Proving yourself to your Teacher

Proving Yourself to your Teacher

In the American culture we work hard to show what we know.  It is demanded that employees, bosses, students “know” information. You are asked to “prove” yourself over and over again and have to jump through hoops to do so. You are taught to stand your ground, prove you are “right” sometimes you even need to “take over” to show you are “ready”. This is the excessive yang energy of the culture. But you are made of both yin and yang energies. The work I teach in the tradition of my Teacher emphasizes the responsibilities and compassionate and considerate behaviors of this current life on Earth, as well as cultivating and developing a stronger ability to follow the Guidance of Above. It is learning to live balancing yang and yin energies, both. It is quite a challenge. You have to learn to be soft and open while holding your ground in your Earth duties. You have to learn information and knowledge for your work life and raising children, pets, etc. and then be willing to work with Spirit and your Teacher (if you are blessed to have one) with a Beginner’s Mind (a Zen concept, google it if you are interested). Your Earth life often requires logic and assertiveness to win and hold your positions. Your Spiritual work will take you down the path of contradictions because you simply cannot learn until your energy shifts, and what it takes to shift your energy will later completely contradict what you were first “taught.” In case you haven’t noticed, this is often how life itself works.  

Therapy often goes this way. For example, you have no boundaries so you are working on them now. You will find yourself encouraged, even pushed, until you learn them, practice them. Now you set them, typically too hard, too fast. You might become arrogant, “right”, and even defensive. Now you are counseled to back off and soften, to keep your focus on you and you accuse your therapist of being confusing, contradictory, not knowing what s/he is doing etc. But as you are the one getting counseled, you have no understanding of the process and the person guiding you has no obligation to explain to you something that you cannot yet understand because you are in the process of learning about it, and you do not have the decades of training and experience to grasp the understanding even if you were told the explanation. You will be unable to hear it because you do not have the context, yet, sometimes with children they literally do not have the neural development to grasp the concept. In energy work, your energy field may not be developed enough to in any way grasp what is going on or even why or what is happening. It will feel like a muddle. It might feel like you are being attacked because you are filled with fear, fear of the unknown.  

This is why one can stay with a Teacher for decades. The learning goes from one opposite to the other, to teach you to find the middle while you experience the extremes. You learn balance. Every time you take a Spiritual step forward, your entire world of balance will change again. You will again swing from one extreme to another until you find a new level of balancing. Balance is not static. It is a work of art; it is not one answer or one new behavior.  Your Teacher will always have something new to show you, unless you have decided you have learned all you can from your Teacher, and then it is time to move on. How can you be sure your decision to move on is coming from Guidance instead of left brain reasoning, or your wounded self instead of Guidance (a very common occurrence)?  There is no simple answer to this; it will be trial and error. If you are working with a True Teacher, they will take you back, even if you leave for ten years, even if you try to bring them down (which has happened so many time with my own Teacher, which was painful to see).

Working with a True Teacher is not for everyone. It is extremely challenging, much more so than working by yourself, or declaring yourself a “teacher” of some sort, in some area, after a year or so of “experiences” and “working directly with Your guides as they talk to you in the shower”.  There is nothing wrong with practicing what you have learned from the moment your learn it. And there are plenty of people who will pay for “classes” with someone who has one or two years of experience. That is a different Path than the Eastern traditions. In the Eastern traditions you have a Teacher for life. All the Teachers in the Eastern tradition still have their own Teacher even if they themselves are in their 70’s or 80’s (check out Pema Chodron, and my Teacher as well). You are encouraged to “practice” with others, to help others as a helper, not a “teacher”. You never assume you are a Teacher unless specifically asked and supported to do so, by your own Teacher, not by “signs” or dreams that you have decided have “shown you” you have a “gift” and “should be” “teaching”.  For those of you bristling right now, none of this is criticism. It is simply a different Spiritual practice than the Eastern and older traditions which includes the work and teachings offered at Life Path Healings. And the practices of these thousands of years old traditions may simply not be for you.

If your Teacher is asking for your fortune, or your sexuality, or behaving in any manner that feels like a “cult” to you, of course step away and observe in a way that feels safe for you. Other than conditions that truly threaten your safety, expect to sometimes feel unsafe with a True Teacher. Your energy field itself will be challenged. In all fields of science including quantum (energy), stress is ALWAYS needed for any change, good or bad, any growth. For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction ~ Newton’s Third Law. Your left brain, your emotional child, your dark arrogant self, your wounded manipulative self, your “I don’t need or want anybody” self, etc. WILL at some point, and more than once, be challenged.  How to slow down your development if you are working with a True Teacher: Spend your time analyzing your Teacher and how s/he is teaching and whether or not s/he is “saying it the right way” “getting the facts wrong” etc. Take a  defensive stand with your Teacher and justify your words, reactions, choices, behaviors, etc. Use your energy to “explain” to your Teacher what you are “really thinking” and what “really happened” (because your Teacher obviously got it wrong) when you are told something or shown something by your Teacher, instead of simply immersing your Self in your own lessons, analysis of your own reactions, choices, actions and behaviors, and be willing to feel your feelings until something deeper is revealed to you after a bit of time. Being receptive is scary for most people in America. They associate it with being a loser, a doormat, giving up, losing control. Waiting, to see what develops, what is revealed, is something not familiar in America. Instead, you thrash, and in your thrashing often lash out, or spend a great deal of time with like-minded people discussing your “story” and why you are “right”. When this happens (not everyone goes through this to this degree), your Teacher will have to back off and simply leave you alone. You are thrashing. When people are in the thrashing stage of learning (and not everyone goes through this stage), there is no room for learning. Your teacher is not “punishing” you or “ignoring” you. There is absolutely no way to engage when a person is thrashing. Your Teacher needs to let you thrash, while holding his/her own space as a Teacher. 

If you would like a very detailed journaled account of a Westerner’s experience of studying with an Eastern Master and engaged in profound work with the energies of Spirit and true Soul Evolution, read the book Daughter of Fire. If you want to “prove” yourself to a Teacher from any of the Eastern traditions, you will have to be willing to “wait and see” and many times for one or two years if the Spiritual leap you are currently taking is a profound one, not a small adjustment in a step forward. You will have to be willing to “trust” as you wait and see, without attacking, without  making yourself right, using your logical left brain to try and make sense of something that is currently “unacceptable” to your analysis of what is wrong with your Teacher or what was said or how it was said or the timing of when it was said (the list is endless). You will have to choose to be Spiritually soft, keep your Beginner’s Mind, be willing to “not know” and not have a “story”, and if you decide to leave and then come back you will need to be able to get over your ego especially if you left in a huff or perhaps even acted against your Teacher in word and/or deed (as I have observed happening in many Paths, and with my own Teacher).

At Life Path Healings, as with the work and Path of my own Teacher (both Leong and Wong Loh) no one is endorsed as a Teacher unless you hear that directly from the Teacher. My Teachers (of over 30 years) guide and advise me in my current work and know my work and situations at Life Path Healings. This is the tradition and discipline of this Practice. There are many Paths. The Eastern esoteric path of Mystery and Service may not be for you.  At Life Path Healings, some students practice helping others. They give “readings”, teach crystals, act as a medium etc. Some charge money, others simply give. Have fun. Learn. Help others while you learn and help your Self. Do use discretion regarding any choices you make regarding whom you practice with or “work” with and do not assume anyone has been endorsed in any manner even if they claim to be. This is something we had to go through with my Teacher as well, people proclaiming themselves to be some kind of representative when they were not and written warnings were sent to all people coming to study as students as part of the “new comers” packet, until it finally died down. If you have any questions about a particular person, do not hesitate to ask questions at Life Path Healings regarding that person and their practice.

Journey On with an Open Heart. Be Soft for in softness there is great strength.