I’m noticing, at this time of the first harvest, what I’m harvesting in my life. This will be a post in honor of teachers – on both sides of the veil.
I’ve been doing online work with three teachers – transformational work with Karissa Schwartz, who is an Inner Alignment Coach, and work with the Iron Pentacle, one of the core magical tools within the Reclaiming and Anderson Feri tradition, with Chelidon and Raven Edgewalker of the World Tree Lyceum.
I was doing work with Karissa when she mentioned that of course, those of us who came from difficult childhoods often assume we have to do everything ourselves. We couldn’t count on others – so we learned not to ask. As is often the way with insight, when she said that, part of me thought, “Yeah, I knew that,” at the same time that another part of me realized, for the first time, what it meant.
It meant that all my life, I’ve taken the long way around to get from one place to another, because I did it all myself. And I suddenly realized how unsustainable that approach was, and is.
On the heels of that realization it came to me how rich it is to learn from others. To have like minds on kindred paths sharing knowledge of that path and the tools that help sustain us. That’s been very rich in both the work with Karissa and in the Iron Pentacle course, which is about reclaiming the vibrant points of our souls that make us fully human (my take on it). It’s about reclaiming the richest parts of our humanity.
The online work in both these courses is shifting decades-old personal challenges in my life, and giving my magic much more breadth. It’s teaching me to sometimes look to others for what I need – like last full moon, when I was walking out in my back yard to honor spirits, guides and ancestors. I did the preliminary casting and chanting, and later, after the spirits had joined me, one of my primary guides said, “It is good to be with you. You should call on us more often, so we could come and be with you. You should ask us for our help.”
Of course I often ask for their help when I’m doing focused magical work. But I hadn’t thought that they could be support for me at other times, too – I hadn’t thought to ask. “We are here for you,” my guide said. “We’re ready to give you what you need, and we hope you’ll ask – but for us to help you, to advise you, you have to ask.”
I was struck by how powerful support like that could be in my life – that insight and ageless wisdom. So I’m going to be asking – my friends, my loved ones, my teachers, my guides. All that great support there for me, all that sustainability – if I can just let go of the past and remember that I don’t do this work alone.
Golden Lammas blessings to those who teach, those who learn, and those who ask and are answered.
