The word ‘Guru’ is derived from two Sanskrit words
‘Gu’ – meaning ‘darkness or ignorance’
‘Ru’ – meaning ‘removal’
Hence, GURU is believed to be the removal of darkness from our lives.
When will I meet my Guru?
This is probably one of the most frequently asked questions in every seeker’s life, and the very simple answer is “that the Guru is always there, the Guru is everywhere, but you need to be ready to learn”
If you really want to learn, then you will find that everything in this world of ours is a teacher in some way to someone who has the desire to learn.
Learning can be found in something as simple as a rock or a flower, a smile or a tear, an ant or a lion.
The real question is “Are we available to the Guru, to learn?
Are we ready to lose the borrowed knowledge, the old patters, the old beliefs, the ego and our desires?
Traditions of the world say it is the Guru who finds the disciple in this divine game we call life.
“When the student is willing, the master appears”
Very often it is our ego that stops the Guru from coming closer to us.
With nothing else to do, the Guru silently waits for the flower inside our heart to blossom. Then one day, when the fragrance of that flower starts filling the air, the Guru then appears from nowhere, and prepares us to be offered to the divine.
This is the whole mystery, and this can happen any moment.
Physically, the student could be remarkably close to the Guru in proximity, but many times the student’s heart does not communicate with the Guru.
It is only the heart which understands the language of love and the Guru speaks this language of love and compassion.
The Guru is more eager to meet the student, than the student is, to meet Guru!
The Guru is no more a doer, all effort and doing has dropped a long time ago. This is because the moment the mind is dropped, all doing is stopped.
No matter how much the Guru desires to help us, the Guru waits for the willingness of the student to cooperate, even though the Guru knows the student is missing ecstasy and bliss.
Many of the seekers lose their hope, many blame the Guru, many begin doubting, but the Guru is eternally hopeful and ever loving.
“The only thing that is greater than seeker’s stupidity, is the master’s compassion”
On Guru Purnima, we honour our Gurus, our spiritual masters and teachers and express our gratitude to them for guiding us and showing us the way.
(Guru Purnima is celebrated on the full moon day of the Hindu month of Ashadha, which coincides with June or July according to the Gregorian calendar)
One way to magnetize a bar of steel is to place it in proximity to another magnet. The reason ordinary steel is not magnetized is not that it doesn’t have that magnetism potentially inside it. Rather, it is because every molecule cancels out the north-south polarity of the others. When you can get all the molecules pointing in one direction, then the bar of steel becomes a magnet.
Human beings also have a divine power locked within them, but every desire, every impulse, every conflicting tendency that we have cancels out the flow of our inner magnetism. Lacking in magnetism, we don’t have the power to succeed in anything, much less the spiritual quest.
You will notice that there are some people who are extremely magnetic. You don’t know how to define their magnetism, and yet you know it’s there.
In the true guru-disciple relationship, the guru helps the disciple to bring out his own spiritual magnetism.
- ‘The New Path’ (words of Swami Kriyananda)
Celebrate your Guru, spiritual master and teachers, by paying your respects and expressing gratitude. Let us take time to celebrate together, by living through and in our hearts to make our world a better and enlightened space.
