The Shift From Religious to Spiritual is Happening Too Slowly
Over the weekend I was involved in several diverse and lengthy discussions about the needed shift from religious to spiritual (Shifting trom Religious to Spiritual). During these discussions there were two themes that had general agreement. The first was that this shift is imperative because the lack of this shift is producing severe threats that are imminent to humanity and even the environment of life on our planet. The second was that making the necessary shift is very difficult to do and is happening much too slowly to address the dire problems that we face. Everybody in these discussions agreed on these main issues. I am happy to establish why these points are true and to deal with disagreement to them in the comments section. This post will address the question of how to effect this change more quickly.
Change comes from within. When change is attempted only externally it does not work. This is why dealing with global climate change is so difficult to deal with. It requires us to each change how we relate to ourselves and the way we each live our lives. It requires us each to change to become more ethical in our own lives when it is easier not to do the right thing. This requires internal change. When this problem is approached with from an external solution point of view it is not even clear what to do to solve the problem. There are some general ideas, maybe even some general agreement on a good day, but no clear path out of the mess. This paradigm can be applied to any of the imminent problems facing humanity. This is because the solutions that are proposed for these problems attempt to impose change from outside on the problem, rather than approaching the issue as needing deeper spiritual responsibility and development from within. These exterior solutions have the effect of medicating the symptoms of the problems but never getting to or dealing with the root of the problem.
Blogs about global climate change: Top 10 worst effects of global warming, Vancouver Unitarians for Climate Change, Eating and Climate Change, Pachauri claims Indian scientific position arrogant, A World War II-Scale Effort
The war in Afghanistan is a prime example of how solutions that are imposed from outside do not fix the problems within. There are huge problems with the way that the folks within Afghanistan have in dealing with each other involving everything from violence to corruption. Until those issues are dealt with by them, no solution that is applied from an exterior source will work. Where they are not taking responsibility for their own problems no outside aid or force will work. David Rohde is very articulate on this topic also (Spiritual Conflict Resolution).
Blogs about David Rohde: A war reporter’s story, One Journalist’s Capture and Escape from the Taliban, An Element of Danger, A Taliban haven inside Pakistan?, Are we there yet?
How to develop the spiritual growth needed in these cases is the realm of expertise of Spiritual Teachers. Spiritual Teachers are those rare individuals among us that have learned to address their own internal corruption and manipulative behaviors and understand that serving this spiritual growth in others is the path of their lives. In this day and age Spiritual Teachers tend to be objects of suspicion and mistrust. This is because no distinction is made between them and religious leaders and they are therefore considered to be as corrupt as their religious counterparts. The big distinction betwen the two is that the job of a Spiritual Teacher is to take the student to the point of spiritual independence while the religious leader is continually tries to increase their own authority and that of their religion. While Spiritual Teachers can be affiliated with a religion, they recognize that religion is just a vehicle to present spirituality. The Spiritual Teacher’s responsibility is to the development of spiritual understanding and not to the religious participation of the students.
Another misconception is that Spiritual Teachers are considered to have lived long ago and are not thought to be around today. Religions revere Spiritual Teachers like Moses, Buddha, Yeshua (Jesus), the Prophet Mohammad, and the Sikh Gurus religiously and mostly ignore the presence of Spiritual Teachers in our own time. To confuse things even worse, posers promote themselves as Spiritual Teachers which makes it seems as if true Spiritual Teachers are the same as these posers. They are not.
What makes Spiritual Teachers so vital for us at this time is that they alone have the understanding of the spiritual changes that we each need to go through individually, and teaching others who are then capable of teaching others is the only feasible way to multiply the numbers needed to have sufficient impact on our most serious problems.
In order to help validate that real Spiritual Teachers are with us today there is a page on this blog entitled “How I Met My Teacher” that contains real life experiences of people meeting Spiritual Teachers. This page is for everyone to post in the comment box their own story of how they recognized their Teacher as a Spiritual Master. It is also OK to challenge the validity of these experiences and the Spiritual Teachers associated with them in the spirit of investigating and actually defining what a Spiritual Teacher really is and is not.
Spiritual Teachers that I have personally identified in this lifetime are:
blogs: Kundalini Connection, Kundalininow’s Blog, Who is Yogi Bhajan?, Recipe by Yogi Bhajan, Be the Lighthouse
blogs: Sat Nam Rasayan Canada, Guru Dev is in Town!, Healing and Shuniya,
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama
blogs: Tibetreport’s Blog, The most important thing we can do, Chinese angry on India, Pay it Forward, The Buddhist Tradition, Khamerlogue
blogs: On Technology as the Solution, Meditations on Anger, my time?, Crossing A Channel, A Gift of Dharma for 11.9.09
blogs: The Gods Drink Whiskey, Making Peace, The rising of the light, Democratic Peace
blogs: JasonGarcia’s Blog, I smoke, Christianity vs. Islam, I Totally Blame Eckhart Tolle
Sacred Space 
Nicely Written
sherjeelawan
November 12, 2009
I have linked your site to mine. Thank you for your articles on spirituality. Namaste
geo
November 16, 2009
Ok I haven’t linked your site to mine, I cannot at this time figure it out. But I will.
geo
November 16, 2009
After reading your comments, I thought I should provide links to sites of Spiritual Teachers that I am familiar with. When I went to find how to do it I came across this
http://en.support.wordpress.com/blogroll/
and thought it might be helpful.
I am also interested in the possibility of linking to other people’s blogs. I tried checking out the geo blog but was denied access 😦
jgtguroo
November 18, 2009
It could also be said that the shift from religion to spirituality is happening right on time. A spiritual teacher to me is one that aligns you with your spirit, and for me personally it was my dog, my cousin peter and almost everyone I meet or happen to pass on the street. I find spiritual insight in every thing. It truly is an amazing journey.
Namaste
geo
November 16, 2009
It is true that everyone and everything can and does communicate to our spirituality because of our inter-connectivity with all things, but a Spiritual Teacher is more unique.
A Spiritual Teacher is someone very rare and special in our lives. They must have learned to truly meditate and be able to guide a student to experience the Soul so the student can learn to meditate independently. In order to do this they must be able to recognize how the student is resisting that awareness, and what is needed to correct it. This is the specific role of the Spiritual Teacher. It is actually a very tough job of confronting the self-serving attitudes the student is most in denial about, or afraid to face, and elevating them beyond any limitation. The Spiritual Teacher does this by not only interacting on a personal level but also having the ability to convey the necessary spiritual realizations non-verbally in what is called the Sacred Space. It is a very well defined skill that requires absolute purity from the Spiritual Teacher.
jgtguroo
November 16, 2009
thanks for that information, I never really thought of it like that, I will think about it some more. peace to you
geo
November 18, 2009