Today, the day my friends and I celebrate the human birth of our beloved Teacher and brother in Spirit, is also the day my Spirit family celebrates the Coming Home anniversary of my Nituna. In honor of both events, I bow my head and say a little prayer of peace and boundless gratitude for the blessings I experience every day!
I tremble as he comes around, my breath barely able to release. I shouldn’t feel this way, damn it. He’s my teacher. He’s my guide to all things Spiritual. When did my feelings for him change?
Teacher consults the classmate to my immediate left, a new student with a multitude of questions. His questions are not mine, but I find myself unable to focus on my classwork. I need to hear Teacher’s voice, need to hear the rolling waves of the richness that sets my heart on fire.
This is not right.
“Why?” A voice interrupts my thoughts.
I snap my head around searching for a face to match the voice. No one is there. No one is actually anywhere around me. Clyde, who usually sits behind me, has scooted his desk next to Hope’s as they work on this assignment I have chosen to do alone.
“Why is what you feel wrong?” The voice repeats and elaborates on the question. It is neither male nor female. It is in my own voice, but I know random voices aren’t always mine.
I shoot out of my seat with a quick, “Bathroom,” and head down the hall, but I don’t go to the bathroom. I walk to the end of the hallway, to the double doors that lead outside, then I stand, paralyzed, wondering what I should do next.
I hear a quick rap on the door that is never locked.
Who could it be? No one ever knocks on this door.
Leaning on the bar that unlocks it, I nudge the door open just a bit. Not too far, but far enough. A squirrel stands in the gap between open and closed, twitching his nose at me.
Why is what you feel wrong? I hear those words again and my heart stops. I twirl to look behind me, but the squirrel and I are alone.
My newfound friend drops to all fours and scurries away three feet then turns as if waiting for me to follow. So I do.
“Where are you taking me, friend?”
Hidden in the chirps of a squirrel, I hear, “You need to understand.”
I follow through the forest at the edge of the school, tiptoeing because the crunching of my feet on the leaves of autumn feels too loud. We walk over the well-worn paths of years of human use, then Squirrel takes me over smaller, more animal-like, paths through the nature of the woods. At first, branches tug at my clothes and my hair. After a while, though, I’ve discovered a way to avoid the trees’ fingers.
Then I hear the voice again.
“Do you want to make a memory?”
“Who’s talking to me?” I scream.
“You know, but you won’t accept it.”
I run around the clearing I’ve just stepped into, searching for the voice. I can’t even find Squirrel anymore. I search behind trees and bushes, in the branches of the trees that wave overhead, behind the rocks of long-ago. Desperate, I start digging through the dirt, looking for speakers or even, by this point, a squirrel with a dictionary.
Finally, I give up and collapse against the trunk of a twisted, ancient Juniper tree.
“You are lost, my dear,” I hear a voice, but it’s not the voice that led me here. It’s a kinder voice. One full of love and understanding. One that fills my heart with the same love I’ve felt only a few times before.
I wipe tears from my face and look up to see a beautifully powerful woman sitting on a nearby moss-covered boulder. Only now do I realize that my search has taken me to the river that separates this school from the real world of stress and pain. Fortunately, we’re still on the right side.
The woman, dressed in a deerskin dress that reaches just above her knees, smiles. Her shiny long, black hair, the rows of fringe over her chest, the fringe over her hips, all flutter as if in a brisk wind, but no wind is blowing past me.
“Hello, my dear,” she says in a voice that flows like the river behind her. It coats my nerves with her peace. “You had a question that I can help you answer.”
I shake my head. I don’t remember any question I had for her. My mind is empty right now.
“I am your guide,” She pauses. “I’m here to help you process this. This is difficult for you, we know.”
If Irreverent were here, he’d have questions. I don’t. I’m just absorbing all of this and freaking out.
My guide watches me. I hide from her gaze, burying my eyes in the blades of grass at my feet. Then, my curiosity finally awakens. “What is your name?”
“My name is Nituna. I am the daughter of the sun.” To make certain I don’t misinterpret the word, she raises her hands over her head toward the midmorning sun that is just becoming visible through the tree tops. “I am one of those designated to guide your Spiritual journey.”
She pauses briefly, studying my reaction as I let this information sink in.
“Your Teacher is another one.”
And then I remember the question from earlier today. The answer no one would claim to own.
I drop to my knees in front of her and let my face fall into her lap as the pain wracks through me in a long line of sobs. Am I in love with my teacher? I didn’t think I was, but there’s something about today that makes me wonder. This is so wrong. How can I continue learning from him? Will the faceless THEY reassign him? Will I lose him because of my silly schoolgirl crush?
As I sob, Nituna caresses my head. Gently, she runs strong fingers through the length of hair that has grown since I first started at this school. It is now almost as dark and long as hers.
Nituna has been with me before. I know her but she’s never spoken to me. Why now?
“Because now is when you really need me.” She positions herself behind me and braids my hair as she talks, using her fingers like a comb over my head. “There is much to learn about this change you have been undergoing, my dear. You are rushed. You are jumping to conclusions that serve only to confuse you more.”
She tucks a loose strand of hair back into the braid.
“Too rushed?” I ask. “I thought there was a hurry. I thought we needed to move along as quickly as possible. I thought the goal is graduation.”
Her soft chuckle is like the chirp of a momma quail. “No, my dear. Not rushed. We have all the time in the world. What matters is your comprehension.” Tieing the braid with one of the fringes she snapped from her dress, Nituna stands, walks around me, and pulls me to my feet. She holds my face between her hands and smiles lovingly, “You are so beautiful.”
With her hands holding my face in place, I can’t shy away from her loving gaze. I can’t avoid her compliment. “Thank you” is all I can say. When she returns to her place on the boulder, I turn back into myself and try to forget her loving gaze and how totally overwhelming it felt. This is so powerful.
“My dear, the feelings you have for us, for your guides, for your Teacher, they are not wrong.” She nods slowly, as if to help send the thought to me through the waves of air and the music in the wind. “You are expected to be overwhelmed. That is why the lessons are so slow and heartbreaking. As you learn about us, about the love we embody, everything you’ve ever known, every lesson, every memory, every love, is thrown into a vat of questions.”
She motions for me to approach, so I do. I lean against the boulder, half on it, half off. She holds my hand, tracing the lines on the palm.
“Your life is long. This part is brief. Until you reach the end, you will not fully understand, and that is just fine. We have no judgment for you. You cannot do anything wrong because All That Is is love, and love does not judge.”
And as the lesson falls into my heart, I understand her words and the love that drowns me every day.
“So, what I feel for Teacher, dear Nituna, please tell me that’s normal. Is that really true love or is it just a normal schoolgirl crush?” I already know the answer.
She chuckles again, pulls my head toward her and places a kiss on my forehead. “This is not a normal crush. It is greater than that, but it is also misguided. The way humans interpret the all-consuming love of our dimension back Home is by comparing it to the deepest love felt in your 3D dimension. In reality, it is the love we all feel for our spirit family.”
I pull back and find her eyes — deep and dark. During her explanation I fall into her soul.
“Truly eternal love is too powerful for humans to experience and survive.”
Looking back later this day from the comfort of my living room couch, I am left with the memory of how things were before today’s realization. Before I understood that the love I feel is too rich to put a label on. There is no human definition that can explain this feeling.
I Love my life!
Until next lesson, dear friends, I remain, ever-faithfully,
The Dragonfly’s Student
The Dragonfly's Student 