Wellspring

 Do not seek the counsel of one who answers all your questions. Seek the silence of one in whose presence no questions arise, whose fragrance draws you to the nectar of the blossom inside you. Scatter the mind's pale petals on those bare brown feet. For every step you take toward the Friend, those feet have taken ten thousand steps toward you.

What, then, is the sign of the true Teacher? Since the moment you receive the light of his eyes, the breath of his word, the touch of his stillness, everything you ever sought in a Guru outside you, starts bubbling up from the wellspring in your own chest.

This is why Jesus says, in John 4, "Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, those waters will become in them a spring welling up to eternal life." Later, in John 14, he says, "If you love me, follow me; and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, who will never leave you."

Now what is the difference between the Father, Jesus and the Comforter? These are not separate persons, but deepening experiences in the devotee. The Father is pure consciousness, the ground of our Being and the absolute stillness of the Self. But our mind, with all its troubled worries and doubts about the past and the future, overshadows that Self-luminous Ground. We confess that we need help. That is when the Guru shows up our life.

Jesus is the outer earthly form of the Guru, whose touch dispels our wayward mind and awakens the Self. But that experience of the Teacher remains stillborn, and merely external, until we surrender to his true work in us, the coming of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit.

In Biblical languages, Spirit means breath: "Ruach" in Hebrew, "Pneuma" in Greek. Intimate as our own breath, the Guru-tattva arises inside us as a flow of bliss and ineffable wisdom. We no longer depend on the outward form of the Master, for we have connected our lips to the grail of the Friend inside. Through all our worldly actions, we rest in divine stillness, and breathe the Christ. This is not symbolic language. It is quite literal. And what vibrates through each breath is his Spirit, his Shakti, the Goddess.

The greatest gift one can give to the Guru is this: stop clinging to his outward form, and start breathing his Shakti through the core of your heart. Then live and breathe that gift to others. And wherever you walk on the earth, walk lightly, greeting God in everyone. Jai Guru Dev.