When I look back on my life, I have had many spiritual teachers that have pushed me to become the person I am today. In some sense, every person we interact causes us to become a little more whole. Everyone has a lesson to teach. However, when I look back there are definitely people that stand out above the rest.
Obviously, my parents were my first teachers. My dad grew up Catholic, but I wouldn’t say he was a devote practicer. My mom never had a stance, but both of them pushed my siblings and I to develop our own beliefs on religion. They put us in private school as a way to introduce us to these concepts and ideas of morality, but not as a means for us to adopt unless we really believed it. I wasn’t baptized until I was in second grade, and it was a choice I made (mostly because of my oldest brother doing so, and then I followed suit). Sure, I went to church sometimes, but it was definitely not every week. While being in a private school, I remember I heard about how people would be damned for not being baptized. This scared me as a child because my mom was not baptized, but I am now so grateful she wasn’t. With her being one of the most loving and caring people I have ever met, I learned how silly it is to say you had to be baptized to enter the kingdom of heaven.
When I was very young, I went to a private school that was run by the Salesian’s. Through growing up, I think my first spiritual teacher was Saint John Bosco. His life was absolutely incredible, and for some reason his life just spoke so loudly to me. I had a strong belief that he had a connection with God in a way that no one else really did. I admit that the story of his life is not as fresh in my mind, but in my heart and core I still believe strongly that he is someone that has helped my journey from the other side.
When I was a little older, my next spiritual teacher was Father Bob. I think I connected so much to him because he pretty much was my imagination’s embodiment of John Bosco. In fact, I thought they even looked alike. Father Bob cared about having fun and a good laugh, and that meant a lot to me. Clearly, my role models were people that knew how to gather people around them by being genuine free souls.
When I was in middle school, my next spiritual teacher was a Salesian Sister. Again, she was the embodiment of what John Bosco’s Salesian’s were meant to be. She would sometimes join in and play basketball with the kids, and, by doing so, she showed a model example of the importance of having fun. I remember I sent her an email one time because I was terrified about the end of the world. If you didn’t realize, the Bible really likes to scare people with concepts of the end of the world and damnation. Her response was that it was important to think about death, because it puts things into perspective about what is important in life. I still hold this lesson in my heart. Additionally, she said that her father spent much of his life worrying about the end of the world, and when the end of his world came it did him no good. These words helped me in a lot of trying times throughout high school. It was her telling me that things outside of our control are not worth losing valuable life over.
In High School I lost my ‘spiritual teachers’, and I think this was very important for me. I still had role models, but I don’t believe they were focused on my spiritual beliefs. My English/Art History teacher was probably my biggest role model in high school. She taught me in such a powerful way that being yourself was the coolest thing you could do. It didn’t matter if you were a nerd or if you were different, as long as you embraced who you are, that is the most powerful and important thing. She also helped me to think more creatively by teaching in a way that caused my thought processes to break through standard thinking. She was the most important role model through high school. While I may have not considered her a spiritual teacher in that kind of context, it is clear that her teachings have still impacted my spirituality today.
In college, I was introduced to my first non Catholic spiritual teacher. What an incredible impact fencing and his guidance had on my life. My fencing coach was someone who adopted Native American spiritual traditions and he believed in what is called the Red Path. In general, I did not like to talk about my beliefs at that time because I wasn’t sure at all what I believed in. Around this time, I was starting to think deeply on spiritual matters though. For some reason I had in my brain that if you took every world religion and put them on top of each other, you’d have the true religion. I believed that each religion had some pieces that were true, but that only together would it become the most true. I don’t know why these concepts came up through me, but it was my belief. One day in lessons my coach asked me, “what do you believe?” and I was caught off guard (maybe a pun here). My label was that I was no longer a Catholic believer. I told him “I think everything is connected.” He responded that this essentially was the mantra of his spiritual traditions. After that, I paid closer attention to his beliefs. He taught me to never write someone off just because their beliefs are different than what I grew up learning. Without him, I may have never been able to accept my next teacher. I recognized that he was put in my path for a reason, and I am so grateful for that.
My most recent spiritual teacher was at work. My co-worker’s wife is a psychic medium and thru her wife’s stories, she was able to tell me many stories about crazy things that normal science or rational thought could not explain. She also told me about a near death experience that she had and also taught me about the writings of Brian Weiss. If not for this co worker, I don’t know how I would have gotten through my fathers passing. It was because of these stories and clear evidence from someone that went from skeptic to a spiritual believer that I sought to find the answers she did. It was because of her that I experimented and read books far outside my beliefs to push myself to learn the fullest truth I could find.
There have been so many other people that have been put in my path to challenge my beliefs, give me exemplary role models to model my life behind, and provide a source of amazing conversation. To all of you that have been in my life to help me along the way, thank you. Every day I learn because of you, and I could not experience this life fully without each and every one of you. A special thank you to those that I have been close with. Whether if it was for a small period or still continues today, you are fantastic people and I hope that we will continue to exist side by side thru time and space and through many lives.
