Guru is Your Mirror
Thursday, November 8th, 2007The relationship to Guru is the central practice of Tantra.
Some people are already experiencing the naturally arising longing for Guru. They are moved to a state of greater openness by following this longing wherever it leads them. To recognize this longing and surrender to it is capacity in action.
But when many Western students hear or read that Guru is the core practice of Tantra, eyes glaze over. Ears shut down. Skepticism sets in.
Most of the Western-style re-inventions of Asian spiritual traditions involve either the importation of psychological models of the self, or the substitution of community or “inner” Guru for a real-life teacher.
Inner Guru is not just common sense, or what feels right to you, or what you think should be true.
First of all, if you believe inner Guru is inner, you haven’t “got it” yet. Second, when you are directly accessing Guru without the aid of a human teacher, you will understand the grace and beauty of the phenomenon of Guru. You won’t complain about or denigrate human teachers. In fact, the opposite will be true: you will be suffused with wonder and gratitude that teachers exist at all. And you will compassionately desire all beings to feel the grace of Guru raining down on them.
A human Guru is a manifestation of Guru Tattva. “Tattva” means “element” or “function.” Guru Tattva is the aspect of the world that moves us toward Self-realization. Like compassion, Guru is a naturally arising phenomenon. Human Guru is a concentrated dose of Guru Tattva that even us dense folk can recognize.
The primary function of Guru is to serve as a mirror in which we can recognize ourselves.
The Guru serves as mirror by loving us. This love continually moves from Self to Self in the Self’s play of manifestation.
Guru’s love can manifest in many different ways because a Guru will do anything to help us Self-realize. Oftentimes “anything” is painful.
Looking into the face of the open, infinite love of Guru, all of our limitations, and our infinite potential, become clear.
In the presence of Guru, we can sense the distance between our state of tension and the open state of Realization. This distance seems very far and, at the same time, no distance at all.
In the presence of Guru, everything for which we have ever longed reveals itself. At the same time, Guru is not a savior.
In the presence of Guru, we discover total responsibility for our condition. We look at the Guru, and we know, “this is what I truly am.” And we know that only we ourselves can relax our tensions and open to life.
This is how the “game” works. Guru shows us this in the mirror of Guru.
It is possible to be in the presence of a great Guru and not recognize Guru. A human Guru cannot force anyone to look into the mirror. She or he can only be that for those who are ready. A person’s recognition of Guru is an exquisitely-timed cosmic event.
Many people have teachers, but they have not met Guru. Their relationship with their teacher is quite ordinary. A person goes along, learning many useful things and growing, but their world has not yet been fundamentally and irrevocably altered.
Meeting and recognizing Guru is a cataclysmic event in the life of a person, even if it is a quiet cataclysm.
At this moment, you will become conscious of the fact that all of your pretenses–your decisions, analyses, doubts, worrying and problematizing–are just so much dust in the wind. You will still keep trying to build a life out of that dust, but you will know it is futile.
You will recognize that Guru is the real master of your life. The expanded state of the Guru is your real destination. And despite your resistances, you will discover with certainty that you will indeed come home.
The recognition of the inevitability of Self-realization is one of the most shattering, and relieving, aspects of what one learns by looking in the mirror of Guru.
We feel shattered because we know that our attachments will fall by the wayside, and we are not quite ready to let go. We are profoundly relieved because we finally know what we are and that we cannot be left behind.
This recognition is the true beginning of surrender to the life process.
In Ma’s Love,
Shambhavi
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