How do I find a good meditation teacher

How do you find a good meditation teacher or teachers?

Well, one way to consider this is to think about different kinds of Teachers. I have in my own mind a kind of map.

A classification system for.

Teaching actually I don't really think. So much in terms of Teachers. I don't think so. Much in terms of the noun teacher. I think more in terms of the verb teaching there is an activity called teaching broadly I classify the activity of teaching.

Under 3 headings.

There is subtle teaching.

There is descriptive teaching and then there is explicit teaching from my perspective. Everyone who does a spiritual practice or a meditative practice?

Is a teacher in that they teach?

But they may only teach at the subtle level.

So what does it mean to teach at the subtle?

Well, 2 things as the result of doing the practice. We change our vibe changes how we carry ourselves moment by moment our body orders probably change our pheromones change.

Things about us change and that shows perhaps only at a subtle level. It shows the body language. As I say page showing him orders. Subtle cues how we breathe? How our eyes look here there and so forth.

Changes take place within us as the results of this practice People can detect those changes, perhaps.

Consciously, or perhaps below the threshold of awareness.

And that puts out a subtle teaching.

You could be talking about anything you could be doing anything but you're coming from a certain place.

As the result of your practice here suddenly teaching with every action. You do every syllable you utter even People who haven't done much meditation. The changes already started to happen.

So that's one aspect of subtle teaching another aspect of subtle teaching is.

More large scale our behaviors improve or they should if they're not then there's a problem.

And People that know us see the the behaviors improving.

And that's impressive to People.

Very impressive actually and the.

There, in that make some interested sympathetic maybe wanting to do that path or that practice themselves.

So the behavior changes that take place with time.

Coupled with this sort of.

Vibe changes the enter so we say Energi changes that take place.

To me, this counts constitutes teaching there for every practitioner is automatically a subtle teacher.

Then there's descriptive teaching what descriptive teaching means is you have a practice somebody asks you to describe your practice and you could do so coherently coherently means there's

Clear vocabulary.

Well formulated senses it all hangs together logically that's what cohere means you can debate coherent description of what you do in words that the average person can understand.

I call that the descriptive level of teaching.

I have a little phrase that I use which is.

What is coherent is Cogent?

Cogent means compelling.

It means all that makes sense and I see the point. Maybe I'd like to do it myself, so if you're not telling them to do it, you're not proselytizing you're not.

Giving them a practice and explicitly teaching them You're just describing Hey. This is what I do. When I have physical discomfort. I do this and it has this effect when I have emotional challenges. I do this and it has this effect. When I do formal practice. I do this sometimes, this happens and sometimes that happens.

You're giving a coherent description of your practice.

Well, that's a teacher.

And that's a level of teaching.

So any of you that have a practice and can coherently describe it. 2 People inwards average. People People that don't have a practice.

Then I say you're a teacher.

At that level teacher, then there's explicit EG.

Explicit teaching is.

You are running a meditation class or your privately tutoring someone.

And you are giving them techniques your answering their questions. You're giving them detailed guidance. You're monitoring their progress and so forth you're explicitly now in teacher.

Some People

Evolved to a place in their practice.

Where they would like to be an explicit teacher and that's good usually you need some sort of training for that, although not inevitably.

Tell you the truth when I moved from being.

Descriptive teacher to an explicit teacher. I myself did not have any training to do that. I just started to experiment and see what worked maybe that's not the best scenario, but that's what I did, and you know it just evolved with time.

Among explicit teachers.

I would say that there are various subcategories there're paraprofessional teachers.

That is to say teachers that.

Teach part time and my organization, we call them facilitators.

I've trained numerous many, many People to be facilitators. They can help out at retreats. They can answer questions and so forth. Uh sort of like a paramedic, there a paraprofessional.

Then there are professional teachers a professional teacher teaches full time someone like me, they derive their lively livelihood that way.

Among full time teachers.

There is a class of full time teachers that are capable of dealing with classical enlightenment when it starts to happen to People they can handle that phenomenon. They can they can handle the pathologies that may occur occasionally that kind of company classical implement occasionally don't get all freaked out. It doesn't happen that often so we might call them Masters.

People that aren't afraid of the E word enlightenment.

So.

If you can find a teacher in that category that you can relate to.

Then that's good, it doesn't have to be 1 now. You might find several teachers in that category that you can relate to, if you can't find a teacher in that category who is comfortable with handling the Enlightenment issue, then OK just find a professional teacher somebody that's

You know does this is established and if you can't find that a paraprofessional.

If you have fun that then a descriptive teacher if you have find that then just.

So when the teachers of the subtle level.

Would be my general recommendations as far as sort of how to think about teachers.