I have had several opportunities as of late to work with people who have natural or organic ways of doing something, whether that is running energy, channeling, or intuitive readings; people who have decided to seek out formal training in something they are already doing. I always support this. Having the book learning, knowing the mechanics of your skill set can only make your practice stronger. But it’s hard. It’s hard to have to think about what you do naturally. It’s hard to have to learn different ways of doing something that’s usually so easy.

I grew up talking to animals. I didn’t even realize not everyone did it for quite a while. And when I started taking classes in it, it was just plain weird, because I was suddenly having to think of my baseline reality as not-the-norm. Trying to figure out the mechanics of how I do something, well, intuitively was a challenge. Luckily, as the daughter of engineers, I had a certain amount of training in the mechanics of things and in thinking about how people think. But it was still odd. I could do the exercises perfectly well, but the rules and techniques were challenging to assimilate. It wasn’t until I attended a workshop about something entirely different that the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Up until that moment, I had no way to explain how to do what I was doing, but this teacher, in a random tangent, hit the nail in the head and the lightbulb went off.

Bear in mind, also, that each of us has our own learning style, so it may take several people trying to explain the same concept for it to make sense to us. I believe rather strongly that experiential knowledge is key in any learning style, so working with a live teacher, preferably in a workshop setting so you can hear the experience of other people, is always going to be more useful than reading a book or watching a video. You have to do in order to fully understand.

Here is the most important reason, in my mind, to go study something you already do inherently: once you know the rules and guideline and mechanics of a modality or technique, you can turn that rote information into an art. If you understand why a thing works, or how it works, you can expand on that and create something powerful, new, and exciting. But it really helps to have the “book learning.” It makes your skill all the more solid.

There is also an energetic transmission that can come from the teacher, that will enhance your skills, understanding, or both. Nine times out of ten, that’s what I’m actually looking for when I go study with someone. Yeah, I’m a data junkie, and I always want more information, but the energetic transmission that comes with the imparting of that data is the part that turbo charges what it is that I’m learning. Some teachers know they’re doing it, and some don’t, but it doesn’t really much matter.

This may sound like a sales pitch, and it is, but it’s not a pitch for my services, it’s a pitch to help you blow through the challenges your negative ego will throw in your way. Any time you embark on a growth path, the negative ego will do everything in its considerable power to deter you. Your negative ego is so powerful it can even create chaos outside of you, if internal chaos is not a big enough deterrent. My own negative ego once blew up the alternator on my car to try to keep me from taking a powerful class. In the case of learning about something you do naturally, the negative ego has a powerful kernel of truth to work with: you already know how to do this. Why should you stretch, why should you do something that feel so hard or difficult or complicated, it will reason (or whine), for something you already do? Why should you be made to feel like you’re not good at something you’re already good at? If you listen to that, you’re limiting yourself. Highly intelligent people run up against this all the time in school and then in life. They are inherently good at whatever subject, and it makes them feel bad about themselves if they get it wrong, so many of them never learn discipline, and they never achieve greatness. In order to soar, you have to be willing to make mistakes, to try different things, and to look foolish.

How great do you want to be? How much do you want to feel like you’re growing, expanding, improving? How much progress so you want to make on your path?

That‘s why you should do the hard thing.

To be the light of the world.

Ayamanatara