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www.CSEcenter.org
CSE’s annual festival day of gratitude for spiritual teachers
occurs at
or near the Summer Solstice, when the light of day is at its zenith. This fullness of
light is the time we honor the Guru, the one who shows us how to find the inner
light of Truth, the revelation of our divine Self. The Sanskrit word Guru means
“the light that dispels the darkness of ignorance.” It also means “teacher” and
commonly refers to one’s spiritual teacher. God is the ultimate Guru, the teacher
of all teachers, the inner light within us all.
Meeting the guru is the way to meet one’s own Self—the key to our highest
happiness. The greatest sorrow we have, the source of our suffering and confu-
sion is Self-alienation—forgetting the truth about who we are as divine beings.
We cannot live the divine life we are destined for, even though we yearn for it
and look everywhere for it, until we realize the truth of who we are. Not realizing
the spiritual truth about who we are, we feel as though something is missing and
search everywhere for it. What we are looking for is our Self, our higher true Self.
Our spiritual teacher or Guru is the one who introduces us to the true Self.
It’s strange to think we would need such an introduction! But most of us wander
in the wilderness of forgetfulness for years without being able to see our true
face. We do not fully discover our divine identity until the Friend comes along,
speaks the language that our heart remembers, and shows us the way home to the
highest happiness.
The One Thing That Matters
When I met my Guru, Roy Eugene Davis, in the fall of 1979, I was thirty years
old and the time in my life was exactly right. I was searching, though I didn’t
know I was. I was filled with sorrow, though I didn’t know why. At such a young
age, I thought I had tried everything to be happy. I had certainly tried a lot of
things. But not the one thing that would matter, the one thing that would change
the course of my life forever. That one thing was “yes.” The yes that is surrender.
And even though it was initially a feeble attempt, the river of divine grace flowing
in my life carried me along once I jumped in.
The “jumping in” was the surrender of listening to my heart, to my essential
Self. It was the willingness to acknowledge what I inwardly knew was true about
me and about life itself. It was time to remember: I was not a victim of anyone
or anything. I was a divine being. My past did not and could not define me. My
future was open to whatever possibility I was willing to envision, embrace, and
stand for.
God is not some far off, never reachable Big Bearded Person in Space but the
very Life of my life. The Source of my strength, the Love of my love—my guide,
my inner wisdom, my polestar. When I met my teacher for the first time I heard
him say “there is only one ultimate Reality and we are all expressions of that.”