🌕 Guru Purnima — The Sacred Art Of Remaining Teachable
Today, many people around the world celebrate Guru Purnima. A day dedicated to honouring the Guru — the teacher, the guide, the one who helps us remember what we have forgotten.
For many people, the word Guru may bring images of spiritual masters, teachers, or people who have walked a path before us. And there is something deeply beautiful about this.
Throughout human history, we have learned through relationship. Through those who carried a flame before us. Through those who helped us see something we could not yet see alone. But perhaps, before asking: “Who is my Guru?” there is another question waiting:
“Am I truly
open enough
to be taught?”
🌱 The Love Of Learning
Maybe every journey begins with this simple movement: The willingness to listen. To look at life and whisper:
A student is not someone who is incomplete. A student is someone who is alive. Curious. Available. Open to being surprised.
Because the moment we believe we have learned almost everything that is important to learn... something within us quietly closes.
Not because knowledge is wrong. Not because understanding is wrong.
But because the mystery of life will always be greater than the answers we have gathered.
🌊 The Love Of Teaching
Somewhere on the way something beautiful happens: What we receive begins to move through us.
- A musician shares a song.
- A writer shares words.
- A gardener shares seeds.
- A healer shares what once helped them heal.
- A teacher shares something that opened their own heart.
There is something sacred about this movement.
A river does not keep its water.
A flower does not hide its fragrance.
A candle does not lose its flame by lighting another candle.
Life gives.
Life receives.
Life flows.
Perhaps the sacred dance of being human is not choosing between being a student and being a teacher.
Perhaps it is learning to love both.
The joy of discovering. And the joy of sharing.
The joy of receiving. And the joy of giving.
🪞 When A Role Becomes An Identity
Every beautiful thing carries a quiet invitation. Because these roles are powerful.
- The teacher.
- The healer.
- The guide.
- The one who helps others.
All of these can become beautiful expressions of love. But they can also become places where we unconsciously stop being open.
The ego does not always appear as: “I am better than you.”
Sometimes it appears as:
- “I already know.”
- “I am the one who teaches.”
But it can also whisper:
“I have found the one who knows.
I have found the right teacher.
Now I only need to follow, and soon I will understand.”
And perhaps this is one of the most subtle traps on the spiritual path.
Because even devotion can become a place where we stop listening. No single person, religion or tradition can ever replace the living connection we are invited to discover with life itself.
Life is always speaking.
We only forget how many voices it has.
Perhaps every role eventually asks the same question:
Can you love what you do
without turning it into who you are?
🎭 Two Faces Of The Same Trap
Maybe this is why the shadow of the teacher role is so subtle. Because it has two completely opposite faces.
One says: “I am the one who knows.”
The other says: “I could never be the one who teaches.”
One becomes too big.
The other becomes too small.
And perhaps both forget the same thing:
The source of wisdom is never owned by the role.
The Teacher Who Forgot To Learn
This touches something very personal for me...
When I was in primary school, I had a strange talent: I asked questions. Questions that sometimes my teacher did not have answers to.
Even as a small child, I already felt something:
A question was not a rejection of knowledge.
It was an invitation into a deeper conversation.
I believed we could all learn from each other.
But my teacher experienced my questions differently.
The message I received was:
“I am the teacher. You are the student. My role gives me the authority, and your role is to accept.”
And perhaps this was one of my first encounters with the shadow of a role. Not the role itself. The role of a teacher is beautiful. But the moment when the role becomes more important than the relationship.
Before Being A Guide, Be A Human
Many years later, I encountered another expression of the same pattern: A friend joined a holiday with us. A friend. That was the relationship I had invited. But this friend also carried another identity very strongly: the identity of the teacher, the guide, the facilitator.
And there is something beautiful about the ability to hold space for others. But perhaps even the most beautiful gifts need listening.
Because sometimes we become so familiar with offering a certain gift that we forget to notice whether it has actually been requested.
- A process was offered.
- A space was created.
- A role was stepped into.
But somewhere along the way, the relationship became quieter... And perhaps this is the question every guide, teacher, and helper has to ask:
Am I meeting the person in front of me?
Or am I meeting my idea of what I am here to do?
Because sometimes the deepest form of holding space is not creating a space for others to enter. Sometimes it is listening deeply enough to discover which space is already there.
A friend does not always need a guide. Sometimes a friend simply needs another human being beside them.
🌕 Everybody Is The Guru
There are some sentences that do not simply give us an idea.
They rearrange something inside us.
For me, these words from Ram Dass are one of those invitations:
WHEN YOU KNOW HOW TO LISTEN
EVERYBODY IS THE GURU
SPEAKING TO YOU
IT'S RIGHT HERE.... ALWAYS
Maybe this does not mean that every person has all the answers. Maybe it means something much more mysterious:
- That wisdom is not owned by anyone.
- That truth does not belong to a single person, religion or tradition.
- That the Guru can appear through everyone and everything.
Not only someone we have chosen because they appear wise enough for us to listen. Not only someone with a certain title, tradition, appearance, or place of honour.
💕 Perhaps the Guru is wherever life finds a way to reach us. 💞
Because what truly reaches us... teaches us.
- A person.
- A sentence.
- Nature.
- An unexpected moment.
- An experience we would never have chosen.
- Something that gently — or sometimes painfully — invites us to see more clearly.
The Guru is not always the one we placed above ourselves. Sometimes the Guru is the moment when life itself touches us.
So the question is not: “Where is the Guru?”
The question is: “Am I listening?”
🪷 Do Not Follow The Footsteps — Follow The Search
One of my favorite sayings, often attributed to Matsuo Bashō, is:
“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.”
Perhaps this is the gift of every true teacher:
- They do not ask us to become copies.
- They do not ask us to build an identity around them.
- They invite us into the same search.
Jesus did not come to be admired.
He pointed toward the Kingdom already within and among ourselves.
Krishna did not offer Arjuna an identity to imitate.
He invited him to remember the deepest truth of his own being.
Buddha did not ask people to cling to his footsteps.
He invited them to walk the path for themselves.
The greatest teachers do not create people who stand beneath them.
They awaken beings who are willing to walk.
To question.
To discover.
To listen.
Different voices.
Different languages.
The same invitation:
Do not stop at me.
Keep walking.
🌱 A Small Guru Experiment
Perhaps, for just one moment, try this:
When you step into the world, imagine that the first being you truly meet — whether a stranger, a friend, an animal, a tree, or any living expression of existence — is the Guru meeting you in a form you did not expect.
Not as an idea. Not as a performance. Just as a quiet invitation:
“Can you recognize me here?”
And notice: What changes when you move through the world assuming that life is not only something you experience... but something that is also communicating with you?
Perhaps nothing. Or perhaps something becomes just a little softer.
- Maybe a conversation feels different.
- Maybe a bird suddenly has your full attention.
- Maybe someone you usually overlook becomes the very lesson you needed today.
Because if life is constantly speaking... what changes when we begin to listen?
Not with the expectation of finding profound wisdom in every moment. But with the quiet curiosity that perhaps nothing is ever truly ordinary.
And if, at some point, you catch yourself wanting to teach, to heal, to hold, to give... perhaps pause for just a heartbeat. And wonder:
"Where is today's lesson trying to find me?"
Perhaps, while you long to
- teach others, life is teaching you.
- heal others, life is healing you.
- hold others, life is holding you.
- give others, life is quietly placing a gift into your own open hands.
And if you find yourself thinking "Who am I to share anything?", perhaps smile gently... because after all...
The Guru may be speaking to you.
And the Guru may be speaking through you.
Sometimes in the very same moment.
🤍 The Gift Of Remaining Open
Perhaps Guru Purnima is not only a day to honour teachers.
Perhaps it is a day to honour the sacred dance itself.
The dance of learning.
The dance of teaching.
The dance of receiving.
The dance of giving.
And perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can offer life itself, the Guru, the Divine...
Is not perfection. Not flawless wisdom. Not disappearing so completely that we forget our own unique expression.
Perhaps the greatest gift is much simpler. Much more human. Much more sacred:
🤲 To remain open. 🤲
Open enough to receive.
Open enough to share.
Open enough to unfold.
Open enough to let life keep teaching us.
Again.
And again.
And again.
❤️💛💚
Yours and mine,
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