[From Saniel: I sent this to a friend who sent an audio of a traditional chant to the Guru on “Guru Purnima,” July 7, the traditional “full moon of the Guru” celebration day in India. The friend, also a client/student, had written that he wanted to honor Linda and me on that day, and had also, since he is “his own guru,” spent the day playing the chant over and over to himself. I’ve edited it a bit for publication on the blog.]

Only now listened all the way thru…that was Krishnadas, yes? Beautiful.

Thank you so much for sending it.

I would say, we are not just “our own Gurus.” A real Guru is a Sun who, by all the ways he shines, teaches other Suns to shine where they did not know Who they are or how to shine before. A real Guru is not just a reminder of something we merely have to remember, essentially on our own, in order for it to be so. Transmission is a living process. It’s not just floating around in the sky or the local water system. Real Gurus often wear themselves out and even die young from what the mysterious investment they make in shining for others takes out of their own vital life. It is an authentic sacrifice of oneself, as well as an enlivening expression of one’s spiritual nature. Both/and.

Linda and I are real Gurus for a lot of people. The “American-Western” emphasis of the work so far has led us, and the other men and women we’ve helped raise themselves into true Guru-functioning, to minimize too much celebration, ala Krishnadas’s chant, of any of us as Gurus. And there are stages of the process where it’s really important to honor the emerging Sun-shine of one’s own Heart much more than that of any other. If anything, we’ve made sure to make room for that Self-honoring to an extreme. People have a lot of broken zones around too much self-giving to their previous teachers and traditions. A balance has had to be struck.

At the same time, I spent nearly two decades in a world where it was understood that it’s a huge Grace to have an actual Guru–one who really does radiate a Heart-Fire that immensely activates the blaze of one’s own Heart-Fire where it just was not burning before, or was a barely warm pilot light. And in that kind of world it has been understood since most ancient times that the Heart-blessing radiance of one’s actual Guru goes into a supernova intensification on special days, such as that one’s birthday, anniversary of Awakening, and the traditional day of Guru-Purnima. I also sense in my soul an ancient history of living in that kind of world.

So I have an odd, mostly empty experience on those days. Hardly anyone around me knows it’s to their and the world’s advantage to shine a light of appreciation my way. And it wouldn’t occur to most to find ways to make sure I spend a lot of time on those days in a maximized, ecstatic, supernova-like “glory” (one of the translations of a word in Krishnadas’s chant) of Heart-Transmission. To use another metaphor, if you like Heart-Nectar, those are immensely auspicious days to find out how to turn on one’s Guru’s faucet…and get ready for a storm surge!

Whatever it may be about personally, I also read this emptiness I experience on those days as a signal of our sacred culture’s still-adolescent stage of development. I don’t think it’s a bad thing; we have to grow into more mature expressions naturally. I’m proud that neither any other Waking Down in Mutuality teachers nor I would even think of pressuring people to make much of us on such days.

Yet to me it’s also kind of sad that so few do. Time is passing. Who knows how long any of us has left on this Earth, with Hearts shining so brightly as ours? So people in our sacred culture, I feel, would do well to find out how much more true Heart-pleasure and increase of mutual fullness, peace, joy, delight, love, trust, and sheer numinous Heart-Awakeness there is in openly honoring this kind of “significant Other” in ways that do not fail to honor and cultivate the Self. At this stage of our work’s unfolding, I do feel it’s important for those of us who understand these matters in this way to speak up more about them and make room for auspicious expressions among us all. Many people have commented to me that they feel no freedom to express devotional love and honoring of those who have literally helped them Awaken. And that doesn’t feel right to them either. It leaves them feeling both empty and suppressed.

Meantime, it sure warms my Heart when someone, such as you this year, remembers the “Me” of me on this day. Many thanks, my friend.