Article at a glance »

• Introduction: How the Role of a Spiritual Teacher Is Misunderstood
• What Is Meant By the Term “Spiritual Teacher”
• Turning the Student to the Inner Journey
• Why a True Spiritual Teacher Won’t Work With All Seekers
• The Different Types of Spiritual Teachers
• Enlightening the Path of the Seeker

Introduction: How the Role of a Spiritual Teacher Is Misunderstood

It goes without saying that spiritual teachers are incredibly helpful people. In a world where there are so many lies and misconceptions, a spiritual teacher helps light the path back to the inner world within each of us.

However, due to deceptions that lead people towards external answers, the role of the spiritual teacher is vastly misunderstood. The spiritual teacher is often expected to be some kind of ‘Truth Candy’ dispenser, and if the seeker gets enough of this mystical candy, then “Whammo!”, enlightenment comes.

But that is not how it works, and because of these ideas, I am writing here about the true role of the spiritual teacher.

So What Does the Term “Spiritual Teacher” Mean?

A spiritual teacher is like a person holding a torch. From the torch springs forth light to illuminate the surroundings. When a seeker comes in contact with a true teacher, he or she may not really know how to respond. The responses can be varied, including:

• They want to take the teacher’s torch or think that that’s the type of light that they should be shining.
• They are immediately appalled at everything that they see, blame the teacher, and run away.
• They like how the teacher looks holding the torch and choose to sit and adore the light instead of igniting their own torch.

These, of course, are incorrect responses. Sometimes the student will be wise enough to bring his torch in contact with the teacher’s, and from that contact, the student’s awareness is momentarily ignited. But it becomes the student’s job to tend to that light.

If it is not tended to, the light may quickly get extinguished—like fire on wet wood. Then the student moves through a cycle of returning again and again to the teacher to re-ignite that flame… until she has done the work to make an acceptable space that can hold the heat and brilliance of the fire, which is nothing more than their own amazing awareness.

Turning the Student to the Inner Journey

One of the most important responsibilities of the spiritual teacher is to turn the student inward and to teach her how to learn. Because the spiritual path is not one of rote memorization, the student must often be untaught ways of learning. The student must also be taught how to engage with rationality and to know when to let it go.

This isn’t traded for some kind of misguided blind faith. Instead, the growth of the student’s inner knowing is the intended sounding bell for truth and for guidance through the experiential journey of the spiritual path. Without that inner compass, the student becomes dependent on the teacher and his wisdom in seeing clearly.

But the true teacher has no intention of being the permanent eyes for any student, so the teacher will continue to guide the student back to her inner journey again and again until the flame of awareness burns on its own.

Why a True Spiritual Teacher Won’t Work With All Seekers

It is true that spiritual teachers don’t work with all spiritual seekers. This isn’t out of an ego game, but instead, it comes from a profound and loving space of helping those who are ready to go into these deep places, while letting those who are not yet equipped for it continue to grow on their own.

The spiritual teacher truly understands that there’s a divine plan at work, and that if the student is not yet ready, he should in no way interfere with that lack of readiness with some kind of idea of ‘helping’ the student get somewhere quickly. This is very a common misconception in underdeveloped spiritual teachers, who think that everyone needs to be enlightened right now.

In truth, everyone needs to be exactly where they are right now. People are where they are, and that’s perfect. But for those who are ready to take the next step, teachers will often challenge them to see if those inner seeds of readiness are actually ready to sprout.

From this space, the teacher may crack jokes or make off-color comments to see if the student is paying attention. The teacher may be mean or act like a buffoon, depending on what the lesson is [which could be something like illuminating the great cosmic joke of this world and how silly we are in taking ourselves so seriously].

The spiritual teacher may do a lot of things that may seem counter to the popular image of a profound, serious, and quiet individual, who walks, talks and acts in a certain way. The unprepared student will say to him or herself, “This can’t be a spiritual teacher. He acts like such a fool.” The student who is ready will say to herself, “I am just as ridiculous as this person here. Perhaps, I shouldn’t take myself so seriously.” And then the student will laugh, and the teacher upon seeing this little moment of recognition will laugh. And the teaching will already have begun.

The Different Types of Spiritual Teachers

For as much as the term ‘spiritual teacher’ gets thrown around these days, it is not a catch-all phrase. There are quite a few different types of teachers out there. All of them have different ranges of abilities, and it’s equally important that those of you who are teachers understand your role and your limitations. We need teachers of all sorts and kinds because of all the pain and illusion that has enveloped this world, but we also need teachers to understand what they can and can’t do. You would not go to an auto mechanic to get your computer fixed. So why would you go to a kirtan teacher to learn how to meditate? You’d go to a meditation teacher for that.

I like to make up loose categories for lots of things on the spiritual path. I say ‘loose’ because they’re made up, but they can help to create a framework of understanding. I often describe spiritual teachers in three main groups, and then there are the masters. Here’s a simple break-down that you can choose to accept or not:

Level 1 Spiritual Teachers

They know their tradition, and they are guardians of it. They are unlikely to have awakened, and their main purpose is to help people learn their specific practices and belief system. This is like a Christian priest who knows the Bible very well.

Level 2 Spiritual Teachers

They know a specific tradition, and they had a profound spiritual opening through it. This is like a yoga teacher who once had an amazing spiritual experience through yoga. So this person teaches yoga to help others to achieve similar experiences.

Level 3 Spiritual Teachers

They have had an awakening, and they teach across multiple disciplines. They can interweave a lot of different religious and spiritual traditions because they can sense how things interconnect.

The final category is for the masters, who simply are. They don’t need to teach, but they can. They can use whatever tool [meditation, hugging, laughing, screaming, etc.] in the present moment to do the work they feel called to do. Their very presence and being already creates shifts in accordance to the divine plan, so it doesn’t matter what they do in the external world. Because doing and action in the external world is always secondary to being and presence, and the master embodies this awareness.

Enlightening the Path of the Seeker

In so many ways, the purpose of the spiritual teacher is about helping to illuminate the path. The spiritual path itself has become obscured by confusion. People think they have to meditate for a certain number of years, or they think they need to memorize the Bible or Buddhist tenets. They’re caught up in all the wrong ways, and then they are exceedingly disappointed when their efforts don’t get them anything.

Of course, you may already hear another part of the problem—people are trying to ‘get’ things. There’s truly nothing to get from the spiritual path, not even experiences. At each level of the spiritual path, the old parts fall away. Where words and ideas helped to create a structure, that scaffolding must be torn away. Consequently, as spiritual experiences and connections help to cultivate an even deeper awareness, those too must eventually be let go. Because spirituality isn’t in an experience or in an idea—it’s in us.

The true spiritual teacher knows this, and this teacher helps students to tear away all those things that are in the way of this awareness, so that the students simply see that enlightenment and the being of love that they wish to be is simply who they already are.

Conclusion

At its core, the spiritual teacher’s role is to help seekers shed the illusions and misconceptions that cloud their understanding of themselves. By guiding students back to their own inner wisdom, a true teacher reveals that enlightenment is not something to be attained but something that already exists within. The journey, as facilitated by a spiritual teacher, is about clearing away the barriers to self-realization, allowing students to discover that the peace, love, and awareness they seek have always been a part of who they are.

A version of this article first appeared in the March 2013 issue of Complete Wellbeing magazine (print edition).

Last updated on 19^th September 2024

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A puppet on strings

Most people don’t realise that they’re essentially a puppet. They don’t realise that they’re attached to many, many kinds of strings. These strings are social beliefs, emotional traumas, biological instincts and much more; but often they are complete mysteries to most people. However, when one of the strings pulls on an arm, the arm immediately reacts.

For example, a young girl is insulted in school about the red shirt she is wearing. She doesn’t know why, but she instantly smacks the other girl’s face for the affront; it is completely reactive, and she thinks it’s because of the insult. In truth, it has to do with her lack of self-worth, which is connected to a deeper fight or flight survival mechanism. An ensuing fight creates more turbulence in both girls’ lives, and that creates additional pain and suffering for them, people at the school and their families. Later on, when asked about why she did what she did, this girl says, “I don’t know.”

These reactions happen for a lot of people in many situations because this is reactionary nature and it doesn’t stay limited to childhood and school life. It ripples upwards to heads of nations and states. Heads of countries feel slighted, so they cut off trade with other countries. Or worse still, they go to war. Imagined slights become real issues that become death and atrocity. It’s a horrible state of life that keeps happening over and over again, but it always begins at the level of the individual and how their strings are tied around them.

Identifying the strings in your life

I never say that living an enlightened life will be easy. Instead, dedicating ourselves to the spiritual path helps us to see where we make life hard for ourselves. When we address that, then things get easier within ourselves. The external world may still be very challenging, but at least we are no longer reacting mindlessly to the stimuli, insults and obstacles that are thrown our way. We do this by identifying the strings that are manipulating us. In general, I’d categorise these strings as:

• Biological and genetic
• Emotional
• Mental
• Subtle energy

The biological strings are simply the core animal instincts that still operate in us. They are mainly concerned with survival and procreation to continue the species. Many people are completely overwhelmed by these impulses, and they tend to be part of the backbone of many of our core fears and issues. For instance, money gets tied up with a fear of survival. We feel like we won’t be able to survive without money. As such, people can become incredibly fearful if they ever feel like they’ll lose their job. When this core fear tugs on someone, a person can react in very poor ways.

The genetic aspect is where we have differences from one person to another. For instance, one person may have more biochemical imbalance that tends towards a depressive personality. This is simply something one must account for and understand as part of what is influencing their lives. How to be without reaction is something we need to learn.

The emotional level is where a lot of our raw and most basic feelings are. They are not really separate from any other levels. You’ll notice as you do your self-introspection that these strings are tied up into a big bundle. But they can be addressed separately as you begin to understand how these things all interact within you. As such, a primal concern around survival such as the losing your job example can ignite a lot of fear, but living an enlightened life means that we learn to simply watch our inner reaction rather than to take action upon it. If we believe in the fear, it becomes 10 times worse.

The mental level is home to all of our stories about ourselves, about our families, and about how we think our lives should go. It is built out of the ideas and patterns that we learned as children from our families and society as a whole. It is the home of the ego, which we have usually learned to defend at all costs. All kinds of beliefs and ideas are collected here that are trying to serve different purposes. Until we explore them, we don’t really know why we are doing what we are doing.

The subtle energy field has many interesting energetic connections, and it’s usually the one that we deal with last as the other three are already a huge amount of self-work. It’s enough to say that we are energy, and we are all interconnected. Those of you who are naturally sensitive to energy will find that you can learn a lot about yourself by noticing how different places and people affect your mood. When they do, you know that a subtle energy string is pulling on you and creating a reaction.

Cultivating non-reaction

The first steps to cutting the strings and finding your core issues are being present and having the desire to know yourself. After that, it is important to practise being non-reactive. I am sure that life will offer you plenty of opportunities to be either upset or excited about something. Both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ feelings should be watched. You can ask yourself simple questions such as “Why does this make me happy?” and “Why does this make me unhappy?” I am not saying to have no emotions at all and be a robot. I am encouraging you to be curious about how and why you behave the way you do. Until now, this was probably an invisible process, so this step is an important one.

As you go, you’ll probably notice a lot of unhealthy behaviour patterns. This is good news. Before you couldn’t see them, now you can. I often outline the most basic steps on healing these issues as follows:

• Identify
• Accept
• Embrace
• Let go

When you can identify something, you can then accept it. Embracing it means to understand the story or feel the feeling. Letting it go means just that. Once you’ve deeply understood something, releasing it is natural, so that new space within you can open up.

Deeper openings lead to deeper understandings

The more open we are, the more we can see about ourselves and others. This is a crucial thing in these times when so much information is coming at us so quickly. A lot of stuff has sped up, and this is why it’s important to slow down. Bringing our awareness more firmly into this moment allows us to see clearly and, as we continue to open, it tends to get easier to know what needs to be done in any given moment. It also tends to be easier to let go of things that do not serve us and to not get caught up in minor squabbles with others. In time, this just becomes how you live, and it’s not really a big deal.

Living an enlightened life, as I said in the beginning, is quite simple and quite sane. It isn’t anything extraordinary. If anything, it is about finally accepting the ordinary and everything else exactly as it is and continuing to learn about yourself so that you can enjoy this present moment—whatever it is—to the fullest.

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The stirrings of intolerance

To really cultivate spiritual tolerance, we have to look at the things we are intolerant towards. What can’t we accept? What are we trying to change? Even good intentions often hide the truth that we are trying to control or manipulate others and the world around us into looking like us or acting like us. But why is this? What difference does it make if someone believes in Jesus, the teachings of the Buddha, or Allah?

These are important questions to tackle. Generally speaking, there are many layers of ego control issues that must be faced. Towards the bottom of the pyramid, we often find hidden motivations around safety and survival because many of the core survival mechanisms that we have are still running on auto-pilot. One such message is that “if others are like me, then I will be safe.” Consequently, people presume that “if someone is not like me, then they are not safe or are a threat.” These core messages are often built off the fear of the unknown or a fear of death, and that drives a lot of unhealthy habits that build up into intolerance, stereotyping, and outright discrimination.

The big bang of spiritual awakening

Even after a spiritual awakening, big spiritual revelation, or major spiritual opening, the old ego messages still try to keep running. So a person who has awakened might still think others need to awaken. This is just a passing phase, however, because the awakened self truly puts no stipulations on life. People moving through other spiritual shifts can really get lost in trying to make the world a “spiritual” place. To those of you who are doing this, I gently encourage you to stop and to go further inward. See what it is you are trying to change, and see how that relates to you. It is an age-old habit for human beings to try and change the external things that reflect internal things that need to change. It is like the woman trying to help her friend leave an abusive relationship while she herself is in an abusive relationship. This is the irony of the ego which tries to futilely change the image in the mirror rather than changing itself.

Meeting others who try to change you

On the reverse side of the issue, many of you will be confronted by others who want to change you. They may tell you that you are crazy for following your heart. They may tell you that you need to believe in a certain guru, deity, spiritual teacher, practice, or something else. Honestly, people will tell you all kinds of things that have absolutely nothing to do with you. That is why going within is so important. The more you rest in your own inner love and inner wisdom, the more you know what is true for you in the words of others. All the rest is just nonsense, and you can let it blow away like a hot summer wind.

In the space of spiritual tolerance, we learn to see others as simply expressing themselves, so there is no arrogance or pride here. Generally speaking, so long as no one is threatening your physical body, most things people say to you do not require much further attention than a smile of acknowledgement. Then go on with your day.

Deepening into your own love

I’ve written about the difference between true self-love and ego love, and essentially, true self-love is complete acceptance of you as you are. In this way, you are tolerant to all your strengths and faults, but you are not blind to changes you may need to make in yourself. Complete acceptance is never saying, “Well, I drink and smoke too much, but that is just how it is.” No, in loving ourselves and finding tolerance for our faults, we also see the course of action to healing unhealthy patterns. For those of you in awakening, it will feel like there is an unstoppable, driving force within you which pushes you into healing. For the rest, all I can say is that regardless of any difficulty you discover within you, you can heal it.

Tolerating the intolerant

Naturally, there will be many people who are intolerant in the world and who do harmful things. There is a great need for people to learn how to be more loving and tolerant of themselves as well as others. But you cannot teach tolerance through intolerance. Consequently, the spiritual path is a challenge to all of us to learn spiritual tolerance, but to also follow the calling of hearts. In so doing, it shows people who are intolerant a new way of behaving. Putting aside truly violent and dangerous individuals, most people acting from intolerance can learn and grow. So I encourage you to be an example of spiritual tolerance and self-love in your community to help others see a new way of living while you practice the beautiful art of being you.

This was first published in the October 2013 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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The dreamer awakens

I am going to be careful to not make too many metaphors related to sleep, but for those of you who have spiritually awakened, it is like coming out of one kind of dreamland. The physical world around us is, in so many ways, more illusory than the dreams that we have at night. So much of the world is overrun with lies and deceptions. But in the dreamtime, you are often in a world much more real because every emotion and feeling is coming directly from you. In this way, your dreams are often where you are most vulnerable and exposed to the truth. You can’t lie to yourself in your subconscious. Going into your subconscious, you’ll see where fear, anger and self-deception dominate your life. This is often why many people have nightmares. For some people, sleep and nightmares can be really bad because there is hidden trauma that the person has forgotten. Such people are afraid even to go to sleep. After years of avoidance and keeping themselves constantly busy in their waking hours, they develop insomnia to avoid dealing with what is coming up from the subconscious.

Intense nightmares indicate that the person is dealing with a lot of fear and fear is its own trauma. Watching horror movies and other things that are based on fear further exacerbates the problem. It’s like injecting poison into your body. At night, your subconscious is trying to rid itself of that poison. During a spiritual awakening, the ridding of poisons goes on everywhere and that includes your dreams and the subconscious.

Creating a dream journal

I am no expert on the psycho-analysis of dreams, but I can say for certain that keeping a dream journal can be an illuminating tool for anyone on the spiritual path. Simply have it close to your bed and when you’ve had a dream you want to remember, write it down before you forget it [dreams fade away very quickly]. Over time, you can discover themes and similarities. Since dreams operate in emotions and imagery, these are usually the most important parts to focus on. For instance, it may not be as interesting that you picked your step-father to play a stand-up comedian in your dream so much as the feelings that come from him, whether it’s inspiration to do something new, overcoming stage-fright and other fears, or something else. As you continue to get a better sense of what your dreams are about, you may find ways in which you can take action during your waking hours to address your deeper needs that your subconscious is telling you about.

For instance, you may have always dreamt of going to exotic places or driving on the road somewhere. It may show up again and again in different forms and as you recognise this pattern in your dream journal, you can begin to inquire with yourself if you need more time to explore life. That may mean actually travelling, or it may mean picking up new hobbies and meeting new people. Dreams work in metaphors, so you may not actually need to go on a road trip. Of course, that might be a fun way to explore anyway.

Nightmares and being alone in the dark

For others, dreams have long been a scary place. A dream journal can help, but looking at how much fear is in your everyday life may be more important. Take a look at the life you’re leading and how you’re handling the stresses in your life. Pay attention to what you are afraid of. You can write down your different fears to get some perspective, or you can talk to a close friend about what frightens you. While there are also ways that forgotten childhood trauma can be arising through nightmares, most often it is the way we live our daily lives that’s truly terrifying and traumatising us. Facing these fears in our waking hours and making meaningful changes are important parts of making space for a more restful sleep.

For those with a lot of trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD] and other deep pains, sleep can be an exhausting place because of all the upset emotions and memories that have yet to be consciously dealt with. Finding a psychologist to help becomes one aspect of achieving a better night’s sleep. Additionally, learning how to do lucid dreaming can be another way to engage with the inner darkness. Through techniques that are available, we can learn to be semi-awake in the dream. We can take more control and interact with the difficult emotions that are arising, to understand them in order to release them. In this way, nightmares can be transformed into an empowered situation and ultimately, they can gradually be released, allowing for a more restful sleep.

The dream that is too real

Have you ever had a dream that seemed like it was actually happening? Many people do. This can only be felt and while it isn’t something that I’ve really felt too often, I certainly know others who have had these types of dreams. However, these aren’t dreams. Most of the time, these are believed to be out-of-body experiences, which some call astral projection. For some people, the veil between this world and other dimensions is very thin. At night, their spirit simply steps out from underneath this veil. This can be a way to explore this world or other worlds. It can be a way to heal on the level of the soul and sometimes this is a way to heal directly with other people where healing isn’t possible in the waking world. For instance, the person has already passed, or the other person is violent or otherwise irreconcilable in his/her waking self. But their true self is a being of light. No matter how horrible they are in person, that soul can be approached on the energetic level for healing.

Certainly, you can become more conscious of these travels, but this is quite different than how we use our consciousness in waking life. In this space, you don’t feel asleep. You’re very alert and you can suddenly find yourself looking at your body in bed or moving into space. In this place, you can communicate easily and directly with other spirits. If you’ve had a loved one pass beyond and you still haven’t finished grieving, you may be able to contact them and say the good-byes that you could never do in waking life. This type of spiritual-level connection is deep and profound and, usually, doesn’t require words for communication. For some people it can be overwhelming. But the level of healing and expanding of consciousness that is possible is tremendous.

Letting go of fear

For all of these situations—regular dreams, nightmares and spirit-travel—releasing fear is essential. The more you release fear, the more you can learn from your dreams. The more you release fear, the less often nightmares will arise. And for travelling in the spirit realm, you will have a chance to see and experience amazing things that you might never have “dreamed” were possible to experience. As always, it looks easier to ask someone to “release fear” than to actually do it, but unless you begin the practice of releasing fear, you will live under its shadow forever.

So my quick tips on the topic always start with writing down what you’re afraid of. Pick an easy one and do it. In this way, you move into the fear. If you’re afraid of approaching that attractive man or woman at the coffee shop, go say, “Hello.” It doesn’t have to be a super big fear and oftentimes, large fears are built up of little ones. Chipping away at them over time helps to dissolve them.

And here’s an essential piece of the spiritual path; you move into discomfort, not away from it. Avoidance perpetuates pain. Unaddressed pain grows exponentially over time. But when you meet whatever it is that is upsetting you, then you can properly address it. Also, go slowly. Building patience is important and sitting in meditation with what frightens you is another way to prepare you to do something that scares you. Befriend your fear. It has been here the whole time, so it’s not like your fear is a new guest anyway.

Sleeping peacefully

My last few thoughts are that as we find more peace in our waking lives, we will find more peace in our sleeping time. A spiritual awakening is a special transition, where everything is particularly tumultuous, including sleep. That’s why meditation and regular spiritual practices become so essential. It helps to acknowledge and release fear on multiple levels so that you can make space for the peace and love that you already are. As you melt more deeply into that peace and love, the dreams that come may become clearer or even prophetic. This is the gift of the spiritual path. Letting go of all these burdens clears the way for you to dream the dream that matters most and then to bring that dream in your waking life.

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