Unicorn Eggs…

One of the most wonderful women I know is a Teacher. I use the upper case ‘T’ quite deliberately as she teaches simply by Being who she is. On her own admission, she prefers to work from the wings and stay out of the spotlight, yet her gentle and joyful Light touches all who know her.

We were chatting online this morning, as we tend to do, being several thousand miles too far apart for a proper cuppa and face to face conversation. We cover many subjects from the most mundane and daftly human to the spiritual and esoteric. At one point today she was speaking of what makes a Teacher, of how it requires that one keeps a foot in both worlds as it were, seeing the greater purpose behind the events of our lives. We spoke too of the decades each of us spend learning to use the gifts we are born with, of the transforming journey through life towards understanding. Of the courage that is needed to be one’s whole Self.

There was talk of the human flaws we all share and of those who inspire us and how they can be seen as “special – to others.” Yet to themselves “it must remain no big thing.” My friend says of such people that they “fart and burp and pee when they cough like any other daft creature of our ilk. But they have Work to do.”

It tickles me, with the mental picture I have of her elegant and stately self that she chooses such words, yet she is, without doubt, the most down to earth person I know, as well as being one of the most genuinely spiritual. And she is right. It is a common misconception that a spiritual teacher must have found some kind of perfection, although it is true, of course, in terms of their awareness of the Divine in life. Yet those true Teachers I have been privileged to meet seem to share this earthiness, this serene acceptance of all the levels of their being.

There is, it seems, always laughter in them, often at themselves, and sometimes tears. Emotion and experience are equally embraced, as are their characters, seen as the raw material of humanity within themselves. They acknowledge their strengths as well as their weaknesses, but seldom see themselves as Teachers unless that role is thrust upon them. They are simply sharing the journey with fellow travellers.

There is another side to this, for the commitment to the Light is real and demands a lifetime. It is not something one can dip in and out of. It can bring to these people both the gift of being truly with those around them with a warm immediacy, but also a certain separateness, an aloneness and sense of isolation as they see life from a different perspective that they can share only with others who have walked their particular path. And at the level of which I speak, they are as rare as unicorn eggs.

Yet there is a wholeness about them, a completeness that accepts themselves and us for who we are, seeing, perhaps beyond the outer face we wear to something profound within and recognising the kindred fire of the Divine we each of us carry. And because of this deeper vision, there is a strength in them and a depth that manifests itself as Love.