Hello everyone, today’s topic is how and why to choose your spiritual master? Lets start with it.
Why to choose your spiritual master?
Now if you are sad, depressed, lethargic, suffering from low self-esteem, then you have to have a spiritual master. If you can go to a therapist, or a counsellor, or a friend that can help you, then it’s okay. You can do that too. But if you really really looking for inner peace or happiness, then you have to have a spiritual master, and live for the validation of that master. By validation we mean, you seek to take every action, every decision of your lives to get the Guru’s or the spiritual master’s respect.
And if you are not depressed, sad, lethargic then also you should have a spiritual master, because your happiness relies on external situations. You are happy because of the external influences which are personally positive to you. The real happiness does not depend upon at all on any external outer worldly influences. That is why the people with real happiness or inner peace are known as the Spiritual Masters or the Guru or the Saints. So once a person have found the inner peace or bliss they go out into the world to preach it on how to achieve it, which is exactly what i am doing.
How to choose your spiritual master?
The best answer to this question is to just choose the religion that you are born into; if you are born in a Hindu family, then do practice according to Bhagavat Gita; or you are born in a Sikh family, then do it according to the Sikhism; if you are a Muslim, then do it according to Islamic teachings; if you are an atheist, then you should kill yourself, just kidding, you can do anything that you want, there are many many beings out there, that’ll answer all of your questions. I will write another article dedicated to atheism someday, which will remove most of atheist’s doubts about god or religion, and everything it entails.
Now, that doesn’t mean you cannot find inner peace or happiness without having to go through orthodox Guru-Disciple relationship. There are plenty of cases, where the people have found bliss within, without following any of the teachings or following a specific Guru.
Its actually rare, that these things happen, one of the cases is that of Eckart Tolle. If you have read his biography, he used to be depressed most of the time and really suffered from suicidal thoughts. He spent most of his early 20’s in anxiety, depression and fearfulness. He explains in his bio that one fateful night, when he was 29, he started to have uncontrollable suicidal thoughts, and while having those thoughts, he started to question that who is this person who cannot live with himself. This self enquiry led him to have an experience that changed his life forever. Self enquiry is one the techniques that Ramana Maharishi(one of the great saints of India) also used to teach to anyone who wanted to reach true answers.
To Quote Eckart Tolle himself
“I couldn’t live with myself any longer. And in this a question arose without an answer: who is the ‘I’ that cannot live with the self? What is the self? I felt drawn into a void! I didn’t know at the time that what really happened was the mind-made self, with its heaviness, its problems, that lives between the unsatisfying past and the fearful future, collapsed. It dissolved. The next morning I woke up and everything was so peaceful. The peace was there because there was no self. Just a sense of presence or “beingness,” just observing and watching.” -Source Wikipedia.
“Pick up artists”.
And there are other cases too, one of them are that of the pick up artists dudes. These dudes wanted to sleep with a lot of attractive women, and this ambition made them approach a lot of women in their lives.
For years “pick up artists” developed a habit of approaching women and also getting rejected a lot of times. They learned to put themselves in vulnerable positions with women consistently. Making yourself vulnerable is a brave thing to do for any person. This bravery made them quite free from the bondage of what people thought of them. Now being fearless, is a good trait, but you have to make sure that you should not have any hatred towards anyone. Being fearless, and having no hatred is a key teaching of Sikhism. Its this teaching that’ll help you find all the answers.
After doing the activity of approaching a lot of random women and dating a whole lot of them. “Pick up artists” soon started to experience the bad parts of the relationships. They found out, that women cannot liberate them from suffering of this life. Promiscuity or even monogamy cannot give you a really long lasting contentment. After going through failed relationships, getting through major heartbreaks, these so-called “pick up dudes” started to question their actions. The “pick up artists” got into self enquiry mode, the same mode that Eckart tolle went when he was going through depression. The “Pick up artists” fuelled their curiosity(jigyaasu), and they questioned their present scenario that if there is no happiness in women then where is it? How can I just be happy? This curiosity led them to bliss.