The Role Of The Spiritual Teacher

by Harry Palmer

Question: What is the role of a spiritual teacher?
Harry: Let's make a distinction right at the start between a message bearer and a spiritual teacher. The message bearer's prime concern is to communicate word-lessons. Coupled with this communication you will often find publicity seeking, marketing and dramatic presentations. Show biz!

There's nothing wrong with message bearers. Most of us are very experienced in this area. We expect that there will be a message, even layers of messages. What did she mean by that? Sometimes when no message exists, we imagine one.
So begin by understanding that the principle role of a spiritual teacher has nothing to do with a message. No word-lessons. What then? World Lessons!
Let's talk for a minute about the higher self. And let's imagine that this higher self is not just an abstract idea or a fanciful belief. Let's imagine that this higher self really exists as a subtle inner beingness possessing compassion and an ability to see things in their true relationship.

Let's further imagine that the day-to-day self, the ego-self, is so noisy with exploding memories and boiling thinking, buffeted by fears and desires, divided by judgments, that, except for intuitive flashes, it simply drowns out this perspective of the higher self. Only when the ego-self gets very still does the viewpoint of the higher appear. This stillness is a natural occurrence of mental maturation whether achieved by aging or by spiritual practice such as Avatar.

If you could instantly trade the ego-self for the higher self, you would probably judge it a bad deal, something for nothing--at first it seem like nothing. A good analogy car made with night vision. You are the woods, and you have a bright lantern. You look around in the circle of light, and you can see the tree ground and the leaves overhead. is like the ego-self. Turn off the lantern, and everything goes black. Really black. Nothing. The urge, of course, is to turn the lantern back on.

But let's say you resist the urge to switch on the lantern and just keep peering into the blackness. After awhile your night vision turns on, and you begin to see in the dark. The longer you work at it, the better you see. And your vision is not restricted to one circle of light. Now you can see to the horizons and to the stars. At first what you see might not be as glitzy as with a bright lantern, but after a while there is a natural softness, a belonging to the forest, a wholeness that you wouldn't trade for any artificial light. This is the viewpoint of higher self, an awakening of a subtle inner beingness. In Avatar we some times refer to it as the appearance of the Wizard.

This inner beingness stays aware by compassionate acceptance and an ability to understand the true relationship of the forces that drive the ego elf. In the presence of this attitude, the ego-self relaxes and disappears.

So getting back to the role of the spiritual teacher, he or she awakens this inner beingness in you and keeps it awake until it can stay aware. There's really no message in this; it's more of a matching of vibration and attitude. Going to see what the spiritual teacher has to say is a wasted trip. Go and see what the spiritual teacher feels like.

The spiritual teacher fills in for your higher self until it awakens. He or she observes you with compassionate acceptance. This attitude of the personal spiritual teacher creates an echo in your subtle inner beingness and, after a time, you begin to perceive your ego-self with the same compassionate acceptance and understanding as the spiritual teacher does. You are transformed into the Wizard. Your ego-self relaxes and disappears. This is not a process that you can think your way through.