Hello Friends 🙂
Last Monday we talked about why the spiritual path is not a way out of pain, but rather a vehicle designed to take you into your pain so that you can unify and integrate.
We talked about how seeking a spiritual teacher because it looks like they have figured out a way of transending pain actually holds you back from learning what you need to learn in your life.
Today, lets talk about the second reasons Guru's are screwing us up on our spiritual journies:
We See The End Goal State, Which Prevents Us From being Where We Are Now - Which Is The Only Way To Get To The End Goal State:
So many spiritual teachers are teaching from a particular 'mountain top' state.
Just like I spoke about above, a true spiritual path is one that takes you into the eye of your pain, that takes you into all of your fragmented and shadow aspects, and helps you to love them. Helps you to see them for what they truly are - parts of your life - and the path should help you to re-integrate those aspects of yourself.
This is what the gurus have done. They have found a state of peace within themselves.
Essentially, these wise and 'enlightened' gurus have reached a state where they are no longer in resistance to (or have very very low levels of resistance)Â any aspect of themselves, or to any aspect of this life. They are in a state of knowing that ALL is God - and not as a concept, but as an experience. They are experiencing themselves as the light that they have always been, and this life as the light that it has always been. They have remembered who they are and are at a place where they can actually live and walk that out. Sounds like a lovely place to be doesn't it?
But here is the kicker - they got to that place one.step.at.a.time.
They got to that place by facing their pain.
By going in.
By experiencing resistance and fear and dread and loss and shattering.
They got to that place on experience at a time.
One level of understanding at a time.
One level of awakening and remembering at a time.
Meaning that they started right where you are.
And they did not hear a teaching from someone else who as at the mountain top state and simply float up there.
The mountain top state cannot be taught. No one gets there by hearing about someone else's experience of being up there. Just like someone cannot describe to you what it is like to be at the top of mount everest, and you having heard that magically transports you to the top of Mount Everest. They can tell you about it, but you still have to take the steps to get to the top of the mountain.
All of this is to say, that if you are on a spiritual path, you will get to your mountain top. You will. But you are going to get there one step at a time. And each and every thing you experience in your life is a step on that path.
Meaning you being exactly where you are right here right now, is the EXACT place you need to be, to learn what you need to learn, to experience what you need to experience that will take you to the next step on your path. And then after that, to the next step. And to the step after that.
All you need to do is this step. This experience. This place.
Your Path Would Pull You, Even Without A Teacher
Your path is pulling you along, and really the only role that an outside teacher or guru should play is one of validation and support.
They should not be teaching you concepts you do not already have awareness of. They should not be imparting knowledge to you that you don't already know - however vaguely. They should only be affirming and strengthening where you are on your path. Because them giving you any teaching that is not already relevant to you in your life, is them trying to teach you a step that you are not at yet. And thus it is nice, but ultimately not useful.
You should not have to STRUGGLE to understand and practice the things your teachers are presenting to you. It may be slightly challenging, they may offer you something that stretches you, but it should feel like a doable challenge, like something you have felt you should be moving into, but just needed that extra push to get you to do it.
Now, there will be times when a spiritual teacher or guru says something to you that you may feel is something you have never thought of. In this case, what they have said should, on some level, still sound or FEEL familiar. It should still be something that rings as a memory of something you have forgotten, rather than feeling like something you have never considered.
You should never walk away from a spiritual teacher or teaching feeling like what you have just learned is so far beyond where you are right now, that you feel like a failure. Or you feel less than. Or you feel discouraged. You should feel encouraged and inspired. You should never feel like what has been presented is completely outside of your zone of awareness and capacity.
It is essentially like a grade two student going and sitting in on a grade 7 lecture. It is not that the information in the grade 7 class is wrong, or that the grade two student is just not listening or trying hard enough if they don't understand. It is simply that the grade two student has not completed the request courses to be able to really get anything out of that grade 7 lecture.
In the same way, it is not helpful for the grade two student to keep going to the grade 7 lectures, even though it is only frustrating, discouraging and making the grade two student feel incapable, behind, and some how less than everyone else, as a way of trying to get to grade seven faster. Staying in that grade seven class will only serve to stunt their growth. To hold them back. The fastest way for that grade 2 student to get to grade seven, is to go back to grade 2 and complete that, then do grade 3, then 4 and so on until grade 7 is the next most logical and easy step.
So if you hear a teaching about loving what arrises, and you are not at a place where you are already feeling that as a natural impulse - then it is simply not the teaching for you. Go find someone who is speaking in a language that already sounds familiar to you.
You know you have hit on the right spiritual teacher/path for you when the teachings resonate as something you were already dabbling in, when you think "Yes! That is exactly what I had been doing! I am not the only one!"
No Spiritual Teacher/Teaching Should Make You Feel Less Than:
If the teachings feel like news to you, if the teachings are something you have never heard before, if the teachings are something you struggle to put into practice in your life, move on. You will get to those, or perhaps they are simply not a part of your path at all.
The fastest way to get to the mountain top experience is to forget about all teachings from a mountain top experience, and to focus all your energy on the teachings that are relevant for you, right here, right now.
If you feel like you 'should' be doing something you are incapable of doing, if you feel like you 'should' be somewhere that you are not, if you feel like you walk away from a teaching and go back into your life and feel like a failure because you can't maintain what was taught - there is NOTHING wrong with you.
Just take a step back, and find a teacher that resonates with where you are on your path right now.
Be where you are. Do not try to rush to any kind of mountain top experience.
THIS is how you will get there.
One step at a time.
<3
