the Guru

(Thoughts on the guru’s role, while preparing for day 2 of teaching the Yoga Sutras in WV.)

Anyone who is a spiritual teacher, guru, or spiritual guide, first and foremost has their vision turned to God, and endeavors to saturate their being with divine realization.

They are interested in the divine, the divine in the world, and the divine in you. This is why they can seem uninterested in human problems. They are not guidance counselors, they are holding a vision and a field of being open, so that you too can turn your sight more easily to God.

The Guru’s role is to have his or her eye fixed on the divine. It is not to further confirm the false reality of your human existence. Our role as students is to follow the spiritual teachers sight to the source, and to attune to the field of being the Guru represents.

It is not the guru’s role to attune to us, or to come to our level. The guru is a transmission point, and we are called to go to the guru, to attune to him or her.

It can feel cold or uncaring when a spiritual teacher doesn’t want to affirm human difficulties by talking about them. But the spiritual teacher, has come to the realization, that there is no end to the human drama, and may have grown tired of it, and so now looks to vaster horizons. We can follow. The guru cannot tell us what he or she knows, but the guru can show us how it is learned. The guru cannot carry us, but the guru can leave a clear path for us to follow. The clearer the better. We just need the faith to let go of our attachment to the countless years of existing in human consciousness, and have the joyful curiosity to see, what’s next for our soul’s journey in infinity.

Lahiri Mahasaya, Sri Yukteswar, Yogananda

Distractions?

Over and over we have been told, or we have read, that when we seek God first, to the point of direct realization, all that is needed will be provided.

It’s an easy message to forget, because we are often raised to believe all our outer circumstances must be perfect, before we can turn our attention within. Even if we don’t believe this consciously, we can see how this way of being is evident unconsciously.

When sitting to meditate, how often do we think about our day’s problems and our life responsibilities? How often do we come to the spiritual path, not to know the fullness of God or the direct experience of the wholeness within our own Self, but to escape from or to fix problems, our less than perfect lives.

All great teachers, Masters, Self-realized persons had trials. They all (at least the ones I’m familiar with) did not look to their trials as a reality, but as an inspiration to go deeper into God, acknowledging God as the only reality.

Pray, meditate, live, and breathe to know the full reality of God, to know its truth of being inside you, closer than even your very breathe.

When you are meditating cast aside your worldly concerns. Give them up to the divine presence within and around. This presence manages the seasons, the stars in the sky, and the heartbeat of over 7 billion humans. It can handle your concerns too. You just have to release them, and focus on the Source.

When you are with spiritually supportive friends, teachers or acquaintances, let go of your attachment to their personality, which may have their quirks, and focus on the depth of that divine being manifesting through their individualized awareness. Let go of talking about anything other than than divine inspiration, and if you can, let go of talking all together and just sit. Then you may find the real beauty expressing through humanity.

(Thoughts while on the road to WV, to teach a yoga philosophy workshop.)