Are you really ready for a Spiritual Teacher?

Are You Really Ready for a Spiritual Teacher?

Why would one even ask this question? These days most people cannot handle honesty, not even to themselves. Or intimacy since honesty is the keystone of intimacy; that and the tolerance to hear honesty from someone who loves you, whether it is the honesty of your beloved, or the honesty of a beloved Spiritual Teacher. Honesty takes tolerance, the tolerance to be able to listen with an open mind, ask questions, consider what is being said, seek inner Guidance and then make a decision regarding what you heard without punishing the other person for speaking or without you leaving the relationship because you cannot tolerate another opinion or a different viewpoint.

It takes enormous personal and inner strength to be able to have an open mind, an open heart, to tolerate diversity, to believe in yourself and your connection to Spirit enough to be able to hear something other than your own thoughts, ego and insecurities. It is Yin strength. The strength to stay, listen, consider, not hide to appease or avoid conflict, not leave. It is Yin strength to not indiscrimately capitulate to whatever anyone says and simply believe what you hear. The strength is staying, listening, considering, without abandoning the self, without shutting out what you are hearing, to stay in the process of consideration of information or insights so new they threaten to disintegrate your current paradigms and reorganize your world, even your sense of self. The ability to live in ambivalence, considerations, questions, Yin energy, to let in the “new” and see, feel, what is being offered.

There are other strengths needed to be able to truly be in relationship with a Spiritual Teacher, if you are blessed to have one, they are rare these days,  and that is to not hide and to not people please. Many people connect with a Teacher to “feel” good, or look good, to themselves, to others. Some of those people are actually so empty inside that they feel the need to connect with someone of “status” in order to exist, to feel alive. They will find themselves “presenting” themselves to their Teacher in ways they think will prevent abandonment, or will win approval, telling “lies”, falsifying or hiding information. These behaviors can often be so inherent that the person does this unconsciously and can become offended when it is revealed by the Teacher. And then they leave, rather than stay and use their Spiritual Practice and Discipline to work through it, work with Spirit and the Inner Self to learn what will be revealed. Spiritual Teachings do not show you what you already know, they lead you down what often at first looks like a dark path to a completely new landscape that you cannot possible imagine or create by yourself.

What about cult leaders? There are ways to watch for this. Cult leaders will not tolerate “reactions”, Spiritual Teachers will. Your Teacher will take you back without apology after you get angry, or if you criticize, or reject what Teachings you were given, leave and come back. A True Teacher loves who you really are, who you can become, and is invested in your Soul Evolution, not your adoration, and is not intimidated by the misbehavior of your personality as you struggle to evolve, to become You, to come Home. You will not be asked to comply or conform. You will be encouraged to think, ask questions, criticize, and even reject what you are told so you become strong in your own connection to Spirit, to your Higher Self.  A True Teacher will provoke you to think for yourself, to challenge yourself, to even challenge your Teacher while you learn. Challenge means testing, not destroying, not attacking with anger or for revenge or to prove yourself right. All learning comes with friction, all of it. The revelations might feel like a sunrise, but getting there took friction. This is true even in biology, and the earth sciences, not just quantum physics or metaphysics. A True Teacher does not present as perfect or as a messiah and will not hide his/her faults, shortcomings or weaknesses and most of all, a True Teacher has a Practice, a Current Practice and a lifestyle that is in alignment with the Teachings offered.

It doesn’t matter if your initial reasons for seeking out or connecting with a Spiritual Teacher are not healthy. Spirit works in strange ways to connect Students to their Teachers. What matters are the choices you make as you start to Wake Up.  Are you going to a Teacher because of unhealed low self-esteem and are approval seeking? Or because you are lost and want someone to give you direction in order to get away from your uncomfortable emotions or decisions? Do you hide or lie to your Teacher about what you are doing in your life, or with the Teachings? Do you keep secrets about your behaviors, your choices, your addictions, your ego trips or even the reasons you are associating with your Teacher such as your lust to become an instant teacher yourself, or to have a “career” that you imagine your Teacher has?  Have you forgotten that becoming a Spiritual Teacher is a “calling” not a career. And by the way, becoming a Student is also a “calling.”  So are you ready?  Can you willing share yourself, all of yourself, with your Teacher rather than editing in order to protect yourself emotionally or to protect your ego,  or to “look good” to someone you wish to emulate or in some cases, conquer? Can you risk truly listening to your Teacher and to even consider trying to follow what your Teacher offers to you as Teachings? This might mean giving up your “ego” especially if you all by yourself have decided you have some kind of spiritual gift and that is the main reason (conscious or unconscious) that you decided to associate yourself with a Teacher in the first place. This is after all the age of instant “teachers” and instant “healers” where you take a workshop, “study” with someone for a short time and then declare yourself to be “gifted.”  And this is the age a giant new-age industry that promises an income producing public that an expensive workshop and certificate printed up can make them into an instant teacher or some kind of gifted spiritual person. We can thank the exploitation of the ego driven public of lost souls for the flourishing billion dollar new age industry. 

Where are you in all of this? Do you even know?  Once again: It doesn’t matter if your initial reasons for seeking out or connecting with a Spiritual Teacher are or were not healthy. Spirit works in strange ways to connect Students to their Teachers. What matters are the choices you make as you start to Wake Up.  

Journey On