The University of Life - an introduction

We are all in the University of Life studying various degrees as we go through our lives. We each become proficient or an expert in some aspect of life. We graduate with a degree in looking after children or people, cooking, making money, working at a particular trade, creating things, communicating and lots of other skills and talents.

The main characters
We are often so busy living our lives we are unaware that we are in a learning environment. We don’t see that we are students of life in the University of Life. Let's meet some of the main characters in this university. The Student, the Head of the University, the Nutty Professor, the Assistant and the Genial Janitor.

The main character is our true happy, loving selves, Soul, the student who has enrolled into the University of Life. We have been sent off by our father, the Higher Power or God to discover ourselves, why we exist, how our existence works and what we are here to do.

Head of the University
The Head of the University is a strict no nonsense guy who issues projects for us to complete. He is often seen as pleasant and generous, a lot of people think of him as God and he is indeed the God of his University. While we are here as a student we have to obey his laws. Sometimes he can be seen as a demon and a devil, giving what seem like impossible tasks for us to complete. He is often accused of putting tempting diversions I our way to divert us from our goal and keep us in the University for as long as possible.

Nutty Professor
Next we have the Nutty Professor who can sometimes take control of everything and concentrate all our efforts on a few select projects and experiments. He has often rejected any input from the student as irrelevant and illogical. He bases all his research on logic and will often not take into consideration any suggestions or influences from higher sources. If it’s not logical, it doesn’t belong in what he considers proper work and research.

The Assistant
The next character is the Assistant and who sometimes ends up as a guinea pig. The Assistant does the bidding of the Nutty Professor and the Head of the University of Life. Regularly he has to perform the tasks necessary to conduct the experiments and gather the research, relating to the current project. Many times the Assistant becomes the guinea pig to test a particular theory.

Some of these experiments are straight forward and simple where we try a few combinations to see what happens. Other times we are dealing with something complex and unknown and can result in unexpected outcomes. Occasionally some of the experiments have been pushed too far causing the death of the poor Assistant.

Library
As we go through these experiments, Soul is gathering the experiences and collecting its research. It is earning positive and negative credits depending on the results achieved. If something doesn’t work out, we usually have to come back to it again at some stage, to complete the task.

The research and lessons are all stored in a huge library called our memories. We have several libraries but the one we are most familiar with is the one concerning our current life. We occasionally get references from older libraries as we come across people and places which had a significant role in one of our previous lives.

Genial Janitor
Then we have the genial Janitor. We spot him now and again as we go about our studies in the University. He can be very helpful in showing us how to get different places easily and seems to have the run of the place. He has often helped us with our experiments giving us advice and ideas. He has a way of explaining the rules and laws of the university so that we discover where we are going wrong and how to get it right.

While he is currently working in the university, one can see he has graduated a long time ago and is well versed in the outside world and how we can get there. He knows all the quick ways of getting through the university and will share his knowledge when asked. He’s carried out a lot of the experiments and knows how to get the best results. He also has a lot of friends who have been janitors in the past and between them they know their way around every part of the University of Life. He has been know to help a lot of assistants graduate a lot quicker than the Head of the University had planned for them.

Where do we fit?
So where do we fit into this view of the University of Life? Here are some alternative descriptions for the characters listed above:
Our Father – The Higher Power, the loving God, the Sugmad, Allah, the God of Gods.
The Student – Soul, the true, loving, happy part of ourselves.
The Head of the University of Life – God, the God of power and fear, the devil.
The Nutty Professor – our mind which uses logic to view and judge the world.
The Assistant – our physical selves, our body with its emotions.
The Genial Janitor – a prophet, a saviour, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad, Krishna, Harold Klemp, Paul Twitchell, Dali Lama and others.
The outside world – heaven, happiness, joy.

Read through the article again and see if these character suggestions are right for you in your progress so far in the University of Life.

Live your live and love it.

*Ed Parkinson

You’ll find more insights on the University of Life on the Spiritual Writings page.