Teacher to Teacher

I did not make any new years resolutions. Last month, I began a practice of setting intentions on every new moon, and releasing every full moon. I think setting intentions monthly does not call for any shallow ambitions to be made January 1st, most likely unrealized or unpracticed by February only to be brought up again or even forgotten by next year.  I will practice being gentle with my Self, an ongoing practice too significant for 2012 alone. A friend of mine mentioned that she likes to pick a word for the year. I like this and picked two today: Gratitude and Amazement.

This week alone a good word for me is humility as I cling onto old habits. One particular habit that I did not, until recently, know that I had any chance of going back too. Even as I write tonight I'm listening to a heart wrenching Cat Power song and finding comfort in the grief that resonates through the melody. But, being gentle, I'm giving myself permission to listen to sad songs for an hour or so. Winter is a time of turning inward and I am so in it. But I did not choose to do my work because I thought it would be easy and it certainly isn't as I go even deeper. I have no regrets.

Back to the gratitude part. I am so grateful for and in awe of the incredible teachers that have shown up in my life. I was working with one such teacher tonight who has become very dear to me. We dug into my past. There's more?! Of course there's more. But before we started he asked in what ways I thought I affected him. I thought about it for a moment. "Laughter", I answered. "And tenderness. You can be kind of a hard ass and I am somehow able to get past that, bring out your gentle side." We moved onto to the work but thinking about this later, I was amazed. One of the intentions I set during my last ceremony was to be shown ways to bring my gifts into this world. I forget sometimes (okay often times) that I am always sharing my gifts, although they are sometimes subtle and I can be to stubborn to see. I also recognized that this teacher was saying you teach me.

One doesn't have to work with a Shaman or a mentor to have teachers. A teacher may take the form of a lover, a friend, an enemy or a bird in the wild or someone that has gone before us. Once I opened myself up to being taught I began to realize that we are all teachers, yes, including me.