The teaching talk in the spiritual teacher-student relationship

Perhaps you have experienced it yourself or heard about it – spiritual teachers meet with their students, answer and ask questions, discuss views, opinions, beliefs, sometimes quite directly and roughly, question the ideas of the students, convey important content for certain actual issues.
The spiritual masters also deal directly with individual students and their life situation, habits, learning processes for a longer period of time if needed during such a talk. Which is not necessarily always pleasant for the student. And even light work, spiritual healing, are integrated into these events to make it easier to harmonize mental, emotional, karmic and energetic blockages and confusion of the students, to transform these obstacles into clarity.

Why exactly do teachers and students need to talk in addition to meditation and practice of personal energy work, individual meditation and reflection, re-evaluation on their own?

Basically it is quite simple: The eyes cannot see themselves – without a mirror!
The suitable mirror for the soul life of the student is the Spiritual Teacher, who tries to expand the consciousness of the student into areas that they does not know, overlooks, or even fears to perceive and explore.

The Spiritual Teacher, the Guru (Sanskrit: Expeller of spiritual ignorance, spiritual darkness. Literally: heavy, weighty, significant), draws the student’s attention to contradictions and errors, blockages and “white spots” in thinking and acting, speaking and deciding.

He gives suggestions for thinking, sensing and discussing views and how to deal with spiritual methods with the student.

Is the teacher therefore “always in the right”, knows a lot – or maybe even “everything”?

No, that’s not the point at all.

It is not important in the spiritual teacher-student relationship who is “right”, who knows how much!

The immeasurable treasure of the teacher-student relationship is the stimulation to serious thinking, to question dearly held “right” points of view, values, fears and prejudices. I call these blockades of thinking and feeling “holy cows”. They separate the student from the here and now, from reality.

With the Spiritual Teacher, the student can in many respects catch up on his puberty and develop a truly independent spiritual life, attuned to himself and his soul, without losing himself in rebellion or submission. In the teacher-disciple conversation the disciple evolves. Learn more about himself than he can on his own, learn to accept more from his heart than he he is able on his own.

As the Spiritual Teacher loves the disciple more than the disciple loves himself, the disciple can learn to perceive and love himself more and more. And thus awaken in his divinity.

For the Spiritual Teacher there are basically simple rules:

Invite your students to think thoroughly about themselves and the world, to concretely try out their own potentials and help them to understand the world from a spiritual point of view instead of following the prejudices of the ego. Teach them to love what is.

Invite them to openness – because what is concealed cannot be viewed, grasped, developed, clarified, loved and thus healed.

Do not keep silence out of politeness or “say something nice” to be pleasant. Because then important wounds are not looked at, understood and healed with heart-light.
There is no spiritual journey without a serious teacher-student relationship – for how can “the eye see itself without a mirror”?

This relationship includes mutual respect and openness, and the willingness of the student to put to the test dearly beloved views secured with fear and anger – the „Holy Cows“.

And to learn to BE much more than originally thought.
And thus to become a Spiritual Teacher yourself…

Heartfelt greetings, Walter