Finding An Inner Teacher
“You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.”
As of late, I have been dissecting a philosophical novel by Daniel Quinn Ishmael: An adventure of the Mind and Spirit. It starts with the narrator reading an ad in a newspaper- 'a teacher looking for a student with an earnest desire to save the world'. He’s quite upset by it, annoyed. The narrator shares his story- when being a young boy he desperately searched for a teacher. As a young idealistic boy, he was set on saving the world and needed someone to tell him how to go about it. He yearned to find a wise being with access to otherworldly wisdom, a secret knowledge, something that cannot be so easily found. How ironic the teacher shows up now when he’s disgruntled, decades older man.
Haven't we all searched for such a teacher? Someone to show us the way…
When reading it, I chuckled a bit because of similarity to my own process of journeying inward, which began several years ago. While looking for teacher/s out there who could provide answers to the stirrings within my Soul, I had a strong sense the answers I was seeking, were all within me. How can other Soul possibly know the exact path I AM to walk, what to experience or to create? We surely may find some genuine, external guidance but so long as it propels us to go within instead of having us rely on his/her ‘guru-ness (think I just made up a word).
I remember writing a paragraph that came as a response to a political article I had read a while back (can't recall which one):
"People come in different shapes, forms & fashion, they might be completely broken, not in alignment with their physical, emotional & spiritual selves, at very different levels of their own evolution; yet they preach to the world the way it ought to be, frequently projecting their shortcomings, behind which is hidden their own agenda, though unbeknownst to them. And what do others do? They listen to the external, frequently messed up, hypocritical rhetoric that is nothing more but subconscious projection of unresolved/unhealed issues.”
Gosh, sounds a bit harsh, doesn’t it? But it came out of my depths, I couldn’t type fast enough as it was coming. I had tapped into something genuine, it resonated as my truth. I realized how detrimental it is to turn inward and to take responsibility for own path (physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually) but in a more conscious, heart-centered way. With it came a deep-seated desire to uncover the very essence of who I AM; the yearning for reconnection with the Spirit within me. I knew there was more to this human journey than the security of 9 to 5 job, money in the bank, white picket fence, the latest clothing. I saw this ridiculousness for what it was. A charade everyone agreed upon to play, one from which we all will eventually awaken.
So yes, my Soul kept whispering: “Pay attention. I am here. Open your eyes and see. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.”
I felt a rebelliousness within me arise, as well as a deep need to connect to a personalized Soul’s wisdom and not some outside, possibly distorted 'so-called advice', rigid ideologies, fixed dogmas imposed by institutions or spiritual gurus. And so the pull to go further and deeper to seek hidden mysteries of my own Universe, the unseen to the naked human mind/eye. I wanted to draw from my own experience, and not someone else’s. The superficial, meaningless distractions lost their grip over me, no longer held any powers. NO longer did I care about that which we were once told supposedly matters in life; titles, labels, prestige, high-end positions, ruthless pursuit at all cost of more & more money. Gone! The energetic shackles just seemed to dissolve into oblivion. All of it - the superficial that is - is nothing more to me but a dead miasma, a cancerous tissue still floating around within the pockets of human collective attempting to attach itself to the unaware. The only calling I chose to answer is to my very Soul and to its full integration into this physical vessel. Soul possesses unquestionable authority, my ultimate connection to Source has best guidelines I’ll ever need as to how to go about creating an individualized experience, but still very much a part of the human collective. So I make a choice to participate in this creation soulfully. I’m realizing this is a Divine dream my individual Soul fractal is partaking in. So more and more these days I seem to watch the world with more detachment as everything and everyone goes by and New York City is a heck of a place to witness it from. People rushing, running around, not having the time to sit still and be, or to reconnect with the rest of the human family on a deep level. What comes to mind is another quote from Ishmael: An adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn:
"The most fundamental difference was that in Africa I was a member of a family—of a sort of family that the people of your culture haven’t known for thousands of years. If gorillas were capable of such an expression, they would tell you that their family is like a hand, of which they are the fingers. They are fully aware of being a family but are very little aware of being individuals. Here in the zoo, there were other gorillas—but there was no family. Five severed fingers do not make a hand."
My inner teacher shows me, how perfectly we have mastered being great at “being individuals”, lonesome fingers of a hand. Now we must remember/recall/reawaken to the fact that aside from being individual expressions, we are also part of ONE Human Collective regardless of race, religion, skin color, political affiliation, or whatever part of the globe we inhabit. We are part of the hand. We are all Brothers & Sisters-Human Family. If we allow ourselves to reconnect with the teacher within, soulful epiphanies and wisdom will abound and we shall know Peace, Love, Unity, Abundance again.
