As to your first well-taken observation -- true, and long acknowledged. When they find you, you respond, taking the meeting itself as the sign that what you need will be given, even if it's the clear communication to let be and let time and silence do the work. Not the same as refusing contact.
As to the second -- well, it's a matter of mundane training and experience. Sometimes the encounter is only one small part of the work that needs doing -- what 's beyond you to mend, you refer to greater skill in all humility and recognition of your limitations -- but again that's not the same as judging oneself unworthy. And besides -- in most healing traditions, including mine, it's recognized that the healer who neglects his own energies won't keep healing for long.
The season has an intensity, I believe, that does not let up but rather keeps growing until the solstice -- Samhain initiates it, but it isn't over in one night. It's on the wind, it's in the growing dark and cold; I work with large numbers of young people, some quite disadvantaged, and there's a vulnerability in many for the promise of life wintering over to be overwhelmed. This whole quadrant of the year . . . I guess it's of a piece with the vigil candle, Ross -- which is a solitary and quiet ritual on the night of the ritual itself, but which travels with me in mind to meet whatever comes.
But since you practice worthy forms of healing yourself, I doubt I'm saying anything you haven't already thought about.
