LISTENING TO THAT SPIRITUAL TEACHER

What is he saying, really?

Is he using experiential words relevant or potentially relevant to my life, or is he using abstract, philosophical words?

Jidda Krishnamurti and U.G. Krishnamurti emphasize the hopelessness of believing and following teachers who have little or no actual spiritual experience in terms of understanding themselves, and merely parrot Ramana or some other teacher, although Ramana is the teacher most frequently parroted.

You also need to be clear about what you are looking for.

Are trying to find someone who understands and can explain certain spiritual experiences you have had?  This is absolutely the wrong reason to seek out a teacher.

Drop that search immediately because it is not relevant to your present experiencing.  Past experience is gone, a memory that should not be allowed to haunt you.

You see, that experience has not stayed with you.  Where you are now is most important, and what you have to do is carefully explore your present experience, especially your inner experience, and see if there are any invariants, any inner experience that does not change.

Such would be the experience of a vast inner space, emptiness, which is the mainstay of Buddhism.  Do you know emptiness, both inner and outer?

Do you experience the Lifeforce within as a formless entity empowering and acting through you?  Are you aware that all that you know and all that you experience about yourself and the world is experienced through the medium of YOUR consciousness, and all that you really ever know is consciousness?

Are you able to watch big emotions, such as sadness, grief, love, jealousy, anger, etc., without fearing them?  Can you accept and totally coexist with even the strongest emotion?  Is this what you are seeking to do, to expose hidden emotions and reabsorb them into your sense of self?

Have you located the I sense within, or the I Am somewhere in your chest, gut, or head?  Can you focus on it, stay with it, and bring it into your heart?

Do you want to experience the bliss of having a close relationship with the Lifeforce, AKA Shakti?  Do you see how Shakti depends on consciousness to be part of your experience, and without consciousness--your consciousness--there is no experience of Shakti and no bliss?

Are you aware of your own sense of presence, that you exist as a presence in  the world, and this presence permeates and penetrates your body and mind and extends like an energy field into the space around you?

Are you aware of an inner, formless, "entity" that is aware of consciousness, and which can watch the coming and going of your waking state, dream state, and sleep without itself being touched?  Are you aware of all the movements of consciousness and the mind that flows when you first awaken, including the coming and going of consciousness, and the simultaneous presence of the witnessing of these changes within.

It is this kind of direct, experiential knowledge and experience which you should be looking for in a teacher, not someone who speaks abstractly about enlightenment or awakening, Nirvana or Brahman, Jiva or Atman, without carefully explaining these experiences.