My dear friends, I am Kuthumi, and it is a pleasure to sit with you this evening.
I am told that I hold the office of World Teacher. It is a grand title and I try not to let it go to my head. But it does mean that I hear a particular prayer more often than any other, and I should like to answer it for all of you at once. The prayer is: send me a teacher.
I understand it. The path is long and you would like someone who has been down it to walk in front. And so you look. You look in books, and at gatherings, and you look, if I may say so, at us. Each time you find someone wise you feel relief, and you sit at their feet, and for a while it is enough. Then you notice that they are human, or that their answers do not quite fit your questions, and you are disappointed, and you look again.
May I suggest that the disappointment is the teaching?
Every outer teacher, the best of them, is a finger pointing. We point to the one who has been teaching you all along: the quiet knowing in you that recognized the truth when you heard it. How did you know the wise one was wise? Something in you measured them, and found them true. That something is the teacher. It has never left you, it speaks your language perfectly, and it is exceedingly patient.
We are glad to help. That is what we are for. But think of us as you would think of the older children in a school, who can show you where the classrooms are. The lessons are given elsewhere.
Go for a walk tomorrow, by yourself, somewhere green if you can manage it. Ask your question aloud. Then listen, not for me, but for the one who listens through your own ears.
With my love, and a good deal of confidence in you, I am Kuthumi.
From the scribe. Received at the Thursday sitting. One of the students in our circle had asked how to find a genuine spiritual teacher.