I know that it sounds contradictory, but this Water Witch is an Air elemental. To me, this makes sense as there is oxygen within water. And water and air do tend to work together, creating evaporation and rain etc. Something that many don’t realize is that when one is an Air elemental, they tend to be a multitasker. I tend to read 10 books at one time. I don’t finish them in record time, or even at the same general time. But I often have many books on the go. I correlate information from said books and bridge information and weave it all together into something of a format that totally makes sense to me, even if it doesn’t make sense to anyone else.
This is something that comes quite naturally to me. And for the most part it serves me well. But when I was younger and doing this as I was integrating many teachings on a spiritual level, I had this one spiritual teacher observe that I would get frustrated with not being able to learn it all at once. Yes, I studied a variety of avenues, but I wanted it all NOW. So one day he looked at me and said, “Have you ever heard that expression ‘Rome was not built in a day’?” I had, and I did not see his point. Then he said, “Here you are, so eager to learn it all and so impatient with yourself that you are not learning it all at once. Well let me tell you…Rome was not built in a day. In fact it was not built in a week, or a month or a year or in ten years. It took a LONG time to build Rome. And that was just a city. You are building a PERSON. Like a city, you need proper foundation. It takes time for that to happen. And you want your pathways to be paved well, not just helter-skelter. That takes time as well. So perhaps consider cutting yourself a bit of slack and get comfortable with the fact that you are going to be learning about this stuff for THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. There is a lot of time for you to work on each thing. And if you don’t get done with learning it all in this lifetime, that is okay. There can always be the next life in which to pick up where you left off here and take it from there.”
These words stuck. They stuck in my brain, but also in my heart. This man truly cared about me and about my well-being. He could see that I was driving myself into an early nervous breakdown if I did not slow the hell down. I did not resent him for his insight. I cherished him for that…right up to the day he died. When you get to be my age it is an actual miracle if any of your teachers, in whatever capacity, are still alive.
Now, years later…decades later…I find myself saying similar things to people who are studying the craft of Shamanism with me. By the way, I will never call them my “students” because that would imply a position of authority over them, which I do not have. We are all equals, plain and simple. But so many want all the information all at one time and I find myself encouraging them to just take a breath and trust their process instead of forcing an agenda on the entire thing. That way they can learn so much more so much more thoroughly. And it needs to be organic. That means that the lessons are not laid out in a pattern that can become “cookie-cutter”. They are designed according to where the person is at in their own life and what needs to be learned about where they are at and what they can do with that. No amount of theoretical work will match the work that is done on a deeply personal level. Walking through the process of discovery and healing is the best instructional manual of all. And once something is learned on a deeply personal level, it becomes easily available for when the moment arises that it is the appropriate action for whomever else is walking the same path of healing.
There is that parabel about the man who fell into a deep, dark hole. He kept calling for assistance to get out of the hole, and each person that came by offered little to nothing, because they were unfamiliar with his circumstance. But then this one guy comes along and jumps into the hole with him. “What are you DOING?” the man asked, incredulous that this guy just jumped in with him. “It’s gonna be okay,” the man replied, “I have been in this hole before. I know how to get out. Follow me.” That is how it actually works. Something that is completely unfamiliar in the healing realm is something that, chances are fairly high, will be a stumbling block for the person fascilitating the healing. They may have read a book or an article about it, but unless they have walked that path, it is all just theory. But the experience of healing that…that is a precious tool that needs to be savored…and shared. That experience takes a lot of time. First, the event needs to take place that causes the wound. Then there needs to be the acknowledgement of the wound. Then there needs to be the addressing of the wound. And then, with someone of fair experience in this type of wound, the healing can take place. But that healing also will take a lot of time, depending upon the wound. And it is not like we can keep picking at the wound and not expect it to get infected. We have to heal it in stages, allowing the wound to heal over to one degree or another…to scar, if you will, before we address the next level of healing. Picking at scabs will not serve us well with this.
Everything about healing takes time. After all, we are creating a person here, not just a city.