Every few months I get bitten by a bug. It is one that for several reasons I have continued to put off for a few years. You see there is a part of me that craves teaching others—craves it like the Sun chases the Moon.
To me it is not about sitting high and mighty or any other egotistical approach. Nor is my desire about me being a teacher of the Craft, though I have trained and initiated before. There is too much responsibility and duty, and risk if these are not taken seriously or properly, for students to be taken merely for the sake of indulging the ego. I cannot accept any such approach for myself, which is fine since my own impetus doesn’t come from there.
It is easy to fall into the ego trap though, after all students tend to put their teacher on a pedestal. On one hand, this can be used by the teacher for their own ego work. There are, however, easier and better methods of doing such that do not rely on students putting them on a pedestal. It can be damaging to the teacher to want to be on that pedestal, needing students that put them there. There is a fallacy here. At some point, the teacher will fall off that pedestal, and there is no climbing back up. Every teacher on a pedestal will fall. If the teacher liked being there because of ego and tries to return to that position, they will lose their student, doing them and the Craft a disservice.
Nonetheless, teachers will be placed on pedestals, even when they don’t want to be. They too will fall… which is a good thing. As one of my own various teachers likes to point out, the teacher doesn’t really begin to teach the student until they fall off the pedestal and the two become equals. My simple advice to students out there, if your teacher suddenly falls short of your expectations and doesn’t attempt to twist the truth so as to appear perfect, but instead admits their own flaws as a human, it is not the time to quit. There are always other factors to be concerned with, so take this advice only as part of it. For instance, if there is abuse or exploitation then quitting needs to happen immediately! That is assuming the relationship could not be avoided at all. My advice given doesn’t apply there. If you as a student are training with a creditable teacher and they fall before your eyes, take it not as a sign of their failings as a teacher but as a sign that the relationship has evolved into a space of vast potential.
Long side tangent over, my own desire to teach is about witnessing. Through passing the Craft on, I get to stand in wonder as another’s Craft blossoms before my eyes. It is the spark of understanding suddenly shinning in the eye that I crave. That is all the teacher does anyway; “Here is the praxis. Here is how you Craft. Go, the rest is on you.”
I have over the course of the past couple of years turned people away seeking with me. They are all lovely people—truly. The main reason I have done so is due to my own frequent moving. I feel it would be a disservice to take a student on only to move away and I am not sure I am up to teaching at a distance, though technology in that arena has developed a long way from the ole snail-mail correspondence course. Additionally, I was undergoing an immersion into a new praxis and Tradition. As a result, it is certainly not the time to teach. There are other reasons as well, but a blog is not the place to discuss such. Let’s just say they tie deeply into my own Craft.
So why even bring all of this up? Quite frankly, writing blogs helps me to explore corners of my thoughts, most of which gets omitted. Such is the case with this post as well. The oath-bound or praxis specific stuff goes into my private and closed blog. Everything else either gets written here, not written at all, or deleted after being written. So there you have it, all this is just about me digging into parts of my Craft. I don't think any of this will make the bug go away though.
Boidh Se!
-Spanish Moss
“Lost in a thicket bare-foot upon a thorned path.”
