Spiritual Teachers Quotes

You are not given the light by anyone—not even by a spiritual teacher. You are that light.

For spiritual teachers, it is important not to identify with the image people inevitably have of them.

He suddenly understood the message of so many spiritual teachers that the only revolution that can work is the inner transformation of every human being.

The kundalini comes in two primary forms when it comes forward from a spiritual teacher.

If you can cultivate the right attitude, your enemies are your best spiritual teachers because their presence provides you with the opportunity to enhance and develop tolerance, patience and understanding.

How can one know who his spiritual teacher is?...His heart looks at the spiritual Masters and makes the choice. When the heart sees a spiritual Master, if it is overwhelmed with joy, then there is every probability that that spiritual Master is the right one for the seeker.

There is no other teacher but your own soul.

I've often called mothers the greatest spiritual teachers in the world.

I call myself a meditation teacher rather than a spiritual teacher.

Remember you have lots of help. God is meditating in you and through you. The beneficent forces of existence are glad to help you. You can focus on any spiritual teacher. We are glad to help you.

At a certain point I left my spiritual teacher because I began to see the limitations of my teacher, who was a very powerful occultist, but who I thought was, to some extent, limiting others in their spiritual growth.

We see that love manifested normally in the soldier, in the parent, in the lover, and in the spiritual teacher.

"Spiritual teacher" of course is not an identity. "Spiritual teacher" is a function. Somebody comes, the teaching happens. Somebody leaves, there's no spiritual teacher left.

When I'm with people, I'm a spiritual teacher. That's the function, but it's not my identity. The moment I'm alone, my deepest joy is to benobody, to relinquish the function of a teacher. It's a temporary function.

Teaching a practice can also be a hindrance if it becomes one's identity. To be a spiritual teacher is a temporary function. I'm a spiritual teacher when somebody comes to me and some teaching happens, but the moment they leave I'm no longer a spiritual teacher. If I carry the identity of spiritual teacher, it will cause suffering.

Like Gandhi, like the Buddha, like all great spiritual teachers, Easwaran had no use for beliefs unless they generated actions. Doing, not saying, is what counts.

The inner cry is a very good way to meditate. As you're sitting there in meditation, just cry inwardly to God, to that source, to your spiritual teacher or to a particular god or goddess.

In fact, the machine doesn't have the consciousness we have, the free will that we have, and to surrender one's free will, not in every matter but in spiritual matters, to a spiritual teacher is in a sense a lower level of surrendering one's will to God.

The one infallible sign that a spiritual teacher is a fraud is that he charges money for his instruction.

You can focus on me or on any spiritual teacher. Spiritual teachers who have left the body, who are no longer on earth can help you too. When I leave the body someday, I can help people just as effectively if they focus upon me.

All religious leaders and spiritual teachers emphasize finding a place within us that is true. People who obsessively follow these leaders instead of their own purpose attach to the spiritual leader and become fanatical and controlling. That's why Jesus tried to tell his followers not to get attached to outward form.

Thank God I have the things that my mother and father taught me, the things that I've learned from pastors and spiritual teachers and the books that I read.

One of the most extraordinary things about being a spiritual teacher is the rare privilege of being able to look deeply into the very souls of many human beings at the same time.

I have seen cases where people seemed to become totally free of ego, and at some point in their lives the ego came back. It has happened, for example, to some spiritual teachers. At some point in their lives, they began to identify again with form.

You can focus on Jesus or Buddha or Krishna, Ramakrishna, Lao Tsu, Yukteswar, Yogananda, Vivekananda, any of the great spiritual teachers who have lived, or on a living teacher, and draw light from them.

Many spiritual teachers have done this. They have disbanded their whole community because everyone got angry. The karma, at a certain point, has to go back to the person; it's intensified and hurts them spiritually.

We should reflect on the idea that since the beginning of time sentient beings have been mentally unstable because they have been slaves of delusion, they lack the eye of wisdom to see the path leading to nirvana and enlightenment, and they lack the necessary guidance of a spiritual teacher. Moment by moment they are indulging in negative actions, which will eventually bring about their downfall.

If I'm going to continue to be any kind of spiritual teacher, I've got to go deeper myself. And so for me, [I am] preserving long periods of solitude, silence, prayer, journaling, study, writing. I don't turn on music or the TV unless I really need to.

My heart skipped a beat and then flat-out tripped over itself and fell on its face. Then my heart stood up, brushed itself off, took a deep breath and announced: "I want a spiritual teacher.

If you read the stories of the great spiritual teachers of the past, we find that they have attained spiritual realization through a great deal of meditation, solitude and practice. They did not take any shortcuts.

A true spiritual teacher does not have anything to teach in the conventional sense of the word, does not have anything to give or add to you, such as new information, beliefs, or rules of conduct. The only function of such a teacher is to help you remove that which separates you from the truth of who you already are and what you already know in the depth of your being

Some of the most exalted states of consciousness I experienced were in bed with someone, alone, or with my spiritual teacher. There was never a difference for me.

If a spiritual teacher says something that doesn't make sense to you, you should always listen to yourself and not the teacher. A little common sense would end all cults.

I believe the choice to become a mother is the choice to become one of the greatest spiritual teachers there is.

... your spiritual teachers caution you against enquiry--tell you not to read certain books; not to listen to certain people; to beware of profane learning; to submit your reason, and to receive their doctrines for truths. Such advice renders them suspicious counsellors.

When it comes to spiritual teachers, there are those safe, gentle, consoling, soothing, caring; and there are the outlaws, the living terrors, the Rude Boys and Nasty Girls of God realization, the men and women who are in your face, disturbing you terrifying you, until you radically awaken to who and what you really are.

Many spiritual teachers - in Buddhism, in Islam - have talked about first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom, to enlightenment.

That is the challenge of a spiritual teacher: not to take on board the projections of specialness people have. This is especially dangerous for spiritual teachers who only have contact with disciples or followers, who may live in an ashram.

Once the awakening happens, with it comes the realization that suffering is unnecessary now. You have reached the end of suffering because you have transcended the world. It is the place that is free of suffering. This seems to be everybody's path. Perhaps it is not everybody's path in this lifetime, but it seems to be a universal path. Even without a spiritual teaching or a spiritual teacher, I believe that everybody would get there eventually. But that could take time.

The Zen Master was constantly attempting to break up concepts that people had about what it was like to be a spiritual teacher. We have a traditional image. Each Zen master was a complete character.

A true spiritual teacher knows more than he or she necessarily verbalizes, using temperance and love to be guided to say what is appropriate.

I was told to challenge every spiritual teacher, every world leader to utter the one sentence that no religion, no political party, and no nation on the face of the earth will dare utter: 'Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way.

When one talks about being like a dead corpse in the hands of a spiritual teacher it means being able to surrender one's will, specially one's nafs al ammarah, that is a part of our soul which is again a Quranic term, which commands us to evil - we must surrender that. That's what it means. It doesn't make you become part of a cog of a machine.

When I was in my twenties and just so sexually prolific, the first time I went to Machu Picchu, this guy, a spiritual teacher, says to me, "When you make love, you must be making love." I thought that was the greatest advice I had ever heard.

In future years a number of you will become spiritual teachers. After many years of study and doing a good job, go out into the world and teach people.You'll reach points of advancement where you'll be able to be of great help to many, many people.

Phony gurus make themselves objects of adoration and worship. Real spiritual teachers aren't interested in adoration and worship. They like respect only because they realize respect will help the student.

History does seem to repeat itself hence it's mindboggling to still hear the 'avoid all negative people' speeches from, of all people, supposedly important spiritual teachers. Ironically, their congregations would probably be the ones hiding their faces from the accuracies of truth speakers like Christ. Now, Christ was the complete opposite of negative, however the danger is that truth is often misunderstood as negativity by those who are constantly taught to only seek flattery.

Swami Ashokananda was a brilliant and accomplished spiritual teacher in the West.

An advanced way to meditate, of course, is to focus on your teacher. If you have a spiritual teacher and you focus on them during mediation, then you access the light that flows through them.

The abuse of power manifests with phony spiritual teachers and phony gurus who tell you how to run your life and what to wear and what to eat, all that sort of stuff. They abuse. People don't realize that, listen to them and ruin their lives.