The Right Teacher, Mentor, Or Guide

The right teacher, mentor, or guide is only awaiting our readiness to learn. A teacher cannot teach anyone who thinks they already have their answers. To find them, we only need to have an open mind. Along with an open mind, we must also be willing to be wrong about our current beliefs and honest with our mentors and ourselves about what those beliefs are. 

To find a mentor or Teacher that agrees with us will not teach us anything. A critical word to anyone’s growth; is stretch. Our belief system makes up our world as we allow ourselves to know it. If we want to grow spiritually, we must become willing to stretch beyond our limitations and reach into the unknown. 

For most that are even contemplating searching for a teacher or mentor, even if we are not aware of it in these terms, we have become tired of our self-imposed limitations. And, even when this is true, we struggle to let go of old ideas and patterns that limit and weaken us. 

We will often fight to the death for a belief system that does not serve us rather than allow anyone to penetrate our walls of defensiveness. If we are serious about learning, we may find a self-imposed barrier of defensiveness and learn how these self-made walls are shutting us off from the sunlight of the spirit. 

Frequently, our resistance to allowing someone to guide us is rooted in our seeming inability to trust. Trust can be tough to step into; many of us have been betrayed by someone we loved, neglected by someone we thought loved us, abandoned, or left behind. 

Becoming capable of trusting anyone can be a monumental task. We also tend to think that by opening up to trust, we make ourselves vulnerable. The willingness to reach deep within and find the courage to try and trust is paramount to our spiritual growth. We can feel unsafe, exposed, and in peril. BUT. By not attempting, we will undoubtedly keep ourselves imprisoned in an emotional cell where it may seem impossible to see any light. 

For the Teacher, we are so desperately seeking that it takes a handful of very frightening principles, honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness. Beginning with these principles, we slowly start to open the door to courage, hope and eventually trust. 

It only takes a little bit of willingness to open the door. If we open the door and allow ourselves to step through, the world can become a safer place. Then our teachers can begin to show us a path to absolute freedom.  

Our teachers are only waiting for our willingness to be taught. They can show up in a wide variety of ways if we are watching. They may present themselves in an inspiring thought we have as a result of watching a sunset, a message that seems to be just for us in a book we read, maybe even in the music we choose to listen to. They may and quite often seem very foreign to us, but if we are willing, the lessons we each need will resonate as the truth for us, and we will accept them and take them on as ours.