If meditation is self-discovery, then surely the only teacher qualified to teach about ourself, is our self. How can someone else know more about myself than me? Other than sharing some principles, guidelines and techniques for the journey, a teacher might be able to reveal all about their own self, but surely not about myself…
This reasoning might hold true if the ‘self’ we seek were the self we are familiar with ¬– our finite, limited physical, emotional and mental self – yet the ‘self’ we seek is precisely that self which we intuitively sense, but cannot yet grasp, for it is mostly hidden from our present awareness – our infinite, ever-transcending, all-beautiful, all-loving, all-blissful, all-powerful, all-illumining inmost heart and soul.
While the finite can measure the finite, only the infinite can know the infinite. Our present limited awareness is like a small magnifying glass, offering us some help in exploring our immediate vicinity; while to discover and claim our larger, higher, infinite self, we need an interstellar telescope, capable of viewing galaxies far beyond our present perception.
Only someone who has already established a free access to this infinite realm – a genuine God-realised spiritual Master – has the innate capacity to see and know the infinite in us and to guide us on our spiritual journey to our own soul-discovery.
On our own, we are like someone trying to find their way through a complex maze with high walls on all sides, blindfold and with no idea where the destination is. Having a spiritual Master to guide us is to have an all-seeing eye high above the maze, for whom it is easy to see exactly where we are and the shortest way for us through the maze, to reach our destination.
(to be continued…)