Last week I met a shaman in an absinthe bar.

No, that’s not the intro of my new mystery novel! It actually happened. While living in Berlin definitely lends itself to some strange experiences, this was one of the strangest by far.

(I’ve actually got much more to say about what we talked about during our brief interaction! But I’ll save that for a later post.)

However, the experience got me thinking about synchronicity, kismet and finding the right teachers to spark our continued spiritual growth.

So although I’m freshly back from Dublin and had planned to take this week “off” from writing, I felt compelled to share this post with you today.

First up, let me just tell you straight up: I don’t really believe in gurus (as in one extremely wise individual that you should follow to the ends of the earth). I do believe there are a lot of people out there with a lot of knowledge about a ton of different things. But no matter what, you are always your own best guru. You find the advice you need to hear at the moment you are ready. You don’t have to stick to any one prescribed path. You can move on and pick and choose what works as you need to.

I also believe you can have multiple teachers about the same topic and you’ll learn something important from each of them. No one person contains the entire answer. Sometimes you’ll need to hear something from a slightly different perspective in order to really get it. And the cool thing is in this day and age, you can!

Think of it this way: even if you take the same yoga class with the exact same sequence at the exact same time every day, you’ll probably enjoy some classes more than others. The teacher brings their own energy to the room! And we just naturally connect with some teachers more than others. No one person is going to resonate with everyone.

In fact that idea is kind of a romantic sort of dream: meeting the one teacher that will impart us with a nugget of knowledge that fills in all the missing blanks in our life. Of course, there are lots of people with tons of beautiful things to teach you! But it rarely happens that we’ll meet an enlightened being that can spend a bunch of 1-on-1 time helping us on our personal journey.

They’re right here, right now, sitting next to you, making your coffee or cutting you off in traffic or listening as you sob your heart out on the phone.

The best spiritual teachers you will find in life are already all around you. And if you want to learn their important spiritual lessons, it’s time to start paying attention.

We’re all on a path of learning and growing and expanding. And we’re constantly meeting new teachers along the way.

We often don’t look at the people around us as important teachers but that’s exactly what they are.

The biggest lessons we learn in life are never in a classroom environment!

They’re a result of the experiences we have with others. Whether it’s intentional or not, relationships facilitate our personal growth.

Your romantic partners are usually the most important ones! But your friends, parents, boss at work, even a celebrity or character on a TV show can be highly influential.

But this only makes sense. Our energy doesn’t lie!

You’re attracted to certain people, places and things because you’re an energetic match for them. The things that you’re not a match for simply fall off your radar. It’s like you have blinders on for everything else.

Of course, in reality, there’s a million different possibilities sitting right there in front of us. But we become attuned to looking at the world only in one way. We just filter out all the other options that don’t fit with the narrative that we’ve created.

The question is do you like where you are? Or are you trying to create change?

The cosmic joke is that we all create our own matrix.

Our outer world is a reflection of our inner world. That’s why when you really dig into it, you’ll discover manifesting is entirely about doing that inner work! It’s about creating the life we want by becoming the person we really want to be.

So if you’re feeling stuck or like you’re in a rut, it’s time to choose a new story.

Repeating situations are giant red flags that you need to shift something drastically. You must approach this situation with a new mindset or approach if you truly want to move forward.

We’ll keep repeating the same lesson over and over again until we learn how to transmute and move past it.

Here’s one example:

To the outside world, we might spend a lot of time talking about how we’re ready for a life-long partner. But in reality? We’re only attracting an endless parade of casual encounters! So what’s the disconnect?

Very often, it’s no wonder that deep down we feel ambivalence about wanting that romantic love.

Real intimacy is one of the scariest things we could ask for! And if you’re feeling the effects of a failed relationship or if you were never around a healthy relationship growing up, it’s easy to see why REALLY falling in love might be terrifying.

But if you were truly ready to move past the lesson, the fuck boys wouldn’t show up for you. Because they just wouldn’t be part of your reality.

There’s something about this situation that attracts you to it over and over again. Figuring it out is the only way forward.

We often think that spiritual lessons will come from a guru or from some cataclysmic event.

But the truth is, you’re the only one in charge of your expansion!

You just need to start paying attention to the lessons you’re being shown right now.

Becoming your own guru isn’t about getting up at 5 am to chant or moving to an ashram. It’s about figuring out that everything you need to learn is already right here.

Your spiritual growth is only determined by you, not by what book you’re reading or what class you’re attending. You can take in the lessons and begin your expansion or you can continue to repeat the same old (unhelpful) patterns hoping that something outside of you will change.

You can only move past the lessons if you move THROUGH them. Otherwise, they’ll just keep popping back up over and over again.

We often resist the lessons because they feel uncomfortable. They push us into unfamiliar territory. Or sometimes we resist them because we so firmly insist on being right.

The truth is growth and expansion doesn’t always feel good! Sometimes we must face a painful lesson or need to say goodbye to things that are no longer serving us. We don’t see that there’s something better waiting right around the corner.

And even some manifesting teachers get this wrong: they suggest you can skip some lessons to get directly to what you want (aka the spiritual bypass). But that’s where people get stuck because you can’t outrun the lesson you’re here to face! What you resist, always persists.

If you want to rapidly uplevel your expansion, stop seeing the problems in your life and start seeing them as opportunities for growth instead.

Every problem is an opportunity for expansion.

You can do what you’ve always done or you can learn something new.

Becoming your own guru is never about giving your power away to someone else. It’s never about shying away from your own life.

The process of becoming your own guru is simply learning how to see that the world is truly happening for you, not to you.

So brush off the fear and doubt. Take a deep breath, dive in and choose the become person you were truly meant to be.

Thank you so much for being here beautiful souls! I sincerely appreciate all the love you’ve given me lately. And I really hope this post helps you on your path. ????

PS Looking for more? You might also want to check out this post about how to program your mindset for mssive growth or this one about how I manifested my dream home.

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