There are more fake gurus and false teachers in this world than the numbers of stars in the visible universe. Don’t confuse power-driven self centred people with true mentors. A genuine spiritual master will not direct your attention to himself or herself and will not expect absolute obedience or utter admiration from you, but instead will help you to appreciate and admire your inner self. True mentors are as transparent as glass. They let the Light of God pass through them.
When you have found what you were looking for, you want to share your discoveries. This is part of how we are. Even a gold digger who has made his fortune after years of hard and frustrating work wants to share his joy even when he has to be afraid of the envy and greed of his companions. We want others to participate in what is precious for us. They also should participate with the profit. We want to teach what we have learned. For every piece of valuable knowledge and wisdom there is someone who can take advantage of this insight.
And at this point we reach a crossroad which we tend to overlook all too easily. Do we leave our fellow men who have built up trust in us, the freedom to choose from what we can offer to them what they value or do we start to put them under pressure, even in subtle ways, to take more as they like? Is there a point where the ego gets involved in our sharing which wants to know better what is good for the others? Would we need our friends to move on just the way we benefitted the most?
Maybe we have already taken the way and chosen the street of the complacent teacher without noticing. We have students who read from our lips and quote our insights, ask humble questions and follow our guidance while constantly showing gratitude and recommending us to other people. Successes like these tend to dazzle us with a seductive light. This is not our light we assumingly spread over our students. It is their light which beams from the honest wish for truth, realization and love which we swallow and return it to them as if it were ours. Now we are already on the path of pedagogical and spiritual exploitation.
The next step of the blinding can be observed in the way we handle critics and complaints: “That you cannot deal with this clearly shows that you cannot accept this as a shadow part of yourself. Look at this and work with it, then your critic will end.” “What you experience is a choice of yourself, and as you project it towards me shows that it is unconscious to you. Be glad that you have the chance to gain insight into that.” Cunningly we mirror every feedback we get back to the student which helps us out of the trouble. The student may learn about his inner part of the critic but also that his teacher is not transparent and open at this point.
Every teacher has a shadow as part of who we are as humans. It is not necessary for the teacher to offer all her shadows and shortcomings in front of her students, because in this way she puts herself in the center and the students in the periphery; but it is harmful when she presents herself as perfect, because thus she takes herself much more important than the student and puts herself in a position out of reach.
As long as she knows about her shadows and cares about clearing them up, she is a good teacher. As long as she can keep her shadows apart from the work with her students, so that her teaching is undiluted, she is on the right path. The teacher should always assure herself that she will stay a student, a student to the bigger wisdom to which she owes everything she is able to teach. And that this bigger wisdom is also revealed by the students and by the field created in meeting them, especially when critical questions or comments are shared. The teacher should always be aware that teaching is grace and responsibility. Good teachers can also be seen in the way the deal with others and especially with themselves in a humorous way.
As there are relationship partners for certain phases is life, there are also appropriate teachers for different phases in life. The true teacher can become a false one when the phase of the way is over in which the teacher can guide the student, and when the relationship is kept to a point where the teacher is overstrained and unable to cope with the task. It is part of the job of the teacher to notice at which point to release the student and send him onto his own path. When this is missed, the teacher is blinded. Then it can become difficult for the student to find her own way, sometimes painful and loaded with conflict especially when the free teacher-student-relationship has become a dependent one.
The claim for a teacher to be totally transparent is high, and it always is addressed to a person. When we are looking for a totally transparent teacher it can happen that we never succeed. So it is better to carefully feel inside what a certain teacher we feel attracted to, can offer us and where the limitations are. We do not need a perfect teacher but a teacher who can helps us to overcome those points we cannot master without help, up to the point where we are independent. A good teacher makes himself disappear at the right point for the student to become a teacher himself.
The rules are taken from Elif Shafak's novel “The Forty Rules of Love” (Viking 2010). They are inspired by the Sufi tradition and worded by the autor's imagination. www.elifshafak.com
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