Believe me when I say there is no rest for the Guru. In my spiritual life travels I have come across many spiritual teachers and gurus and they had one very important thing in common. They were human. As long as our body rests on Mother Earth we are human. That means we make mistakes and we falter and sometimes, more often than you might think, we fail.
The magic is to learn from that failure; to get up, reassess the requirements of our life and dreams and try again to live it in the most beautiful way possible. Gone are the days when the people blindly followed a leader. We are waking up now, and we begin to understand that any of us is capable of anything if the heart for it is right. Heart is not the same as desire. It is more like a pure soul intent to function for the highest possible purpose.
When Gurus fail us
We used to be hard on the guru, feeling as though we had been betrayed when some story arose to prove they had failed morally. I’ve seen this amongst Christian teachers, Hindhu and Yogic teachers… it happens within every discipline on all levels. I have seen young people carry a burden of care for years because a teacher they looked up to proved their humanness publically by screwing up.
I suspect and hope that these days we are beginning to recognize that we are our own best teacher and that we are all, in fact, the same. Instead of this being a liberation however, it seems that we are now placing this ridiculous burden of responsibility and punishment for our failure on ourselves instead.
Less is more
There is one thing I can say to this. STOP BEATING YOURSELF UP. Yes, you make mistakes. Yes you can’t do everything all the time. Yes your expectations of life in the moment, and of yourself may be unrealistic. Nobody is designed to do it all without paying a heavy price in burnout.
Movements across the globe such as Tiny Homes and Minimalism reflect the growing acknowledgement that in this age of consumerism and look-at all the-cool-things-I’ve-done-related-ego, less really does bring greater happiness. Less space to live in; less stuff to fill the space; less on the to do list; less expectations on our children; and so on.
My bad
Today I have a to-do list as long as my arm and some items on it are being pushed from day to day as there really is just too much on it. I’m failing my own expectations. But that’s ok. I just need to adjust my expectations. Maybe my body isn’t up to teaching, massaging, housekeeping, mothering and writing killer material all in one day. I have to reorganize my priorities. After all, I’m only a guru [not]!
I’m sharing a webinar with a friend, Christa Bitner in a couple of weeks time on this very subject. So if you are feeling the vibe of this, stay tuned for more details.
