![\"\"](\"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Teachers.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
When I was at my hungriest for a teacher one did not magically appear with the answers I wanted to know. Well not in the way I expected. In hindsight I had many teachers. I was passionate, curious and worked hard to understand. I picked up two practices from two different authors that served me very well. One was to question. \u201cThe right question is a key.\u201d The other said \u201cdo the work, the rest will come, have faith.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Through my work with spirit in my teens I had already been in a teaching position and I seemed to gather students, or at least people who wanted me to teach them all the time. At first I taught anyone and everyone. I learned a lot from teaching. I still do. When I thought I knew an answer my students would hit me with an interesting curve ball that was not an answer I had thought of. <\/span><\/p>\n Teaching can be such a joyful and uplifting thing. It is so educational, healing, and loads of fun. If I give a workshop I have been paid and set a price mostly for the travel, venue and so on, but mostly my teaching has been free. This has led to some really unpleasant situations, ones where I was deeply out of pocket or de-valued. Over the years I\u2019ve had more broken hearts from students than lovers. For every hour they have put in I\u2019ve put in three. It was exhausting and draining and as with many teachers, I burned out. So I stopped teaching. <\/span><\/p>\n Yet someone would beg me, plead with me, promise me they would do x y and z and sometimes I relented, and sometimes I didn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n A pattern emerged.<\/span><\/p>\n I would teach and then they would learn and when they had learned the lesson they needed (not necessarily the ones I had been teaching) off they went. Sometimes peacefully, sometimes not. I felt like a failure. That I was terrible at picking students. What was I doing wrong? Of course the answer was nothing. <\/span><\/p>\n What I teach is not found in books, at least not the ones I didn\u2019t write. I give practical spiritual knowledge. Someone\u2019s spiritual path is not for me to dictate, and while I am responsible for what I teach, only the student is responsible for what they learn.<\/span><\/p>\n The student is responsible for what they learn.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n No teacher can open your mind and transplant knowledge and wisdom into it. Sometimes it requires work, effort and time. Sometimes it will just come. Try and balance mirth and reverence. Give it a joyful heart. Try it their way, try it a hundred different ways. Understand that right now you might not see the point but it might make sense in context. For some reason the parable of the Prince popped into my head.<\/span><\/p>\n An Eastern Prince went to study at a Shaolin temple. He was given a bucket of water and told to slap the surface. He did as he was told. \u201cDo it again.\u201d And so he did. He slapped and slapped until the bucket was empty. Wet and sore the Prince wondered what the point was. \u201cWhat now?\u201d he asked. \u201cNow go to the well, and refill the bucket.\u201d The Prince drew the water, and carried it up the hill. \u201cNow slap the water until it is empty again.\u201d Day after day, week after week the Prince spent all day slapping water. He grew bitter at his pointless task, that he, a Prince was being used so. After a year he went home for the Kings birthday. The whole court buzzing with questions about what marvels he had learned. \u201cShow us!\u201d they begged. \u201cTell us\u201d they called. In a fit of rage the Prince yelled \u201cENOUGH\u201d and slammed his hand down on the hardwood table. The whole court murmured in surprise and awe. The table had cracked down the middle and slowly fell into two pieces. Of course the crowd was pleased but the Prince stopped and stared at his hand. He humbly returned to the temple and continued to slap water out of a bucket, this time without any bitterness at all.<\/span><\/p>\n Some people spend a day slapping water, think it\u2019s pointless and leave. Rubbishing the teacher or lesson. New things are hard. The spiritual path is not a straight line. It is a spiral and the lesson you are learning will depend on your mind-set.<\/span><\/p>\n There is no\u201d Perfect Teacher\u201d<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n There is this post-Judo-Christian hangover still in the pagan community, and in culture at large that to be spiritual you must also be x. Old, saintly, male, all powerful, whatever it might be, that the teacher must be perfect.<\/span><\/p>\n The truth is there are no perfect people, maybe save the Dali Lama and he\u2019s busy. Pagan teachers are human, with all the great and gloriously things that entails. We get sick. We have bad days. We poop. We have complicated relationships. We make mistakes. That doesn\u2019t make us bad teachers, or bad people it makes us human. Of course it is nice to be respected but don\u2019t put us on a pedestal either. We will always fall off. We will always disappoint you. Not because we are bad at what we do, but because the saintly expectation and constraints of \u201cspiritual\u201d simply have ideals in them that nobody I know has yet to achieve. That means just as you will learn imperfectly so you will have imperfect teachers. That is a lesson in itself. No amount of knowledge or spiritual power divorces you from being human. That to be spiritual is not about being perfect, but still striving to be better. <\/span><\/p>\n