This article by Baba Koleoso Karade explores a fundamental issue of all spiritual discipline how to choose a teacher and mentor. Baba Koleoso Karade has written two important informative books Tradition and Transformation A Philosophical Treatise Based on the Ifa Religious System and Reaching Black Males Through Spirituality: A Rites of Passage Imperative. The books can be purchased through Baba's website.

Ire,
Awo Falokun

With the Name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful and in the Presence of our Ancestors, Both Seen and Unseen.

June 17, 2002

Master: Dear One, once you go beyond these doors there will be many who will come to you seeking teachings and wanting to follow you. Also, there will be many with whom you will want to study, yet it is important to know how to chose a teacher. In learning how to chose a teacher, you will learn how to be a teacher.

Student: It seems the world has teachers for every aspect of this spiritual path.

Master: Yes, some who are motivated by spirit and those who are motivated by ego. While all start out sincere, the more fame and fortune comes to them, they loose the spark of divine that was guiding them in the beginning.

Student: Master, I never want to lose the spark of Divine.

Master: That spark is so easy to lose because you get caught in the world and the world has a spark of its own. It has an attraction that is constantly calling you. That call is very pronounced in the spiritual realm.

Student: Why in the spiritual realm?

Master: The vibrations on the planet are changing, all is being pulled or called to a higher level of consciousness. Many set up shop along this spiritual path to higher consciousness, selling everything from instant illumination to one-day life changing experiences.

Student: Are any of these things valid?

Master: Most are, yet as you know it has taken you years of self-study, dedication, sacrifice and contemplation to get to where you are, do you think there is an easier way?

Student: I wish there was.

Master: Ha Ha, we all wished that, for that is the way of the world, instant gratification. We all want it now, yet will not and do not want to accept the responsibility for it when it comes.

Student: How can there be responsibility in a one-day life changing experience or instant illumination?

Master: You know there is no instant illumination short of a major life changing experience, which cannot be purchased. Can you purchase the pain and illumination from the Sacred Sun Dance? Can you purchase the illumination from a Near Death Experience? Can you buy the illumination from years of meditation and prayer? We think not. We say to you Dear One, think of that which changed your life. Think on it and you will see it was nothing that you could buy it was an inner process pushing forward to your waking consciousness. It was a dormant seed-taking root growing beneath various levels of your awareness until one day you became aware of this beautiful plant and sought to give it nourishment. Thus you began to search for teachings and teachers to feed and water this plant that had grown up in your consciousness. That it why you must go to the garden of Buddha, there you will find one of his followers Ken McLeod who will read to you form his book, "Wake Up to Your Life" on how to chose a teacher.

Student: Thank you Master for you have always encouraged me to go out and learn from others.

Master: While we all see with the assistance of the light from ONE SUN we see different things. You need to go and see what others see beneath the light from the One SUN.

With that the student went to the garden of Buddha. There he met Ken McLeod, who was sitting reading from his book " Wake Up to Your Life."

Ken: Welcome, for your master informed me that you needed to be taught the teacher student relationship. I will speak to you from my book. As you know, this work is experiential, not intellectual, and you can no more rely on a conception of the mystery of being able to ease the pain of separation than you can rely on an idea of water to quench your thirst.

Student: I find so many of us are caught in the game of trying to do this work solely from an intellectual place. We know the books, we know the language and we can impress yet we lack the experience.

Ken: To travel this path, you must rely on faith, not belief. Faith is the willingness to open to the mystery of experience. It contrast with belief, which is the attempt to interpret experience to conform with habituated patterns that are already in place, including those inherited from your culture and upbringing.

Student: So this is why many do not get to the greater experiences because they are holding on to the patterns that have been established for them. They will not go beyond the established patterns of their culture. So if one is raised a Christian or Muslim, they will no go beyond those patterns.

Ken: How do you know whom to trust as a teacher? This is a crucial question. To answer it you must rely on your own intelligence and perception. If you find someone you think can guide you, ask questions. What training does this person have? How did she or he come to teach? What, exactly, does he or she teach? If you smell a fish or your stomach turns, the person is probably not right for you, regardless of his or her reputation, credentials, number of followers, or special abilities.

Student: I know of a yogi who would let you know if he was to work with you or not.

Ken: The key question is whether this person opens up new possibilities for you. The teacher expands possibilities- by raising questions, offering advice, assisting you, or challenging you in ways that don't exactly match the world as you know it. In other words, the teacher brings the mystery of being into your life in a way that you do not ignore.

Student: So the job of the teacher is to help you grow beyond your limitations.

Ken: The teacher-student relationship is based on a shared aim- your awakening to the mystery of being. It is not based on mutual profit or on emotional connection. The responsibilities of the teacher are three:

• To show you the possibility of presence
• To train you in the techniques and methods you will need
• To direct your attention to the internal patterns that prevent you form being present in your life.

Everything else is extra and is usually based on the projections of the student, the teacher, or both.

You as a student, have two responsibilities:

• To practice what is taught as it is given
• To apply the practice in your life

For the teacher-student relationship to work, the teacher must be concerned only with the student's growth and awakening, and the student must know this to be true.

Student: This is so good, while these principles come from a Buddhist perspective they are universal in their application.

Ken: If you do not trust that the teacher, in the role of teacher, is helping you to wake up, you will inevitably interpret the teacher's actions through the lens of your reactive patterns. For example, if you see the teacher as being cruel, then even if the teacher is not cruel, the student-teacher relationship cannot function fruitfully because you will interpret the demands or actions of your teacher as cruelty, not as pointing you to presence or to your own patterned functioning.

Student: It is important for the student to surrender.

Ken: You are entrusting a lot to a teacher, so ask questions and observe until you are satisfied that this person has experience, the training, and the motivation to teach you. Experience means that he or she has sufficient depth of understanding to open new possibilities for you. Training means that he or she can teach and guide you in the methods that dismantle the sense of separation. Motivation means that the teacher is sincerely dedicated to your spiritual growth and that no other agenda takes precedence in your relationship.

Student: It is necessary for the student to see things as they are and not as they would like for them to be. So many times we go to a teachers thinking they will be our saviors, we put all our hopes and baggage in the teachers hands. If the teacher does not perform the expected miracles then we lose faith and blame the teacher. When in reality we must be willing to do the required work. To many of us look for the easy way out, someone to blame and we want something for nothing.

Ken: Frequently, problems begin on either the student's or teacher's side with a poorly developed ability to set or maintain appropriate boundaries. In this culture, lacking the checks and balances on the teacher-student relationship developed in other cultures, idealization and projection become highly problematic. Teachers are relatively isolated in this culture and receive little support or appreciation from society. They often compensate for their isolation by overburdening the one community they have-students-with their needs for appreciation, recognition, or support.

Students in this culture have a tendency to give themselves away to their teacher, often as a result of family conditioning or similarly based needs for affection, appreciation, or security. The student may idealize the teacher and project onto the teacher the student's own conception of perfection. The student may then take the position that association with perfection is sufficient and make little further effort in his or her own practice. Or, if the association seems insufficient, the student finds fault with the teacher and is unable to accept instruction.

There is one thing that you as the student must be clear on, A CRUCIAL TASK FOR YOU AS A STUDENT IS TO BE CLEAR ABOUT YOUR OWN INTENTION. IF YOU DON'T CLEARLY UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR IN A TEACHER OR IN INTERNAL WORK, YOU WILL INEVITABLY ACCEPT SOMEONE ELSE'S AGENDA AS YOUR OWN.

With that Ken closed the book and allowed the student time to reflect on the lesson just given. For it was a most important lesson, because you cannot walk this path without a teacher and understanding the teacher-student relationship is most important.

The student withdrew to the garden fountain to meditate on the lesson. As he went into mediation he could do nothing more than give thanks for his Master for teaching him to be like a bee and travel from head to head of the different flowers seeking the pollen to make a honey in his life. He has traveled to many teachers learning. With this he could see that his master was truly his teacher. That he had with his Master the kind of teacher student relationship that Ken taught of.