Killing the Guru, Again

Forever, there have been two approaches to God. The first is organized religion which states that you can only have a connection to God through us, the Church. This is the traditional model of looking outside ourselves for “the way.” And those that show the way are the priests, rabbais, pastors, ministers and some gurus. The second is the Gnostic approach which states that we all have our own direct connection to God and that we are already divine ourselves. Those that show the way here are the ones that help you to find God within and may be any type of guide or teacher.
According to a survey by Pollster Lou Harris last year, 97% of the American people say they believe in God. Of this majority of Americans, there are two manners in which they will seek God and that is either through organized religion or through the self.
In the New Paradigm we have now entered, more and more people are waking up to the truth within. In fact that is what the New Paradigm is all about: living our lives as the divine beings we are and perceiving the world around us a reflection of this divinity. It is a new territory we have entered, the Aquarian Age where Planet Earth is assisting us to connect to God directly.
The world doesn’t need another spiritual know-it-all in this New Paradigm. I know this because I have spent my life looking for the one person or “way” who could take me to enlightenment. And what did I find? That we are all having a human experience and no one in a human body is immune from this.

Do we need help finding the guru within? Absolutely! Everyone including spiritual teachers needs reminders and inspiration from time to time. We are all here having a human experience and it wouldn’t be a human experience without the experience of our humanness, which means feeling the full range of human emotions.
The self-help industry is an $11 billion dollar industry. People are looking for ways to transform themselves and their lives. That is why it is called “self” help because people want to help themselves. I feel the self-help industry gets a bad rap. In fact there is a TV show in development about children raised on a diet of self-help books. Granted, many self-help books grasp at straws and are either incomplete or just don’t work.
So why are so many people writing these self-help books? Because so many people are wanting to know how to help themselves. And there are many ways to reach God and our divine selves so there is room for many voices. Is that a bad thing? No! We may have to hear it 50 different times, 50 different ways, by 50 different voices until one day, something clicks. We are all looking for our unique blueprint, our unique path, our unique contributions and our unique gift to share. We don’t know exactly what will reach out and touch us at what time.
The guru is being replaced by the inner guru and the new “spiritual teacher” is the one who makes us feel better; about being human, about our lives, about loving ourselves and about loving what is. The new teacher is the one who teaches that we are all just divine beings having this human experience and the way to divinity is by embracing this experience and all of it’s flavors.

The new teacher is directly connecting us to God, not to him or her.

The new teacher teaches that desire is in fact a divine path and that feeling good is our birthright. We shouldn’t have to work so hard to find our divinity as it is right under our noses. But we need permission. Permission to go for what we really want and permission to know that our desires are divine information. Pure and simple.
And why shouldn’t there be joy along the way, as well as pleasure, delight, play, sensuality and excitement? Right now in my life, I want to go to the bookstore and get something juicy so I don’t have to work so hard. I want chocolate covered sushi; the protein and the dessert together, jet fuel with a cherry on top. I want my new spiritual meal to be packed with potency, fun, inspiration, and a little danger; something I can relate to and something that interests me! I have read many of the greats and loved them as each one has rocked my world. There is always a time and a place in someones life to deepen ones knowledge and faith through the study of spiritual teachings and scriptures and mine has lasted for ten years. These are texts that transmit “living truth;” living texts that eternally contain the highest vibration of truth. Some of my favorites are Eckart Tolles’s “The Power of Now,” Yogananda’s “Autobiography of a Yogi,” the ecstatic poetry of Rumi and anything by Osho.
So why am I not reaching for those classic texts at night? It’s because they feel SPIRITUAL. Being “spiritual” is like a cat trying to be a cat; he already is that. Why would he try and become something that he already is? That’s silly. Yet we as spiritual beings are “wanting” to become more spiritual. Actually it’s the other way around. We as spiritual beings should be wanting to become more human. That is what this book is about; giving ourselves permission to become more human. To fully embrace our divinity through our humanness. Otherwise, why are here in a physical body?
I hear people all the time saying that they feel unfulfilled and want to get more “spiritual.” So they do what we are all trained to do: look outside ourselves and our own experiences. The truth is that it is just ourselves we are out of touch with. Our teachers need to help us connect to God by ourselves. Anything other than that, where we give up our power to another person is a betrayal of self. This book is all about returning to the innocent, heart-desire driven, child-like approach to life.
I want a new take on living a ravishingly lush and profound life that embraces not “trying” to be spiritual and not looking or behaving like I am spiritual.
I never really thought spirituality would go out of style because our true nature transcends any kind of style. But the way we approach it as we grow and transform, changes flavors from time to time. Sometimes we are devout and reverent and sometimes we are craving the colorful, lusty world. It just seems like the times right now are all about reaching the sacred through the human buffet.