I’ve been thinking another interesting insight I out of my visiting the Druid Grove meeting. At the end of the talk, after the leader had laid out a thumbnail sketch of what Druidry is, she asked each of us to tell the group which level of Druid we thought we were. There’s a cool overview of Druid spiritual tradition Here.
The Druid hierarchy consists of three levels: Bards, Ovates & Full Druids. The bards are pretty much what you would expect, singers, storytellers and entertainers. Though, within the Druid world, they take on additional roles of court jester and intelligence agent. By traveling far and wide, and listening wherever they go, and by having the ear of the king (as the jester), they keep the other Druids apprised of what people were thinking and the state of the land.
The Ovates are the healers, judges, justice of the peace, midwives. These don’t move around nearly as much, working within a relatively small area, so they can know and be known and trusted by the people in that area.
The Full Druids are the top of the heap. The decision makers and teachers. Responsible for keeping balance in all things, including things political.
When asked to pick one of these, I saw that I was somewhere between Bard and Ovate. Music, performance and theater used to be a big deal for me and they consumed a lot of my attention. Now, not so much. My attention is elsewhere and I’m more interested in being a healer than in getting noticed as a performer. To my chagrin, I also notice that “I’m not there yet,” at least in my own mind.
I’ve been told many encouraging things, but, when it gets right down to it, I don’t feel like a healer. I’ve been told this would happen. That I would reach a point, after the initial coolness of learning all the good stuff wears off, when it comes home to me that the real world is not as simple as it appeared in training. The last thing our teacher told us at graduation, was that we now had unconscious competence, and that over the period of the internship, we will move that to conscious competence and build confidence in our skills. There is no question that I have had to face some hard realities about what I know, how to apply it and the limitations of time, money, and what the clients will allow.
Being out of the game for a month has really shaken my confidence. I had a group session last night that interesting, but not particularly exciting. It wasn’t clear if any of the people there had gotten what they were looking for, and that always makes me feel a bit low. I really need to get over that. People get what they need to get, and they may not be too forthcoming about it. They may not realize what they’ve gotten til some time down the road. It’s really nice for someone to have a really cool experience and tell us all about it, but it doesn’t always happen that way and I need to be ok with that.
It’s clear to me that my journey, to being the type of healer I want to be, is going to take some time. And in that time I’m going to have to work a regular job to finance my “education.” I want to travel more and take more classes, and meet more people. I don’t want the classes in order to “learn” stuff or get certificates to hang on my wall, but to have the experience of what that modality will teach me, on an unconscious level. Any type of training, if you approach it in the right way, forces you to uncover and confront aspects of yourself that get in your way. No one training will uncover everything, so it can easily take years to get to the bottom of the blocks and negative beliefs that keep you where you are.
Having a year and a half off has allowed me to let go of an enormous amount of cynicism about the computer industry. Now that I have a goal, the work is a means to an end, no longer the stultifying activity required to survive. This time around, I will find a position that suits my values, at a company that I can have some respect for. In the past, I would take whatever I could get, based on the premise that I had no value and was lucky to get anything at all. It still feels a bit strange to consider myself valuable, with useful skills that should be respected and listened to, but I’m getting there. I’m still working on striking that balance between honoring myself and standing up for my values, and not being an opinionated, selfish, jerk. As I say, I’m working on it.
Druidry has it cool points, and I may head in that direction someday. But right now, I’m still trying to find my footing in this more mundane world, footing that will allow me the freedom to explore my reality in different ways.
No comments:
Post a Comment