Human behavior is fascinating. By taking a step back and witnessing how humans function, you take a huge step forward in your personal development. Observing how people select their spiritual discipline is a great place to start.
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I have said before that I needed a better reason to be Christian than that I was born to a Christian family in a predominantly Christian nation. However, you do not need to look too deeply to see that is the primary way people do it. If you were born in a predominantly Muslim nation, very likely you would be Muslim. This is of course true for all the major religions. You would think that fact alone would give people reason to pause and reflect deeply. As some Catholics have said, “Give me a child for the first five years of their life and I will give you a good Catholic.”
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I have also been fascinated to observe that people select a Guru and that is it. The idea that only their Guru is the real deal is incredibly common. Even more incredible is to see some of the people that are put in such a position of Guru and how they attained it.
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First being from a foreign country, often particularly India, helps. There is something about the cultural norms of behavior and dress that enraptures westerners.
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Speaking with a strange and enchanting accent is also a very effective way of being promoted to the title of Guru.
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The performance of miracles is another favorite criterion. As Einstein said, “There are only two ways to look at life, one is that everything is a miracle, the other is that nothing is a miracle.”
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Remarkably even to this day, people are quick to think of things they do not understand as miracles. Whether or not it is true, I have, many times been offered to be given mantras through which one can perform miracles. I have turned them down every time. Such things are, more often than not, manipulations of energy and of people.
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Someone once commented to me that they felt people were more willing to listen to me since my hair began to grey. I responded by saying that I would like to think that people were not that shallow.
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Indoctrination into a cultural or sub-cultural norm, and subsequently finding someone who aligns with that criterion for a spiritual teacher, is the number one way people select their Guru.
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Where is the growth in finding someone who conforms to your current world view and clinging to that? Once a Guru is selected in that manner, the cake becomes baked and no one else can be accepted as having that stature.
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I realize that I am in delicate terrain here. I say this in all humility and sincerity. To evolve beyond your current state, you will do well to get clear on the nature of that state. This is not easy to do.
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So how to wisely pick a Guru? It requires an integration of thought, feeling, and reflection.
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The challenge with thoughts is that you can justify anything with the intellect.
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The challenge with feelings is that they can be based in personal bias and distortion instead of deep inner truth, each of which feels pretty much the same.
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Reflection means taking time to be with thoughts and feelings with the willingness (this is rare) to question the source and motivation of those thoughts and feelings, and thereby evolve/move beyond them.
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The ability and act of doing this in an ongoing way throughout life is called a life of discernment.
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As Adi Shankara said, that is, in and of itself, the path to enlightenment.
I remember that t-shirt picture, still have mine.
How to pick a guru is how to pick anything in your life, it seems to me. Such a delicate process and we are so pushed in our culture to rush rush rush as if we are going to be missing life if we don’t.