the perfect teacher

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Sometimes there are deprecating glances and dismissive rejoinders when anyone admits to a wee whisper in the heart -- the whisper that longs desperately for "the perfect teacher." Unblemished, accepting and capable of overlooking the flaws I myself am so bad at overlooking.

"Every moment is the perfect teacher," I can hear someone saying. Well, maybe so, but where there are aches and cuts, who would not long to be thoroughly and completely healed? Sage nostrums can take a hike ... where do I find the perfect teacher? I'm not kidding -- I want this more than I wanted a B-B gun when I was a kid.

The perfect teacher ... the one without flaws; the one who accepts all flaws.

I like this idea of a perfect teacher in whom we can find surcease and release. Rationally, it's off-the-charts even if there are vast religions supporting it, but realistically, where the heart beats, it makes perfect sense.

Trying to find the perfect teacher may be as irrational as thinking you have actually found him/her, but where the longing arises, the heart opens up wide-wider-widest and it is this quality that makes the search for the perfect teacher a wise choice. Open up to what touches the heart ... what really touches the heart. Nurse and nurture that longing as a mother might nurse and nurture her child.

And how does the good mother act? Is she inattentive? Not at all. So bring an unswerving attention to bear on the honest yearnings -- however insane they may seem. Books don't answer. People don't answer. But an attentive mom?

Well, mom is god. Any kid knows that.
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