Rare And Precious Thing The Possibilities And Pitfalls of Working With a Spiritual Teacher

Chapter 1 RETURNING TO THE CIRCLE You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round.1Black Elk There are an infinite number of reasons for wanting a spiritual teacher, some as clear as an alpine stream, others as blurred and haunting as an inscription on an ancient tombstone. We might come to our desire through sufferingthe piercing loss of a loved one, or the all-too-pervasive sense of numbing isolation in the modern world, for instance. Perhaps, though, we've experienced ecstatic and fleeting moments of insight, where in a quick flash we see it, the extraordinary beauty of the world, the absolute miracle in the most daily occurrenceHaze breaking over fir and bamboo, / Clears and concentrates / The mind and spirit, said the Chinese poet Chien Chang.2 In the first circumstance we want a teacher to show us the way out, in the second the way back in. Underlying both is a yearning for the clarification of who we really are and the palpable ache for connection, for contact, for merging. We, in our secular consumer society (having divorced ourselves from wildness), have lost touch with the ancient but living tissue that connects us to the mystery of creation. In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James surmised, by way of his examination of a multiplex of experiences (the first study of its kind, published in 1902, and still a classic), "that the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance; that union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true end; that prayer or inner communion with the spirit thereofbe that spirit 'God' or 'law'is a process wherein work is really done, and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within the phenomenal world."3 James's statements, though a tad starched for modern ears, are still valid, not so much for what they sayyou can find the same themes in any number of popular magazinesbut for the emphasis of his study. The true radicalism of James (at least to the Western world of the day) was his recognition of personal spiritual awakening as the nadir of religiositybeyond ritual, beyond tradition, beyond race or standing or "expertise." We didn't need an intermediary, James proclaimed. His assertion was nothing new: the mystics had been saying such things for thousands of years, be they from East or West or from the luminous circles of indigenous tribes. Yet James was offering a broader invitation to the Western public. It was the beginning of the paradigm shift that melded the external with the internal, science with religion. Solitude, and by this I do not mean being alone but that primary place in each of us where we meet spirit, was for James the truest state. The spiritual teacher-student relationship is of this realm, a primary connection nourished in intimacy, which is at once most private and most universal. This relationship, however, presents its own set of problems. If the visible world is indeed a part of a more spiritual universe, then we are all, in every second of existence, swimming in spirit. Unfortunately (and this is the devil's bargain), we've entered a truncated dreamscape of division and separation, believing, more often than not, that God, spirit, presence, or whatever you want to call it, is overthereand we are overhere. Spiritual teachers and many non-teachers alike have simply seen through, or at least glimpsed, this dream loop and do not take it at collective face value. How, then, do you teach a person to swim when that person is already swimming? AnimalsKain, John is the author of 'Rare And Precious Thing The Possibilities And Pitfalls of Working With a Spiritual Teacher' with ISBN 9780307335920 and ISBN 0307335925.