I write, every morning.

I write longhand in a paper journal, using a fountain pen. There's something very 'intimate' about writing by hand, which is quite lost when you sit and peck away at the keys on a keyboard. Science even agrees... we use a different part of our brains to form letters, as opposed to when we type.

The other day-- after I'd watched a rather turbulent discussion unfold in a forum-- I sat contemplating the issue of healing. How do we heal? What does it take, to heal? What is TRUTH? Who gets to decide what Truth is? How important is not only the healing message, but the WAY the message is conveyed?

And so, these words flowed onto my page. For some, they may feel inflammatory, insulting and incendiary. For others, they may strike close to home.

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[I am 'speaking,' in thoughts, to several ostensibly evolved 'guru-types' who were part of aforesaid heated discussion]

'I sit here and watch you, experiencing how you dispense your wisdom. You don't *call* yourselves Teachers, but you covertly allude to knowing better than others. You haughtily dismiss others as delusional and ignorant, if their opinions differ from yours. But the worst thing? You are scab-pickers!

I watch you... you study others and then seek out those places where a scab has formed over an old wound. You home in on it and pick at it until the wound has been re-opened and is bleeding anew. You do so, with NO regard for the fact that the wound was cleaned, sterilized, treated and prepared to heal. You see only a scab, and keep picking at it till it bleeds. Then you state 'Ah! See! You're wounded, and need to heal!'

Is this what you call HEALING?

Is this also what you do to YOURSELF, when you cut your leg on a sharp rock? Do you keep picking open your own tissue which is trying to repair itself, so that the pain and memory of the wound may be with you FOREVER? So that your skin-- when it finally HEALS-- is covered with a thick layer of scar tissue, rather than the normal skin our bodies are capable of regrowing?

I don't call this HEALING.

Is healing not about treating a wound with care and compassion, and generally doing what you can to help the wounded area become as close to WHOLE as it was, before the wound?

Where is the value in creating a patch of skin, now covered in thick, unfeeling and unyielding scar tissue? Do you do this, so you can wear your old wounds with ego-driven PRIDE? So that everyone around you-- including those you purport to teach and heal-- can SEE your obvious scars, and thereby feed YOUR ego through their impressedness that you have 'survived?'

STOP!

Stop, for a moment and consider-- if you still remember how-- whether your scab-picking road to 'Healing' really exists for the genuine good of the person who sought your wisdom in becoming whole... or is actually an expression of your own latent anger, bitterness, hostility and disappointment at how HARD your own path has been.'

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I have never been a supporter of the idea of 'bullying people into self-awareness.' I won't deny that it may work for some, in some circumstances... but I also feel that it is quite destructive (and perhaps betrays a narrow and closed mind) to apply as a 'one size fits all' teaching paradigm. When I consider my own greatest learning moments, they were NOT the ones that were forcefully beaten into my head with a baseball bat, rather, they were the ones there were 'quietly illustrated' to me, through the use of compassionate words and meaningful parables.

Which brings me back to the point of the dangers of 'one size fits all enlightenment.' That's really the thing that bugs me.

Learning is a two-way street, an exchange of information between Teacher and student. The onus is on ME, as a student, to be discerning about how I will best learn. If I look at a Teacher and all I can get to is 'Geez, you need some SERIOUS anger management,' I will not hear their message. But there's also a responsibility on the part of the TEACHER to recognize and accept that the way they teach may NOT be 'all that' for every student that comes along.

To me, that is an issue of respect and humility.