I went to go see the amazing Gangaji speak last night here in Seattle. If you are not familiar with her, she is a modern master of Truth, a western woman who met her guru in India and now teaches the principles of enlightenment and awareness world wide. It was an amazing night full of insight for me and everyone there.
I've sat with many an enlightened master over the years, and the idea of having a "Guru" that one is devoted to is one that I've had some conflicting experiences with. But I came to a new depth of clarity sitting the Gangaji last night that I'd like to share.
I used to put teachers I admired on a pedestal, believing them to be somehow a "superior being" that I should just be grateful to get to be in the same room with.
It felt so good to be around these people, and I really believed that it was because of the presence that these special people emitted, and I was a bit like a greedy child, just wanting to drink in as much as I could.
I had it in my head that there was like this enlightenment scale, some people way unenlightened who where at the bottom of the scale (murders, rapists, etc.) and people who where mega enlightened (Jesus, Ammaji, Yogananda, Nityananda, etc.) and then there was me, somewhere in the middle, trying to be less like the lower level beings (losers!) and more like the higher level beings (winners!)
I was trying to escape from myself, trying desperately to win the gold medal of righteousness in the spiritual Olympics, and I though that if I just attached myself to these people who had reached it, the real heavy weight champions, I could somehow ride their coat tails into the gates of heaven.
But here's what happened in a nut shell: I failed.
I got really disappointed by my teachers, first one, then another, then another, as they revealed themselves to be not all that I thought they where in my idealized imagination, and I had invested my whole self into their teachings, and so it hurt when I realized what I had done, and had to face myself again.
So then I went "screw it! I don't need another stinkin' guru! I'll be my own guru!"
What a concept!
And I crossed the bridge from spiritual co-dependency to spiritual independence. I learned to listen to my heart, to my intuitive guidance, and make choices based on that.
But I reached a point where I felt like I had hit the ceiling of my capacity to grow and expand myself. I was ready for more, but I didn't know where to start or what to do. I felt like I couldn't see past myself, and I was stuck.
So I prayed for guidance, and I opened to Life bringing me whatever I needed, not even knowing what that was.
And then through a synchronistic event I met a teacher unlike any other teacher I've met before, Matt Kahn. He didn't see himself as superior to me or anyone else, and he gave me such accurate and profound guidance that took me even deeper into the core of myself, into my heart, into the pure awareness of consciousness itself, not just in words, but as an experience that was my own.
Gangaji and many other teachers like her offer the same thing, if you have ears to hear it. I didn't have ears for it in the past, I was looking for a quick fix to my problems, an escape rout out of my personal hell. And since I wasn't facing it in myself, it showed up in my teachers, and I saw their darker sides and felt disappointed and even taken advantage of.
But these True teachers wont open up their spiritual prescription pad for you, they wont promise to take your pain away if you follow steps A through Z and then write a fat check, they will simply hold up a mirror so you can see your own true reflection in the clarity of their presence.
And as I was sitting in the church where Gangaji was speaking last night, I came to realize on an even deeper level that it's not really the person Gangaji - a white woman in her sixties who knows something about something - speaking the words of Truth I was hearing, it was Truth itself, speaking as Gangaji, and I saw that the same essence of Truth was alive within all beings present, and it was also the very space within which the whole thing was occurring.
I saw and experienced that in truth Life is the only guru, the pure essence of life that moves us and motivates our every action so that we may position ourselves to make the mistakes and overcome the challenges that cause us to learn the lessons and heal the wounds we need to in order for the deepest truth of our Divine Nature - the space of pure Awareness and Love - to shine through in our daily experience.
So I went from putting teachers on a pedestal, to kicking them off the pedestal, to opening to a teacher as a sacred reflection of myself, to seeing that sacred reflection in everything equally.
I have accepted Life as my Guru, and everything that goes along with that, embracing (to the best of my ability, but even my resistance that still comes up is the Guru showing me that!) all experiences as good, even the painful ones, because I know that it's how I heal and grow into the person Life is molding me to be. I am devoted, deeply, but not to a single entity, but to the spirit of Love that speaks through the entities I call my teachers, human and non-human.
And every moment, every breath is Holy.
Much Love!
~Jessica
www.EffortlessLivingCoach.com
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