It's not just about "looking better" on the meters. It's about DOING MORE HEALING! the more healing you do the sooner you will be able to drop down to less healers and clear the encounter faster. sure you can ignore all of Dawn's' advice, but if you do, you are never going to be the sort of healer that gets spots in hard mode raids.

The anti meter bias for healing has its roots in reality but it has gotten out of control. Dragon Soul has a bunch or raid wide, unavoidable AoE, this isn't ICC where you boosted you numbers by standing in shit. IN DS you boost your numbers by being aggressive and healing your pants off. Cata healing is different than it was before, like it or not the meter is no a pretty important now.

I guess I can understand "don't feel bad if you are not at the top". fight mechanics and class weakness/strength play into that. All of us have to get used to the pink bar at the top of recount (or the orange bar in T12). But, if you are not at the top of your spec (highest HPS disco e.g.) than you should try to tighten your stuff up. If you don't want to, better get that shadow spec worked out, because when the time comes to drop down to less heals, guess who is gonna get the boot?