I’ve rewritten this post in my head probably twenty times.
There is a strange part of becoming a practitioner that I don’t think we talk about enough.
At some point, the things you teach other people become the exact things life asks you to practice yourself.
Discernment.
Boundaries.
Trust.
Accountability.
Knowing when to stay.
Knowing when to leave.
Knowing when something can be both meaningful and no longer right for you.
The last little while has asked all of that from me.
And, frankly, it has been so damn uncomfortable.
I thought becoming a practitioner would look different.
I thought there would eventually be a point where I felt qualified enough.
Another training.
Another certification.
Another initiation.
Another teacher telling me, yes, now you're ready.
I've spent years learning.
I've sat in classrooms and circles. I've studied tarot, energy work, Shamanic Reiki, sound, ritual, herbal and plant medicine. I've participated in ceremonies. I've facilitated. I've practiced. I've been mentored. I've invested a significant amount of money, time and energy into becoming better at holding this work.
And somewhere along the way, I started confusing being validated as a practitioner with actually being one.
Those are not the same thing.
That has been one of the harder lessons for me to learn.
Sometimes your teachers become part of the lesson.
I recently made the decision to leave a mentorship and training relationship that had been a significant part of my development.
I'm intentionally not going to turn this into a public autopsy of another person.
There are things I could say.
There are things I am angry about.
There are things I believe should have happened differently.
There are also places where I have had to look at myself honestly and take accountability for the ways I participated, stayed longer than I should have, ignored things that didn't sit right with me, or handed someone else too much authority over my own knowing.
Both can exist.
I can acknowledge what I learned there without pretending everything that happened there was okay.
I can be grateful for parts of an experience and still decide that I no longer want to participate in it.
I can take accountability for myself without taking responsibility for someone else's behaviour.
And I can leave without needing to convince everyone watching that I was right to leave.
That last one has been hard.
Then came the identity crisis.
Because when a relationship with a someone you are learning from ends, especially when certification or lineage is attached to that relationship, there is another question waiting underneath:
Who am I without their permission?
That one got to me.
Because I did the work.
The hours happened.
The studying happened.
The practice happened.
The experiences happened.
The things I learned didn't suddenly evaporate from my body because a relationship ended.
But I still found myself wondering:
Do I have to start over?
Does leaving invalidate everything that came before it?
And underneath all of those questions was the one I actually needed to answer:
Who am I waiting to give me permission?
Discernment isn't just something I offer clients.
This experience has changed the way I think about spiritual authority.
I don't want people handing me theirs.
I don't want to build Ascending Priestess around the idea that I have some secret access to truth that you don't.
I don't want someone leaving a session thinking, Briaa told me what to do.
I want you leaving thinking:
I knew that. I just finally heard myself.
That distinction matters more to me now than it ever has.
Because I've experienced what can happen when we place teachers, mentors, healers or practitioners above our own discernment.
And spiritual spaces are particularly vulnerable to it.
We use words like intuition, downloads, alignment, medicine and calling.
Those words can be beautiful.
They can also make it very easy to stop asking questions.
I never want spirituality to require someone to abandon their critical thinking.
Your intuition and your discernment belong in the same room.
I'm also learning that integrity doesn't mean perfection.
This one might be the hardest.
I have made mistakes as a practitioner.
I'm going to make more.
There will be things I teach differently five years from now because I learned something I don't know today.
There will probably be offerings I outgrow.
Language I'll change.
Beliefs I'll reconsider.
That doesn't make the work fraudulent.
It makes it alive.
Integrity, to me, isn't pretending I have reached some final form where I know everything.
It's being willing to ask:
Is this still true for me?
Is this within my scope?
Am I being transparent?
Am I practicing what I'm asking other people to practice?
Can I receive correction without collapsing?
Can I change my mind when I know better?
And maybe most importantly:
Am I helping someone return to themselves, or teaching them to depend on me?
I know which kind of practitioner I want to be.
So Ascending Priestess is changing.
Not because I'm abandoning what I've learned.
Quite the opposite.
I'm stripping away some of what I thought I had to be.
Less performance.
Less spiritual theatre.
Less trying to sound like a practitioner.
Less pressure to package every human experience into a healing journey.
More honesty.
More conversation.
More plants.
More ritual.
More sound.
More laughter.
More questions.
More room for complexity.
More respect for the person sitting across from me.
And a lot more trust.
The four words I've been returning to lately are:
Remember. Discern. Embody. Trust.
I originally thought they were pillars for my business.
I'm realizing they're instructions for me, too.
Remember what I already know.
Discern what belongs to me and what doesn't.
Embody the work instead of performing it.
Trust myself enough to keep walking without needing someone else's permission.
Maybe that's what this season has actually been about.
Not becoming a better spiritual practitioner.
Becoming a more honest one.
And if you're navigating your own complicated relationship with a teacher, mentor, community, spiritual practice or simply a version of yourself you've outgrown I hope you know you are allowed to examine it.
You are allowed to keep what was medicine.
You are allowed to name what wasn't.
You are allowed to take accountability for your part.
You are allowed to change your relationship with the work.
And you are allowed to ask questions.
Actually....
I think you should.
Because your discernment was never supposed to disappear the moment you entered the room.
Maybe that is the practice.
With Love & Respect,
Briaa
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