Different isn't wrong

There is a very serious flaw in the way most of us were taught.  Think back to when you were in school....the teacher would assign a lesson, you would learn it, then you would be expected to demonstrate that you knew what was taught.  There was almost never any room for variance or perspective.  It was a fact-oriented education, we were taught facts and we were expected to be able to recite them.

Even in the more creative realms, there were 'right' and 'wrong' ways of expressing yourself.  There was a generally agreed upon meaning for just about everything, and if you didn't produce something that lined up with that understanding, you were graded poorly, because you 'obviously didn't understand the lesson.'

And this concept of learning persists in how we approach our spiritual learning.  There are so many different places where this idea of right and wrong exists, and we often aren't aware of it.  Sometimes we end up sabotaging ourselves because our experiences aren't what we expected, and so we tell ourselves we must have done it wrong.  We discount what actually happened because we had our sights set on the 'correct' outcome.

But while there are some things that do exist within these failure or success parameters (you either light the wick of the candle or you don't), so many more have many, many different ways of working (a circle can be cast in countless different ways).

Our brains want things to fall into nice, neat little boxes.  We want to think that all red berries are dangerous and that when we meditate 'successfully' we will be filled with peace and tranquility.  But for most of life there is no simple answer, no one true meaning, no ultimate correct way of doing something.

And this makes us feel unsure.  If we can't have some objective way to measure our success, then how do we know things are working?  If there is no ultimate meaning to a symbol, how do we know we are interpreting it right?  How do we validate our experiences without a yardstick to measure by?

I was lucky enough to have gone to a school that expected us to not just recite back facts, but to think about them and to explain those thoughts.  I had parents that had discussions with me, and I have always liked looking at things from other perspectives (and trying to imagine those perspectives were my own).  So, for me, it only seemed natural that different people, with different backgrounds, would experience things differently...and that was okay.

And yet, I still held myself to expectations of what 'should be'.  I struggled for many years with thinking I wasn't connecting because I don't have movie-quality visions.  I thought I wasn't grounding because the imagery didn't work for me.  I didn't feel like I was getting divinatory messages because it feels like thinking to me.

A somewhat mundane, and yet also somewhat perfect example is hair.  There are a lot of myths that involve long (and often unbound) hair.  Hair can be a vehicle through which we express ourselves (think of how many teens do drastic things to their hair).  And in magical circles, long hair is almost always the 'mystical' ideal.  There are many different explanations for why more hair equals more power or why cutting one's hair is bad.  But for me, I find it is the exact opposite.  Not only do I feel more myself with short hair, but it physically bothers me to have long hair.  And not just that it's so heavy it makes my head hurt, but also longer hair makes my thoughts sluggish.

It's not something I can logically explain, but I've lived it and it's real to me.  These are the experiences that I have and my truth, and it just doesn't make sense for me to subscribe to someone else's model of long hair meaning more power...because it doesn't work that way for me.  Whenever my hair gets too long, I feel wrong and bad, and every time I cut it I feel amazing.

And this works in other areas too.  Sometimes, we just need to get out of our own way.  If I am thinking about whether or not my rune interpretations are right or wrong, I start to doubt myself.  I feel like an imposter, like someone who is trying to recall this book or that book or like I need to list my sources.  But I work with the runes every day and have for years.  I might not have academic, historic knowledge of them, but I know them.  And I can sit and talk about how they speak to me...if I stop worrying about being right and just talk.

I think it is an important skill to work on, and something that we may struggle with for a long time.  Because we are all new at everything at some point in time, and we do feel like we may need help and instruction.  It can be hard to leave those feelings behind, especially if we are self-taught and not going through some kind of certification process with tests and levels we can point to and say, "look, see, I passed this, someone else thinks I can do this."

Maybe it's not even a matter of being objectively capable.  Maybe it's more a matter of claiming our own experiences.  Of recognizing that our perspective matters, and even if it goes against everything that everyone else knows, it is still our perspective and that no one can take that away from us.  Maybe it just comes down to accepting and voicing your truth, no matter what form it takes.