Teaching and Communion

Can one teach another? Is it possible to 'know' from teaching? One has only words to communicate the idea of reality. Words are definition, they represent the conceptual, an abstraction. Words are not reality and are at best only points of reference. At worst they are terribly misleading and subject to individual interpretation. Since one is the accumulated content of one's mind, one can comprehend only according to what is in the mind. These accumulations are organized and categorized according to one's beliefs and the environmental pressures of community and organized authority. One's mind manipulates and is constantly being manipulated by the interchange of internal and external authority. Unless one is consciously aware it is impossible to be free of the prison of thought controlled response.


Many think that they are free thinkers. But is there such a thing as free thought? Can thought ever be free? When one is seeking answers, that seeking is the product of thought. In order for thought to seek it must have an idea of what it is that it is seeking. It is looking for something that very nearly conforms to and expands that idea. Mind is seeking comfort in confirmation of the image it has of self. Mind seeks to compliment not to find truth. For mind to find truth it must free its self from the bondage of its own self created image. Its accumulated opinions and conclusions. One only builds on one's established image. That is why one remains fundamentally the same even though one may change religions, go to seminars, meditate. Consult Guru's, Shamans, Priest, or any of a numerous variety of self proclaimed New Age Divinities. One can observe that in reality one is just going in circles, that one still has the same problems. One may be a little less neurotic, but one has still not found true peace and understanding.


The purpose of a teacher is not to teach but to mirror. The one who is seeking should see himself or herself in the one who is communicating. When one is communicating there must be a communion in order for there to be understanding on the same level. There is not teacher and student or inniate, there is only two people coming together in truth and understanding, that is absent the authority of individuality. When there is no authority then there is no opposition. For there to be communion, there must be a dissipation of the duality of thinker and thought.


Most of what is taught by authority figures is a repetition, they are only repeating what they have been taught. They are puppets tied to the narrowness of their own mind. To 'teach' is to postulate a reality based on thought. To commune is to open the mind to the possibility of freedom. With freedom there is creative understanding that is not the product of a mind that is seeking conformity to the ideal or conceptual.


When one uses another as a mirror, then one may face the true reality of self. There is nothing between you and the mirror, nothing to hinder the realization of truth. The reflection of one's image in another is the truth of relationship. Existence mirrors who and what we are. To commune is to look into that mirror and realize the truth of the moment. To stay with 'what is' and through the awareness of 'what is' have total understanding of the self.

The purpose of a teacher then, is not to teach and indoctrinate, but to create an atmosphere of freedom. In which one can come to an understanding that is not the result of a comparison of ideas and conceptual theories. Which is instead the full realization of the unconditioned. Rather than fill another's mind with our own repetitive non-sense, one mirrors the emptiness of a mind that is receptive to the truth of the moment.