Your own direct inner experience is your truth, not what some outer ‘guru’ tells you the truth is according to his or her interpretation.
A recent workshop with a senior international Yoga teacher triggered me tremendously. Having practiced Yoga for over twenty years, I’ve always looked for a powerful guide to take me to the next level of integration. I’ve travelled to India many times in search of an authentic authority to answer my deeper questions. But in all honesty there is no such thing as an outer being that can give you inner clarity. Yet we give our power away so easily by blindly subscribing to the teachings of a single person or tradition.
Over the years I’ve noticed the response of many practitioners whom attend these intensive seminars of various Yoga styles and I see how we sheepishly follow whatever a senior teacher says, often dropping our own common sense in favour of staying aligned with a specific tradition or trend. Surely there is nothing more valid than your own immediate feeling of what is being taught? Rather than just being impressed by some new ‘counter’ concept, introduced from a different angle, at the expense of your well-being, just to make a point.
It brings me to the question of what good teaching really is? Do we simply impress students with entertaining stories and fancy postures or do we honestly guide them to become independent, to feel for themselves the deeper layers of intelligence that reveal their own inner essence, their own truth, not as a mental construct, but as a real, visceral experience?
Ultimately the practice itself is our only real teacher.