Spiritual seeker – What are you seeking?
Are you seeking to transcend your ego or even your self? Are you seeking to transcend suffering? Your humanness? Or perhaps you are seeking to integrate being into form? Seeking to integrate ultimate truth into form? Does that mean that you believe that you can come to embody the highest potential a human being can become? Can your teacher? Does he or she believes that they are the highest potential form of a human being? Is there room for imperfection? What do you really know of your teacher? What do you know of the nature of your seeking?
Seven things to keep in mind and to be curious about when you choose a spiritual teacher. Curiosity, as in an innocent and open ongoing inquiry, being the keyword here.
-
What does s/he teach?
-
Do they have a transparent actual teaching? Clear guidelines you can practice regardless of their presence. Ask directly.
-
Are they seeking to bind you to them and the community or release you to the Truth of what you really are? Are you? If you, as most human beings, have a subconscious longing to belong, you are at risk of committing yourself to a teacher and community that consciously or subconsciously aim to bring into a narrow context rather point you to ultimate freedom.
-
Be curious about patterns in your relating to your teacher that are similar to how you relate to your parents or partner in life.
-
Do you long and hope for a messiah that is here to safe us? Does your Spiritual teacher believe that s/he is this messiah? Ask them directly.
-
Are you really seeking to discover who and what you really are? Who is your teacher?
-
Make it an art to explore in yourself, what you are really seeking for.
Use the literature available on the topic to teach you how to be a seeker avoiding the traps of delusion. Universal teaching to Truth, love and freedom is to be found in all traditions.
Dearest seeker, our spiritual search is as old the human race is. I consider it a drive as powerful as any instinctive drive of ours. The spiritual drive is not something to intellectualize or disregard as childish. Spiritual seeking is a real thing. As far as I believe spiritual searching is a natural movement of evolution. Whether we feel it as spiritual or existentialistic, the question of who, what and why we are, is universal and we human beings can be intelligent and gentle about our spiritual seeking. We have the opportunity to discern what is what. If we find that we are driven by dysfunction, old psychological wounds or heartbreaks, we can seek professional help. We can heal our psychical wounds with a professional while being a spiritual seeker, loving our spiritual teacher. It is not a question of either or. Sooner or later our humanity and our spirit meet anyway. Make sure your teacher does not believe him/her to be and all-inclusive solution to all your problems and pains in life, attaching psychological skills to themselves that is beyond their understanding and realistic ability to help you. If you read the history and the newest research and science regarding spiritual teachers it is known, that awakened or/and enlightened masters are far from always psychological and emotionally mature. Trusting all they give can mean profound and hurtful consequences for you and your loved ones. At best, unconditional blind trust in a teacher can end up being a waste of our time.
Did you know for example, that old Tibetan guidelines ask the seeker to spend 12 years getting to know a teacher before they surrender to one? Want clarity on what they are and what they are not. Love them, by all means. Love and devotion is a true way of being and a profound path, some would say the most direct path to enlightenment, but don’t be a fool unto yourself. Know what you seek. Have a practice of an ongoing inquiry into this. What am I seeking? The more we honestly know ourselves, the less chance there is that we fall into a cult leader that 25 years down the road turn out to be as human as us. Know that all human beings are equal and any teacher that sets up more or less obvious spiritual hiraki as an obvious or subtle way to measure how far you are on the path to awakening and enlightenment is selling, at best, an illusion. Know that all anyone else can ever be to you, is a light holder. Embrace love and thankfulness, if you have found such a human being and at the same time, do your own inner and outer work. If you have had any, small or big, awakening into a reality of yours, being Love, trust this. Trust that what is more than you have found a crack in your ego and shown you what you are. If that has happened once, it is likely to happen again. With or without a spiritual teacher and his/her community.
Be open, soft at heart and clear in mind. Ask from the depths of your heart” who and what am I really?” Learn the art of listing to the silence behind all thoughts and ideas. At this time in age, enough spiritual seekers around the world have years of experience and education behind them. Experience as seekers and devotees and as members or leaders of cults or spiritual communities. Many mature and hole hearted human beings who have much important experience and expertise to share on how to be a spiritual seeker stirring directly towards Truth and Love and ultimate freedom, not getting lost in the clouds of delusional gurus and their communities. Fortunately, the impression is that most spiritual Gurus are well meaning, truly believing that they make a loving difference but that does not save them from developing an inflated spiritual self who is blind to where they fall of the narrow path of Truth. Even an all loving, intelligent, well meaning, family mother/father, who believes he/she protects his/her family and children and could never harm them, can end up making more damage than good, simply form perceiving himself or herself as all knowing.
And as you probably are aware of, we can receive much good from someone who is also no God.
