Do you want to be a teacher?

Every so often I get another email from someone asking my advice about how they can become a ‘teacher’. It seems that some spiritual seekers believe that once they get ‘it’, then the natural consequence of that is to become a ‘teacher’. I invite these people to look at their real motivation for, first of all, the getting ‘it’, and then also why they would care to start teaching.
When I look at my own motivation for starting this expression more than 10 years ago, I know that it was the last thing I wanted to do. My main motivation was, and still is now, to wake up out of the dream of thought, and explore what is true in myself, in the most honest and real way. I never saw myself as a teacher and had no idea that anyone needed to be taught anything that they don’t already know. I had no interest in enlightenment or any other spiritual concepts. I started expressing the truth of how it is, because after a lifetime of suppressing life energy in believing that there was something missing or wrong with me, Life itself needed to express what had not been expressed. This has changed over the years, and now is much more of a full expression that has evolved through life experience, but the motivation is still the same – to explore and express what is true in the most honest and real way.
So if you are willing to admit to yourself that your secret fantasy is to become a spiritual teacher, I ask you to look really honestly at what you want to get out of it.
In my own experience, being a so-called ‘teacher’, has only ever been about exposing my own raw vulnerability and endlessly losing more and more of what I thought I knew. In this love of truth, there is no possibility of hiding behind a spiritual teacher persona or any other role. Sitting in front of a group of people, and acknowledging that I don’t know, and seeing how in this not-knowing, all the real knowing is in each one of us.
And contrary to popular belief, certainly in my experience anyway, being a ‘teacher’ is a terrible business model….

Unmani
www.die-to-love.com