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Looking up at Buddha
(mariocom20, 
Morguefile)

Guru-disciple scene
(terimakasih0, Pixabay)

Double-Sun
(8385, Pixabay)

3 Giraffes
(Sponchia, Pixabay)

Sun spirituality
(InspiredImages, Pixabay)

3 Female Elders
(tshekisoboman, Pixabay)

Nature meditator
(ojohncreation, Pixabay)
Gurus

Looking up at a BuddhaI am reluctant to recommend any human spiritual teacher. It is a bit like recommending a builder - fraught with complications. Or worse.
I have personally witnessed  financial and relationship/sexual abuse by various spiritual teachers - all in the name of Higher Things. Goodness and wisdom can often be mixed with increasingly apparent controlling and abusive behaviour. I especially question crazy wisdom teachers - and those who support them. I don't think it particularly serves humans to spiritually idolise other humans. There is so much room for abuse.
Never give your life away to any guru!
To understand this, read Stripping the Gurus by Geoffrey Falk [downloadable for free]. He is a 'militant atheist' and has many other views I strongly disagree with. But - as I see it - he has done useful work on gurus.
After reviewing the lives of 40 widely-acknowledged spiritual giants, he concluded:


"One is then left with very little indeed to cling to in all of this. For, if even the widely recognized “best” Realizers apparently cannot distinguish between hallucination and their own ostensibly valid realizations, are lesser Realizers to be regarded as being more reliable?
Seen from that perspective, the most that any spiritual teacher can be is a decent, honest, unpretentious, even-tempered and caring human being, never “divinity in the flesh.” Yet, if even one-tenth of the allegations made against those figures are valid, the overwhelming majority of them would fail miserably at even that minimal, level-headed decency. Thus, the bulk of what they would wish to teach us by their own behaviors, no sensible person would want to learn.
So even let each of them be every bit as enlightened as they have claimed to be, then. (Again, if these top forty spiritual leaders are not so divine, who is?) It makes no difference; for, with the endemic reported character flaws which they bring to the table, who of them could ever do more good than harm in the world? What use, then, is their vaunted “enlightenment”? And, if anything like karma and reincarnation exist, who could suffer more for their alleged actions, in future lives, than such respected holy fools, from the “Christ-like” Ramakrishna on down?
The good news, though, is that none of these grandiose god-figures, playing unconvincingly at being holy, compassionate and wise, have any power whatsoever over anyone else other than what you, or I, would give to them. Without our obedient submission and credulous swallowing of their untenable claims and widespread exaggerations, they will dry up and blow away as if they had never existed.
Put another way: They need us much more than we need them."
(Geoffrey D. Falk, 2005/2009, accessed 12 March 2014)


A painting. In an Asian hut in a forest, a disciple kneels before a guru, offers gifts. The guru gives instructions with an outstretched arm.

Remember that your parents were your first gurus.
Did they abandon you or abuse you or do they still hang on?
Remember that life can give you many teachers (even those who oppose you).
Whoever they were/are, they need to free you.
It is all preparing you for Father Sky and Mother Earth.
Or as O.M. Aïvanhov said, for the divine parents of your soul and spirit, that is the Universal Soul and Cosmic Spirit.

In the foreground are dark mountains and sea. A double-sun is not far from the horizon. Amidst this epic scene, two people are tiny, standing on a huge smooth rock, taking it all in.
Double-Sun, perhaps symbols of Universal Soul and Cosmic Spirit?

So, I do recommend Nature. There is the Sun - a brilliant role model and simple symbol for God - around which you can build your life. Animals can help us. There is a quote about a spiritual teacher explaining how he learned to meditate by observing a cat. A dog can display amazing qualities of unconditional love and loyalty - always there with a wagging tail. Attunement to Angels can help a lot. Also self-love, self-acceptance is important.

A photo of the heads and tops of neck of three giraffes. Clouds and sky are the backdrop. The giraffes appear to be communicating.
Let us collaborate like giraffes, with our heads in the clouds (Heaven) and our feet on Earth!

Also, once humanity starts applying Natural Family Living, with the likes of Attachment Parenting, human beings will naturally spiritually blossom in their life course. There is a nice quote from the book The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff about this, and her observation of it in the South American indigenous tribe the Yeqana [quote forthcoming].
It is natural and normal for us to be spiritually connected. It is our culture - like interventions in birth, unnatural education, and patriarchy - that disrupts this instinctive mysticism and drive to serve the world.

There is no need for a human hierophant or intermediary. The path to intimacy is through shared power, not through unequal guru-disciple power games. We all play our part, with the emphasis very much on "we".  It is a team effort to save the world and become enlightened. We have to become far more ecological, sensitive to the web of life. The quest for personal enlightenment can easily distort into selfish, competitive rivalries.

A fantasy scene. In the middle, a sun-like energy pulses beautiful Light to all. To the left, a silhouette of a woman in lotus posture appears to levitate. On the right, another silhouette, a person doing hatha yoga.

Gaia Charis explains it excellently (posted March 2010, accessed 12 March 2014; hyperlink now broken):

"As a sociologist I would make the assertion that the recorded history of the construction of spiritual ‘knowledge’ shows it to be founded on masculine principles which are themselves products of male-dominated cultures. The resulting characteristics of this process are the pre-eminencing of hierarchy and status and the valorisation of intellectual complexity (traditionally deemed to be masculine) coupled with the denigration of emotion and simplicity (traditionally defined as feminine.).
This template is writ large through all major religions and all academic disciplines from the time of Ancient Greek thinking onwards, an era on which our contemporary thought structures are founded. The history of spirituality is the history of a masculine concept of spirituality.
Not only has female experience of spirituality remained largely unheard for the whole of that time but it has often been actively eliminated, as witnessed in the early demotion of women within the burgeoning Christian church and the horrors of the burning times.
The female experience, however, has always, like my own and like the African grandmothers [looking after their many AIDS-orphaned grandchildren], been deeply grounded in both simplicity and in the actualities and necessities of ‘Be-ing’.
This is in direct contrast to century upon century of masculine abstraction, of complex theorisation and of the creation of a status-ridden hierarchy of expertness presented as the only medium by which the uninitiated may access the Divine...
It is no wonder that female spiritual experience has so often been viewed as so subversive and threatening that it has to be subdued and eliminated... it exposes elitism as a lie, it busts the gates of Divinity wide open and lets everyone in for free."


Three female elders of the San indigenous people. They are standing, clapping along with some special communal event.

This is why I write articles on the importance of simplicity, the importance of emotions, the importance of women (also see here), the importance of natural family living and attachment parenting. It's also why I question the competitiveness of spiritual teachers. And it is why I prefer to disseminate my website for free. I want to "bust the gates of divinity wide open and let everyone in for free". I want us to save the world. This is what this website is about - to help you and us achieve that!



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An image of a person meditating in nature. Branches, flowers and nature seem to grow from the meditator.

"I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it."

(Morpheus, from 1999 movie The Matrix)

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Saviour

Guru Quotes

How Evolved Am I?

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Be on the lookout for the ways your special skills can serve what the world needs. Because we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
(The Story of Stuff email 9 September 2017)

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Page last updated: 27 July 2023.