Posts Tagged ‘Training’

The 3 Questions that Guide My Training

Saturday, August 24th, 2013

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I recently started formal training in manifesting, starting with the basics and working my way up, following the path the spirits I train with have laid out. It’s been excellent, and I’ll share some notes soon. But today, I want to talk about how I train, and the questions I’ve learned to ask over the past decade of training with various spirits, and in particular, from spirits who rarely train humans.

(Note: I’ll refer to manifesting throughout this post, but you can just replace that with whatever skill you’re learning, like energy healing or awakening ethereal muscles or anything else.)

Step 1: Ask for an expert. But not just an expert at manifesting; if you do that, you’ll get someone who knows ascended-level techniques, but has long-since forgotten the details of the simpler techniques you’ll be learning. Instead, ask for an expert at teaching the skill.

Step 2: Start at the beginning. By the time I had access to this training, I already knew a lot of magick. Energy healing, communication, awakening mental muscles, and so on. It’s tempting to ask, “What’s next, what do I learn when I can already do all this?” And I did, and it lead me to focus on the wrong parts of communication for months.

Instead, ask, “What’s the simplest version of this skill?” The spirits I work with have a levels system worked out, so I ask for level 1. I verify I’m doing level 1 correctly, then proceed to level 2.

When I did this with communication, I found I wasn’t placing signatures into my brain properly (part of level 2), even though I’d already learned most of levels 3 and 4. Fixing that fixed a lot of problems I’d been having.

Step 3: Ask what other domains should be involved. For example, level 2 communication is about placing the message into your brain, so in addition to the ethereal muscles for communication, you also want to use the ethereal muscles for physical effects (specifically nerve effects). To properly learn level 2 communication, I first trained in the fundamental skills for physical effects, then in nerve effects. That got those ethereal muscles awake and engaged. Then I was able to use those muscles for communication as well.

Once again, I didn’t know that when I started learning communication, and once again, wasted weeks and months trying to learn the techniques using the wrong ethereal muscles. But this time, I know to ask, so I’ll know if there’s some other skill I should learn first.

Summary

Those are my three questions: “What does level 1 manifesting look like? What other domains should I learn first to do it properly? Who should I train with for those other domains?” By telling the spirit exactly what I need, I’m more likely to get it, particularly if the spirit doesn’t normally train novices in manifesting (or whatever skill you’re learning).

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.

How to Ask the Right Questions and Get Great Training

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

You found my old blog. Thanks for visiting! For my new writing, visit mikesententia.com.

My plan for testing communication boiled down to:

  • Start with the simple communication: Have a spirit send me a message, and have him do all the hard steps to make communication work.
  • One step at a time, do more of the communication process myself instead of relying on the spirit.
  • Figure each step out, debug it, and re-test with the spirit, then add the next step.

Why not just ask the spirit how to do communication properly? Well, I’d already done that — shown him my full communication and asked him what I was doing wrong. He’d give me pointers, but never a full solution, never enough to do communication properly. So I wasn’t expecting too much from him.

But this time, he nailed every problem. We tested basic communication. (It worked fine). Then we added one step for me to do myself, and it stopped working. He watched me once, told me exactly what was wrong and how to fix it. And this wasn’t a one-off lucky fix. He’s 3 for 3 now in troubleshooting my communication.

What changed? What turned a disappointing teacher into a spot-on troubleshooter? It wasn’t him. It was me, figuring out how to ask for training properly.

See, before, I’d asked very broad question: “Look at this complex thing and tell me how to fix it.” Like taking a 1980s car to a mechanic, or bringing a buggy laptop in for repairs, it’s hard to say exactly what’s wrong. Sure, you can spot some problems, but making an exhaustive list? Not very likely.

Now, we had a single skill to debug, so he could focus on just a few problems. Then, knowing he was building on a good foundation, he could focus on just the next step, and nail down that problem too. By simplifying my question, I got much better training.

So that’s the real lesson from this: Good training is my responsibility. If I’m not getting it, it’s because I’m trying to fix too many problems at once. When that happens, I need to return to what I can do, ask the trainer to help me advance one small step, verify it, then repeat.

If you liked this post, consider visiting my current blog at mikesententia.com.