Dissolving or Expanding the Self: The Point of Spiritual Practice

The great spiritual traditions agree that the primary reason people suffer — and the primary problem they need to resolve — is the experience of being a separate, isolated individual, cut off from God or source or their own essential natures. When you meditate, you’re bridging the apparent chasm that separates you and connecting with your breath, with your body and senses, with your heart, with the present moment, and ultimately with a greater reality. (It’s this connection that promotes healing.)

Mindfulness into meditation

To experience health and well-being, you must properly care for and feed the body, regulate your breath, exercise consciously and regularly, and care for the mind and your spirit. This is where meditation plays a practical key roll as part of your overall physical, emotional, mental, and personal health management.

Here are some effective tools and techniques to enhance your mindfulness and meditation practice. These tips come from San Francisco/Marin County yoga teacher Sherri Baptiste, born into a lineage of teachers at the forefront of yoga training in America and founder of Baptiste Power of Yoga:

Find a quiet place. Create a space in your home and set aside a daily time to just sit and practice meditation. The space should be warm and draft free, the phones should be turned off, and the lighting and music should be soft and unimposing.
Determine how often and how long. If you’re a beginner, start with 3 to 5 minutes and let the time grow to 20 or more minutes as you become more adept. Practice a minimum of three times a week; the ideal is to practice daily. Meditation evolves over time, and when conditions are right, meditation will flow. Encourage yourself to be patient in the process and to practice without any expectations.
Find a sitting technique that works best for you. Book VII, Chapter 1 offers suggestions. Whichever sitting position you choose, remember that sitting straight is a key that heightens awareness and the quality of your breathing.
Pay attention to your breath. Breathe smoothly and evenly, using the lower, mid, and upper lungs without forcing. Establish a breath that is gentle and uninterrupted in quality and flow. You might say, “The breath rolls in like a wave and out like a wave” with a sense of expansion on the inhalation and relaxation on the exhalation.
Cultivate the mind. As you sit, notice your thoughts and then step back from those thoughts, watching them for a moment as they pass by. Then bring your awareness back to your breathing, using it as a tool, to calm the active mind and to direct the consciousness into new and deeper levels of awareness and insight.
Go deeper. At certain points as you guide yourself, use an inner dialog with words and phrases such as “Feel the stillness of your body”; “Relax more inside the throat”; “Notice the body breathing”; and “Listen to the breath with intimacy.”

Observe and notice any areas that may still be constricting, and then simply let them go, letting these areas completely release.
Find space between your thoughts. At this point, you let go of dialogue, leading yourself into the silence and space between the thoughts. Now sit here for the next few moments in stillness and silence. Remember, meditation goes beyond mindfulness techniques. It’s a spontaneous flow and energetic quality. When all the conditions are just right, it will simply flow. The ideal here is to be in the moment as it unfolds.
Bring yourself out of this practice slowly. Use a soft tone of voice and then place your hands on your chest for three deep cleansing breathes. Open your eyes slowly. Encourage yourself to practice often.

You can believe in spirit, awaken to it, stay in touch with it, and become infused by it, but the ultimate aim of spiritual practice is to help you overcome all apparent separation and become one with spirit completely.

The approach of dissolving the self and the approach of expanding the self ultimately take you to the same place: the deep inner knowing that you and God or the ground of being are identical — “not two,” as some teachers put it. Although most spiritual traditions tend to emphasize one approach over the other, they generally offer both as alternatives, depending on your inclinations.

Dissolving the self

What keeps you separate? Well, some traditions call it ego or self; others call it personality, pride, self-image, or self-clinging. Essentially, it’s the beliefs and stories described in Book VII, Chapter 1: the inner turbulence and self-centered preoccupations and patterns that keep you from seeing things clearly. Of course, these preoccupations and patterns run deep and can take a lifetime (or lifetimes!) of dedicated practice to undo, but you can begin to unravel them using some of the meditative practices described in the preceding chapter. (At a deeper level of understanding, you’re actually never separate from spirit even for an instant — you just think you are. But therein lies the riddle everyone needs to solve. As the great Indian sage Ramana Maharshi used to say, “The only thing that separates you from the Self is the belief that you’re separate.”) As you unravel these patterns, you gradually dissolve the limited self you thought yourself to be and realize your identity with the greater reality.

This journey can take a long, long time (even lifetimes, if you believe in reincarnation), and it may be fraught with difficulties, fears, and uncertainties, as you’ll discover if you read the biography of any great saint or sage. To navigate the journey at all, you need to develop a healthy measure of self-love and self-acceptance. You also need the guidance of an experienced teacher. For more on teachers, see the section “Finding a Teacher” at the end of this chapter.

Expanding the self

In addition to dissolving the self, you can also understand the spiritual journey as an expansion of identity from the narrow to the vast, until you’re finally identified with the luminous, eternal vastness itself (also known as spirit or God). The ancient Indian sages used the model of the five bodies, which are subtler and subtler levels of identification beginning with the physical body and moving to identification with the ground of being or greater reality itself.

Here’s a similar model (based on the five bodies and loosely adapted from the writings of philosopher Ken Wilber) that you may find helpful in understanding your own spiritual experiences and unfolding. Remember that each time you expand your identity to a new level, you incorporate the level that came before instead of leaving it behind:

Physical body: Some people seem to think of nothing else but eating, drinking, working, sleeping, and sexing — they’re largely identified with their physical needs and instincts.
Persona: As you grow up and interact more with others, you develop a personality — a set of habits and tendencies and preferences — along with a self-image based largely on how others see you. Gradually, you begin to expand your identity to include this social persona, and you may become preoccupied with how you look or come across or the other accoutrements of a self-image, such as material possessions.
Mature ego: If you spend enough time exploring your inner life and sorting through your deeper feelings, values, and visions, you may eventually develop a mature ego — a healthy, well-rounded sense of who you are, what you want, and how you can contribute to others.
Energy body: Beyond the body-mind lies the energy body (the aura that surrounds the physical body), which expands and contracts depending on your mood, your energy level, and countless other factors. (Whether you notice it or not, you’re constantly reacting to the energy bodies of the people you meet.)

The classic exercise for experiencing your energy body goes as follows: Rub your palms and fingers together vigorously for a few minutes, then hold them an inch or two apart and notice the energy field between them. Bring them closer together and farther apart, feeling the energy get denser and thinner and pulsate as your hands move. To explore this dimension further, check out the sidebar “Playing with your energy body” later in this chapter.

People who expand their identities to include their energy body realize that they’re more than just their body-mind, which opens them to a spiritual dimension of being.
Transpersonal dimension: This broad category encompasses the full range of nonordinary experiences, from clairvoyance and other forms of extrasensory perception (ESP) to rapture and bliss to visions of angels, gods and goddesses, and other otherworldly beings to direct communion with your higher self — or even with a personal manifestation of God. When you expand your identity to include these subtler levels of being, you know without doubt that who you are is far vaster than you once believed, and you begin to access a deeper source of wisdom and compassion as well.
Glimpses of being: When you experience being directly in all its innate perfection and completeness, you realize that you’ve never been separate from who you really are even for an instant.
Ground of being: Only the great mystics and sages get this far. Now you’re one with spirit or the ground of being without separation — in the words of the Indian scriptures, “You are That.” Sure, you continue to eat, drink, sleep, and blow your nose, but you never forget even for an instant who you really are — and your being radiates wisdom and compassion to others.

Playing with your energy body

Did you ever have the sense that you were bigger than your physical body? Or that the space you occupy expands and contracts depending on circumstances? Did you ever have the feeling that you had no boundaries and you went on forever? Well, you’re experiencing the expansion and contraction of your energy body, the aura of energy that surrounds your physical body.

Here’s a little exercise for playing with your energy body:

Begin by sitting quietly; closing your eyes; and taking a few slow, deep breaths, relaxing a little on each exhalation.
Spend a few minutes imagining going for a walk in nature or spending time with someone you love.

Notice how big you feel.

Then notice how your size (but not your waistline) changes when you imagine getting stuck in traffic or paying your bills or getting into an argument.
Next, check out your energy body without imagining anything.

How far do you think it extends beyond your physical body? Six inches? Several feet? Does it extend farther in front than behind? Farther above your body than below into the ground? Is it thicker than the air or thinner? Thicker in some places than in others?
Pick a room where you feel comfortable, stand or sit near the center, and check out the boundaries of the room in every direction.
Fill the room with your energy — fill it with you!

Imagine it, sense it, visualize it, sing it — whatever helps you fill the space as much as you can.
Draw your energy back in until it forms a sphere around you, about 2 or 3 feet away.

Notice how the energy becomes denser.
Play with expanding and contracting your energy in this way several times; then relax and notice how you feel.

By regularly experimenting with your energy body, you can acquire a direct understanding of the spiritual truth that you’re more than your physical body. (This exercise is adapted from a series of exercises in the book The Lover Within by Julie Henderson [Station Hill Press].)

The Path of Devotion: In Search of Union

If you believe in the existence of a personal God or have had experiences of a presence greater than yourself that inspired feelings of awe and reverence, you may be drawn to the path of devotion. It’s the primary spiritual path in the Judeo-Christian tradition and Islam, and forms one of the main currents of Hinduism.

Although devotees may feel deeply connected to God and believe that a spark of divinity shines in their hearts, they often experience themselves to be painfully separate from God. As the anonymous author of the mystical Christian text The Cloud of Unknowing puts it, “The person who has a deep experience of himself existing far apart from God feels the most acute sorrow. Any other grief seems trivial in comparison.” Through contemplation, mantra recitation (see the section “Mantra: Invoking the Divine in every moment” later in this chapter), chanting, selfless service, and other devotional practices, devotees seek to get closer to God by focusing all their love and attention on God — and ultimately, if they’re mystically inclined, to merge with God completely in a state of ecstatic union.

The path of devotion has its own unique aspects or phases of development, which include the following:

Developing virtue: In all the great devotional traditions, devotees are required to prepare themselves for union with God by living a life of purity and restraint.
Cultivating a higher octave of love: The devotee may begin by feeling personal love for God or teacher, but eventually this love evolves into an unconditional, transpersonal love that knows no bounds and does not depend on the love object to evoke.
Overcoming duality: Beginning with a painful sense of separation, the devotee gradually gets closer and closer and ultimately merges with God, until no trace of separation remains. As the Hindu sage Swami Vivekananda put it, “Love, the lover, and the beloved are one.”
Transcending the personal God: Ultimately, the devotee must transcend even God, if God is experienced as having a particular name or form. At this stage, the lover and the beloved dissolve into God as the absolute ground of being, the nameless, formless greater reality whose essence is love.
Everything is God: The distinctions get pretty subtle at these higher levels, but here goes: When the devotee no longer needs to contemplate or meditate in order to experience oneness with God but sees God everywhere in every moment — waking or sleeping — he or she has reached the pinnacle of the devotional path. Now that the separate self and all self-centered striving have fallen away, every activity reflects a complete alignment with the divine purpose: “Not my will but Thy will be done.”

To give you a flavor of the devotional path, here are two practices you may like to try. These have their counterparts in all the world’s great spiritual traditions.

Mantra: Invoking the Divine in every moment

Throughout history, meditators and mystics in the great devotional traditions have recommended the constant recitation of a mantra (a sacred word or phrase usually transmitted directly from a teacher) to bring the devotee closer to the Divine. At first, you can practice repeating it aloud; then, when you become proficient, you can repeat it silently to yourself; and ultimately you can graduate to purely mental recitation (which is considered the most powerful).

Some practitioners of mantra also manipulate a rosary (or mala in Sanskrit) to help them keep track, ticking off one bead for each recitation. Or you can coordinate the sound with the coming and going of your breath.

Although you may begin by limiting your mantra recitation to a few minutes or hours of meditation each day, the traditional goal is constant practice. That is, you want to get to the point where you’re repeating the sound or phrase nonstop in order to keep your attention focused on the Divine and away from habitual patterns of thought. Ultimately, your mind will become one-pointed, and you’ll think always and only of God — which is the first step on the path to union.

Needless to say, you’ll be lucky if you can remember your mantra for a few minutes at first. But if you’ve received a mantra from a teacher (or know a mantra you find particularly meaningful or resonant) and you feel strong devotion, who can say how far you can go in your practice? (For inspiration on your path, you may want to read the spiritual classic The Way of a Pilgrim, the anonymous story of a devout Russian Orthodox peasant who chants the Jesus prayer day and night.)

Chanting and bowing

Besides meditation and contemplation, the devotional path usually involves active practices like chanting, singing, and bowing. As you may have noticed if you’ve ever sung along with a gospel choir or chanted Indian devotional hymns, you can lift your spirits, open your heart, and intensify your devotion by raising your voice in praise of the Divine. If you’re devotionally inclined (or devotionally impaired!), try mixing your meditation with a little chanting or singing every now and then. Choose songs that have resonance or meaning for you.

Traditional wisdom suggests that chanting sacred words and phrases also has the power to open, stimulate, and harmonize your energy centers. In this way, chanting helps “tune up” your body and prepare it for meditation and other spiritual practices.

As for bowing: What better way to practice surrendering your self-centered preoccupations and habitual patterns than by falling down on your knees on a regular basis? One famous Zen master wore a perpetual callus on his forehead from bowing repeatedly to soften his stubbornness.

Of course, bowing figures prominently in the Judeo-Christian tradition and Islam as well; like meditation, it’s a universally recognized practice for overcoming separation and approaching the spiritual dimension of being.

But bowing doesn’t mean giving up your autonomy to some outside power or force. When you bow — to God, Jesus, Buddha, or the picture of a teacher or saint — you’re ultimately bowing to your own essential nature. Think of bowing as an expression of the essential oneness of inside and outside, the one bowed to and the one bowing. Or, as they say in India, “The divine in me bows to the divine in you.”

The practice of the presence of God

Here’s a time-honored practice that has counterparts in all the world’s great spiritual traditions. When you catch a glimpse of the sacred, you can practice seeing it everywhere you look, in everyone and everything. One ancient Zen master used to say “Buddha! Buddha!” to every being he encountered. When the contemporary Tibetan teacher Kalu Rinpoche visited an aquarium in San Francisco, he went around tapping the glass to get the fishes’ attention so he could bless them and wish them happiness and well-being.

The practice is just that simple: Remember to see the sacred or divine in every being and thing. You may believe that everything is God, or infused by God, or created by God, or has the spark of divinity inside. Whatever your belief, the practice reminds you to look not at the surface or at what you like, don’t like, want, or need, but at the sacred, spiritual dimension that is perpetually present.

Of course, the practice may be simple, but it’s certainly not easy. You may begin by doing it for ten minutes and see how it goes. If you enjoy it, you can naturally extend it as you feel inspired. (To help you remember, you may want to repeat a phrase like “This, too, is divine,” not constantly like a mantra, but intermittently, as a reminder.)

The Path of Insight: Discovering Who You Are

If you find yourself seeking answers to core spiritual questions like “Who am I?” or “What is reality?” but don’t have a particular interest in God or devotion, you may be drawn to the path of insight. Unlike devotion, which concentrates the mind on a representation of the Divine, the path of insight uses direct investigation and awareness of present experience to see beyond surface appearances to the deeper reality that underlies them. When you keep questioning and looking deeply into what is apparently real, you inevitably happen upon the ultimately real — the formless, indestructible essence of all appearances. (It’s kind of like peeling the layers of an onion.)

Now, the point of this approach is not to deny the relative reality of ordinary people and things. Rather, the path of insight generally teaches that reality has two levels: the relative and the absolute:

On the relative level, it’s important to make a living, pay the bills, spend time with family or friends. If you pretend that the relative isn’t real, you’re going to have some problems. (Traffic court and bankruptcy spring immediately to mind!) As the Sufis say, “Trust in God, but make sure to tie your camel to the post.”
At the same time, though, there’s an absolute level — a Divine presence or sacred dimension that underlies this world and gives it meaning. When you encounter this level, you see the deeper reality of things, just as the mystic sees God everywhere she looks. Whether directly or more gradually, the path of insight in its various incarnations leads you to an experience or knowing of this absolute level of reality. (In the East, they call this knowing enlightenment or liberation. In the West, they call it gnosis — the Latin word from which “knowing” derives.)

Discovering the sky of mind

Here’s a brief meditation that you can do anytime you’re outdoors to give you a taste of the vastness of your essential nature, which the Zen folks call, appropriately enough, “big mind.”

Preferably on a clear day, sit or lie down and look up at the sky.

Set aside your analytical mind for now and all you think you know about the sky.
Take a few minutes to contemplate the vastness of the sky, which appears to stretch endlessly in every direction.
Gradually allow your awareness to expand to fill the sky — up and down, north and south, east and west.

Let go of all sense of personal boundaries as you fill the sky with your awareness.
Become the sky completely and rest in the experience for a few minutes.
Gradually return to your ordinary sense of yourself.

How do you feel? Has your awareness changed in any way?

After you get the knack of this exercise, you can do it for brief moments at any time of the day — for example, while walking your dog in the morning or gazing out your window on a break at work — to remind yourself who you are.

Most of the core practices highlighted in Book VII show you how to investigate your present experience so that you can eventually develop insight. To give you a glimpse of the absolute level, here are three exercises designed to cut through your usual way of perceiving things to reveal a deeper reality. Generally, they work best after you’ve been practicing some basic meditation technique like following your breath or reciting a mantra.

Expanding your boundaries

Picking up where the energy body meditation leaves off (see the sidebar “Playing with your energy body” earlier in this chapter), this technique shows you that you don’t end with your skin — or with the farthest edges of the Milky Way, for that matter.

Begin by sitting quietly, closing your eyes, and taking a few slow, deep breaths, relaxing a little on each exhalation.
Sense the solidity and density of your body as you usually perceive it.
As you inhale, imagine that your head is filling with a soft, clear mist; and as you exhale, imagine that all solidity and density drain from your head, leaving it pleasantly empty, spacious, and open to sensation and life-energy.

Don’t worry; you won’t disappear!
Breathe the mist into your neck and throat, and breathe out any tension or density, leaving the area spacious and open.
Continue to apply this meditation to your chest, lungs, and heart; your arms and hands; your abdomen and internal organs; your pelvis, buttocks, and genitals; and your thighs, lower legs, and feet.
Feel your whole body completely empty, spacious, and open to the current of life energy.

Rest in this feeling for a few moments without thought or analysis. Enjoy the buzz!
If certain areas still feel dense or solid, breathe into them until they’re empty and open.

You may notice that the boundaries of your body are now diffuse — you’re not sure where you leave off and the outside world begins.
Expand the boundaries of your body and your awareness until you include the whole room and everything it contains.
Expand to include the whole building, then the whole block, the whole town or city, and the state.

Take a few minutes with each expansion.
Expand even further to encompass the earth, then the solar system, the Milky Way, the universe, and beyond the farthest boundaries of the known universe.

Again, spend a few minutes at each level. You’re vast beyond measure — you contain everything. Allow any thoughts, feelings, or sensations to arise within this vast expanse.
After spending several minutes in the vastness, you can begin to pay attention to how you feel.

If you find it difficult to locate any feelings, that’s fine — just enjoy the expansion for a few more minutes! Then check in with your body: Are you feeling more calm and relaxed than when you began? Has your breathing changed in any way?
Gradually come back to your body before getting up and going about your day.

Notice whether your self-image or your experience of people and things has changed in any way.

You can practice the first part of this exercise (emptying and opening) by itself, if you like; it has the power to calm your mind and relax and harmonize your body. With regular practice, you’ll be able to create a spacious, open, radiant feeling in your body with one sweep of your awareness.

Looking into the nature of mind

The Buddhists have devised some powerful techniques for exploring the mind and realizing its essential nature (which happens to be the greater reality mentioned earlier in this chapter). And you don’t have to study with a Zen master to get a taste of this essential nature for yourself. Here’s an exercise adapted from the Tibetan tradition:

Begin by sitting quietly; closing your eyes; and taking a few slow, deep breaths, relaxing a little with each exhalation.
Meditate in your usual way for a few minutes to relax and focus your mind; then allow it to rest in its “natural state,” as the Tibetans put it, without doing anything special.

If you can follow this exercise with your eyes open and gazing straight ahead at the space in front of you, great — that’s how the Tibetans do it. But if you get distracted, you can close your eyes.
Begin by noticing a particular thought as it arises and endures in your mind.

For example, you can take a memory, a plan, or a fantasy. Then ask yourself the following questions:
- Does this thought have a particular shape or form? How big is it?
- Does it have a particular color or colors?
- Does it have a beginning, a middle, and an end?
- Where is the thought located? Is it inside or outside your body?
- From where did this thought arise? Where does it go when you’re no longer thinking it? How long does it last when you continue to think it?
- Does the thought have substance or is it just empty, open, and filled with space? Does it leave a trace in your mind, like footprints on the beach, or does it leave no trace, like writing on water?
Turn your attention to your mind itself and ask the following questions.

Don’t think about or analyze your mind or become preoccupied with its contents, such as thoughts or feelings. Instead, just look at your mind the way you would look at a bird or a tree. (Remember, the mind is what’s important here, not the brain.) Take a few moments to respond to each question:
- Does your mind itself have a shape or form? How big is it? Does it have a color or colors?
- Is your mind identical with your thoughts, or does it abide as the ground or space in which your thoughts arise and pass away?
- Where is your mind located? Is it inside or outside your body? Does it have a beginning or an end?
- Does your mind have substance like the earth or is it empty and spacious like the sky? Is it blank and dark, or is it bright and clear?
Allow your mind to rest for a few minutes in its “natural state.”

Notice how the inquiry has affected you. Has your relationship to thoughts changed? Has your sense of identity shifted in some way? Do you feel calmer or more spacious? Take note of the changes; then gradually get up and go about your day.

Asking “Who am I?”

For as long as they’ve had the capacity to reflect on their experience, human beings have asked, “Who am I?” Zen masters, Sufi sheikhs, Indian sages, Jewish rabbis, and teachers of virtually every other spiritual persuasion have used this question to help their disciples see beyond their accustomed identities to a deeper realization of their essential nature.

When you first ask this question, you may come up with the usual answers: “I’m a woman,” “I’m a father,” “I’m an attorney,” “I’m a runner.” As you probe further, you may get more-spiritual answers, such as “I’m love incarnate” or “I’m a child of God.” But if you just set these aside and continue to inquire, you’ll eventually have a direct intuition of a more fundamental identity that has nothing to do with who you think you are.

Practice the following exercise with a partner, if possible. (One person begins by questioning; the other by answering.) If you don’t have a partner handy, you can do it alone facing a mirror:

Sit comfortably facing your partner, gazing at one another in a relaxed and natural way.
Allow the questioner to begin by asking, “Who are you?” Then the other person responds by saying whatever comes to mind.
After a pause, the questioner asks again, “Who are you?” and the other person again responds.

Of course, if you’re doing it alone, you get to play both roles.
Continue in this way for 15 minutes; then switch places for an equal amount of time.

If you’re the questioner, don’t critique or judge the answers in any way. Just listen, pause, and ask again.

If you’re the respondent, gently look for an answer; then respond. If you can’t find one and have nothing to say for a moment or two, just sit with the silence and the not-knowing. You may become flustered or confused, start to laugh or cry, or have moments of deep stillness.

Accept whatever arises, relax into the process, and keep going. Even a brief glimpse of who you really are can completely transform your life.
When you’re done, sit for a few minutes with your experience before getting up and going about your day.

Finding a Teacher

A meditation instructor — someone who teaches you techniques, offers good advice on how to implement them, and helps you troubleshoot or fine-tune — can help you refine your practice and deal with basic questions that arise along the way. But if you want to deepen your practice and use it as a means to spiritual ends (as described in this chapter), you want to find a spiritual mentor or master.

Your spiritual teacher may coach and support you through the transformational process and even accelerate it by confronting the ways in which you resist or hold back. Some teachers act more like spiritual friends, treating you with the camaraderie and equality you expect from a peer, while also sharing their wealth of understanding. Others act more like traditional gurus, transmitting their understanding directly to you while actively pushing against your stuck places. (Of course, many teachers lie somewhere between these two extremes and combine a little of both styles.)

Whatever their approach, however, all good teachers help create and sustain, through their relationship with you, a sacred vessel or space in which the difficult, wondrous, and ultimately liberating process of spiritual transformation can take place inside you. They also possess these qualities (not all teachers will have every one of these characteristics, of course, but the more, the better):

They’re humble, ordinary, and down-to-earth, not arrogant or inflated. In Zen monasteries, the head monk cleans the toilets.
They’re honest, straightforward, and clear, not evasive or defensive. As people gain spiritual maturity, they become increasingly free of psychological baggage.
They encourage independent thinking and open inquiry in their students rather than blind obedience to a particular dogma or ideology.
They’re primarily concerned with the spiritual development of their students, not with fame, power, influence, or the size of their organization.
They practice what they preach instead of considering themselves exempt from the moral and ethical guidelines that others must follow.
They embody the highest spiritual qualities, such as kindness, patience, equanimity, joy, peace, love, and compassion.

The process of finding a teacher can be as mysterious as the spiritual journey itself. For some people, it’s a lot like finding a lover or a mate — it involves a complex mixture of luck, availability, and chemistry. For others, it’s simply a matter of following the counsel of a friend or showing up at the right place at the right time. Ultimately, you need to trust your intuition, your own inner knowing, when choosing a teacher — it’s the only reliable equipment you have for navigating in this flawed phenomenal universe.

Be open but not gullible, skeptical but not cynical. Feel free to ask questions, expect good answers, and take your time. According to the Dalai Lama, Tibetan students may spend years checking out teachers to make sure they embody the teachings they espouse. Just as you wouldn’t rush into a marriage, you shouldn’t rush into anything as intimate and deep as a relationship with a spiritual teacher.

Cultivating Spirituality