Professional Help

Every once in a while, I have a question that I want answered or a skill that I want to learn. I will explore the options for who can teach me this and attend a class or search for a teacher. I have not found either of these things to be massively successful. The idiom that “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear” is very true and in my life, teachers show up when I am ready, not when I look for them.

For a while I have gone to metaphysical fairs because I have something that I want taught to me and I have a concept in my head that such knowledge will be passed to me by a teacher. A person who desires to teach and has put themselves into a position that I might find them. This is quite possibly a false concept. It is certainly a method towards finding a guide. It even is the way that I found a guide a few years ago. Most of the teachers in my life though, I found them accidentally. I was ready to be taught, but these people didn't wear teacher hats or have business cards that told me to listen to their wisdom. I know that for almost every person who I have been able to guide it has been a similar thing. I am blessed that many times, people who I have been able to assist have passed me on to friends as a recommendation. Sometimes it works out famously and sometimes it doesn't. So, what have we learned at the end of this paragraph of thoughts spilling from my head? That no rule can exist to guide all situations. There are many ways to find a teacher.

Like so many lessons then, this comes back to the consistent lesson of consistency. Recently, I found a quote that said, “as long as you are pointed in the right direction, keep walking.” I think this applies here. Teachers can be found by going to fairs and directories and searching for them. They can also intersect with you while you are on that path or another which you think has nothing to do with it. One must keep walking and moving toward a goal even if that doesn't always yield results that we might be looking for. I do pushups every day. Every day, no matter what. It does not always yield results that I can see. A great many days, it is just part of my routine. Some days though, I really learn a thing or notice a difference in my strength. Keep on walking. You don't know how far you have gone. Like a child on a bike trip who does not understand what the map says or where this is necessarily going, we just need to keep going.

So, should I attend classes and go to sessions with people who desire to teach? Probably. But much like eating will not solve my hunger forever, or reading one book will not dull my thirst for knowledge, I do not think that any one skill or lesson is going to be the thing that teaches me what I am looking for. Attend and search and learn, but realize, this is a step. There is no final precipice to arrive at. I know people well into their senior years. They are still searching for answers to what it is that they long to know. Sometimes we find that piece and it gives us peace. Until it arrives though, our job is to just keep walking.