, and open hearts. Many were new friends, but they responded with great love, energy, and enthusiasm. I am grateful for their contributions, and know that their personal stories will inspire you.

This book is divided into six sections that deal with important issues: Overcoming Challenges; Soul Expression; Death and Dying; Life’s Everyday Lessons; Spirituality; and Family, Love, and Relationships. Each section opens with a poem inspired by the topic. The inspiring essays deal with a wide range of subjects—everything from the death of a parent, forgiveness, and how to stand up for yourself to pregnancy, overcoming depression, coping with divorce, and healing from breast cancer. These wise stories provide you with a framework to interpret your own life lessons.

The stories in this book have several common themes. One is finding and expressing your unique self, despite fear, self-doubt, and the negative messages of society. The contributors have learned that they are here to express their souls and to create. They have learned that those people who find the courage to freely do so often experience fulfillment and bliss. Healing is another common theme; all of these stories are meant to help you on a healing journey. Healing means that you release the obstacles that keep you from living your authentic self and joyfully and creatively following your destiny. Healing also refers to the healing of your soul, the part of you that is eternal. Once you learn and heal from the lessons that the Universe shows you, you can feel more beauty, peace, and joy.

Wise masters say the human condition requires some type of guidance. So, consider this: we are not here only to collect material items, titles, pictures, or trophies nor are we here to work all of our waking hours. We are here to:

Conquer fear, anger, love, and trust

Learn about the love we have within us, as well as the darkness

Enjoy love, beauty, and intimacy

Make choices

Live our dream with courage

Manifest abundance and happiness

Cocreate with God

However, in order to do these things, you must first learn more about your own soul. Challenges inspire your soul to grow and blossom.

As a closing thought, I want to leave you with a few suggestions from the collection of essays you’re about to read. Feel free to add some of your own after you’ve finished your journey.

You can cling to familiar expectations, conventions, and reasonable responses or you can listen to the sweet madness in your bones.

Learn that real grace is not just being loved, it is learning how to love.

I can rely on a basic inherent trust in my life.

Anything is possible if you truly have the will to manifest your dreams into reality.

Be grateful, compassionate, forgiving, patient, creative, and truthful.

Hope is a skill of the heart.

My life becomes rich and educated when I am uncomfortable.

It took me years to learn one of my greatest life lessons (patience is not one of my virtues). For years I had trouble accepting and embracing what showed up in my life. I would speculate on exactly what would transpire in my future to avoid making mistakes. I would try to second-guess situations, and I frequently made assumptions that were not correct, usually out of fear. I have come to realize that this is risky behavior, because I might miss out on the lesson that life is trying to teach me by being preoccupied with trying to control the outcome of the situation. The net result was the blockage or delay of my personal growth, or the repetition of the lesson in a bigger (and more annoying) way. Or sometimes I would manifest the very scenario I was trying to avoid in the first place! I have had to train myself to let go of this fear, and be more mindful and present in the moment, as Thich Nhat Hanh urges us to do in his wonderful foreword.

If you are having a major or minor lesson, don’t forget to reach out to others to help you cope and heal. We are ultimately responsible for ourselves, but friends, relatives, and teachers can be a joy and a comfort. Get professional help if you need it. Inspiration and assistance are available—no matter what your financial means. It is possible to release your beliefs, habits, decisions, and old stories of your life and find the gift of challenge. To help you on your journey, I have included resources for further exploration at the end of each section. You might also want to form a support group to ponder the lessons, using the discussion questions at the end of the book. Remember to make the choices for yourself in the end!

This book is an invitation to lead a deeper, more meaningful life. You have the ability to deliberately create the life of your dreams. Soar as high as you can. Stretch and take that risk. Achieve the conscious choice to be healthy and happy. Let go of your old stories of yourself, and focus on what you truly want. Make every moment count. And remember that in the end, love is what really matters.

Don’t wait another day. Your soul is waiting. Good luck, joy, and blessings on your journey.

—Andrea Joy Cohen, M.D.

The period of greatest gain in knowledge and experience is the most difficult period in one’s life.

—THE DALAI LAMA

SECTION ONE

Overcoming Challenges

You gain strength, courage, and confidence in every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

—ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

It is not easy to be a pioneer, but oh, it is so fascinating. I would not trade one moment, even the worst moment, for all the riches in the world.

—ELIZABETH BLACKWELL,

FIRST WOMAN PHYSICIAN IN THE UNITED STATES

Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, Grow, grow.

—THE TALMUD

Bow at the Feet of God

We are all beggars at

the feet of God

But also his children

clamoring for his Love

His light shining from

the lighthouse of love

Finding us wherever

we are on course or lost.

Caught in the rocks of life

sending his lifeboat

to return us to the

right course

Bright, oh so bright

His light

Never a light so bright

has shone on me—

My eyes are almost

blinded by its intensity.

My heart gives off a flare

as if to say

Oh captain, I am

lost, please bring me back to the

station—send help!!

And just like that

I am back

This is grace

Bow at the feet of God.

Andrea Joy Cohen, M.D.

GETTING REAL

Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.

IN 1972, Stanford’s medical school pioneered in offering students a course on human sexuality. The first session of this course was several hours long and consisted of watching, nonstop, dozens and dozens of films on every sort of sexual practice. Some were funny, some were sad, a few were elegant, others crude, but all were graphic. By the end of the day, sexuality had become as banal as eating dinner. The idea, I suppose, was to desensitize future physicians, and help us to talk with patients about sexual issues in a way that was unembarrassed, professional, and personally neutral. Since then, physicians trained at medical schools throughout the country have told me that they have sat through such a day at the movies. Many medical schools take a similar approach even today.

When I think of what it must be like to need to speak of achingly intimate, fragile, and important things to someone who has stripped them of all meaning, I feel sad and diminished. I think that many of us could probably have served people in sexual anguish far better before this session than afterward. It took me many years to recover a sense of the power and mystery of sexuality. For a long while sex seemed absurd, if not ridiculous.

Whereas medical school taught me the banality of sex, American culture taught me that sex is only for the young and perfect, those without a hair on their bodies, a blemish on their skins, a wrinkle, or an extra ounce of fat. Many years ago, I had sat on the beach at Diamond Head in Hawaii, unwilling to take off my robe because six months before, a part of my intestine had been surgically removed and I now wore an ileostomy appliance. All around me powerful-appearing, handsome men sat in small groups, smoking cigars and presumably discussing the market with each other as slender young women many years their junior sunned themselves or played Frisbee in tiny swimsuits. Their bodies were uniformly Barbie Doll perfect, and watching them, I had been on the verge of tears. Absorbed in their own conversations, the men paid little attention to these women.

About the middle of the afternoon, the curtain of one of the cabanas was pushed aside, and a middle-aged woman with a mane of black curly hair emerged. She was wearing a white suit meant for someone perhaps fifteen or twenty pounds thinner. Very slowly and deliberately and with the utmost confidence, she sauntered across the sand and entered the ocean. By the time she reached the water, all conversation on the beach had ceased and every male eye was on her. Many of the women were looking at her, too. It was my first lesson in the difference between perfection and sexuality.

Real sexuality heals. In its presence I could begin to reclaim my own sense of possibility and wholeness, and I am grateful to this woman for inhabiting her body in this way. Without knowing me at all, she helped me to begin to inhabit my own life. Now more than thirty years later I have seen hundreds of others, people with cancer, reclaim their wholeness by reclaiming their sexuality.

Clare was one of these. In her beige linen suit and white silk blouse, she appeared flawless, competent, and totally in control. In comparison to her elegance, my waiting room looked shabby. When I said her name, she rose and shook my hand. Without another word she followed me into my office and folded herself into a chair, crossing her long, beautifully shaped legs at the ankle.

I settled myself opposite and smiled at her. Without any warning whatsoever, she burst into tears. The contrast between her tears and self-possession was so extreme that I was caught completely by surprise, and for a moment I was stunned. Then I reached forward and took her hand between my own as she sobbed. We sat like that for a long time, until she had cried enough. Turning a tear-stained face toward me, she commented, How embarrassing. I have not cried in years.

These are special times, I said. She nodded. Would you tell me about it? I asked her.

She had come because eight weeks before she had undergone surgery to remove her right breast. After much discussion, she and her doctor had made this decision together. She felt certain that it was the right choice, and she had healed nicely. And how has this been for you? I asked her. I don’t know, she told me.

She was in her late twenties, unmarried, and successful as a businesswoman. Until her surgery, she had worked out daily and had been very proud of her body. Men had always found her very attractive, and having a man in her life was important to her. She’d had many lovers, mostly colleagues she had met in the business world. But that is over, now, she told me. I could never allow anyone to see me disfigured like this. After the surgery, she had ended her relationship with the two men she was seeing. Both had accepted it gracefully and moved on.

No one at work and none of her friends even suspected that she had cancer, she told me. She had done it entirely alone. So obsessed had she been with secrecy that she told everyone that she was going on a vacation to Europe and had even made arrangements to have cards sent to them from abroad. Even her parents did not know. But she was here because the pressure of keeping this secret had become too much and she needed a place to talk and to be herself. I can’t come very often, she told me. People would begin to suspect.

Come whenever you need to, I told her.

For the next few years, I saw her every three or four months. On the surface her life was much as it had been, except that she lived as a celibate, putting all her energy into her work. During one of her infrequent visits I had called this to her attention and asked her if she planned to be alone for the rest of her life. Only for five years, Rachel, she told me. Seeing my look of surprise, she explained that her oncologist was very conservative. She had picked him because she, too, was conservative. Early on, they had discussed a breast reconstruction. He had encouraged her to put off having this surgery until the fifth anniversary of her diagnosis. And this is so that any recurrence can be easily seen? I asked. She nodded her head. Yes, she said. After five years the chances are that I will be home free.

A little more than a year before this important anniversary, we had one of our sessions. During the hour, she told me that she had gone to an opening at an art gallery and had struck up a conversation with a painter who had asked her to join him for a cup of coffee. He is a very attractive man, but obviously totally unsuitable as a lover, she told me. So I said, ‘yes.’

Because he is unsuitable? I said, puzzled.

I thought we could become friends, she had replied. Surprisingly, she had a very good time. Will you see him again? I asked her.

Yes, I think so, she told me. He is such good company.

Three months later when she returned for another session, Peter’s name came up in our conversation over and over again. They had gone to the zoo. She had visited his studio and had been very impressed with his work. By now, she had met many of his friends who were artists and sculptors and found that she liked them very much. It had surprised her to discover that she fit in so well with these people and was even more comfortable with them than with people she knew from her own work. Perhaps it’s because you are creative yourself, Clare, I told her. Business can be as much of an art form as paint or stone. She thought this over for several moments. She had never seen herself in this way before.

About two months later, she called to schedule an urgent visit. She came into the office looking somber. It’s the end, she told me. Thinking that perhaps she had suffered a recurrence, my heart jumped into my throat. But this was not what she had meant at all. Peter left a message on my voice mail, inviting me away for the weekend. I will have to tell him now, she said. It’s over.

Relieved, I said, Perhaps once he knows he might not feel that way about things.

I doubt it, she replied. He is exactly the wrong sort of man. Beauty is his whole life. He will be completely repulsed.

When will you tell him? I asked, my heart sinking.

Tonight, at dinner, she said.

Call if you need to, I told her.

I found myself thinking of her all evening, but she did not call. As the weeks went by, I continued to wonder what had happened, but I resisted calling her to see how things went. As was her way, she came in again three months later. In response to my questioning look, she laughed. I was wrong, she said. He still wants to be friends.

It turned out that Peter wanted to be more than friends, but Clare had refused. Her body was too ugly, too maimed. My fifth anniversary is less than six months away and I will have my reconstruction, she told me. Perhaps then. She went on to tell me her plans. She had scheduled the date of her reconstructive surgery more than a year ago and interviewed several surgeons and some of their patients before deciding on the surgeon she would use. She had arranged vacation time at work. As her insurance did not cover this sort of surgery, she had begun saving the money for it right after her mastectomy and over the past five years had enough money put away. It would be very expensive and difficult, but she hoped it would return her to wholeness. She looked down at her hands clasped in her lap for a few minutes. Then she looked up. I hope it works, Rachel, she said. I was not sure, but I thought there were tears in her eyes.

I did not see her again until a few days before her fifth anniversary. She came in, looking excited and happy. I was delighted to celebrate this milestone with her, and I asked her about the upcoming surgery. She smiled and told me that she had canceled it. I looked at her in surprise. How come? I asked her. She returned my look for a long moment. Then slowly she unbuttoned her blouse and shrugged it off her shoulders. She was not wearing a bra, and her left breast was exquisite. But its beauty was overshadowed by the radical change in her body. Her mastectomy scar had been covered over with a mass of tiny, exquisite tattooed flowers. They looked real. In the most delicate of pastel shades, they climbed to the top of her right shoulder. As she turned away from me, I could see that they fell across it and down her back as if scattered by gravity or the wind. She stood, pulling her slacks down over her hips. Her body was beautiful. One little tattooed flower had come to rest in the small of her back, and another lay against her right buttock. Under it was a tiny initial P. My mouth dropped open in shock, while at the same time I experienced a pang of envy. She was indescribably erotic. Men encountered women like her only in their dreams.

Shrugging back into her blouse and buttoning her slacks, she sat down again, laughing aloud at my look of astonishment. Isn’t it beautiful? she said. Peter painted it and we went to Amsterdam to have it done. Then we used the money I had saved for the surgery for a honeymoon. I am so happy, Rachel, she said, blushing slightly. My husband has convinced me beyond the shadow of a doubt that anything of real beauty is one of a kind.

HEALING EMOTIONAL PAIN

Dean Ornish, M.D.

IN my own life, and in the process of conducting research, I have learned how illness and suffering can be catalysts for transforming some fundamental issues: how we view ourselves and how we relate to the world. For my patients heart disease has been the catalyst; for me, it was emotional depression. For many years, I have struggled with many of the same issues as my patients—self-worth, self-esteem,