Be Your Own Guru
"I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect......You cannot bring the mountain-top to the valley. If you would attain to the mountain-top you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices." ~J.D. Krishnamurti
What does it mean today to "Be Your Own Guru"?
In a time when we have coaches, mentors, self help gurus, spiritual teachers and motivational speakers about everything from achieving material success to assured enlightenment and bliss, it may be going against conventional wisdom, good sense and business trends to try and go your own way. But, you would be doing something that all pioneering individuals have done before you and most importantly you will be doing the right thing.
Think Branson, Gandhi, Gates, Jobs, Mandela, Edison, Fuller, Wright, Rand, Urqhart, Tesla, Wilber, Vivekananda, Aurobindo and more...did they all follow the traditional route to impactful success or did they listen to something higher or deeper within themselves.
This does not mean you have to go it alone. It just means you must stay detached when you listen to advise, look at case studies, study best practices and learn techniques and processes from multiple teachers and you must primarily listen to your own intuition and apply your creativity and logic to the problem. The one that saw the gap or the opportunity or the adventure in the very first place. The one that drew you to your path at the very beginning of your quest. The higher self inside you.
Jiddu Krishnamurti was an amazing man. In the 1920's, he was anointed the Maitreya or the chosen Saviour of Mankind by Annie Besant and CW Leadbeater of The Theosophical Society. The "One" well before Neo came along. Then, in one of those classic moments of history, he stood up at a major gathering of the Society in Holland and declared "I am not the Maitreya". He told everyone to be their own teacher and follow their own path. And then he quit. He gave up the kingdom and the glory. He stayed true to his word till the end building schools and centers for independent thinking and inquiry into the self all over the World. Today he is revered as one the greatest spiritual wisdom masters of the 20th century and yet he had no disciples and refused to be a Guru till the end.
He described wisdom as being able to stand atop a mountain seeing all the patterns below before they happen rather than sitting in the valley looking at everything close up with no detached sense of their true purpose or meaning or what the future might hold.
Following a Guru or Coach or Teaching blindly is similar in that you do not see all the patterns in front of you because you are not detached enough from the teachings or rules to see all paths to the truth. This does not mean you need to go shopping at the supermarket of wisdom and mix and match the perfect solution for you from a menu. What it does mean is that you must define your own vision, mission, goals and purpose or end game so that the teachings you explore are useful to you on that journey, all the way to the top of your own mountain. Then, from that place you will see things as they really are. Pure wisdom!
Be the light to yourself (words from JD Krishnamurti):
