Maybe we shouldn't call it "Soul Lessons."

When we think about the word “lesson,” we usually think about sitting in a classroom, doing homework, and making progress. There’s material being taught, and in a lesson, we’re expected to move forward with what we’re learning.

That is, after all, the essence of a lesson.

And then we hear the phrase “spiritual lesson.”Immediately, we’re thrown back into the school experience: Did we learn the lesson? Did we understand what we were supposed to understand so we can move on? And if we didn’t—do we “repeat the grade”? Do we come back to Earth again?

Lately, I’ve been understanding more and more that using the word “lesson” isn’t quite accurate.

The soul doesn’t come to Earth in order to “go through lessons.”The soul comes to Earth simply to learn and to experience.

Earth really is a vast school—but we, as souls, are not sitting in a classroom. There’s no homework, and there’s no punishment if we didn’t do it or if we didn’t understand the material. We’re here to learn, and learning happens in many ways—mostly in an informal way.

Life itself—our experiences, what we go through—is the learning.

There isn’t a single “lesson” we have to pass.

Yes, there are things the soul wants to learn, and each soul is different. Some souls want to learn confidence and independence. Some want to learn about sexuality. Some want to learn love.

So there are themes we came here to learn.

And maybe those themes can be called our “soul lessons,” because the soul chose a topic for its learning, and it lives its life with the intention of learning about that topic—learning it from the inside.

And still—this isn’t a classroom, and we don’t fail. Even when we struggle deeply, and even when we find ourselves repeating the patterns that keep us stuck again and again and again.