It’s a whole new ballgame out there, folks. You can look at a picture online and call yourself a Reiki Master. You can take a weekend class and offer yourself up as an expert. You can do a few days of training, and be a personal coach! And nobody will know if your credentials are any more valid than someone who’s been practicing for 10 or 20 years, or who has over 1000 hours experience. I don’t know about you, but if I’m doing a past life regression, I want to make sure the person in charge knows what in the hell they’re doing. You don’t mess around with most of this stuff, people, you really don’t. It can mess you up really badly. And you simply don’t know what you’re doing right off the bat, no matter how naturally gifted you are. You need experience, time under the saddle, to see what can happen, to understand how to work with not only yourself, but with others.
If you’ve been doing your Work for six months, that’s really exciting and great, and I’m excited for you, but don’t ever presume you’re an expert in your field because you’re not. You’re a novice, an amateur, a starter, and ethically you really SHOULD tell all your potential clients and students exactly how long you’ve been doing your work, where you got your training, and how many hours you’ve put in actually doing your work. Most other professions have this kind of assurance and credibility built in. If you get a massage in North Dakota, you can be assured they’ve had 1000 hours training (I think around there), so much schooling, and been doing it for so many months. It’s called legislation and I think it’s a really good idea. But since there are so many different kinds of alternative modalities around, and not many (if any) of them are in any kind of way legislated by anyone, it’s essentially a free-for-all. It’s caveat emptor, buyer beware, you have no assurances or guarantees as to the quality of the work you’re about to receive.
I want to educate the public, I want to maintain the integrity of my Work; my intuitive work, my writing, my healing. I want people to know enough to ask those important questions before they have any work done on them. “What’s your background? Where did you get your training? How long have you been practicing? How many people have you worked on?” The practitioners should have their certificates in full view, they should even have an informational sheet for you that gives you their background information. Otherwise, you just don’t know. You just don’t know. And you don’t know what you SHOULD know enough to ask questions, because well, you trust, right? Nobody who isn’t qualified would ever work on you right? Unfortunately, that’s a big WRONG.
I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s happening everywhere, but I’ve seen this phenomenon in this area popping up a lot lately. Unqualified people teaching classes and workshops and trainings. Yes, it pushes all sorts of buttons for me, someone who’s been in the field for 20 years now, so I try to be fair and loving and helpful, and I’m sure I fall short sometimes (most times?) but I strive for openness, for disclosure, for honesty, for integrity, all the way around. Call me on it if I’m not acting with integrity in anything that I do. Question me if you think I’m not qualified on something I’m teaching or speaking about. Even if I get mad or defensive, it’s good for me to hear it, as well. I think there’s a call worldwide for honesty and speaking the Truth, no matter how painful or ugly. It’s OUR Truth, what we know, what we feel, what we believe. So yes, this whole entry is just MY opinion, but I think it’s valuable for you to think about. Do you know the background of that psychic who’s about to disclose all sorts of truths about yourself to you? If she tells you your husband is cheating on you, what are you going to do with that information? Did you know that in my world I would NEVER tell you that information in that way? It’s highly unethical. I would also never tell you you’ll never find love, or heal from your cancer, or sell your home. Yet I’ve heard of other psychics telling people those very things. I’m horrified. I’m mystified. But in the end I’m determined to keep speaking from the truth of my Work, and that is that integrity and ethics are paramount to this new level of Work we’re entering into. If you don’t have that, you don’t have much.