I was just discussing this idea with a friend this morning. I was thinking about it throughout the day when I checked my email just now and saw: "Be a student, not a follower" as the subject of one of the emails. I love when that happens!
I've heard this phrase before but it just felt more meaningful to me today, when I had just been thinking about this subject. In fact, I was telling my friend how I have never had this one person I can consider as my "teacher" and to live life exactly the way he or she expects me to. She along with another friend of mine comfortably consider this one man as their professor and guide to life while I can barely consider my professor-professors like in school as my "professors." I wonder if this is an ego issue? In a way, I am protecting myself from disappointment. I have had one case where I considered someone so powerful a teacher that I thought this person knew everything. This person was my father. However, as I grew up, I found out, as many children do at a certain age, that my father is not as perfect as I imagined him to be.
I don't think he ever considered himself as perfect or told me to consider him as my guide to life but I did it anyway. When I saw that his actions do not fully align with what he taught me, I felt betrayed. Now, my father is one of the best people I know and if you meet him, you would agree. However, he is not perfect just as everyone else in this world is not. Perfection only belongs to one, who is God. On the other hand, a teacher is a person who perhaps not perfect, but is someone you should be able to turn to when you have questions or when you need guidance. If a teacher says one must never lie and he or she lies from occasion to occasion, then students may not easily be able to believe the teacher or have trust that what he or she is presenting is in fact a guidance or not.
With this in mind, I was telling my friend of something I read a few months ago in one of Dalai Lama's books. He said, everyone needs to find a teacher, a spiritual teacher in particular, in order to succeed on this path. However, there are so many "bad" teachers out there that it is difficult to find the right one that easily. Thus, one must spend a total of 9 years in order to fully settle on ONE teacher who is to be the guide or master that as a pupil, you can follow.
Although most success mentors agree that one must seek to become a "student" rather than a "follower", if you take 9 years to fully assess one person whether living or dead to then consider as your teacher and master, at least in the field of spirituality, perhaps then it is okay to move from student to follower.
But then again, even then, perhaps one must always have his or her doubts even if it's an "epsilon" (as my friend quoted) of a doubt, one must have it in order to have at least an "epsilon" of protection against that type of educational betrayal.
I've heard this phrase before but it just felt more meaningful to me today, when I had just been thinking about this subject. In fact, I was telling my friend how I have never had this one person I can consider as my "teacher" and to live life exactly the way he or she expects me to. She along with another friend of mine comfortably consider this one man as their professor and guide to life while I can barely consider my professor-professors like in school as my "professors." I wonder if this is an ego issue? In a way, I am protecting myself from disappointment. I have had one case where I considered someone so powerful a teacher that I thought this person knew everything. This person was my father. However, as I grew up, I found out, as many children do at a certain age, that my father is not as perfect as I imagined him to be.
I don't think he ever considered himself as perfect or told me to consider him as my guide to life but I did it anyway. When I saw that his actions do not fully align with what he taught me, I felt betrayed. Now, my father is one of the best people I know and if you meet him, you would agree. However, he is not perfect just as everyone else in this world is not. Perfection only belongs to one, who is God. On the other hand, a teacher is a person who perhaps not perfect, but is someone you should be able to turn to when you have questions or when you need guidance. If a teacher says one must never lie and he or she lies from occasion to occasion, then students may not easily be able to believe the teacher or have trust that what he or she is presenting is in fact a guidance or not.
With this in mind, I was telling my friend of something I read a few months ago in one of Dalai Lama's books. He said, everyone needs to find a teacher, a spiritual teacher in particular, in order to succeed on this path. However, there are so many "bad" teachers out there that it is difficult to find the right one that easily. Thus, one must spend a total of 9 years in order to fully settle on ONE teacher who is to be the guide or master that as a pupil, you can follow.
Although most success mentors agree that one must seek to become a "student" rather than a "follower", if you take 9 years to fully assess one person whether living or dead to then consider as your teacher and master, at least in the field of spirituality, perhaps then it is okay to move from student to follower.
But then again, even then, perhaps one must always have his or her doubts even if it's an "epsilon" (as my friend quoted) of a doubt, one must have it in order to have at least an "epsilon" of protection against that type of educational betrayal.
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