Do you really need The Spiritual Teacher?
Many individuals ask about having a teacher on one’s spiritual path. Well, what’s a spiritual teacher? What might this relationship seem like? Wouldn’t it be the best option for you?
Many people have asked me my opinion on having a teacher on a spiritual path. Like the rest in life, you can find only points of view regarding whether this choice is the best one for you. All I can perform is reflect our experience regarding having a teacher and what I’m the advantages and problems are of participating in this sort of relationship.
First and foremost, a teacher is someone who has been down the exact same road that you are traveling – albeit at the least several miles in front of you living miracles store. They understand the pitfalls and the roadblocks, and can assist you for making your path easier and less painful. They could comfort you with the information that many people have walked this road before and survived, no matter how difficult the trail may appear for your requirements in the moment.
Second, a teacher can reflect things to you that you would never see in yourself – at the least not without plenty of self-honesty, that will be hard to find whenever we are first on our spiritual path. Denial is usually our companion and we avoid what we fear is painful, even if we are doing it subconsciously. The point is that the teacher has more awareness and can look out of the mental and egoic strategies that individuals eagerly justify and defend.
Third, a teacher creates a safe and supportive environment to allow us to open our hearts and minds in, giving us the ability to explore facets of ourselves we would normally avoid. A good teacher will not use anything we have shared against us or to hurt us, and most importantly will not manipulate us with this information. This isn’t unlike the connection we have with your doctor – what’s discussed in the therapy room stays in the therapy room.
The dangers of this type of relationship are found when a teacher has not totally cleaned their ego-mind and really has the tendency to want to make use of people and situations because of their personal benefit. The flip side of this problem is that many times the student does not understand the teacher’s point of view because they are able to only see from their limited point of view. They then judge the teacher, not totally understanding their intent or the bigger picture. In these moments it helps you to speak to other students who have been later on before for clarity – one of the ways or another. The objective of your spiritual path is to improve your own personal power, self-love and self-worth, not to offer it away to others.
Other dangers involve becoming attached with a teacher feeling when these were to make you that you would never achieve enlightenment. That is merely another appearance of “I am not good enough” manifesting itself in another guise. There’s a classic Chinese proverb that says: Teachers open the door, but you need to enter by yourself. A teacher can be a mirror for you, they are able to reveal many hidden facets of your brain, and they are able to explain many of one’s habit behaviors which are causing you pain in your life. But ultimately they can not do anything for you. You have to do it for yourself. Anyone who promises otherwise is just a danger to you.
For me personally, having a teacher has been an amazing blessing in my life. He taught me what unconditional love was through action – not through words. He reflected if you ask me the love and blessing that I am, revealing the lies that I am not. He gave me words of support when the trail was dark and encouraged me when I thought I would not make it. He was brutally honest with me, since there was benefit or investment in lying to me. He lent me his eyes to see the entire world through so that I could experience that life could be heaven on earth. And most of all, he loved me just the way in which I was, with all my bad habits until I finally could express the light that I am.