You can't spit today with out hitting some spiritual teacher..

They are everywhere..The list of spiritual teachers today is enormous!!!

Every where you look someone has some advice for how you should do your life, your love.

Is it true?  Are we all just walking around with our umbilicus in hand, just looking for a new place to plug in?

About a week back, while watching Oprah's Best Life Series, a young women who was so scared that she was going to loose everything.  Oprah's panel of experts chimed in with wonderful spiritual principles but it was so clear that none of this was helping this very frighted women.

Opinions, platitudes and easy sound bites to not make a process of spiritual advisement or counsel.  Often these platitudes can make matters worse.  Holding out some place to arrive like a new carrot on a stick.

Oprah actually did a better job of counseling this women than did her panel

The difference between someone who espouses spiritual principles and a spiritual counselor, spiritual director or spiritual advisor  is the important aspect that was completely left out of this episode.  The goal of spirituality in our lives is not the integration of principles it is the discovery of our truest nature...we are spiritual beings.  Nothing to add...that's it...

In my opinion, a good spiritual counselor is someone who can help you discover, recover your connection with, for lack of a better term, the divine with in you. A good spiritual counselor can help you reconnect with your own inner resources.

Spirituality is EVERYTHING. Spirituality is in every moment. It is not some separate and distinct thing from everything else nor is it some special moment in time.

The spiritual counselor is concerned with your life. For your life is a spiritual event!

Comments

[Nina East]

Well said, Eric. I've seen and heard the platitudes all too often myself - and frequently they are followed with a passing of the hat or a pitch to buy a book, program, etc.

It's not that there's anything wrong at all with being rewarded for the work you do, it's that the focus sometimes strays from truly helping that person find that point of reconnection to...well, something else. And the "something else" often seems to have a focus on how we're not really OK yet because we haven't learned to do X, Y, or Z.

I've recently been attending a Won Buddhist Temple and have been struck by how practical and honoring the priests, the teachings, and the principles are. I don't think any other spiritual teacher I've been with has been able to express or demonstrate that.
And believe me, I've done a lot of spitting!
Nina!

[generic valtrex]

I don't believe in spiritual teachers.