Spiritual Growth
Messages from the Universe
By Derek Whitlock
May 14, 2008

After speaking at a spiritual church recently, one of the regulars at the service came up to me and said she had a message for me from spirit. Like most people, I felt privileged that spirit had singled me out for a message. The reality is, though, that the Universe is trying to send us messages on a daily basis. But, most of us are too busy to take the time to listen. These messages come in all shapes and sizes.

My search for messages started a few years ago after I was sacked from my position as the Director of Brisbane Institute of TAFE. A friend asked me, What is the Universe trying to tell you. This simple question brought me to my senses. I had been feeling sorry for myself. Thinking to myself, After all I’ve given to TAFE and the education department this is how they treat me. I was really playing the victim. When my friend asked me this simple question I realised I could continue to wallow in my self pity or I could start looking for the lesson in this. I chose the latter and so my search for messages from the Universe began.

It actually took me a couple of years to come to an understanding of what the message was in my being sacked. But along the way I learnt heaps.

As I said earlier, messages come in all shapes and sizes. From my experience though, when the Universe sends us a major message, we are usually too caught up in our emotions to look for a lesson. That was the case for me when I was sacked. I was in no position to fully understand what I was being told, so I simply took it as an indication that the Universe wanted me to move on. I’ve found that it’s much easier to start with small messages and seek to interpret these as we usually aren’t emotionally involved.

My wife, Anne and I have recently set up a spiritual centre. When we first started the process, we often discussed our vision for the centre we wanted to create. While out driving, I was talking about a centre in northern New South Wales and suggested we could do some similar things. We both got caught up in the possibilities of a café and a retail shop. At that moment Anne lost control of the car on a roundabout. It was wet, nothing exceptional, but the car slipped right out of control. Once we were back on the road I started laughing. Anne wanted to know what I found amusing. I explained that we’d been off track in our discussions and the Universe was letting us know we were off track. Our discussions had been very commercially focused indicating how we could make money with the retail shop and café etc. Until this discussion we had never thought about such a concept and the Universe was letting us know not to go down this track now.

On another occasion, Anne was feeling a bit down about how things were progressing with our plans to set up the spiritual centre. Her mind was running wild thinking negative thoughts about the whole process to date and concocting negative scenarios for the future. The phone rang and when she answered it, it was a wrong number. When I asked what she was thinking at the time she confessed to the negativity. The Universe was telling Anne she was getting the wrong message and to let go of her negativity and reassuring her all was on track as it was meant to be.

One of the simplest messages I have received to date was when a balloon burst. It triggered a chain of events that helped me recognise one of my many negative behaviour patterns. This was the culmination of many messages sent by the Universe, the previous ones being ignored by me. The Universe is persistent and will continue to remind us of what needs to be addressed. It’s like the zealous parents who want to make sure their child learns from her actions. The Universe never tires of sending the same or similar experiences until we learn our lessons.

On this occasion, I was at a weekend retreat. As part of the final activity we had to write a positive message to one of the other participants, on a balloon. We were then required to pass the balloon to the other person so that they could receive the positive reinforcement of the message we’d written. Jim had written his message to Lionel (not their real names), but Lionel had left early, so I was asked to deliver the balloon to him the following day. This seemed a simple enough task. As I was loading my van that afternoon, however, the balloon burst. I believed that neither Jim nor Lionel would find out about it, so I decided to say nothing about it.

Once we’d packed our cars, we got together for a final debrief. During this session, Jim turned to me in front of the group and thanked me for taking on the task of delivering his balloon to Lionel. Confession time, I thought. I explained to Jim how I had left the balloon in the back of the van and when I returned with another load, it had burst. I had no idea what Jim was thinking, but his look took me straight back to my childhood. There was my father sitting there scowling at me! I felt the anger and was concerned that I had let Dad (in this case Jim) down.

I went into deep reflection while others gave their final analysis of the weekend. When it was my turn I was able to thank Jim for the lesson he had given me. I’d realised that as a child I had learnt to hide anything that went wrong to avoid getting into trouble. I had therefore developed a strategy of hiding any mistake rather than owning up to it. My childhood experiences caused me to hide Jim’s burst balloon, even though I wasn’t directly responsible for it bursting. In fact, the Universe had burst the balloon to give me the opportunity to learn from the experience.

This wasn’t a one off experience that I could forget about. I began to look back over major incidents in my life and could see, again and again, how I had utilised my strategy of hiding mistakes. As I look back I can see numerous other examples of this behaviour and in most instances can recognise the unfavourable outcomes. But I’m a slow learner! I kept doing it over and over and over again – in some instances with major consequences.

I could now see how this strategy of hiding mistakes had lead to my being fired from TAFE. I’d believed up until the incident where my balloon burst that I understood why I’d been sacked and had resolved the issues associated with this.

What actually happened to lead to me being fired? We were well short of our enrolment target for the year. I’d stuffed up! I had a major mistake on my hands for which I was going to be held accountable and I couldn’t see any way of hiding it.

Then one of the Associate Directors suggested a slightly offbeat way of getting increased enrolments. There was new CD Rom available that taught basic computer skills. We offered this to all current students in all courses across the college. As an incentive to get these students to enrol in this additional course, all enrolees went into the draw for a new computer. Here was my way out! I knew this wasn’t ethical, as we weren’t offering any tuition only a CD Rom, but I had the opportunity to hide my mistake, so I jumped at the opportunity.

We were inundated with enrolments. Suddenly, we were way over our enrolment target and received a commendation for our achievements in budget and enrolments. I’d successfully hidden my mistake – for the time being.

A couple of months later, the s--- hit the fan! After an investigation, my contract was cancelled. The interesting thing is, quite a few colleges didn’t achieve their targets for enrolments that year, with no significant consequences for the directors responsible. Owning up to not achieving target would have meant that I’d still be a TAFE director and not have been out of a job. But it would also have meant that I wouldn’t have been on my current path.

I mentioned earlier how good it felt to be singled out for a message from spirit when I was at a spiritual church recently. This psychic message was indicating to me changes I needed to make. I’d spoken at the service and outlined the types of messages I’d received over the years and how I had gone about interpreting them. I’d even used some of the same examples as I have here. When I finished the talk I felt it was incomplete but didn’t know why.

Spirit came to my rescue through this wonderful lady who was able to deliver the message. What she said to me was, You’re in your head too much. You need to find a balance between the head and the heart. I immediately knew what had been missing from my talk. At no stage had I mentioned love. And yet finding the meaning of love had been my greatest lesson. But it had also been my greatest fear, so I could understand why I had omitted it.

As I look back on my personal relationships, I had a real fear of saying; I love you. I had a fear of using the word love. It was suggested to me at one workshop that I send out a hundred postcards to friends and colleagues with the simple message – I love you! The level of fear this brought up for me was unbelievable. I didn’t take up the challenge of sending out the postcards but I did start signing off emails; Love Derek. As I went to send them my finger would hover over the send button wondering what the recipient would think, but I felt the fear and did it anyway.

As I broke through this barrier and started to express love for those around me, I realised that my fear of expressing love was an extension of my fear of rejection. What if I expressed my love and the other person didn’t respond? I’d feel rejected! Then I began to understand that unconditional love doesn’t require a response. If I’m expressing my love because I’m looking for love in return then I have a problem. The problem is that I don’t love myself enough.

We’ve all heard the saying that charity begins at home. This is also true for love. We must love ourselves first then we can love others. So how do we develop our love of ourselves. I’ve found that one of the best tools for this is the affirmation. We are trying to reprogram our subconscious so we need to continually repeat the new program for our subconscious to eventually get it. So for me that means continually repeating the affirmation;

I Love Myself

Being open to loving myself and loving others has been one of the greatest lessons I have learnt during this period. I still believe in the need to understand the messages the Universe is sending and for this we need to utilise the mind. But spirit has made sure I also open my heart to giving and receiving love. Getting the correct balance between head and heart is one of my greatest lessons in this lifetime.