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| Image by Sasin Tipchai on Pixabay |
Most of us have heard the saying I have shamelessly butchered in the title of this post. It is built on the premise that when a person is at the point in their life where they are ready to learn a specific thing, the Universe will conveniently direct their steps into the path of the teacher they need. Back in the days of the Theosophists, this was probably more or less the case... but I bet they never accounted for this living entity we call the Internet. These days when the student is ready a whole slew of teachers crawl out of the woodwork with grasping hands and call-to-action buttons.
I have been waylaid by these grasping, button wielding fiends on occasion and had to extricate myself rather rapidly from what would be a disastrous transaction. The increasing popularity of online learning has made it all too easy for charlatans and thieves to pilfer the hard-won bank balances of the unsuspecting. Yes, I did say thieves! I once enrolled on a course to find the whole thing was plagiarised material from a selection of websites and books with a few embedded YouTube videos thrown in. The pseudo authors of this alleged course were not even savvy enough to use a single YouTuber's videos, that would have been far too easy, no they had misappropriated the intellectual property of four or five different YouTube contributors. Plagiarism is the lowest form of theft in my opinion. When somebody has gone to the time and trouble to write a book, or produce content for a website, or filmed and edited a video they should be able to share their content without it being stolen by dishonest reptiles. Apologies for the rant there, plagiarism really is a bugbear of mine.
My first foray into Reiki led me to quite a good online course. The price was good and included all three degrees. The attunements cost extra. A while later I found Lisa Powers' Crystal Reiki and have to say the attunement she provided not only came free with the course but was also much more profound and created a much deeper connection than my initial attunements. The depth of the connection to Crystal Reiki energy from Lisa was enough to convince me to enrol on her Reiki l, 2 and Master courses to reinforce my original attunements, even though those original attunements had worked and given me the connection needed to access the life energy. Sometimes the first teacher is not so much wrong as just not right for you.
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| Image by Geralt Altmann on Pixabay |
On another occasion, I found what looked to be a promising course purporting to teach Shamanism and provide the nine rites of the Munay Ki. Turns out that was a bad joke. The lady in question was every inch the typical fluffy-bunny-willow-wannabe-wicca-flake that abounded around the height of Buffy The Vampire Slayer's popularity, just a little older these days. The annoyingly cloying, airy fairy voice, coupled with exaggeratedly willowy hand gestures, was bad enough but when she confused creating an alter with casting a circle and made unnecessary reference to being a witch I knew this was not the course for me. I was looking for personal spiritual progress, not a terrifying free-fall into bad fanfiction. One refund later and I actually stumbled across a teacher I can work with, who allowed students to preview lessons before enrolling and actually demonstrated workable techniques in the previews. I have at this moment in time not yet begun the course, I am a little preoccupied with Lisa Powers' Reiki courses at the moment. I will, however, be paying close attention to this new teacher too.
Online learning is amazing. It is so easy to find an affordable, or even free, online course for just about any topic you could possibly wish for. A little self-indulgent studying is good for the soul, a little academic or vocational studying is good for the career prospects. Just be aware that quite often the first teacher to appear is not going to be the one you ultimately learn with. When you think you have found the right teacher, keep looking, then keep looking some more; don't be surprised if the teacher waiting patiently behind all the graspy handy, call-to-action buttony, in-it-for-the-money grabbers is the one you have been searching for.
For all the teachers out there, I have joined your ranks, we should all learn from the mistakes of airy-fairy-fluffy-bunny-willow-wannabe and the despicable plagiarists of that first course. If you are going to teach then make sure you teach what you are claiming to teach; and make sure your content is either your own original content or used with permission of the original author. There are a lot of courses out there to compete with; in order to succeed those of us aspiring to pass on our knowledge are going to have to produce high-quality content and bring our A game.
Much Luck
Dawn xx
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