Where’s My Satguru?
Sunday, August 10th, 2008Why can’t everyone meet a Satguru?
–lost in the USA
Anandamayi Ma said that many people pass by great beings and never know it. Others travel thousands of miles to meet a Satguru and receive everything they need to awaken within a few moments. Still others unexpectedly meet Satguru and find that their entire lives irrevocably turn in a new direction. Anything can happen.
Just meeting any Guru, recognizing that encounter and being able to take a certain amount of nourishment from it means that you have created some cause for this to occur, either in this life or a previous life. The “cause” is your own effort to wake up from the slumber we call normal human existence.
You have made the effort to recognize your desire to know yourself and your world, and you have cultivated that to a certain degree.
A person who has not yet made this effort may hear of a teacher. “Oh, that sounds interesting,” this person may think, but they have not cultivated enough Self-recognition or desire to Self-recognize. And so they will not go to meet the teacher.
Maybe the teacher is 1,000 miles away, or 100 or only a few, but that won’t matter. Something will always seem to be in the way. “I don’t have the money, or the time or it’s raining outside, or I’m tired, or I can’t find a babysitter, or my partner won’t like it.” Some reasonable sounding reason will always take precedence over the natural desire to Self-realize.
Or maybe a person meets a real teacher, but the teacher does not match up with the person’s concept of what a teacher is supposed to be and how a teacher is supposed to act. Or perhaps the teacher makes the person feel a little uncomfortable when he or she was expecting to feel only happiness.
All this means is that someone is not ready for Satguru, or perhaps other kinds of teachers either. A person who is ready for any kind of real teacher will be aware, to some degree, that it is her own concepts about herself and her world that are causing her to suffer, and she will be open to having these challenged.
This person will go to meet the teacher no matter what and will show up ready to learn and be transformed.
Thousands of people met Ma and benefited from her presence, but she was only Satguru to a few of these. This is also true of the teachers who travel around today and have thousands of devotees. It’s actually much easier these days to meet a great teacher than it was years ago, but just meeting a great teacher does not mean that you have met Satguru.
Meeting Satguru is a total cosmic situation. You are not meeting another person. You are meeting your own true self. This event is shocking, and what follows from the initial encounter is oftentimes uncomfortable in the extreme. A person has to be ready for this to occur.
Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche says that the Guru is an assassin. Satguru is a super assassin, then! Who is ready for every cherished self-concept and limitation to be pointed out, shown up for what it really is and relentlessly hunted down? Only those whose natural desire to Self-realize has blotted out everything else.
So, the short answer to this question is that not many humans at any one time in history are ready for the encounter with Satguru. What most people are looking for is a little relief from their troubles — a little time off from worry and burdens, a little relaxation. This is beneficial.
Shiva is not worrying, and so if we can relax a little and take a break, and perhaps even become less attached to our fixations, we are drawing closer to recognizing Shiva nature. Then, little by little, the desire to know and experience more of this, our own true nature, will arise.
In Ma’s love,
Shambhavi
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