Finding
your spiritual teacher
With so many different offerings in the religious supermarket, how do
you know what is right for you, how do you know what to trust, how do
you avoid being taken advantage of? And how do you find the right teacher
or teaching? The key is to realize that the real teacher is inside of
you.
By Kim Michaels
I have been walking the spiritual path for 30 years, and I have studied
a wide variety of spiritual teachings. I have also been involved with
several organizations and spiritual teachers. I have friends who have
been involved with many more teachers, and I have observed hundreds
of people struggle with the spiritual path. Based on my experiences
and observations, I have come to one very clear conclusion. The difference
between those who are successful on the spiritual path and those who
continue to struggle with frustration is how they look at the concept
of a teacher.
The push-button mentality
If you take a step back and look at the big picture, the essence of
the spiritual path (or life, really) is to move out of ignorance and
into understanding, out of the darkness and into the light—in
the mind, that is. There is an old saying which states, “If people
knew better, they would do better.” I believe any normal person
would never knowingly hurt him/herself. That is why Jesus said about
those who crucified him:
Father, forgive
them; for they know not what they do. (Luke 23:34)
So when we experience any
kind of pain, limitation or suffering, it is because we are ignorant
about something—we don’t know better. How many times in
your life have you felt, “If only I’d known that at the
time!” Why do we live longer today than people did 500 years ago?
It is because we know more about hygiene, nutrition and how to fight
disease.
I think all people have some sense that knowing more is important, but
this is especially true about people who are spiritual seekers. We just
know there is more to life than what we were told in school or Sunday
school. We know there is something to find, and we simply can’t
stop looking for it. And while this drive for knowledge and understanding
is the driving force on the path – the motor that powers our progress
– where would a car get us without a steering wheel? It would
simply keep running in the same direction until it hit a wall or ended
up in the ditch. My point is that we need to find a way to direct our
quest for knowledge in the right direction. Where do you need to look
in order to find the knowledge that will empower you to change your
life?
I have grown up in the West and most of the people I have met were likewise
Westerners, so things might be different in other cultures. However,
when we Westerners first become aware of the spiritual path, we tend
to approach it like we approach any other aspect of life, namely as
consumers. We think the way we have been programmed to think, namely
that if we have a need, we must find some person, service or product
from outside ourselves to fill that need. We also tend to think that
this is a mechanical process, meaning that when we find the right person
or product, our need will automatically be filled and our lives will
inevitably improve.
Most of us were not brought up with a conscious awareness of the spiritual
path. At some point in our lives, we become aware that we are spiritual
seekers, and we naturally think, “Oh, I need spiritual knowledge
and understanding, so I just need to find the right teacher or teaching
and then my life will automatically improve.” This is what I call
the “Push-button mentality.” We have grown up around technology,
and when we go into a dark room and push a button, we expect the light
to come on. If it doesn’t, we think there is something wrong.
So what happens when we become aware that our minds are dark rooms and
that we need to turn on the light? We think it is simply a matter of
finding the light switch. So we venture into the religious supermarket
and look for a teacher, a teaching or a technique that we expect will
automatically turn on the light in our minds and turn us into enlightened
spiritual masters. And we are immediately bombarded with numerous teachers
and organizations who claim that they can do just that.
Why people get frustrated
As the well-programmed consumers we are, we pick out a product that
looks appealing to us and eagerly start consuming it. Yet after a while
– usually a short while – we start feeling like a person
who has flipped the switch, but the light hasn’t come on. So we
keep flipping the switch on and off, and while we can hear the click,
the light still doesn’t come on. This is usually when we start
feeling frustrated, and we might even take it out on the teacher or
teaching that seemingly isn’t working.
I have personally felt this frustration and I have seen it in many others.
It is very understandable, especially when we consider that so many
teachers or organizations do make promises on which they can’t
deliver. They too have been caught up in the consumer approach to spiritual
growth, and they have – either unknowingly or deliberately –
decided to tell people what they want to hear.
So what do we do? Well, some people give up right there and never try
again. Yet most of us don’t give up that easily. We take the politically
correct consumer approach and reason that we simply hadn’t found
the right product. So we start looking for another one, and when we
find one that looks appealing – and makes the promises we want
to hear – we think, “Ah, this is the right one.” Yet,
once again, we flick the switch and the light doesn’t come on.
I have seen people who have taken this approach for decades, and the
frustration keeps building:
- Some people blame it
on the teacher and they go into a mode of feeling that it is the outer
teacher that prevents their progress—they can't make it until
they find the right teacher.
- Some spend their time
fighting a teacher or organization that they feel took advantage of
them.
- Some refuse to acknowledge
that their chosen teacher or organization made empty promises. And
they refuse to reexamine their approach to spiritual growth. So they
remain fiercely loyal to an organization, often believing they are
making progress while refusing to see that they are stuck in the consumer
approach.
- Some play the game that
their teacher is better than anyone else’s so they have to convert
the whole world.
- Some give up the dream
of instant gratification and instead believe in gratification in the
tomorrow that somehow never seems to arrive. They have reasoned that
if only they keep doing doing the same thing, their lives will one
day change. Incidentally, Einstein’s definition of insanity
is that you keep doing the same thing while expecting different results.
Common for all these people
is that they keep looking for the solution – for the teacher –
outside themselves. Fortunately, I have also seen many people who, often
after a few failed attempts, realize that the consumer approach to spiritual
growth simply doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because it is
based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what the spiritual path is
all about.
The real purpose of the spiritual path
In our consumer culture we are programmed to believe that we can change
our circumstances in life without truly changing ourselves. Take for
example the issue of obesity. There are numerous products on the market
that promise you that by taking a pill, you can lose weight without
changing your diet. Eat whatever you want, and our pill will make you
lose weight. Other companies are selling a diet, and they say you can
use their diet to lose weight without exercising. Still other companies
sell exercise equipment, and they say you can lose weight without changing
your diet. Others say you can lose weight without changing your lifestyle
or your attitude toward life.
Do you see the common denominator? They are all saying that you can
take a piecemeal approach to life. You have a problem with obesity?
The cause is this or that mechanical component, and by treating that
one component in a mechanical way, you will solve the problem. This
entire approach is based on the Western tradition of breaking reality
into separate pieces, to compartmentalize it, so it seemingly becomes
easier to analyze and manage. This approach has led us to create an
entire culture that is based on the idea of shortcuts.
The basic approach to life in our consumer culture is that you can isolate
a particular problem and link it to a particular mechanical cause. So
by treating just that one cause, you fix the problem, That approach
works great in a car. If your tire is flat, you just need to patch the
tire; you don’t need to change the oil filter. Yet despite what
our Western scientists claim, human beings are not machines. So as spiritual
seekers, we have to make the effort to free ourselves from the programming
of our scientific, mechanical consumer culture.
We might also say that spiritual growth is not about one particular
aspect of our lives—it is about the totality of our lives. If
you want real spiritual growth, you have to change your entire consciousness,
not just a part of it. Again, even Western religion is based on a piecemeal
approach, making many people believe religion is something we do on
Sunday and then forget about the rest of the week. Yet spiritual growth
is not the same as religion; it is about the totality of our consciousness.
Therefore, to attain growth, you have to be willing to change your entire
consciousness. As Jesus said:
The kingdom of
heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures
of meal, till the whole was leavened. (Matthew 13:33)
You need to be willing to
raise the whole of your consciousness. Many spiritual seekers have realized
the fallacy of a piecemeal approach to life, and they are looking into
a more wholesome approach, such as holistic medicine. Yet in my experience
many people have not realized that we also need to take a holistic approach
to spiritual growth. For example, obesity is not just a physical problem.
Everything is consciousness, so your physical body is a product of your
state of consciousness. If you really want to solve a physical problems,
you have to uncover the psychological mechanism that caused the problem.
That mechanism might go back many lifetimes, and it takes time and work
to overcome it. Of course, that reality is very unpleasant for people
who have grown up in a consumer culture that programs us to believe
in mechanical solutions and shortcuts. And that is precisely why so
many people become frustrated with the spiritual path and why many give
up before they see results.
A reality-based approach to spiritual growth
What is the way out? It is to realize that life is a holistic process.
Every aspect of your life is a product of something that takes place
in your consciousness. Every aspect of life on this planet is a product
of something that takes place in the collective consciousness. So the
only way to really change our lives is to change our consciousness.
The only way to change the world is to begin by changing ourselves.
This leads to the foundational principle for spiritual growth,
You can’t
change your outer situation without changing your inner situation.
You can’t change your world without changing yourself.
The conclusion is that the
real goal of the spiritual path is to change your consciousness and
this is not a mechanical process. It is tempting to think that changing
your consciousness means finding a teacher or teaching that will give
you some secret formula that will do the work for you. So many people
are seeking for the holy grail or the philosopher’s stone. Yet
the stark reality is that no teacher or teaching from outside yourself
can do the work for you. You are the only one who can change yourself,
and the reason is that God gave you the gift of free will.
If you are to change, you can change in only one way, namely by you
making the choice to change yourself. An outer teacher might inspire
you to make that choice and might give you information that makes it
easier for you to choose. Yet the outer teacher can never make the choice
for you. This becomes clear when you consider exactly what it is that
has to change. Who is the you that has to change? It is the conscious
self, and the core of this self is your sense of identity.
There is an old Indian proverb which states, “The knowledge that
is in the books, stays in the books.” The idea is that you can
study spiritual teachings forever, but if you don’t internalize
the teaching, it will do nothing for you. Believe me, I have seen dozens
of people who faithfully studied spiritual teachings and practiced various
techniques, yet their lives never changed. The reason is that such people
are not internalizing the teaching.
They are taking it in on an intellectual level, and some of them have
a very impressive intellectual knowledge of any spiritual topic under
the sun. They can go on talking about it for hours, and they often sound
incredibly impressive to an inexperienced seeker. I have met people
who seemed to live for the chance to impress others with their intellectual
knowledge of spirituality, yet these people never seemed to change.
And I have met others who couldn’t have explained a spiritual
principle if their lives depended on it, but they lived that principle
every day. Jesus explained this when he made the statement:
For I say unto
you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness
of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom
of heaven. (Matthew 5:20)
The scribes and Pharisees
had a very sophisticated intellectual understanding of the outer scriptures,
but they had not internalized the teaching. They had not been willing
to let the teaching change themselves. They thought intellectual understanding
could get them to Heaven, but in reality only a change of consciousness,
a change in our sense of identity, can get us to Heaven.
What I am pointing out here is that the real key to spiritual progress
is to realize that you cannot approach a spiritual teaching like a consumer.
It is not a matter of simply reading a teaching and understanding it
intellectually. It is not a matter of simply joining a church or spiritual
organization and then expecting that you will automatically become enlightened.
You need to internalize the teaching, so that it becomes part of your
being. Thereby, the teaching will permanently change your sense of identity,
and because all of your thoughts, feelings and actions spring from your
sense of identity, your life will naturally change. So what is the key
to internalizing a spiritual teaching? It is to use an outer teaching
only as a tool for stimulating the process of getting insights from
a source inside yourself.
The inner teacher
While there is more than one way to do this, I have found that the most
efficient way is to adopt the approach that the real teacher is inside
of you. That teacher is constantly trying to teach you and he/she does
so through your intuition. Therefore, an outer teacher or teaching is
not truly meant to give you the information that will change your life.
AN OUTER TEACHER IS ONLY MEANT TO STIMULATE THE PROCESS WHEREBY YOU
GET THE REAL ANSWERS FROM INSIDE YOURSELF!
The key to internalizing a spiritual teaching is to never let an outer
teaching be confined to intellectual understanding. Instead, you use
it to reach for an intuitive insight from beyond the intellect, from
the teacher inside of you. One might say that you always look at an
outer teaching as a tool for opening up the communication with your
inner teacher. You study an outer teaching until you find a concept
that appeals to you. You then send that concept to your internal teacher
and wait for it to be mirrored back. This mirroring back will happen
in the form of an intuitive insight that gives you a highly personal
understanding of the outer teaching. It is this inner understanding
that empowers you to internalize the outer teaching. And only then will
the teaching change your life! That is precisely why the scribes and
the Pharisees could not recognize Jesus as a spiritual teacher—they
were stuck in intellectual analysis of the outer teaching.
Who is the inner teacher? It can be your Christ self, which is a spiritual
being assigned to you from the spiritual realm. Your Christ self is
the mediator between your outer mind and the spiritual realm. It knows
you intimately and follows your soul on a very personal level. For more
on the Christ self, see Jesus’
discourse and the following teaching.
Your teacher can also be an ascended being, such as Jesus, Mother Mary
or another member of the Ascended Host. Yet even such teachers communicate
with you through the mediator of your Christ self. In other words, even
the Ascended Host don’t want you to approach them as external
teachers that are elevated far above you. Where do ascended beings reside—where
are they found? They reside in the spiritual realm, what Jesus called
the kingdom of Heaven. And where did Jesus say the kingdom of Heaven
is located?
Neither shall they
say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within
you. (Luke 17:21)
The message is clear. The
real teacher is inside of you, and as long as you are looking for a
teacher outside yourself, you are not likely to find the real teacher.
Instead, you are likely to find a false teacher.
Beware the false teachers
Over the years, I have noticed an unfortunate polarization that divides
spiritual seekers into two extremes:
- I know many sincere spiritual
people who cling to an orthodox religion, such as some form of orthodox
or even fundamentalist Christianity. I know others who have the same
loyalty to a New Age teacher or organization. This represents one
extreme, namely the belief that one particular outer teacher or teaching
is better than all others, and therefore the solution to the world’s
problems is that the world becomes converted to the true teaching.
I fell for this approach when I was young, and I have met people who
have been stuck in it for a lifetime.
- The other extreme is what
I see in many New Age people. They have rejected the previous approach,
often because they grew up in a hellfire and brimstone Christian culture
and they rejected the fear-based, judgmental attitude that dominates
such a community. Yet they often jumped into the opposite extreme
and reasoned that there is no “right or wrong,” there
is no “ultimate truth,” meaning that any teaching can
be as good or true as any other teaching. Therefore, these people
often reject the concept of evil and consequently they reject the
idea that there could be false teachers who are deliberately and aggressively
trying to deceive them and prevent them from making real spiritual
progress.
In my observation, people
in the first extreme often become rigid and make very little progress,
even though they often take great pride in belonging to the elite that
is saving the world. People in the second extreme often have very confused,
scattered and inconsistent beliefs, even though they often take great
pride in belonging to the elite that is saving the world. What is the
way out? It is to be a mature consumer in the religious supermarket.
You don’t have to go to the store with the idea that one brand
of soap is the only right one and that all others are of the devil.
On the other hand, it would be naive to expect that any product in the
pharmacy is safe and has no side effects.
The key to being an informed consumer is discernment, the ability to
tell what is true in a higher sense and what springs from the dualistic
mind. I have met many people who attempt to build this discernment based
on some outer criteria. People in the first extreme judge everything
by comparing it to an outer teaching, such as the Bible, which they
see as unquestionably true. People in the second extreme refuse to judge,
and they accept whatever sounds good, often based on what they want
to hear.
The only way to have true discernment is to rise above the outer mind,
the dualistic mind of intellect and emotions, and reach for the inner
teacher. It is only through the mind of Christ that you can know the
difference between what is true, meaning that it is one with God’s
reality, and what is not true, meaning that it sprang from the mind
of separation from God. As Jesus said:
All things are
delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the
Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to
whomsoever the Son will reveal him. (Matthew 11:27)
The trick here is to realize
that the Son is not exclusively the outer person of Jesus but the universal
Christ mind, which you can access through your individualized Christ
self. In other words, the key to discernment is the mind of Christ,
or as Paul put it:
Let this mind be
in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: (Philippians 2:5).
The true meaning is that
you make conscious contact with your inner teacher. As you start the
spiritual path, this might seem difficult, yet if you had no contact
with the inner teacher, you would not have been open to discovering
the spiritual path. So you simply need to multiply the talents you already
have by expanding your intuitive connection. To do this, it can be extremely
helpful to follow an outer teacher or teaching, and this gives you an
excellent measure of discerning between a true and a false teacher:
- A true teacher knows
that the key to your growth (even your salvation or ascension) is
that you become a spiritually self-sufficient being, that you find
the truth inside yourself instead of relying on anything outside your
spiritual self or I AM Presence. So the true teacher is always working
on bringing you closer to this self-sufficiency. One might say that
a true outer teacher is always trying to connect you to your inner
teacher so that you are empowered to the point where you no longer
need the outer teacher. The true teacher sees that the true measure
of success is that you no longer need the teacher.
- In contrast, the false
teacher also knows the key to your salvation, and therefore he is
constantly trying to prevent you from connecting to your inner teacher.
You can see obvious examples of this in the so-called cults that seek
to isolate their members and make them feel they can be saved only
by their particular outer teacher who is the mediator between God
and them. Incidentally, some mainstream religions fit into this category—I
intentionally mention no names.
Unfortunately, there are
many far more subtle examples of false teachers that give you a lot
of truth but mix in enough error to prevent you from becoming fully
self-sufficient. Yet the ultimate false teacher is your own ego, who
can survive only by preventing you from making contact with the inner
teacher. The ego will attempt to keep you stuck in one of the two extremes
described above. The key to escaping this is to take a balanced approach
to the path. Instead of reasoning that there is only one true teacher
or that all teachers are equally good, you reason that there are false
teachers and true teachers. You can learn from both, but only if you
are willing to discern between them and only if you are willing to learn
from your mistakes—which means that you have to admit it when
you make a mistake.
Overcoming pride
When I discovered the spiritual path, I was 18 and thought – as
most teenagers do – that I had it all figured out. I found an
organization that taught a form of Eastern meditation and gave some
teachings that were a mix of Hinduism and science. At the time, I thought
I had found the only true teaching and that converting everyone would
solve all of the world’s problems. Yet after a couple of years,
I intuitively felt something was wrong, but I could not consciously
understand what it was. I left the organization in great disappointment,
and for a couple of years I was in a spiritual vacuum. I felt I had
been fooled and I was suspicious of any other spiritual teaching, and
the result was that I didn’t find any other teaching even though
I had a longing for it.
There is a law, which can be described in the following saying, “When
the student is ready, the teacher appears.” So if I had a couple
of years where I had not found a teacher, the only realistic conclusion
is that I wasn’t ready. Why wasn’t I ready? Because I had
not been willing to admit that I made a mistake. I was still blaming
my experience on the outer organization and its leader instead of admitting
that the real problem was that I was taking an immature approach to
the spiritual path. I was too proud to admit my mistake, and I have
seen many other spiritual seekers fall into the same trap, thereby keeping
themselves either in a vacuum or keeping themselves in a particular
organization even though they should long ago have moved on.
My problem was simple. I intuitively knew that I had been in a false
teaching. Yet in order to admit that with my outer mind, I had to admit
that I had been wrong in wholeheartedly embracing this organization
as the true savior of humankind. I had to be willing to admit that I
had been fooled because my discernment wasn’t good enough. For
a couple of years I wasn’t willing to admit that, and the result
was that I kept myself in a vacuum that prevented the next teacher from
appearing in my life.
A better approach to finding your teacher
Is there a better approach? I believe there is, and hopefully it won’t
take you as long to adopt it as it took me. The approach is to realize
that the real teacher is always your inner teacher. This teacher is
constantly seeking to guide you to make the maximum progress on your
spiritual path. In order to do so, your inner teacher will often guide
you to find a particular outer teacher or organization. The trick is
to realize that your inner teacher is NEVER trying to guide you to the
ultimate teacher or organization. Your inner teacher is above and beyond
the outer approach, the consumer approach, to spiritual growth. Your
inner teacher knows that no teacher or organization is the only true
one or the ultimate key to salvation. The only key to salvation is that
you raise your consciousness.
So your inner teacher is not trying to guide you to the ultimate outer
teacher. Your inner teacher is guiding you to the outer teacher who
is best suited for teaching you the lesson that you need to learn in
order to take the next step on your personal path. And in some cases,
the lesson you need to learn might be that you cannot put ultimate trust
in any outer teacher or organization. You need to rise above outer teachers
and make contact with your inner teacher. And who better to teach you
that lesson than a false teacher, even though – or perhaps because
– he might fool you for a time?
My point it that I intuitively felt that my inner teacher had guided
me to my first spiritual organization. When I started feeling that this
was a false teacher, my ego managed to convince me that I had been misled
by my intuition and that I should never trust it again. While I maintained
that mistrust, I was in a vacuum and my life felt empty—I was
literally depressed.
The way to neutralize this ego-plot is to recognize that your inner
teacher is always guiding you to the place where you can learn the next
lesson. When you give up the dream of finding an outer teacher who will
automatically turn you into an enlightened being, you can stop pursuing
an impossible dream. Instead, you can see every situation as a stepping
stone to further progress, and you can actively look for the lesson
you are there to learn instead of believing that you have to remain
in that organization forever.
You see, your ego is constantly trying to use every situation to stop
your progress. So if the ego can't prevent you from starting the spiritual
path, the ego will try to use any mistake you make to get you to stop
taking the next step. On the other hand, your inner teacher will guide
you on how to use every mistake as a driving force for taking the next
step. The problem is that pride will cause us to listen to the ego instead
of the inner teacher. The only way out is to make a conscious effort
to reach beyond the ego and find the inner teacher.
I realize today that I was truly guided by my inner teacher to find
my first spiritual organization. Yet I was guided there to learn some
very specific lessons that would help me develop a more mature and discerning
approach to the path. After I learned some of those lessons, I was ready
to find the next outer teaching, and this was a true teaching sponsored
by the Ascended Host.
In the beginning, I thought I had now found the ultimate teaching and
that I would remain there for the rest of my life. Yet gradually I came
to realize that even a true teaching can become a trap if it prevents
you from becoming one with the inner teacher. And today I know that
no outer teacher can ever do all the work for you. The outer teacher
can help you rise to the point, where you stand before the door that
leads to eternal life, or whatever you want to call it. Yet in the end,
you must walk through that door on your own power, and you can do that
only when you no longer rely on anything outside your Self.
Incidentally, everything said in this article also applies to this website.
This website is obviously an outer teacher. If you will read between
the lines, you will see that Jesus is constantly talking about the need
to find the inner teacher and to take a balanced approach to spiritual
growth. Thus, you should never allow this website, or the teachings
and tools on it, to prevent you from going within. This website has
only one purpose, namely to connect you to your inner teacher, so you
no longer need this website. As Jesus has said, “If no one follows
in my footsteps, I have failed as a teacher.”
Please don’t let Jesus and his teachings fail. Find the kingdom
of God within you!
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Copyright
© 2005 by Kim Michaels |
