Become your own guru
By Sandra and Daniel Biskind Copyright 2005
How many spiritual paths have you explored? From 12 steps to 7 principles to 4 questions, how many teachings and practices have you studied? Most spiritual seekers have had quite a few under their belts. There is no lack of excellent, valid and valuable paths. Wisdom has it that any path, pursued correctly and diligently, can work. But how many of us have found that, even after 20 years of consistent, diligent practice, we have really attained the state of consciousness we know in our hearts is there?
Recontextualizing, which is what good teachers and gurus do, is invaluable. It tweaks our consciousness, expands it and reforms it. It reminds us of what is possible. But what we are seeking is not reformation but transformation. We want to transcend the mind, not fill it with still more intellectual furniture to rearrange once again.
Our world is at the inflection point of numerous long term cycles that have been prophesied in all the different traditions, native and esoteric, throughout the world. At some level we all know this is a time of major transition. Numerous sources point clearly to this time. Changes in the earth's electromagnetic and gravitational fields confirm this is the time. Central to this shift is the transformation of consciousness of humanity.
"Waking up" happens only four ways. The preferred way is, of course, to be born awake and remain that way. Unfortunately, that is also the rarest. Another way is to awaken spontaneously. Well-known current examples include Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie. Very hard to plan and usually quite painful, its usual pattern of first hitting bottom makes it hard to recommend this path. The third way is the classic: renounce your life and glue yourself to the feet of your guru. Alas, there are no guarantees this will work and no certainty about timeframes, either. The success rate is actually not much higher than the spontaneous post-crash awakening path because there are so few gurus with the requisite state to stimulate any given person's awakening.
The fourth way is relatively new. It was in use two thousand years ago in the Middle East but that iteration, described in the New Testament, was aborted. Like Reiki and many healing modalities that involve laying on of hands, it involves a transfer of energy. But there the similarity stops, for this transference of energy begins the process of initiation into enlightenment. And the focus of the healing is not a symptom, but rather the root cause of all problems: consciousness. This energy starts a neurobiological process (with actual changes in brain function) that transforms one's state of consciousness from the sense of separation with omnipresent mind chatter to a sense of oneness with an ongoing experience of inner peace.
Becoming one's own guru is not unknown even in the high church tradition of Christianity. Joseph Campbell describes how some 800 years ago Joachim of Flores taught about the three ages following the expulsion from Eden. The first, the Age of the Father, prepared the way for the Incarnation, which began the Age of the Son. In that, God spoke to the world through the church. Finally, in the Age of the Holy Spirit, God speaks directly to the individual. At that time, when the façade of the great cathedral at Chartres was completed, St. Francis of Assisi was widely considered to be a model of the third age, when each individual can have a direct relationship with the God of their own understanding without need for an intermediary.
In the Vedic tradition, the history of our planet consists of 24,000 year cycles, each containing four ages. The longest is the Golden Age, followed by the devolution into the successively shorter Silver, then Bronze, and finally Iron Ages. The Iron Age is the one that is ending at present. We are making this momentous transition now. From 2004 to 2012 we are crossing the threshold into the new Golden Age. And for humanity to successfully transition into the Golden Age, an awakened, enlightened consciousness is necessary.
To become one's own guru means simply that one has attained the state of consciousness which one formerly went to a guru to attain. The fourth way to enlightenment is once again available. The divine beings who have converged on World Earth have crafted a spiritual technology to access and transfer the energy of enlightenment, enabling all who seek this state to attain it. Their goal, the enlightenment of humanity, is finally realizable, and just in time to help ease the transition to the Golden Age, the age of discovery, when we can all be our own guru.
Becoming one's own guru is quite different than becoming one's own expert on gurus. Just as studying bugs doesn't make one a bug, studying enlightenment doesn't make one enlightened. The map, a useful tool, is obviously still not the territory.
To become one's own guru must mean that one has that potential, however dormant, inherent in one's own being. We often refer to masters as "awakened," or we say, "They remember who they are." What is it that allows them to awaken? To remember who they are? What has enabled their inner nature to be different?
The key here is their state of consciousness. In an enlightened state of consciousness we transcend the mind - we are liberated from it. This does not mean to lose the mind, or to manage it or control it. Transcending the mind in the first place means not identifying with the mind. We experience that we have a mind, just as we experience we have a body, but at the same time we experience we are so much more than the mind and/or the body. In this state, we experience life authentically, free of the filtering and editing of the ego mind.
How does this happen? A critical element is a change in brain function. We can consider the brain to be like hardware whilst our beliefs (and, of course, our programming) are software. No matter what the software may contain, the hardware has various parameters, characteristics, and limitations that govern what the software can do. The non-awakened state of consciousness differs from the awakened state because certain areas of the brain (for instance, where the sense of separation stems from) are comparatively hyperactive whilst other areas (such as where the sense of oneness resides) are relatively inactive. We compulsively seek gratification because the reward center has become atrophied.
While we can map the changes in brain function, what ultimately matters is what is experienced. Do we continue to be ruled by endless mind chatter or can we witness reality in stillness? Do we continue to live in the past or the future or are we fully present in the moment? Are we prisoners of our programming or are we truly, finally free? Do we still crave things outside ourselves or do we experience causeless love and limitless joy? Is our experience one of separation or oneness?
Humanity has been evolving incrementally for eons, but to attain enlightenment at this pace would take hundreds, if not thousands more lifetimes. However, there is now a spiritual technology available on the planet that begins the process of rewiring the brain. The process differs for each individual but results in providing a key to unlock the mind's stranglehold over the heart, allowing the heart (the seat of divinity, intuition, creativity, and love) to open and flower. While the mystical experiences the enlightenment energy facilitates are exquisite treasures, it is the permanently changed experience of life that is the fulfillment of the heart's deepest desires: peace, love and joy.
In "Truth, Lies and Love" the historic context for this amazing scenario is presented. Elsewhere, many have noted phenomena that are contributing to such unprecedented events. Changes such as those happening now in the earth's geomagnetic field and resonant frequency are important facilitating agents. The common inflection point of innumerable cycles (from psycho-spiritual to meteorological to astrological to socioeconomic to astrophysical) all point to this as the time identified in Eastern, Western, esoteric and indigenous traditions across the planet as the one of global transformation.
Reprogramming our software (reformation) can be worthy and uplifting, but it can never substitute for rewiring our hardware (transformation).
The classic symbol for transformation, the butterfly, is not a reformed caterpillar. So too, the emerging new species, homo spiritus, is not a reformed homo sapiens. And in this new species, all are their own gurus.