How To Find and Work With A Spiritual Teacher

Our Questions

Recently, a friend asked how to find a spiritual teacher and I also spoke with another person about working with a spiritual teacher. These questions are deeply relevant for all of us as we take a spiritual path. In a way, we are all each other's teachers. Next time we'll speak to that, but this entry is devoted to those souls among us who have taken the journey and come back to be the servants of all our Truth here.

The Blessing of Spiritual Teachers

We call spiritual teachers awakened masters, awakened mystics or sometimes gurus. They have taken the path that leads not only up to enlightenment (personal fulfillment of the spiritual journey), but back to Earth to serve as masters, examples and instruments of Truth. They teach that despite what seems to be a world overwhelmed with suffering that there is transcendence and Love. Spiritual teachers have found this Oneness or Love and show us how to do the same.

Teachers can be witnesses who hand us the Truth, that we might read the book and learn to write it ourselves. They can be scholars of Love or Wholeness who sat at the feet of God, become masters, then turned, never leaving the feet of God, to teach us to do the same. A teacher may shine with a very bright energy of Love that is contagious, similar to the way a person's positive attitude can be contagious. Being in the presence of that kind of spiritual teacher can give us the opportunity to feel enlightened even before we have had an awakening. We can live within that support as we take our steps along the path.

Spiritual teachers arise from many religious faiths - Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Sufi, Jewish, Muslim, Taoist, etc... Some spiritual teachers have studied, benefited from or bow to more than one tradition or may even be a transcendent amalgam of All. One thing spiritual teachers have in common is that they see who we really are. They see our potential and they see our Light - the Soul, Spirit, High Self or Holiness that we really are. Spiritual teachers are more interested in our Holy Light and Love than our thoughts and emotions. They see the potential for us to live out our High Self or Soul's purpose on Earth and that is what they beckon forth. They see the potential in us for mastery.

How to Work With A Spiritual Teacher

Open Your Heart To Love

Love. We can start by loving, not the person, not the image, not an icon that we see in a teacher, but the energy, the light, the devotion and the presence of the teacher. We can accept the grace of her presence and his devotion to God/Love/Truth and each of us. Each teacher is steadfastly devoted to the end of suffering, to awakening, mastery and entrance into Love or Unity, not just for their own students, but for All who seek this Return.

We can admire and esteem this goodness, we can bow to it in our hearts and be grateful, in any way we can, that God, that Grace, has come to us in all these ways, through all these teachers. We can be glad in our hearts and rejoice that Love/God/Flow/Oneness has come to teach any and all of us. We can Love that Love has not forsaken Its creations and is still willing to teach us today.

If we can feel just an inkling of this, we can open our hearts, even just a breath, and we will have allowed Love to teach us. We will have taken a step toward the teaching simply by seeing Love embodied in another. When we recognize Great Love in a spiritual teacher, we can see the potential for revealing that Great Love in ourselves. We have taken a step closer to our teacher, to the teaching, and to Love, Itself. We have opened to Love.

Accept The Teacher's Love and That You Can be A Student

Sometimes these great radiating forces we behold in teachers can make us feel shy because they are so huge and so full of presence and Love. We can have a tendency to pull back and think, "Well, that teacher can do it, he must be special. It's because he's a prophet blessed by God. He must have some special calling, a God-gene or something, but I'm just a regular human, I could never do that. I could never match That."

Instead, we can try thinking of what we can do, today. We can love, as we are, right now. We can open our hearts and be willing to be in first grade and just start, knowing that our teacher, likely started in first grade too. We can recognize that he or she once started a spiritual path and took many years to get where they are standing today and that each day he or she keeps a steady practice of Love to keep standing there radiating Love back to us.

Know that could make it easier for us to begin our practice now, simply by being present as we are. Recognizing that the more we accept our teacher, the more we accept our Self. And the more we accept our Self, the more we relax and accept All.

Once You Pass Start, Be Prepared to Be a Serious Student

Once we pass first grade, by simply beginning, we can skip directly to college. We can put on our walking shoes and go directly to the library of God. We can consider spiritual work, serious work, the work of a lifetime, that needs a life's devotion. We can know that our teacher will be there giving us the lessons we need to take the steps on the path. He or she will give us key after key, even maps when we are are ready, much advice and tests, especially if we are apt students. But, we need to know ourselves to be sincere students, capable, happy and willing to do the work of being students. Then, we can know the spiritual path as our life work of Love, our masterpiece.

Know the Path is Long and Paved with Gems and Dragons

We can recognize that a reason for a teacher is that there are many awakenings, yes awakenings, along the path. Knowing this will help us not feel alone as we move through event after event, even cosmic events of learning. Spiritual awakening can often feel like martial arts training. It can knock us out and go right down to our bones because sometimes we will feel like we are wrestling a dragon.

This is one of the main reasons it's good to have a teacher. He or she is likely to have been through similar events or will have the riddle's answer for what you are going through. There are stages to the spiritual process, many stages. If we try to go through them "alone," it can feel like a shipwreck at times and nirvana at others or like perhaps like you've shipwrecked in nirvana.

Having a spiritual teacher can be like having a special "in case of emergency call" number that works even from the far shores of forever. If we have a teacher, we can keep asking questions and being open. Our openness will pave the way to success and our questions will end our isolation. Everyone's spiritual opening is both dramatically different and striking similar. It is really good to be on this path together and with a guide.

Know Your Teacher to be a Student of the Soul

A spiritual teacher is a person who is here to guide the mind to awaken and hold space for the soul to come to earth. This means that a spiritual teacher is not here to be a mental therapist. She or he may assist us in how to live a spiritual, soul-guided life on Earth by giving us advice on how to live our daily life, but really the work of a spiritual teacher is about transcendence, Unity Consciousness, God, Love, the Whole, enlightenment, embodied soul's purpose, Zen, etc...

Very often, our teachers will remind us how to leave the past and come to the present, which is very much the opposite of psychotherapy. If you have the opportunity to have an individual session with your teacher, know it is not a counseling session, but a session to help you advance along your soul's purpose line or be of greater service to the whole.

All Time With Your Teacher Is Sacred Time

We can use all our time with our teachers as sacred time. Honestly, each second is a gem, a marriage of Heaven and Earth, and it is up to us how we use this time. Whether we are in a group teaching, a personal teaching or enjoying a meal, all time with our teacher is sacred time. As best we can, we can try to use this time to learn. Even if we are in a group setting and feel like our teacher is not talking directly to us, we can try to learn from him anyway. We can learn, over and over again, happily, that every teaching is for every student and everyone is a student, even your teacher.

Let Your Ego Go on Hiatus, Permanently, if Possible

A teacher may not always seem kind to our minds. His methods may seem harsh, but we can try to look past the exterior. We can ask is he really trying to demean us or is he really trying to get to the diamond that is in the center of the coal? We can ask ourselves to be honest, to look and look again. We can remember that our teacher is after what is best for our soul coming to Earth, not our mind being pandered to. We can remember that in the end, we too are after the same thing.

Work and Play with Your Teacher

Even after our first awakenings, there many steps in the path. A teacher can move from being someone up on a pedestal to being a friend and a crusader for a common cause - the cause of Oneness together. We need allies on this path and who better to have as an ally than one who has been there for years already, someone who is already doing this work and play of Love, everyday. Then, if we have a question or a triumph, we always have someone to turn to and share it with. We can use teachers and let them use us, for we are each other's fuel, we are each other's bread and life.

Ways To Find A Spiritual Teacher

Ask a Friend

Most people I know found teachers through the recommendation of a friend. Eight years ago, a friend introduced me to Elle Collier Re. I now live and study at HeartGate Sanctuary, the home of the teachings of awakened teacher and mystic, Elle Collier Re.

Try the Internet

Many spiritual teachers have websites. These sites are valuable resources for any student or seeker. You could spend a very enlightening time, going from website to website, reading the writings of our great teachers. These sites are full of articles, transcriptions from teaching, excerpts from their books, audio lessons, radio broadcasts and video podcasts. You can purchase their CDs, books and DVDs, see schedules of their classes, both in person and by tele-conference.

Here are the websites of three spiritual teachers who have been true inspirations in my life. There are many more, just search. Have fun, explore, be inspired:

HeartGate Sanctuary, home to the teachings of Elle Collier Re:
http://www.HeartGateSanctuary.org

White Conch Dharma Center, home to the teachings of Domo Geshe Rinpoche:
http://www.white-conch.org/Rinpoche.html

Awakened Heart, home to the teachings of Chris Celine:
http://www.chrisceline.com/

Retreat Finder and Find the Divine/Seek a Retreat are websites that list spiritual retreat centers by state. They also list conferences and spiritual events at these centers. Many teachers have their own retreat centers and/or travel to these centers to offer workshops:

http://retreatfinder.com/

http://www.findthedivine.com/

The Tat Society's Spiritual Gathering page lists national and international listing of satsangs (a satsang is a discourse or teaching with an awakened teacher) and workshops from an number of spiritual disciplines:

http://tatfoundation.org/spiritual_gatherings.htm

Perhaps surprisingly, your local Craigslist and Backpage list spiritual events in the community and classes sections. Check them out:

http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites

http://www.backpage.com/classifieds/index

Look Around Town

Your local newspaper's events section will often list spiritual talks at bookstores, spiritual centers, churches and other community locations held by spiritual teachers. Local coffee shops, grocery stores, spiritual bookstores, yoga studios and other community bulletin boards often have posting for satsangs, classes and workshops with spiritual teachers.

If you know of other resources to find a spiritual teacher, please list them in the Comments section. Or, if you have inspirations for how to work with a spiritual teacher, please share your insights. Thank you.

Amen, Atala