True: there are many, many phonies and exploiters and power-trippers out there who label themselves such (hence many people are rightly warning you against the idea.)
TRUE: you DO already have what you need within you. (But how do you access It, get There?)
TRUE: you can take just a bit from a lot of different traditions, and approximate your own working philosophical and spiritual position.
TRUTH: if a person wants it intensely enough, they will find a Guru. One not only realized, but able to confer or reveal what you are seeking to you. And what such a One reveals is not anything strange or foreign but your own true self.
You go into the nature of that Self…not “go into”, are revealed as That. And at that moment… there is no Guru, no seeker… just That. It feels natural because it is. You have come home.
Pure love. Ah… Where did these tears come from? How could I not have known this?
By Grace, at that moment, He has taken you there. And yes, it was right within you the whole time…You might have believed in It but never directly experienced It. You could no more see it (because you WERE it), than you could see the color of your own eye without using a mirror.
But, as Casey said above, “a Guru is the mirror.”
Gu means darkness; ru, its removal.
Such a one will not have ads in Yoga Journal or on flyers taped at your local food co-op. They will not offer workshops or sell tapes. They will not ask for or expect money or extravagant gifts. They won’t have a website. They won’t offer a program. They will not impose anything on you. They will almost never prescribe a particular form of diet or any other action. They may not give lectures or write books.
Such a person does one thing and one thing only, though He may do it in a thousand different ways: show you the truth of Who you are. (It’s often Socratic; you ask, He answers. Or it might just be hanging out with Him, in His presence… what they call “darshan” in some traditions.)
After you see That, it is left to you to determine how best to live it… what mode of life is appropriate, what takes you closer, what seems to push you away. You get very very clear, but not through a list of what you can and can’t do.
I have heard it said that in life one may have many karya gurus (people who take you part of the way, up to the level they have gone) but only one Karuna Guru (Someone like I have inadequately described).
My beloved Guru… how can I ever say what He did for me, or how much, or for how long?
I tried many paths and read many books, but just couldn’t LIVE what I abstractly knew. I met Him in my mid-20’s; I had the unutterable priviledge, joy, bliss, sweetness, of being with Him in form for 26 years.
Once I met, there was never a time when He was far from me (though sometimes I felt that way. But later I would discover, always, that HE hadn’t moved, I had). And I would return to Him, (which is to say, myself).
In effect He raised me. He gave me the foundation on which my life rests and rested, the background against which all else comes and goes. He released me… not from life and its struggles but TO a surety within which remains independent of even those most terrible of circumstances, and which kept me walking through all the ups and downs and ins and outs.
Seeing/ being shown doesn’t take away difficulties on the worldly level. But, because a hold on This strengthens you, it allows you to continue despite the difficulties. And, as He sometimes quoted (and I have quoted on 43T), it is as Shakespeare said; “Sweet is the use of adversity.”
I couldn’t, and can’t, always re-experience this (and never by will power). But sometimes, again by Grace, it comes. And even when I only remember (rather than return to the direct experience), that is enough to get by until, often unpredictably and through Grace, I enter back into That.
Very few people who know me in my worldly and professional life know this about me. They cringe, rightfully, when they hear the word “guru” , as I used to. They see dependence, exploitation, manipulation of the gullible, as I did.
I keep this part of my life private, sacred, and secret. I am saying it here only in answer to your question, and only in anonymnity.
How, given my beliefs that gurus were phoney and for the weak, did I become His, and He my dearest core?
My need and desire and longing intensified to the point where I HAD to have answers and then, somehow, I was led to Him… or He found me. He cxame out of my need, not His. Bceause… what on earth did He need?
The closest description of what the experience is like is in Ram Dass’s Be Here Now.
There are no fancy tricks with a Karuna Guru. You ask; He answers; you are taken There. Sometimes such beings are very, very funny… fortunately for me, my Guru was. (Once I asked Him some long elaborate now-forgotten question and He replied wryly, “I could prove to you that you don’t even exist, but it would just upset you.”)
He has now left the body, but He has never left me.
It is up to me to live what He showed me, and to bring sincere and intense (though relaxed, in the sense of not tensed-up) effort to returning to That, daily, in every action. To return even when I feel distant or “dry”.
I miss my husband, with whom I had such a powerful bond, far more than I do Him, to Whom I had an unbreakable bond.
How is this possible? My husband, upon dying, left me by leaving life. My Guru… where on earth could He go? He was beyond birth, beyond death… He came into form, for the sake of me and others like me, but He was always far beyond and much more than physical form.
He has never left me, and never will.
Andrew Miesem cheered this 6 years ago
