Cafe Hitch-hike

2021-11-05

I quit (but not what you think)

I seriously am not a quitter when it comes to tasks. I can usually quit people (that's a different story) but with things to do, plans or tasks, I'm your man. I don't quit until it's over, I'm asked to quit, or I see that I exhausted all possibilities (and I'm usually exhausted).

I reached a decision (kind of) to quit the energy work training that I started last spring. I started with it because I thought it connected with personal goals and the direction I wanted to go. I've done 2 weekend sessions of these workshops, and I must admit...

...what I learned didn't settle easily with me. The origins of the work was in a culture distantly related to my own and I wasn't fully sure I had permissions to do it; I felt like I was appropriating it to a degree. I understand that it's one thing to express respect for a culture that creates something we practice, and I tried to be respectful, but something still felt like I was trespassing.

...the participants. We started out with 13 people at the first workshop and then 7 (including the facilitator) at the second one. Their assistant and 5 others dropped out. Why did so many drop out, including the right-hand man? I hate to say this, but the ones who remained were intense (and I guess I'm part of that pool of intense, witchy women)! There was a weird energy whenever I was around them that often left me feeling drained no matter how I tried to roll with them.

...the beliefs. Some of them were pretty out there and even batshit batty. With the pandemic going on and all the disruptions, the workshop had quite the explanations for that. When I told a couple of guy friends about them, they protectively said, "watch out, before you know it, they'll be asking you to drink Kool-Aid!" That made me feel a tad bit uncomfortable, too, and something told me to heed their observation.

Oh, yeah, the operation was also headed by a leader who was supremely charismatic, and I'm very sure he looked just as yummy as Abs Guy / Chris Helmsworth when he was that age. I guess they usually need that to start such a group. It's usually not a good sign in some ways, too.

...the energy. I learned to work with it in ways I knew and my understanding of it grew, yet I didn't feel comfy with it. If anything, it left me feeling unsettled and sometimes disoriented.

I finally told my other mentor M. that I would not be attending the next workshop series. She assured me that I'll still belong to the group and said she understood. It just wasn't the right time, place, or condition, and she assured me as long as I stay open, other chances to for me to follow my path will appear.

I do have an online coven where I can discuss these things with other females, and I thought maybe this would be a good local one. Which leads me to...

...the intensity. The women in this group were tres intense. If they felt something, you knew it whether they said it or not. I had lunch with 2 women (a mother and a daughter who were super close) and got to know others. One of the things that stood out was the amazing passion and intensity they carried in their pursuit of getting better at working with energy and trying out its various modalities (e.g., reiki, acupuncture, use of divinity tools). It almost felt frantic, like they scrambled from one modality to another, one workshop series to another, one teacher to another, trips to exotic lands to study and learn. When was it ever enough?

Ok, all of this sounds 110% familiar to me. I've done all the same. Our facilitator has said the each member of the group reflects something to us that we don't like, and they were right. I could absolutely see that I've approached if not chased these things with a very similar intensity. What they did (and myself to an extent) was almost frightening to me, and it forced me to stop and think about the ways I've approached my own spiritual and healing journey (yeah, they all definitely had things they wanted to heal just like me).

I suppose the group made me think really hard about a lot of things and how this new thing fit in my life. I felt uncomfortable working with the energy, and its attached beliefs. I thought it fit with some things I learned and decided to pursue after I had my experiences with psychedelic medicine (which personally, was beneficial for me though it also wasn't easy). Well, maybe like I said earlier, it just wasn't the time and place.

I thought of the various classes and trainings I had over the years. I'm glad I didn't have many that went badly, and I hate to say that those that did were quite the wastes of time and energy, and I had to spend some time steering away from them because they didn't put me in a good direction at all. Ohhhhhh, my prime example is the education classes I had to take to get my teaching credentials, but most of the classes were a series of hot messes and the training ended disastrously. I learned that if a class is going badly, it's usually best to pull the plug and try again elsewhere.

downwind | upstream