It used to be easy to spot – and to avoid – a door-to-door salesman. If you saw one coming up your street, you could easily close the blinds, turn off the TV, hide in a closet and pretend not to be home. Even modern day telemarketers are easy to avoid thanks to caller ID: If the call comes in as “Unavailable” you know to make yourself unavailable as well.
However, with the Internet, all you have to do is like or follow someone on social media and you get their sales pitch delivered to your inbox automatically.
“Thanks for following …
Now click here to get your free download;
Your free e-book;
Your free training;
Listen to this MP3 for invaluable insight;
Take this online course and change the course of your life;
Sign up for my newsletter to receive regular, life-changing tips.”
Yes, you unwittingly opened the door to someone you thought wanted an online friend but instead just wanted a loyal customer.
People are searching for answers and are turning to different forms of spirituality to help find meaning and purpose in their lives. This is nothing new. However, in relation to the human timeline, the Internet is.
Thanks to the level playing field of the Internet, you don’t need to leave your house to find the spiritual guidance your soul craves. There are millions of “enlightened experts” online who are more than willing to deliver it straight to your inbox. The market is saturated.
Many of them are the real deal.
However, many are no more qualified to advise you than a bartender. I take that back: Bartenders have far more experience dealing with their customer’s problems and deliver exactly they ask for.
Sadly, there’s so much crap out there it’s hard to determine where the smell is coming from. It’s easy to get seduced by a well-packaged “spiritual solution” that promises watching a few videos will lead to enlightenment. The ego is easy to seduce and is always looking for an easy way out. So after being intrigued by the initial sales pitch, you lay out the cash to get the full product only to find the online class was just a regurgitation of a Super Soul Sunday episode or the video was lifted directly from a popular self help book you bought years ago.
So how do you recognize someone who can truly help you on your spiritual journey?
Determining who is and who isn’t truly qualified to be a spiritual leader or teacher is really not possible. There is no job description or resume. People are called to that kind of life. It doesn’t matter what they did before, where they studied, what books they’ve read, who they know, what stage they are in their life, or what they claim to know. Helping others is a calling and they have no choice but to devote themselves to that calling once they honor it. After all, once you discover your life’s purpose, there’s really no turning back.
Not to mention spiritual teachers are everywhere. Shit, many of them don’t even realize they’re spiritual teachers. They’re everyday people just walking the walk. You can recognize them by how they make you feel. They don’t scream, “Look at me! I can save you!” They quietly whisper, “Look at you, you can save yourself.”
A spiritual teacher is someone who helps you recognize and focus on the Divine in you, not someone who makes you recognize and focus on the Divine in them.
Anyone who tells you that they have the secret for circumventing the pitfalls of your humanness is not being honest with you or with themselves. There is no way a human cannot be human. Our souls signed up for the gamut of human emotions and experiences. Constant, total bliss is not possible in this physical reality. Not possible and not necessary.
No one has THE answer – because the answers we seek are unique to our individual life purposes. However, there are people who can effectively help you determine what it is you’re actually seeking and the steps you can take to get there.
You will not learn how to be authentic from people who aren’t being authentic with you. You will not be inspired to get real in your life from someone who is full of happy horseshit. Anyone who can’t get out of the way of their own ego can’t help you learn to see beyond yours.
A spiritual teacher is forever a spiritual student and has just as much to learn from a student as a student has to learn from him. The only way we can evolve is by helping each other, getting behind each other, and understanding that we all have gifts that are equally important to humanity.
Effective spiritual teachers often piss you off
There’s a very good chance that what you NEED to hear and learn is not what you want to hear. No one can promise you anything. If someone promises that they can make you happy, be wary. They can’t do anything FOR you.
You don’t need someone to rub a salve on your ego’s boo boo. You need to be jolted out of your comfort zone and asked to take accountability for the beliefs, thoughts and actions that have made you unhappy. Find someone who irritates you enough to ask, “Where the fuck does she get off?” Someone who rips the band aid off the wounds you’ve been licking and asks you to take the personal responsibility to finally heal. Someone who tells you to stop blaming what’s going on outside of you for your unhappiness, and to instead honestly look at what’s going on inside of you.
On a final note…
Look to people with life experience. I’m not being ageist because there are plenty of young people who have lived fully and who have had very specific experiences that enable them to be valuable teachers. However, life experience – not just academic understanding – is what’s valuable.
Be wary of people who regurgitate the ideas of others and tout them as their own. It’s one thing to be influenced by someone else’s teachings, but it’s quite another to take those teachings and repackage them as your own. This happens a lot. Granted, there is talent in being able to synthesize information, and there’s value in using the sound principles of others THAT HAVE WORKED FOR YOU as building blocks in the creation of your own spiritual beliefs and practices. However, if someone is just spewing what they feel is a proven formula in order to gain attention and money, you are just a customer to them. And after buying into a sales pitch pretending to be spiritual guidance, you will most likely wind up feeling as empty, if not emptier, than when you started your journey.
Finally, if anyone in anyway gives you permission to see yourself as a victim, run the other way. The ego thrives on “misery loves company” and finds solace in deflecting blame on to others and bad luck. A lot of those looking to make money or to gain recognition in the spiritual playing field know this, and will seduce you into following them and shelling out cash by nurturing an unhealthy victim mentality. That’s not spiritual guidance, that’s manipulation.
