What has been the most difficult teaching for you to master in this lifetime?

Q:  Are you afraid of anything? What has been the most difficult teaching for you to master in this lifetime?

A:  I spend most of my time focusing on the myriad ways I can become more and more loving. As I ponder your question, though, musing about the greatest human fears—death (my own or that of a loved one), being alone, being abandoned, being physically harmed, contracting disease... none come to mind. Many of the things I used to fear, I still would rather not happen, though in my heart I know I would accept them (and have) if God and my soul needed me to have these experiences. Nonetheless, I have had certain reflexive responses to stimuli, which, in the moment of occurrence, displayed elements of fear, and these indicated where I have still needed to grow in detachment and surrender. I will continue to welcome those opportunities if and when they come.

The most difficult teaching to master in life (as it was for my life, as well) is non-attachment—as it is, likewise, the source of one’s greatest inner peace. Being the loving observer; having an experience without becoming defined by it; allowing the ebb and flow of life, as does sand on a beach... these are the highest achievements, and the most difficult to achieve. The invitations to become attached are always there:  seeing a “tragic” event in someone’s future (much less my own!) and having to watch it arrive and happen, while staying in a wholly loving and detached consciousness (like when I recently saw my own car accident two minutes before it happened; or when, during my training by the Masters back in the 90s, I watched my own death only minutes before it happened, and then had to allow and experience it; or knowing, in advance, the date and circumstances surrounding the passing of a loved one). I was actually quite surprised at seeing how non-attached I was in these situations.

My greatest challenge in the area of non-attachment has been in gifting people the answers to their questions, solutions to their problems, cures to what ails them physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually—at their request!—and then watching them walk away, not use or apply it, and continue to needlessly suffer. There have been moments when I still have felt a pang in my heart in just such a circumstance, though I know that part of that, for me, also stems from the compassion I have for all living beings. Relieving the suffering in this world drives me as much as does sharing my joyful experience of God with this world.