What Does it Mean to Be a Teacher
What Does it Mean to Be a Teacher?
By: Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
The love between teacher and disciple is both the most powerful and the most paradoxical relationship a human being can experience; it is unique in this world, in that it belongs only to God. And yet it has to be played out in the human arena where it is inevitably brought into the limited and distorted structures of the ego and personality. From the point of view of the soul all the projection and misunderstanding this gives rise to can seem such needless drama, based entirely on illusion, and yet this drama too has a role to play. It is the teacher’s job through it all to remain unswervingly true to the real divine nature, to the love and to the inner light of the disciple, as the transmission of love that the disciple needs to make the journey is given from heart to heart. In an earlier chapter, “Dust at His Feet,” I wrote about my relationship with my sheikh, the Naqshbandi Sufi master Radha Mohan Lal. The following chapter describes a little of my own experience as a Sufi teacher. I began this work when I was thirty-six and was sent by my teacher, Irina Tweedie, to lecture about the Sufi path in North America. And then when she retired in 1992, I became her successor. In 1998, the year before she died, I was made a Sufi sheikh. I should clarify that there are two distinct forms of spiritual teacher. There are teachers who convey the spiritual teachings of their tradition, their practices and disciplines. They may give lectures and seminars, write books and have students who study these teachings and often engage in the practices. Then there are spiritual teachers who have disciples, taking upon themselves the full responsibility of their disciples’ spiritual evolution, their journey Home. I have written a number of books and conveyed some of the teachings of my lineage of Sufism; this chapter is about my work in the traditional relationship of teacher and disciple. Although most of
By: Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
The love between teacher and disciple is both the most powerful and the most paradoxical relationship a human being can experience; it is unique in this world, in that it belongs only to God. And yet it has to be played out in the human arena where it is inevitably brought into the limited and distorted structures of the ego and personality. From the point of view of the soul all the projection and misunderstanding this gives rise to can seem such needless drama, based entirely on illusion, and yet this drama too has a role to play. It is the teacher’s job through it all to remain unswervingly true to the real divine nature, to the love and to the inner light of the disciple, as the transmission of love that the disciple needs to make the journey is given from heart to heart. In an earlier chapter, “Dust at His Feet,” I wrote about my relationship with my sheikh, the Naqshbandi Sufi master Radha Mohan Lal. The following chapter describes a little of my own experience as a Sufi teacher. I began this work when I was thirty-six and was sent by my teacher, Irina Tweedie, to lecture about the Sufi path in North America. And then when she retired in 1992, I became her successor. In 1998, the year before she died, I was made a Sufi sheikh. I should clarify that there are two distinct forms of spiritual teacher. There are teachers who convey the spiritual teachings of their tradition, their practices and disciplines. They may give lectures and seminars, write books and have students who study these teachings and often engage in the practices. Then there are spiritual teachers who have disciples, taking upon themselves the full responsibility of their disciples’ spiritual evolution, their journey Home. I have written a number of books and conveyed some of the teachings of my lineage of Sufism; this chapter is about my work in the traditional relationship of teacher and disciple. Although most of