I’m afraid too much education, especially in the realm of spirituality. This is designed to indoctrinate and convince and to cajole and to own the narrative. And none of these things are actually spiritually empowering. It’s rough because in our culture right now, there’s so much judgment, there’s so much know it all behavior. And that’s what humans do. And things get scary.

We buckle down and we need to know it all. And we force our beliefs on everyone and we can’t see other perspectives because things are scary and we need to know what’s happening and we need to have the answers. And man, when you try and do that with the things of spirit, it really get goes so fast. Fundamentalism and judgmental ism and who leads to violence, as we’ve seen, leads to war.

War in families, war in relationships. Warren communities and war in nations. So what’s the option? What’s the other option again? What if spiritual education information was about educating choosers? I mean, it’s easy to see with kids educating children. Our main goal is to let them grow up into, well, you know, responsible, kind, productive adults. We’re really educating our kids to become good choosers, good, responsible choosers, make good choices, we say.

But when it comes to spirituality, too often we’re telling people, don’t make choices. Follow what it says in the book. Deal. Make your own choices. Do whatever your pastor says. Don’t make your own choices because you’re not trusted to make your own choices. Don’t know God directly. Go through a priest, go through this weekly ritual. Go through these intermediaries.

Well, that’s not really how life works, because even if you’re playing by the rules, even if you’re trying to keep your God stuff all within the book, even if you’re trying to do it. All right. Spirit shows up in mysterious ways and shakes you to your foundations, teaching you lessons, guiding you through experiences, giving you sparks of awareness in dark times.

And if that stuff is controlled by the book and unfortunately, a lot of the structures of religion will make you wrong, will make you believe you’re wrong for having your own deep and profound experiences with your Creator, with what many would say is your higher self, with the spirit of mystery. And yet that’s what you’ve always had, even since you were little.

Is this connection with the spirit of mystery in your own way, in your own language and your own preferences, and by your own choice? So what if spiritual education was more about formation and options and mind and spirit expanding practices that guide you to your own unique connection with the Creator, your own unique, intuitively guided heart? I remember when I first met Maria Jasper, who’s my indigenous Apache mama, and I had just had this big intuitive awakening back in the year 2000 after, well, with the birth of my daughter, my second child, when suddenly I was hearing spirit and I was being guided and I could see energy in people’s bodies and I could, you

know, help manipulate that energy guided by spirit to help them feel better or to help them heal, to help them release old standing beliefs and and yucky stuff. And I still do that, that kind of clearing work and collaboration with Spirit. But the people around me, especially those like my mom, who is such a Catholic woman, who really was guided by a lot of those traditional rules, she was scared.

She was concerned. She wondered, Do I need an exorcism? Like, good things seem to be happening, but it must be masked depression. It must be. Something’s wrong because it’s not painting inside the lines. And I remember when I first met Maria, I was looking for an indigenous spiritual teacher like her to tell me what to do to give me a new set of rules, to train me to make me legit with this spirit stuff, with this new way.

That spirit was pouring through me. And I remember she asked me a couple of questions. She said, Well, let me ask you this. You want me to train you? I’m like, Yes, please. Yes, please. She said, Well, are you already hearing your spirit guides directly? Do you hear your own angels, the wisdom, or do you feel it in your body?

Are you getting those messages directly from Spirit? And I’m like, Yeah. Am I like so much too much maybe. And she said, Okay, okay. And when you listen to these voices, do you just do whatever they say? I’m like, Well, no. It’s more like teamwork. It’s more like they see things from their perspective and then I choose. She’s like, Okay, good.

And when you collaborate with Spirit, do bad things happen in your wake or do good things happen that were a mix of both. And I was like, Honestly, when I collaborate well with Spirit, it’s only good stuff that happens. It’s when I resist, when I know I shouldn’t. That’s when bad stuff happens. It’s good stuff that happens, She said, Great, you’re trained.

I’m like, What do you mean? She’s like, Well, I’m not going to train you in those things because they’re already happening through you. And honestly, much of the training that we would do in in relating with spirit is to get you to the place where you’re at now, she said. Now, if you were going on 13 years old and you still weren’t hearing voices, then we’d be worried about you.

Like, okay, this is a different definitely a different perspective. So she said, Maria said, I will share with you the rituals, I will share with you, ceremonies I will share with you stories I will share with you cycle tracking. I will share with you the skills and practices that we use that that that she was taught by her great grandfather to walk this path, to walk this earth with connection, both to Spirit and to the great mother, she said.

But I can’t really train you to be what you already are. And when she said that, something really deep landed for me. Now, trust me, she’s trained me in a lot of things because there are a lot of practices and a lot of tools that we can all share, that we can learn. And and she actually shares them alongside of me and some other masterful teachers inside of my wisdom collective, of which you are invited to join, by the way, because we all need more inspiration and different perspectives grow us and different practices inspire and feed and nourish us and different stories and ways expands us and connects us and and helps us up level

to the next whatever to the next access point, to the next clearance level, to the next power and ability to utilize our own unique gifts. But can you feel the difference between this? This sharing among wise women, the sharing of practices and ideas, the sharing of stories, the the inspiration of hearing different ways without the indoctrination, without the indoctrination and without the dogma, without the box, without some idea that spirit is small enough to place in a box.

That’s the kind of education I’m open to. It’s empowering and it’s collaborative, and I think that’s the only way we should be educating about Spirit is in ways that empower each individual to their own unique gifts, their own unique way, their own unique path, their own unique way of connecting with all that is that’s how we do it in the Wisdom Collective.

It’s a collective. What do you think about this?