I recently wrote a long post on my Facebook page and Instagram about being asked to teach the art of healing. I think I need to tell a proper story about it.
I do enjoy the fact that in the West, you can participate in any course of your interests. Just pay for it and then you get to learn it. There are plenty of courses to select, weekend courses, online courses, on various topics. For me, it's like a fantasy land and it's so much fun. However, with that also comes the attitude of 'it's just a merchandise, a product to be purchased'. Some people really commercialize their art and turn the sacred knowledge into something else. I have seen someone advertising their numerology skills as something to help you find a new guy. I was horrified.
Think about it, when you learn about your numerology chart you get to see your strengths, challenges, life lessons, life purpose, talents, calling, personality, you get to see why you do things the way you do and if there is anything you need to work on and how. You get to learn about your own life's blueprint for this lifetime! This is deep. Knowing oneself is what we eventually have to do before we can be totally conscious about our own actions and before we can even reach enlightenment. Knowing your life's blueprint helps you navigate your own life! It's very healing and enlightening! There is nothing to do with finding the next guy after a breakup or buying a new home! But that's what gets people's attention, isn't it? When/how to find the next date, when I can get a new car, have a new home, etc. That is pure marketing and that's what I called 'commercialized' and then the art becomes something to cater to people's mundane need (and greed), which doesn't really help heal anyone from their suffering, from the real issues underlying their unhappiness.
I find that quite disrespectful to the art and knowledge. We are given tools for ascension, for the betterment of our kind, for healing, for growth, for enlightenment and what do we do? Use them to get the next material thing we think could fill the void we have inside because we never healed the actual wound? There are people who do this consciously, for marketing and business purposes, and there are those who do this unconsciously because they simply don't understand the depth of the knowledge, of the art so they cannot appreciate it or use it in the way they should. There are also some who would never see the truth when it's staring them right in the face, they only follow the trends and hypes. They don't even recognize what's right in front of them. This is why esoteric teachings were 'secretive' and only the selected few had the opportunities to learn.
Where I come from, depending on the subject and area of the art, the masters can be really selective when it comes to their students. There are masters in Thailand who refuse to teach Westerners unless they've spent years showing their worth before the masters agree to teach, all because of the attitude and commercialization of the art as mentioned above. And when it comes to healing and magic in general, the masters will make you meditate again and again because you simply don't mess with energy irresponsibly and without self work! And I'm not talking about the nice, relaxing type of meditation you often come across in the West, either. I'm talking about 'spend-an-hour-on-your-own-and-let's-see-what-kind-of-mess-you-have' type of meditation! Observe yourself, observe your mind and often, no one's going to guide you anywhere, it's just you and your inner world! Work with your mess, so to speak, and then you might get to learn what you've come for.
Even with picky teachers and proper training that can take years to complete, depending on the subject, some things were still lost along the way. I'm grateful for many of the traditions we kept in my home country, I like the training but unfortunately, the understanding of certain mechanism of energy was lost and all we are left with is the practical, mechanical rules of how to do a certain things, similar to how a lot of people are taught to do Reiki these days. They are taught where to place their hands regardless of the need of the person they're transmitting the healing energy to. For example, a lot of people would mechanically place their hands on the head, then shoulders, then chest, etc., giving a few minutes to each area, as taught even when the recipient of the healing has one area that needs extra attention and that area can be left unattended or not given enough attention and time for healing. When, if you use your intuition, you might intuitively spend more time in one area than in another as needed. This is also one of the reasons why, for some people, Reiki doesn't work. But is the issue with Reiki or with us, humans? Another thing is, without understanding the art and knowledge you're working with, there is a chance for you to turn it into something it wasn't designed to be. Believe me I have heard of 'bad Reiki'...
When you're working with energy, you also need to be careful because the potential power is enormous and with power should come responsibility. When you heal people, you're also dealing with their emotions and when they come to you they already are vulnerable so you need to be responsible, compassionate, and understanding of the consequences of your action/interaction with them. Power and knowledge without responsibility, consciousness and wisdom can lead to disasters. Your ego can also blind you from seeing the bigger picture in some cases. So you need to be trained properly. You need self-work and you need constant guidance, consultations and discussions with your teacher. So when I realized that in many countries people can go to a weekend course and become a certified practitioner of any healing modality, I was terrified. What do those people know about their practice? They might be taught how to do things technically, mechanically, but where is the understanding?
I can't say that everything in Thailand is perfect when it comes to this, though. We might keep certain traditions, which are valuable, and we are respectful to the art. However, the understanding of the how's and why's also got lost in the indoctrination of many things so even with my upbringing, I was still left with many questions that I sought to understand. When you understand how things work or why they are that way, you understand the mechanism of them. You are able to see when to do and not to do something. Also, once you know the rules very well, you will know how to break them properly when breaking the rules is needed.
Where I'm from, we are often left with a lot of rules without explanations. For example, no haircut on Wednesdays, holy days (when people go to temples to pray) are on new moon and full moon days, start ceremonies at 9 o'clock, no weddings on Saturdays, no pointing with feet, no stepping on books, etc., etc. And when you only have rules without understanding the how's, the why's the mechanism of the forces behind those rules, the rules become superstitions and superstitions are then soon discarded, disregarded, thrown out and forgotten. We're witnessing that in Thailand now. First, it was the foreigners that noticed how 'superstitious' we were, and now the younger generations see no points in following those rules. I was one of them. Too many rules, and no explanation whatsoever so why should I bother? In fact, some people in Thailand now are even saying that the Buddhism in Thailand is too full of those superstitious rules that should be taken out of Buddhist practice all together. This is alarming because every religion has some understanding of energy and that's why you can find 'funny' rules in all of them even when no one knows anymore what it's really about, what it's really for and how to actually do that or properly break that rule when needed.
Let me go back to those superstitions I mentioned. Now that I have come to understand how energy really works and I've looked into many different areas, I'm a little older and wiser, I understand where they come from. Let's start with the 'no haircut on Wednesdays'. In Thailand Wednesday is associated with green color and green is all about growth so if the energy is about growth, you might want to do something that involves growing, not cutting down. Of course, if you need to cut something on that day, you most likely would not drop dead. I might have mentioned somewhere in a previous post that the no cutting should be for Thursday because Thursday is ruled by Jupiter, which is about success, growth (in a sense), luck, while Wednesday is associated with Mercury, communication. But then again, Jupiter's color is more of orange/red and Mercury should be gray but somehow Wednesday is appointed green in Thailand and for that, it is associated with growth. Then again, we often start rituals on the eve, new moon tomorrow? We pray tonight. New Year's day tomorrow? We pray overnight tonight, and so on and so forth, so if it's growth day tomorrow, you might not want to cut anything starting today. This kind of makes sense to me.
Let's discuss another example, no stepping on books. What are books? Books are a source of knowledge. For a long time in human history, books were a source of knowledge. Books contain written words and words have powers. Sacred texts were written and bound in books. You pass on your knowledge in words either by talking or writing. So books have become a symbol of knowledge (and in many cases, wisdom). Books are worthy of respect, and if you respect something, if something is valuable to you, to your spirit, why would you step on it or stomp on it? Again, you won't drop dead if you do that. It just shows your relationship with books.
So behind everyone of those seemingly superstitious rule lies a beautiful meaning of how to align with different forces in the universe. But without the understanding all they have become is a superstition. And superstitions are soon forgotten. Then things get lost along the way. Ironically enough, I got to learn some esoteric teaching that gave me the answers and explanation to my questions in the West. Don't you just love the duality and polarity of this dimension? There is no such thing as complete black and white, often, you find the opposites close together!
Seeing all of this, I had thought that I would take certain knowledge with me to the grave. I'm fine with teaching things like numerology, tarot, even meditation online or in weekend courses, but when it comes to energy healing and magic in general, I prefer training people properly or I'd rather not teach at all. It's such a big responsibility! I want to pass on my knowledge with my understanding so that people truly see what they are working with. I want to properly train them so that they receive guidance and grow as a healer as well as a soul. I want to be there for them because this is a journey that can take a long time. There will be a relationship that will last a lifetime. It's not going to be like 'the weekend is over, see you never!'. There will be a lot of discussions, sharing of experiences, we will be supporting one another, grow together. It will be like an extended family. We will build a solid foundation together. So basically, if I'm going to teach the art of healing, I will do it properly, the oral tradition!