risk

It is a terrifying prospect, to be willing to learn when you don't know what you will be taught. To completely leave one's self at the mercy of the teacher, to apprentice to a mystery.
Ok, maybe not the first time, or the first thing. But once a first lesson is learned, one realizes the possible risks at leaving one's self so utterly vulnerable.
The lesson is not in any book. The best of the books merely reveal that there is a lesson to be learned, are an invitation to the apprenticeship. But the lesson must be received from the teacher. Most often it is painful. Like surgery - torn flesh as the undesirable is extracted. Often it feels like betrayal by the teacher himself. One can never know, and one never sees it coming. Blindsided by truth. The red pill. Like an ingenious twist at the end of a movie with "to be continued", one is terrified to see the sequel. How much surgery can one endure to be made well? How much suffering can one endure to identify with the teacher?
How many times can one be offered the blue pill before he swallows it?