Several years ago I wondered whether or not I really did have a teacher, a "guru", somewhere out there that I wasn't pursuing in this lifetime as a matter of personal (possibly karmic) choice. So I did what any diligent and hardcore committed practitioner would do and started sending out mental signals to the universe asking whether or not I really did have a teacher, a "guru", somewhere out there for when I was ready to have a teacher again in some future lifetime.
I didn't really expect any kind of sign or "response", skepticism prevailing, but just a little while later, I think maybe within the month, I got an email from an old college acquaintance I hadn't heard from in years saying she had a flash of intuition that she "needed" to contact me and tell me about her teacher; the Zen teacher she's found in this lifetime (I had no idea that she ended up on the Zen path).
I interpreted that as a response from the universe. Not necessarily that her teacher was my teacher (maybe so, but I still wasn't ready to pursue it), but that's how it would happen. When I was ready for a teacher again, it would just come my way by happenstance. Don't worry about it, it'll happen when I'm ready in a future lifetime (with chronic suicidal ideation the "future" is never in this lifetime). I haven't thought about it since.
Not having thought about it since, I never gave thought about what type of teacher or what characteristics I would look for in a teacher, what criteria would make me accept a teacher. I guess I just thought it would come down to instinct and I think that was right, the best approach for me.
On February 5, I watched a video that showed up on my YouTube front page by a guru named Sadhguru. I know that was the date because I posted it on Facebook to mark the date I first came across his videos. It was just instinct, something about him, that I thought I should mark the occasion. I still don't know why he stood out that I should click on his video, I generally don't click on any guru-looking video that shows up on my page.
I've watched a bunch, dozens, of his videos since then (many are in the quickly watchable 10-20 minute range). I don't agree with everything he says, but what's the point of a teacher if you agree with everything he or she says? Might as well be your own guru then (maybe my biggest problem has been that I've been acting like my own guru then). But it's not like I disagree with anything he says, at worst I'm skeptical but still open. Or I just don't know.
Just about all of his videos, posted and re-posted across various sites (watch one video and recommendations abound thereafter), make me ponder something specific. That's unlike other dharma talks that I'll sometimes listen to just to have the words enter my ears and paying attention is optional. However, the titles indicate such a range of issues that some I'm just not interested in. He covers Buddhism and Gautama just as a small part of larger Hindu spiritual cosmology, perhaps befitting someone truly enlightened and therefore possibly unlimited in range. Nothing he says contradicts anything in Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan iconography even affirms the wider view as represented in Hinduism. The Buddha, Gautama, is represented as the sage of the human realm.
One thing I like about him are his "twists" on some points. Sort of like plot twists in movies when you realize something you thought was one thing turns out to be something else. And he makes things on the spiritual path seem so simple! And that feeling carries away from his talks, stop making things so complicated, it's really quite simple! Things he says are confounding but in a good way; enlightening in a way of feeling lighter after listening to him.
When Luyen (pronounced "Lynn", should rhyme with Nguyen) contacted me several years ago, the universe may have been showing me how it would happen when I was ready for a teacher again. I don't think it matters that in a future lifetime I wouldn't recall any particular incidents from this lifetime. I think that's the sort of thing that can carry over as karmic seeds and germinate either as instinct or in response to encouraging conditions or stimuli (I certainly don't know how much of my instinct or experience in this lifetime is the result of karmic seeds from things that occurred in past lifetimes, i.e., to someone else). And coming across Sadhguru so close to what is looking more and more to be the end of my life may be the universe giving me confidence in recognizing a qualified and worthy teacher.
I even came across a video covering people like me with a dubious relationship with the guru concept and sums up a lot of what I've been struggling with (and like chronic suicidal ideation I'm neither alone nor unique):
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