Everyone’s a spiritual teacher 🌍

My friend recently confessed that he feels like he’s not making a meaningful enough impact as a real estate agent; that maybe he should be helping people “evolve” instead. I told him I think the whole frame of certain professions being more impactful than others is mistaken. Given complexity and interdependence, how could we possibly know the impact of our actions? On a large enough time scale does that the question even makes sense to ask? Does anyone remember what Rosa Parks did for her job? Was emperor Antoninus Pius’s legacy his reign, or the example he set as (adopted) father to Marcus Aurelius?

But I think focusing on external impact obscures another helpful view: Everything is equally suffused with spirit/awareness. All waves on the ocean are equally wet. Everything is equally spiritual, therefore nothing’s more spiritual than anything else.

If this is the case, we’re free to see the world of form as a way for us to learn from everyone and everything (even the really shitty stuff, although those lessons sure seem a lot harder). Eg: The teachers at my son’s daycare are extremely important “spiritual” teachers in his life—they’re contributing daily to his growing up, his awareness and identity (waking up), and the way he faces his future life lessons (karma). And they're more developmentally appropriate for where he's at on his journey. I wouldn’t want Adyashanti or Amma to be Jack’s nanny; they probably wouldn’t even be that good at it! Seems a short step from here to generalize everyone as everyone else’s spiritual teachers.

It also leaves me deeply suspicious of anyone claiming to be more deep, spiritually special, or putting themselves above anyone else. If they’ve really woken up to presence as every gesture, every mundane conversation, they wouldn’t question their significance and wouldn’t have anything to prove. They’d know themselves as both totally insignificant and simultaneously infinitely important as a part of the whole cosmic dance. The question then becomes not whether what you do is spiritually significant, but whether or not you get in the way of the spirit already suffusing what you do.

P.s. I was just talking with James Dial about this at a taco shop, and right after I shared the idea, Tyler the cashier—whom I’d previously discussed being a new dad with—had some epic parenting tips for me!

WIth love, Jordan