Welcome back everyone and I hope the threat of the oncoming Holidays is not stressing everyone out! Today I’d like to talk about the teacher or guide who helps us in our visualization work. The guide is a special figure who helps us make quantum leaps in understanding. He, she or “it” is a figure outside our conscious range but also within it. The guide is accessible to us but has an aspect that goes into the superconscious and subconscious ranges of our mind. If we are working with a concept, such as Spirit, they can access all the information in that concept.
We need to make the guide as unlimited and all-knowing a figure as possible in order to give them the greatest possible range of helpfulness. They should be essentially all knowing in the sense of grasping fully everything we already know and feel as well as all the knowledge we are just beginning to touch upon. The teacher is in the unique position of being both a mirror and a telescope to us. As a mirror, they reflect back to us in an inverted form our own mental processes, giving us a third person perspective into ourselves.
This increases our self-consciousness and allows us to more clearly see our own restrictions and neuroses. As a telescope the teacher stands over us in a position of superior knowledge, which gives us access to broader vistas than we would normally perceive. We can look out at a wider world-view and set more ambitious goals for ourselves in terms of who we want to be in the future. As such, he or she is part of our evolutionary process of self-improvement.
It is sometimes frustrating doing Spiritual work because we face real life problems and want real solutions. Teachers can’t usually solve our problems in the external world directly, although they might be able to exert some influence. Rather, they tend to want us to reevaluate our internal experience in some way so that we change and thus our experience changes. This can make us angry when we are stressed out and at our wits ends about a particular problem.
Recently, I started working with the idea of "Work" as a Spiritual teacher. It was a great way for me to divert the intense stress and dissatisfaction I was feeling in my work situation to a useful end. Work (who looks like a tree with a human face for some reason, go figure!) told me that work has a maze-like quality. I have to clarify that it is not the dead-end rat chasing the cheese kind of maze, but the Spiritual maze that your walk in spirals to clear your thoughts. Work said that the walls of the maze were the limitations placed on us by circumstances, forcing us to face ourselves in a variety of ways. If we allow ourselves to be lead in this fashion we can find a new freedom in the physical limitations of our work. I found this very helpful and have used it to my advantage.
So, the teacher can be anything or anyone. Work said that if I had a question I could ask him directly or I could ask to have the question answered by the people I work with as his “helpers.” I have been surprised to use this and have people say things that directly relate to my questions in a short period of time. Our partner/spouse can be our teacher in this way as well, becoming a voice-box for higher power. A very powerful exercise, in fact, is to have a friend or your partner sit down with you and answer some questions as if they were a higher source of information. You ask them to pretend to be that deity, teacher, idea, or what have you and answer the question as that being. You write down their responses. It’s important that they approach it like a game and not impose their own ideas too much on what is said but really play-act the part. The results are surprising, especially for the other person who can be amazed by some of the things they say.
The absolutely necessary components of being taught are a willingness to learn, an internal rather than external focus and a flexibility to hear what you don’t want to. Because you are working within your own mind, the answers can’t be imposed on you. So, your range of hearing is the limit of your range of teaching. Also, you have to believe in what you hear, take it seriously to really explore it and also ask questions and engage in a dialogue that challenges your thought processes. Being a good student is more that just a role, it is a discipline that requires patience and self-control. Humility is an important virtue that can make or break a good student. The ability to laugh at yourself or take constructive criticism is important. Sometime the nature of the involvement with the subconscious mind make dreams or partially-awake dreams a wonderful place to receive teachings. Our craving for an external teacher can be somewhat satisfied in this format. In the next exercise I will discuss how to meet any teacher in your dreams.
Exercise: Dream Teacher
In this exercise I will discuss how you can invite a teacher to come through your dreams. You might want to work with a series of Angels, or a particular guru, or an idea or concept as a teacher. Whatever form they take, it is helpful to have a clear idea of what you want to ask that teacher. Before going to bed, ask that particular teacher to come to you in your sleep and appear to you in a dream or partially-waking dream. If they come through in a dream, ask that a particular question be answered and that you remember the dream clearly when you wake up.
It is helpful to have some extra time in the morning to be semi-dreaming as that is the best format of all. If you are short on time and short on sleep, you may not have or remember the dream. Be aware that you may partially wake up during a dream enough so that you can invite the being into the dream and ask the question, but not be so far awake that you lose the continuity of the dream. If you are someone who sleeps deeply and doesn’t remember their dreams, you might want to begin by taking up the practice of dream journaling until your memory of your dreams increases. Then, it will be much easier for you to work with your dreams consciously.
Some people have the ability to have lucid dreams, which are dreams in which they clearly know that they are dreaming. These differ from semi-awake dreams in that you are fully involved in the dream rather than partially. These are fantastic for speaking to dream guides, but it is difficult to achieve total lucidity in even a lucid dream for most people. But if you can do it, it is the most intense and potent experience of that sort. I have found that if I enter into a partially asleep and partially awake state before going to bed I can sometimes achieve “dream hearing,” where I can experience the auditory aspects of dreaming without the visual aspects. If you can train yourself to walk that subtle line you can receive purely spoken teachings from different sources.
Visualization itself is a great way to explore the relationship with the teacher. After you have generated the most unlimited teacher possible, it is important to consciously design their personality to also be as accessible to you as possible. This could mean having a teacher of a particular gender or particular look, with a particular personality that you find pleasing and enjoyable to be around. Any traits in the teacher’s personality that you find irritating can put you off the exploration of that relationship, so it is important to consciously use your power to develop your teacher to be what you desire.
Many people are caught up in “Orientalism” in terms of the form of teacher, meaning that they must have a third eye, be exotically multi-armed, glowing or look like a Buddha. None of these things are important unless you need to see them to give the teacher credibility. The teacher can even look like you. The important thing is to understand that the teacher is internal but more than that and that they are limited to teaching you within the boundaries of your own particular limits. They can't force you to hear what you are not ready to hear or give you answers you aren't ready to receive.
If you dead-end in your relationship with the teacher, receiving non-answers or being put off, or running into conflict with them, then look at the whole situation. If you are asking a specific question and they will not give you any answer or only an opaque one, then back off and leave that question alone for a while. You may ask them to answer the question for you through other people, as we discussed before, through a dream or some other experience. Sometimes the question itself is the problem. If you are really blocked with the teacher, ask them what question you should ask them. Then, ask them that question and receive an answer (probably). The frustration and disappointment you may feel in the process is actually part of the process. It is in fact part of the “answer” to your question. Ultimately answer means process of transformation. The answer is what you are when you understand the answer. But transformation takes time. Be willing to backtrack and find a more fundamental question.
It is helpful to give the teacher gifts of love, literally. Lay out a crystal bowl in your imagination and fill it with a golden liquid that is actually your own love. Place flowers on the offered love-liquid and then set up sticks of incense, fruit and candy around the bowl. Make the entire offering a “pure offering” meaning that it is free of contamination and can’t become contaminated by anything in the near future. You do this by declaring it to be a pure offering and then seeing it glow with white light. Ask your teacher to appear and accept the offering. If they don’t appear, just leave it, as the intention has been made. Offerings are important as they reinforce the value and worth of the teacher's message. Relationships with teachers can become cold and distant if the teacher is too formal and godlike. Likewise, an overly informal relationship with the teacher can jeopardize respect. Expressing your love for the teacher is the best offering. Anything that reinforces the relationship positively will probably lengthen the relationship.
If the form of the teacher changes and falls away in favor of some new form, don’t feel like a traitor. The teacher has many forms but all permutations of the same fundamental ideas. Be sure to journal what the teacher shares with you when it feels important and never leave important questions unasked. The teacher can even be your lover or partner, but just keep the teaching aspect of the relationship central.
If you find yourself in the role of the teacher, share without concern for gain or ego and allow the process to be fluid. Likewise, don’t be afraid to say what you need to say and be assertive. Remain sensitive to others and trust your intuition in the process. This newsgroup/website came about because I felt I had been taught important information and wanted to share it with others. I don’t own the information and I can’t claim credit for it. Share this information with others as well as your own teachings and don’t think that there is no audience. Remember that you won’t be rewarded for your efforts or even thanked. This may come much, much later. Regardless of what you share you will know that you are part of the network of information that allows higher sources to flow into the world and work their magic. You are spreading love in the form of concepts and words.
When you run out of questions or into brick walls, or feel that the answers you are receiving are not satisfying, you can always serve the teacher. This can take the form of picking up trash by the side of the road, performing charity work or writing to someone who cares for you. Doing these things as acts of service to the teacher can lead you to a place of intense intimacy with them and take you to the highest levels of understanding. The student as a beggar has little power over the teacher, but the student as servant to the teacher is more powerful than the teacher. The Spiritual source is bound to serve that which serves it.
So, in this undeniable flow of energy, you become supercharged with the light of the teacher through service to them. Every action you take in service to them glows with their energy and understanding. You in turn must then begin to glow with that same light. Eating a meal or taking a walk can all be service. This is service in the sense of sharing the positive aspect of that experience with the teacher.
They experience only pleasure from anything you do in service to them, even if it is a painful experience for you. The pleasure they feel is in the tasting of the fruits of your labors or in sharing your pleasure. Through continuous service the teacher is internalized more and more until they cannot escape. Then that being is your perfect lover/friend/confidant and is never separate from you. Their name is written on your heart and they become an aspect of your self; the source of unlimited knowledge. The teacher can no longer withhold answers and the book of life is opened fully to you. I bow down to the teacher in you!