University Earth

Grief is one of the most profound human experiences we can face, yet we are often taught to think of it as something we eventually need to “get over.” But what if grief isn't about moving on? What if it's about learning how to move forward while carrying the love, memories, relationships, and experiences that changed us?

In University Earth Class 110, “How Do You Move Forward When Part of Your World Is Gone? Understanding Grief,” Professor Jessica explores why grief changes us so deeply and what loss can ask of us beneath the pain.

Drawing from her own lived experience after the death of her second husband, Professor Jessica opens this class with a deeply personal reflection on losing not only her husband, but her friend, her imagined future, and a significant part of the life and identity she had built around their relationship.

This conversation explores grief, loss, bereavement, love, attachment, identity, healing, emotional change, and the pressure society places on people to “move on.” Rather than treating grief as something that needs to be fixed or overcome, this class invites us to consider what happens when we give ourselves permission to grieve in our own way and in our own time.

In this class, we explore:

• Why grief can affect our emotions, identity, relationships, routines, and sense of purpose
• Why moving forward is not necessarily the same as moving on
• The connection between grief, love, attachment, and loss
• Why there is no single “right” way to grieve
• How loss can change the way we see ourselves and our future

Professor Jessica is joined by Devorah Brinkerhoff for the Student Perspective, exploring what personal experiences with grief can teach us about loss, love, change, healing, and the human experience.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 — My Personal Experience With Grief
02:28 — Why Grief Changes Us
04:54 — Moving Forward Without Leaving Love Behind
07:04 — What Is Grief Asking of Us?
09:30 — Moving Forward vs. Moving On
10:54 — Student Perspective: Devorah Brinkerhoff
13:13 — Why Society Struggles With Grief
15:39 — Reflection: Learning to Live With Loss
18:04 — Class Dismissed

ABOUT UNIVERSITY EARTH

University Earth is a consciousness and human-experience video podcast hosted by Jessica Rooks, where life is the curriculum and the human experience is the classroom.

As Professor Jessica she explores the questions, patterns, experiences, and spiritual concepts that invite us to become more conscious of the lives we're living.

Subscribe and join the next class.

 🎓 WANT TO BECOME A UNIVERSITY EARTH STUDENT?
Have you lived a lesson that belongs in the classroom? Your experience may help another student understand their own.

Apply to share your Student Perspective →

Website: https://www.universityearth.org/the-lecture-hall#become-a-university-earth-student

 🎓 University Earth
Where life is the curriculum, and your soul is the student.

Fear Keeps You From Moving Forward? How overcoming fear, fear of the unknown and fear of change work — and how courage and action create clarity | University Earth Class 109 with Professor Jessica Rooks

If you know what you want to do but feel stuck, hesitant, overthinking, or waiting for certainty, you are not alone. In University Earth Class 109, Professor Jessica Rooks explores what fear is really doing when it keeps you from moving forward — and how understanding courage and action helps you move anyway.

Fear is a protective response designed to keep you safe. Courage is not the absence of fear — it is what you do next while fear is present. Discernment is fear giving you useful information to pay attention to. Avoidance is fear becoming a pattern that keeps you inside what is familiar.

Drawing from lived experience, Jessica shares leaving the United States to travel the world despite never traveling internationally before — quitting a 16-year career, selling, giving away or donating approximately 95% of what she owned, leaving family and friends, and taking her life and podcast on the road without a fixed plan. Instead of waiting for a perfect plan, she chose a flexible plan to learn, adapt, and grow along the way.

In this class, we explore:

• Why fear exists to protect us and why eliminating fear isn't the goal
• How fear becomes a pattern of overthinking, hesitation, and staying stuck
• Fear of the unknown vs. useful intuition — discernment vs. avoidance
• Fear of change and why certainty rarely comes first
• Why courage doesn't require fearlessness
• How action creates clarity when you don't have all the answers
• Why a flexible plan beats waiting for the perfect moment
• What it means to hear fear without letting it make the decision

Featuring a Student Perspective with author and filmmaker John R. Spender on fear, courage, uncertainty, and the choice to move forward.

ABOUT PROFESSOR JESSICA ROOKS

Jessica Rooks is the host of University Earth, where life is the curriculum and your soul is the student, and Awaken Your Authentic Self. Her work explores spiritual awakening, personal growth, conscious living, healing, self-awareness, fear, courage, and the lessons of the human experience through lived experience and reflection.

ABOUT UNIVERSITY EARTH

University Earth is a class series where life is the curriculum, and your soul is the student. Each class explores the human experience through spiritual education, consciousness, personal growth, lived experience, and real-life reflection.

🎓 WANT TO BECOME A UNIVERSITY EARTH STUDENT?

Apply to share your Student Perspective →

Website: University Earth — Become a Student

Explore all classes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdxCVNseZXjE

 Continue Your Learning Journey

Start from Class 101: https://youtu.be/90M92F38rzU

🎓 University Earth Where life is the curriculum, and your soul is the student.

This class is for educational and spiritual exploration purposes and shares personal perspectives. It is not medical, mental health, or financial advice.

What is ego — and is yours protecting you or holding you back? In University Earth Class 108, Professor Jessica Rooks breaks down spiritual ego, fear vs ego, and how to overcome ego for personal growth, self-awareness and spiritual awakening.

The ego is your sense of identity — the stories about who you are and what you can and cannot do. Healthy protection becomes limitation when staying familiar feels safer than growing, changing, and choosing differently.

If you find yourself second-guessing your choices, staying inside what feels familiar, or saying "that's just not who I am," you may be listening to more than fear. Professor Jessica Rooks explores what the ego may be trying to protect — identity, safety, control, and sense of self — and how that protection can sometimes begin keeping us small.

The ego isn't simply arrogance or self-importance. It is connected to identity, lived experience, and the stories we carry about what is possible for us.

The question becomes: Is this actually my choice, or is my protection choosing for me?

IN THIS CLASS, WE EXPLORE:

• What is ego and what the ego may be trying to protect — including identity, safety, control, and sense of self

• When protection becomes limitation and why the familiar can feel safer than growth

• Fear vs ego — and how each influences the choices we make

• Why the goal isn't to eliminate the ego, but to become conscious enough to hear it without automatically obeying it

• How awareness, self-reflection, and consciousness create space to question old identities and choose differently

STUDENT PERSPECTIVE WITH TARA WISKOW Featuring Tara Wiskow, intuitive healer, speaker and coach for women from Greenbush, Minnesota. Tara shares her deeply personal experience of recognizing how old patterns and beliefs were keeping her inside a familiar identity — and what happened when she began choosing self-love, changing the way she saw herself, and showing herself what was possible outside her comfort zone.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 — Class Is Now in Session: Meet the Ego

01:59 — Is Your Ego Protecting You or Holding You Back?

04:23 — When Protection Becomes Limitation

06:18 — Fear vs Ego: Who Is Making the Decision?

08:37 — Hearing the Ego Without Letting It Choose

10:34 — Student Perspective: Tara Wiskow

11:41 — How the Ego Protects Us

17:08 — Tara's Story: Choosing Self-Love Over Old Patterns

21:50 — Reflection Assignment: What Are You Protecting?

24:06 — Class Dismissed

ABOUT PROFESSOR JESSICA ROOKS Jessica Rooks is the host of University Earth, where life is the curriculum and your soul is the student, and Awaken Your Authentic Self. Her work explores spiritual awakening, personal growth, conscious living, healing, self-awareness, fear, identity, and the lessons of the human experience through lived experience and reflection.

ABOUT UNIVERSITY EARTH University Earth is a class series where life is the curriculum, and your soul is the student. Each class explores the human experience through spiritual education, consciousness, personal growth, lived experience, and real-life reflection.

🎓 WANT TO BECOME A UNIVERSITY EARTH STUDENT?

Have you lived a lesson that belongs in the classroom? Your experience may help another student understand their own.

Apply to share your Student Perspective →

Website: University Earth — Become a Student

Continue Your Learning JourneyStart from Class 101

Manifestation explained: how your beliefs shape your reality and what it really takes to create change.

If you've tried visualization, affirmations, and vision boards and still feel stuck, you are not alone. Manifestation is often reduced to “think positive, visualize what you want, and wait.” But what if conscious manifestation requires more than that?

In University Earth Class 107, Professor Jessica Rooks explores manifestation, desire, intention, belief, action, personal responsibility, allowing, and conscious creation—and takes a closer look at what manifestation may actually require.

Conscious manifestation can be understood as a process involving desire, belief, intention, action, responsibility, and allowing. Rather than focusing on controlling reality or guaranteeing a particular outcome, this class explores what it means to consciously participate in the reality you are creating.

She explores the difference between wanting something and becoming consciously involved in creating the conditions for it—including the role of unconscious beliefs, visualization, action, personal responsibility, and releasing attachment to a specific outcome.

In this class, we explore:

• The difference between desire and intention, and why creating change requires conscious participation.
• How conscious and unconscious beliefs can support or conflict with what we say we want.
• Why action and personal responsibility are essential parts of creating meaningful change.
• What it means to practice allowing and detachment without becoming passive.

Featuring a Student Perspective with Scarlett Seebach, Author and creator of Astral Reiki, on manifestation, subconscious beliefs, nervous system responses, and detaching from the outcome.

ABOUT PROFESSOR JESSICA ROOKS

Jessica Rooks is the host of University Earth, where life is the curriculum and your soul is the student, and Awaken Your Authentic Self. Her work explores spiritual awakening, trauma healing, nervous system regulation, shadow work, and conscious living through lived experience and student-centered teaching.

ABOUT UNIVERSITY EARTH

University Earth is a class series where life is the curriculum, and your soul is the student. Each class explores the human experience through spiritual education, consciousness, healing, personal growth, and real-life reflection.

🎓 WANT TO BECOME A UNIVERSITY EARTH STUDENT?

Have you lived a lesson that belongs in the classroom? Your experience may help another student understand their own.

Apply to share your Student Perspective →

Website: University Earth — Become a Student

Explore all classes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdxCVNseZXjE

 🎓 University Earth

Where life is the curriculum, and your soul is the student.

 This class is for educational and spiritual exploration purposes and shares personal perspectives. It is not medical, mental health, or financial advice.

What if the people in your life aren't simply part of your story...

but part of your education?

In Class 106, we explore one of Earth's most powerful classrooms: relationships.

Why do certain people affect us so deeply? Why can one relationship challenge us, change us, or reveal something about ourselves we didn't know was there?

From family and friendship to romantic relationships, colleagues, and even brief encounters, the people who cross our paths can become unexpected teachers.

Or, as Professor Jessica likes to call them...

Group projects. Humanity's oldest spiritual assignments. 😂

But this class isn't about believing that every person was destined to teach us something—or that every painful relationship is somehow our fault.

It's about becoming curious about what our relationships might reveal.

Because sometimes...

we don't discover who we are by looking inward alone.

Sometimes...

we discover ourselves in relationship with someone else.

In this class, we explore:

• Why relationships can become powerful classrooms for self-awareness
• What our reactions to others might reveal about us
• The difference between self-reflection and self-blame
• What we may be learning—and teaching—in the relationships that shape our lives

Then, we bring the lesson into real life with a Student Perspective by Journalist Nick Rivera, reflecting on what relationships has taught him about himself

Timestamps

00:00 Class Is Now in Session
02:23 Why Relationships Reveal So Much
04:45 When Other People Become Mirrors
07:09 Are We the Student or the Teacher?
09:29 What Relationships Leave Behind
11:54 The Relationships That Change Us
13:20 Student Perspective: Nick Rivera
14:09 What Do Our Relationships Reveal About Us?
15:18 The Lesson That Stayed With Him
18:11 Your Student Assignment
19:00 Class Dismissed

🎓 WANT TO BECOME A UNIVERSITY EARTH STUDENT?
Have you lived a lesson that belongs in the classroom? Your experience may help another student understand their own.

Apply to share your Student Perspective →

Website: https://www.universityearth.org/the-lecture-hall#become-a-university-earth-student

🌎 UNIVERSITY EARTH

Where life is the curriculum, and your soul is the student.

Have you ever changed the relationship, the job, the city, or the circumstances-only to find yourself facing the same emotional lesson again?

In Class 105 of University Earth, Professor Jessica explores repeating emotional patterns and recurring life lessons, and what they may reveal about the way we respond to the experiences we encounter. From abandonment, trust issues, self-worth, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and rescuing others to boundaries, self-trust, control, and the fear of never being enough, sometimes the circumstances change while the emotional pattern remains remarkably familiar.

Professor Jessica examines why emotional patterns can repeat, how habits and early life experiences can influence our responses, and why awareness and curiosity can be more useful than shame. This isn't about blaming ourselves for everything that happens to us. Instead, this class focuses on the patterns within our own experience that we can observe, question, and learn from.

In today's Student Perspective, Dr. Jessie Ferreira from ASQ Empowerment, shares her personal experience with self-trust and boundaries, including how awareness, stepping outside the immediate emotional response, and practicing what she calls “Position Zero” can help interrupt familiar patterns and create the possibility of responding differently.

The question shifts from:

“Why does this keep happening to me?”

to:

“What keeps showing up here—and what lesson might be asking to be understood?”

Because repeating a pattern doesn't necessarily mean you're failing.

It may simply mean there's still something here worth learning.

IN THIS CLASS:
• Understanding repeating emotional patterns and recurring life lessons
• Why awareness is the beginning—not always the end—of change
• Exploring self-trust, boundaries, people-pleasing, and familiar responses
• Using curiosity and reflection to recognize patterns and create new choices

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 — Welcome to University Earth
00:31 — Why We Repeat the Same Emotional Patterns
02:25 — What Is a Pattern—and Why Does It Repeat?
04:20 — Why Familiar Patterns Keep Showing Up
05:18 — Reflection, Awareness & Recognizing the Lesson
06:47 — Boundaries, Self-Trust & Learning Not to Abandon Yourself
07:46 — What If the Pattern Is Information?
08:27 — Student Perspective: Dr. Jessie Ferreira
10:02 — Self-Trust: Dr. Jessie’s Recurring Life Lesson
15:00 — Can Awareness Actually Change a Pattern?
17:52 — Vulnerability, Healing & Interrupting the Pattern
20:08 — Reflection Assignment: What Lesson Keeps Showing Up for You?

CONTINUE YOUR JOURNEY:
Lesson 104 - Is Karma Punishment or Curriculum

Life is not happening to you. It's teaching you.

I'm Professor Jessica, and I'll see you in our next class.

Class dismissed. 🎓🌎

What if karma isn’t about punishment-but about consequence, awareness, and the opportunity to grow?

In Class 104 of University Earth, Professor Jessica explores the meaning of karma and its relationship to our actions, choices, patterns, consequences, accountability, and personal growth. Rather than viewing karma as a cosmic justice system where the universe keeps score, this class asks a different question: What can our experiences teach us?

Karma has deep roots in Indian philosophical and religious traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, with different meanings and interpretations across those traditions. Here, we explore karma as a framework for understanding action, consequence, learning, and transformation -not as a system of blame.

That distinction matters. Pain is not proof of wrongdoing, and suffering does not mean someone deserved what happened to them. Instead, we can ask: What can I learn from this experience, and what choice is available to me now?

Joining Professor Jessica for today's Student Perspective is Hakeem Bourne McFarlane, author of Choose Yourself, speaker, creator, and educator focused on human behavior, accountability, and experiences. Hakeem explores the space between emotion and action—and the power we have to choose what comes next.

Drawing from his own experience with anger and reactive choices, Hakeem shares how behaviors that once felt protective ultimately became barriers to his growth. He challenges us to consider whether we're choosing from old habits, our present emotional state, or the deeper intention we set before circumstances changed the equation.

🎓 Class 104 Timestamps

00:00 Welcome to University Earth
00:30 Karma: Punishment or Curriculum?
02:25 Karma as Consequence, Feedback & Learning
04:41 Responsibility Is Not the Same as Blame
07:07 From “What Did I Deserve?” to “What Can I Learn?”
08:19 🎓 Student Perspective: Hakeem Bourne McFarlane
10:55 The Power to Choose: Habits, Emotions & Intention
15:05 When Our Choices Have Consequences
16:22 Reflection Assignment: Become an Observer of Your Curriculum
18:38 Class Dismissed

🎓 Continue Your Education

Class 101 — Did You Choose This Life? Understanding Soul Contracts
Explore the possibility that some of life's experiences may be connected to a deeper purpose.

Class 102 — Why Does Life Keep Teaching the Same Lessons?
Explore what repeating patterns may reveal about the lessons we are still learning.

Class 103 — Is Your Life Already Planned? Free Will vs. Destiny
Explore the relationship between choice, free will, destiny, and the human experience.

🌍 University Earth
Where life is the curriculum, and your soul is the student.

What did one of life's difficult experiences teach you?

#UniversityEarth #Karma #SpiritualAwakening #PersonalGrowth #SelfAwareness #Consciousness #HakeemBourneMcFarlane #ChooseYourself

Have you ever wondered if your life is already planned?

Are the major events of your life predetermined, or do you have the free will to choose your own path?

If destiny exists, what does that mean for the choices you make?

And if we truly have free will, can there also be a larger purpose or plan unfolding through our lives?

In Class 103 of University Earth, Professor Jessica explores the relationship between free will and destiny and asks whether these two ideas are actually opposites.

Are we creating our lives through our choices, or are we moving through a life that was already mapped out for us?

Through the lens of spirituality, consciousness, soul purpose, personal responsibility, and the human experience, this class explores different ways of thinking about destiny, free will, and the possibility of a predetermined life.

Rather than offering a simple answer, Professor Jessica invites us to consider a more nuanced possibility: that some circumstances of our lives may be beyond our control while the way we respond to those circumstances remains ours to choose.

Professor Jessica is joined by Kadir Oust, a Law Student from the Netherlands, for a Student Perspective that brings another voice into this exploration of choice, responsibility, destiny, and the forces that shape the human experience.

Timestamps

• 0:01 — Intro: “University Earth” and the idea of life as a class
• 0:27 — Earth as a school; introducing free will vs. destiny
• 0:54 — Life gives questions, we write the answers
• 1:22 — Why asking better questions matters
• 1:51 — Life’s unexpected moments and turning points
• 2:20 — Experiences as part of the curriculum
• 2:49 — What kind of person each experience makes you
• 3:19 — Free will as choosing who we become
• 3:46 — Starting the deeper question: how much is written?
• 4:14 — Spiritual, religious, and philosophical views on destiny
• 4:43 — Coincidence vs. meaning
• 5:11 — Curiosity over certainty
• 6:04 — Humanity’s shared search for purpose
• 6:34 — Free will and destiny working together
• 7:04 — The artist and the blank canvas analogy
• 7:34 — Inspiration through hardship
• 8:03 — The same event, different meaning
• 8:31 — Wisdom as how we meet life, not predicting it
• 9:20 — The central takeaway: choosing how chapters are lived
• 9:55 — Student Perspective
• 12:58 — Reflection Assignment
• 14:07 — Closing remarks and call to subscribe
• 14:55 — Final sign-off

CONTINUE YOUR EDUCATION

🎓 Class 102: Why Does Life Keep Teaching Us the Same Lessons?

Exploring recurring life patterns, repeated lessons, and what our experiences may be trying to teach us.

🎓 Class 101: Soul Contracts

Did You Choose This Life? Understanding Soul Contracts

🎓 Orientation: Welcome to University Earth

Where Life Is the Curriculum, and Your Soul Is the Student

🎓 WANT TO BECOME A UNIVERSITY EARTH STUDENT?

Have you lived a lesson that belongs in the classroom? Your experience may help another student understand their own.

Apply to share your Student Perspective →

Website: University Earth — Become a Student

🎓 University Earth

Where life is the curriculum, and your soul is the student.

Have you ever wondered why you keep experiencing the same patterns in life—even when the people, relationships, circumstances, and surroundings have changed?

Why does the same kind of relationship keep appearing?
Why does the same fear keep resurfacing?
Why do certain life lessons seem to follow us from one chapter to the next?

In Class 102 of University Earth, Professor Jessica explores the deeper meaning behind recurring life patterns and repeated life lessons and asks a question that can change the way we understand our experiences:

What if the pattern isn't happening to you? What if it's trying to teach you something?

Through the lens of spiritual growth, self-awareness, consciousness, and the human experience, this class explores why some lessons seem to repeat until we recognize what they are asking us to see, understand, or change.

This isn't about pretending difficult experiences don't hurt. It's about developing the awareness to recognize patterns, understand the lessons within them, and consider what becomes possible when we approach our experiences from a different perspective.

Professor Jessica is also joined by guest Diana Divine Soul Guide, Multidimensional Channel, and Galactic Shaman for a Student Perspective, bringing lived experience into the classroom and demonstrating how the lessons we encounter in life can become part of our own journey of growth and understanding.

Because sometimes the greatest shift doesn't happen when the circumstances change.

It happens when we finally see the pattern.

Timestamps

00:00 — Class Is Now in Session

00:13 — Why Does Life Keep Teaching Us the Same Lessons?

02:00 — When the Pattern Keeps Repeating

04:00 — What Recurring Lessons Are Trying to Show Us

05:40 — Recognizing the Lesson Beneath the Experience

06:57 — Student Perspective: Diana Divine

09:00 — What Happens When We Finally See the Pattern?

11:50 — The Lesson From the Student’s Perspective

14:10 — Professor Jessica: Bringing the Lesson Home

15:20 — What Do We Do With What We’ve Learned?

17:18 — Class Dismissed

In This Class We Explore:

• Why certain life lessons and patterns seem to repeat
• How recurring experiences can reveal opportunities for self-awareness and spiritual growth
• What recognizing a pattern can change about the way we experience it
• A Student Perspective on learning through lived experience

Your Reflection Assignment

What lesson keeps showing up in your life—and what might it be asking you to see now?

CONTINUE YOUR EDUCATION

🎓 Class 101: Soul Contracts
Did You Choose This Life? Understanding Soul Contracts

🎓 Orientation: Welcome to University Earth
Where Life Is the Curriculum, and Your Soul Is the Student

🎓 WANT TO BECOME A UNIVERSITY EARTH STUDENT?
Have you lived a lesson that belongs in the classroom? Your experience may help another student understand their own.

Apply to share your Student Perspective →

Website: https://www.universityearth.org/the-lecture-hall#become-a-university-earth-student

🎓 University Earth
Where life is the curriculum, and your soul is the student.

Welcome to University Earth—where life is the curriculum and your soul is the student.

In Class 101, Professor Jessica explores one of the most fascinating questions in spirituality and the human experience:

Did you choose this life?

Across spiritual traditions, there is a long-held idea that before entering this lifetime, our souls may have chosen certain experiences, relationships, and themes as part of our growth.

But what does that actually mean?

Did we choose every detail of our lives? Did we choose the difficult experiences we've endured? And if some parts of our lives may be part of a deeper spiritual curriculum, where does free will fit in?

In this class, we explore soul contracts as a spiritual perspective—not as a belief you are required to accept, but as an invitation to look at your life through a different lens.

We examine how soul contracts may relate to relationships, recurring patterns, synchronicities, life-changing experiences, and the lessons that seem to find us again and again.

We also explore an important distinction: considering an experience meaningful does not mean believing that we consciously chose every painful thing that happened to us. Sometimes the more powerful question isn't "Why did this happen to me?" but "What might this experience be asking me to learn, and who am I becoming because of it?"

Today's Student Perspective features Martha Wright, Shamanic Medicine Woman and Akashic Reader, who joins Professor Jessica to explore soul contracts through the lens of relationships, personal experience, and the possibility that some lessons continue unfolding long after an experience has ended.

📚 In This Class

✔ What are soul contracts, and why do spiritual traditions explore them?

✔ The difference between Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Soul Contracts

✔ How recurring relationships, experiences, and patterns may reveal deeper life lessons

✔ Whether we can "fail" a soul contract—or simply resist, postpone, or repeat a lesson

✔ How viewing life's challenges as opportunities for growth can change the questions we ask

🎓 Continue Your Education

Previous Class:
➡️ Class 100: Why Are We Here? Welcome to the Human Experience

Begin with Orientation and explore the foundational questions behind the University Earth curriculum.

Next Class:
➡️ Class 102: Why Does Life Keep Teaching the Same Lessons? A New Way to Think About Earth as a School

If our lives are part of a curriculum, why do certain lessons seem to keep repeating?

📌 Connect with Professor Jessica

Website: www.UniversityEarth.org

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jessica.rooks.77377/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/1120_livingmybestlife/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-rooks-20436368/

Luna & Verse Studio: https://www.lunaandversestudio.com

Email: [email protected]