How to Discern if a Spiritual Teacher and/or Path is Worth Your Consideration

In a world filled with teachers, paths, and methodologies, it is important to learn how to filter out the wheat from the dross, as a means of maximizing the potential acolyte’s own evolution and self-development with the least amount of dead ends, drama, and false starts.  As a result of my own experiences within the mystical arts, I have designed a checklist of questions meant to assist those acolytes aligned with my message to find teachers and methodologies worthy of their time, energy, and attention.  

While this list is fairly extensive, a sound teacher doesn’t have to be so broadly focused on all of the topics listed below, but could still have an awareness of their existence.  There are some great teachers, philosophers, and practitioners who are proficient and focused on individual categories such as shadow work and developing emotional intelligence, or those who are great at developing intellectual character traits and teaching elements of thought.  If they only stress a few of these areas, that is okay, as I certainly recommend finding specialists to work with and learn from, even if they do not identify as a mystic or spiritual teacher.  Not everyone is meant to be a jack of all trades in regards to spirituality, as they are living their purpose through focusing on and honing one specific skill set within a broad spiritual spectrum.

This list will definitely help identify which teachers intimately know and understand themselves and the nature of their reality, and those who are self-deceived and/or purposefully deceptive, but it isn’t completely exhaustive either.  Of course, sometimes a teacher you’re feeling the need to work with hasn’t yet learned a specific lesson or skill, as their own evolution and awareness hasn’t yet unfolded to this point within their process; this too is a natural possibility to consider. We’re often creating with each other where we’re at, and growing together.

Please realize that these are my reasoned judgments based on my subjective experiences, and it is up to each individual to use their thinking to come to their own conclusions and reasoned judgments when making important life decisions.  Each individual needs to work through their own baggage and meet themselves where they are currently at, self-deceptions and all, so that they can learn how to sift through the wheat and dross on their own.  I believe in each person’s ability to figure out what is best for them without needing to consider my perspective; I merely offer this as a service to those who are interested in my opinion on the matter.

1. Do they stress the Seven Hermetic Principles, also known as “the law of attraction”, within their teachings?  They do not need to actively name them, but their concepts should be addressed within their overall body of work.
2. The Hermetic Principle of Mentalism.  
   1. Do they stress the Divine Mind of the ALL, and the mental attributes of our individual and shared realities?
   2. Do they stress various methodologies of critical thinking, to purify the mind of the individual, and call out fallacious logic?  (Many false teachers erroneously stress mind avoidance and “no thought” as an ideal.  Rather than dealing with poor thinking, they run away from poor thinking and make “no thought” a spiritual goal.)
   3. Are they familiar with the Trivium method of critical thinking, and how it relates to reality generation?
   4. Do they stress intellectual standards? For example, clarity, precision, relevance, accuracy, depth, breadth, logic, and fairness.
   5. Do they stress intellectual character traits? For example, intellectual empathy, intellectual fair mindedness, intellectual courage, etc.
   6. Do they stress integrating the Cosmic Logos (Jesus / objective morality / natural law) into one’s heart (inner character) as the gold standard that backs their internal value?
   7. Do they stress psychological health, and working through the causal mental patterns responsible for the quality of reality being generated by the individual?  This includes Jungian shadow work, anima/animus balancing, inner child work, and processing of one’s emotions in the midst of an emotional upset. Do they value the role of emotional intelligence and balance in one’s life?
   8. Are they aware of and/or proficient with any of the methods of working with the mental plane of their surroundings, such as NLP, EFT, hypnosis, etc.?
   9. Do they stress making changes in a person’s thinking (cause), or are they wrongfully stressing change to their behaviors and actions (effect) by giving them physical techniques and exercises?
   10. Are they able to isolate underlying emotional attachments and blocks preventing intimacy, satisfaction, sovereignty, and abundance?
   11. Do they stress healthy boundaries and expectations, and how they protect relationships?
   12. Do they stress that reality generation starts within our mental thought patterns, including subconscious, unconscious, and conscious thoughts?
   13. Do they stress mental purity and alignment?
   14. Do they make distinctions that clarify generalized topics, such as “unity”, “love”, “polarity”, and “duality”, or do they erroneously make sweeping generalizations?
   15. Do they stress the need for logic, understanding, and the question “why”, especially in regards to root mental thought patterns, as well as how logic relates to reclaiming personal power and autonomy?
   16. Do they stress asking good questions, especially of oneself?
3. The Hermetic Principle of Correspondence (as above so below).
   1. Do they stress the “mirrors principle”, where everything we experience is a reflection of our mental state of being?  We are the Source with our subjective inner reality examining ourselves in the mirror of an objective outer reality.
   2. Do they stress the link between our microcosm and our macrocosm?  
   3. Do they stress the link between the various realms and dimensions, including the realms of causality and effects?
4. The Hermetic Principle of Vibration.
   1. Do they stress the need to harmonize our core vibration as a cause, in order to manifest those things that align with our desires as an effect?
   2. Do they stress that our vibration starts in our thought patterns, rather than generalize that we are energy and vibration? Often, many teachers will generalize the concept of vibration and not understand that what is causing our vibration is our thought patterns of relating to ourselves and others.  They profess “energy work” without having any concept about what energy is and where it is coming from.
   3. Do they stress that harmonizing our causal vibration can take years of work on our mental states of being, as covered in the Mental principle?
5. The Principle of Polarity.
   1. Do they make a distinction between polarity and duality?
   2. Do they stress that gender is s special polarity pair that’s not a typical polarity (more later under gender)?
   3. Do they stress that there is an active side and passive side between all polarity pairs?
   4. Are they able to see the unity between all polarity pairs, such as “north/south”, “positive/negative”, “teacher/student”, “questions/answers”, “parents/children”, and “dark/light”?
6. The Principle of Rhythm.
   1. Do they have a working understanding of the cycles and rhythms of the universe, and how they relate to the path of the mystic?
   2. Do they stress the difference between being connected to a natural and unnatural rhythm?
   3. Do they understand the role that rhythm plays in bringing balance to our inner and outer realities?
7. The Principle of Cause & Effect (karma)
   1. Do they stress the need for mastering causality as a means of reclaiming personal power and sovereignty?
   2. Do they stress the difference between an internal locus of control (inside-out cause to effect) and an external locus of control (outside-in cause to effect) in regards to cause & effect?
   3. Do they stress the importance of our thought patterns in regards to the plane of causality?
   4. Do they stress asking “why” questions to determine cause?
   5. Are they able to determine root causes in a person’s thinking that stem from both nature and nurture, as a means of helping the acolyte rise above them as a conscious cause within their own lives?
   6. Do they focus on and correct errors in logic in regards to cause & effect? There are a myriad of causal logical fallacies that humans make, and these need to be intimately understood by teachers and students alike.
   7. Do they understand what is and is not cause, and what is and is not an effect, in a person’s thought patterns, way of relating, emotional state, and behaviors?
   8. Do they stress that external actions and rituals are meant to be the effect of our internal alignment (inside-out), and not the cause of our internal alignment (outside-in)?
   9. Do they make the distinction between what is taught as karma, where it is said to be a cosmic system of rewards and punishment, and what it actually is as a law of logic connected to the Hermetic Principle of Correspondence (all effects correspond to their causes)?
8. The Principle of Gender.
   1. Do they stress that there are only two genders?
   2. Do they stress that gender is a special polarity, one where each contains dual polarities, much like a battery does?
   3. Do they stress the clear differences and unique roles of each of the two genders?
   4. Do they stress healing the separation between the two genders within a person, with things such as anima/animus work, and working through painful relationships with a person’s mother and father? (Parents aren’t encouraged to be present while working through formative childhood relationships and experiences, but the relationships must be examined as a root cause of how we now relate.)
9. Do they teach that unity consciousness is an internal alignment to Source (internal locus / inside-out), or that humans are all equal and the same, and should unite as “one people” (external locus / outside-in)? Internal locus alignment leads to personal evolution through finding and developing the Self, while external locus leads to forfeiting the Self over to a group consciousness, and experiencing a lower version of equality called sameness/conformity.
10. Do they stress individual identity over group identity?
11. Do they stress the esoteric (internal) over the exoteric (external)?
12. Are they aware of and against the technocrat transhumanist agenda of merging humans with machines and artificial intelligence (AI)? I feel that any teacher that is for merging with machines and artificial intelligence is either self-deceived, and/or purposefully deceiving others.
13. Are they clear about the need for the individual to develop objective morality from the inside-out (Cosmic Logos / natural law), and shun group morality pressured onto individuals from the outside-in (herd morality / subjective preferences displacing and/or superseding objective morality)?
14. Do they have a functional understanding of how reality generation works, especially in regards to our thinking, feeling, and behaviors, and how feedback relates to reality generation?

I highly recommend the modern works of Mark Passio, Michael Tsarion, Richard Paul, CritialThinking.org, and the Academy of Ideas, as well as some of the past greats such as the Kybalion, Aristotle, Socrates, Carl Jung, Boris Mouravieff, John Locke, St Thomas Aquinas, Frederic Bastiat, Osho, and Friedrich Nietzsche. While my list can assist you in finding people to learn from and materials to work with, I also provide session/course packages for those who would like to delve deeper into the entirety of what I have covered in this list.  Please feel free to contac me to learn more about what I offer to my students and clients.

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THE UNITY PROCESS: I’ve created an integrative methodology called the Unity Process, which combines the philosophy of Natural Law, the Trivium Method, Socratic Questioning, Jungian shadow work, and Meridian Tapping—into an easy to use system that allows people to process their emotional upsets, work through trauma, correct poor thinking, discover meaning, set healthy boundaries, refine their viewpoints, and to achieve a positive focus. You can give it a try by contacting me for a private session.