The ‘Seeker’ Phase.  Beware of the ‘Naive’ Gene…

I had a conversation recently with a young man who reminded me so much of myself at his age. He was overflowing with questions about the deeper meaning of life. There was a kind of restlessness in his soul he couldn’t quite put his finger on, a dissatisfaction with the status quo that humanity, in his world, was settling for. The ‘needle in his compass’ was swiveling around looking for direction. He was absorbing a wide assortment of metaphysical information through readings and various explorations. The search was on for deeper understanding that he could intuitively sense was there to be discovered. He was the embodiment of the phase of the ‘Seeker’, when the soul has heard, and is attempting to answer, the distant clarion call from one’s depths.

There’s something so noble about the earnestness that can pervade this chapter of one’s life. It takes great courage to be willing to open up to ‘something more’, without knowing what that is or where it all might lead; let alone what one might have to leave behind. At the same time, this very opening has a certain kind of vulnerability to it, a danger zone that comes with the territory of spiritual ‘seeking’.

The very fact that one is pursuing and investigating Reality, reveals the bottom line perspective of the ‘Seeker’: “I know I don’t have the answers, but I hope to find them ‘out there’.” The good news is that this perspective puts one in a mindset of being receptive, which is crucial. If you think you already ‘know it all’, you’ll learn nothing, as you won’t have the ability to listen, to hear, to decipher when something has the ‘ring of Truth’ to it. At the same time, this receptivity, this tendency to think someone else has the answers, creates a potential trap that the spiritual path is fraught with; falling under the sway of the fraudulent ‘expert’. When a Seeker comes into contact with a ‘Master’, a Guru, a Teacher…whatever the label, there’s a huge tendency to ‘project’ all kinds of qualities onto this person that they may, or may not, deserve. An excellent spiritual guide of high integrity, the ‘real deal’, knows all about this phenomenon and will not absorb the ‘hero worship’ being heaped onto them, but will hand it back to the student with the message: “Don’t project onto me. I’ll help you find these very qualities within yourself.”

Ah, but for every one true guide there are a handful of ‘spiritual’ sharks that feed on the naivety of the students giving away their power, to which the sharks are all to happy to oblige. “Yes…I am the Source you’ve been seeking.” Some of these so-called ‘Adepts’ are simply deluded, a ‘legend in their own mind’. Some may have actually attained a higher level of development, got ‘halfway up the mountain’, but now have slid back down that slippery slope and are snared in their own trap of the inflated ‘spiritual ego’, a casualty of their own hubris. And some are just vampires, pure and simple.

A ‘Seeker’ has to trod that path so carefully; maintaining that receptive open mind and heart and yet having a clear, accurate ‘bullshit detector’. It’s so important to challenge any teaching with your own probing queries, with whatever doesn’t add up right, with anything that needs answers. A true guide will welcome such inquiry. It may very well be that the answers to your questions take time and experience on your part before the understanding rolls in; often the case of a true Teaching. But, a fraud will attempt to shut down any uncomfortable inquiring, one way or another. In that case…run!

And one should never be swayed by the hypnotic power of ‘group think’. Yes, a true Teaching will have gathered an array of students who are all working together, collaborating and helping each other along the same path. But sometimes, a particularly magnetic spiritual scam artist can have a flock of starry-eyed, hypnotized idiots worshipping at their feet.

It’s so important that a Seeker can walk that razor’s edge of inquiring openness and prudent caution.