The Lonely Path

Your body along with the spirit that inhabits it is like a sitar. If you do not understand the instrument, you cannot create music. You have learned your way around the world, but you are still a mystery to yourself. If it were not so, you could perform miracles.

For the human mind has an infinite resource which you have so far only encountered in vivid glimpses, short as heat lightning, but held in memory forever, for they were the reality of your life’s experience. 

All any teacher can do is show you the path; You have to walk it alone.

Gurudev Shree Chitrabhanu: From Five Great Healers Speak Out

Cited in Meditations for The New Age

It has always been surprising to me that many of the older spiritual traditions would teach or impart their knowledge of the spiritual principles of life, of prayer, meditation, and healing etc., without expecting their students to have a concise familiarity with their own anatomy and physiology; With their own inner workings and their own inner understanding of themselves as a person.

I think that can be, especially in the West, attributed to the disdain and avoidance of sensuality, bodily functions, sex, and anything visceral that would have been taken over by science, since the days of Decartes. Some avoidance and disrepute is bound up in the teachings around sin and salvation. This is quite ironic, because the root meaning of the word salvation is aligned with healing and wholeness; it comes from the Sanskrit work, Kailo.

The most cogent part of this quote is contained in its last lines, about the role and responsibility of the teacher. They are the “way showers” but they are not necessarily the embodiment of the way itself. They “point to the moon” for us. They give us the trusted tools and help us to shape our intentions and will direct us to the path, but they are Not the path! There might not be any truer statement in the spiritual life or in the pursuit of consciousness than this: You Walk The Path Alone. 

There is no substitutionary atonement, no proxy wisdom, and no second hand awareness work. As my most foundational teacher, Oscar Ischazo, put it, “You are responsible for your own evolution!” We rise or fall based solely on our own efforts, sincerity, persistence, insights, understanding, and grit!