To Trust Your Inner Teacher

You have found yourself a cage and shut the door tight.  It’s not the first time. It’s a cage within a cage within a cage.  Each one narrowing your world; limiting your choices.  All that’s left for you to be, to say, to do is what fits in the cage with you…. most things have been tossed out.

The cages seemed like such a good idea at first.  The promise of transformation and perfection if only you’ll keep to this plan.  The promise of rescue from that thing that keeps happening - if you’ll just follow this well-meaning expert’s advice. The thing will stop, you’ll be free.  You’ll be in a cage, but you’ll be free. 

You’re a good girl, you keep trying to follow expert advice.  Surely they know more than you possibly could - a million followers can’t be wrong.  And when you can’t keep it up forever, surely the flaw is with you.  Surely you’re not doing it ‘right’ if you feel trapped, suffocated… like something important in you is dying inside.    And no, it isn’t overly dramatic to talk of soul-death, not when you’ve trapped yourself in a cage so small.

Something is dying in there.  Something important.  You’re going to need to get out if you want to bring it back. 

But have you forgotten? 

The cage is your own design. Built on ideas of Rightness drilled into your childhood brain.  Ideas that stifled you then shut down your imagination, took away your stories, killed off your creativity.  Ideas that did NOTHING for you when you were small except turn you away from your truth and instinct.  Worse, the idea of Rightness taught you to look outside yourself for the answer.  As if there was only one… and only one way to get to it. 

Ideas like that kill the soul.  They did it then and they’re doing it now.  They’ll keep doing it until you set yourself free.

Open the door, darling.  The cage has no lock.  The guards are inept and completely imagined.  You can taste freedom at any moment.

If you wonder how to open the doors again, know that freedom comes when you start asking questions and listening for new answers.  What if there are hundreds of answers? thousands? millions? as many answers as people who ever lived?  What if there isn’t ONE right way?

There are infinite ways.

What if you taught yourself to get quiet and listen for YOUR answer.  (Not what the experts say, not what your mother taught you. Not what works for your ex or your kids).  What’ if what was always your answer had to do with what’s real and true and alive for you?

Could you dare to open your cages and leave the experts behind if you learned to trust the teacher that is aways within you?

And there it is, the most important part: TRUST

Because your inner teacher?  She isn’t lost.  She’s aways there, waiting to guide you.  You need only you turn in her direction and seek her counsel.

She’s there waiting for you to rekindle your connection.  She knows there has been long absence and many others’ opinions in this relationship.  You’ll need to practice finding your way back to each other.  Every day a recommitment to your return.  A committing to this relationship of depth and respect. - even when her guidance is not what you want to hear. That’s what it takes if you want to trust each other again.  A rebuild of your relationship.  

When you step out of your cages you’ll feel raw; unsure of yourself.  And your inner teacher is like a wild animal you’re inviting to be your friend.  First steps may be halting.

What bread crumbs could you leave out? 

Are you watching for her return? 

Listening for her step? 

Wondering at her responses to your questions and movements?

Asking the questions, not of experts, but of HER, your deep teacher, and not discarding the answers you get?

This is how trust is built.  Little by little, again and again.  Asking, listening, following, growing.  Letting the outcomes teach you.  Trying again.  Being patient with missteps and knee-jerk responses.  Refusing to run back into your cage even though it may feel like the only safety you have.

Build this relationship with her and you’ll never need another expert again.  (You’ll have teachers all your life), but you’ll never again put blind faith in anyone.  You’ll never be in need of rescue.  You won’t need anyone for that… because the only possible expert on you is YOU.  And once you rebuild that relationship, you’ll never forsake yourself.

So open the cage and step out, dear one. Breathe and expand again.  Put out tasty morsels and make invitations.  Wait and listen as your inner teacher arrives. Then, with trust, set out together, heart to heart, and do the only thing left to do…. make your life into a work of art.