I was in Rishikesh, India. The monsoon rain was coming down with full force, and I was soaked to the bone. Tapovan felt almost empty. The newly certified yoga teachers had already scattered back into the world, each one carrying a certificate, a new identity, and that feeling of having just become someone else. A new role, a different costume, the same search.
At that time, I was studying Kriya Yoga intensely, within a lineage said to descend uninterrupted from Babaji. My days revolved around practice, discipline, breath, mantras, and that quiet ambition for spiritual realization. The inner fire was growing. My passion was expanding. It felt as if my spiritual faculties were sharpening.
I lived seven minutes away from Ira’s Kitchen. That morning, I went there for breakfast, grateful for warm food and a roof to hide under while the rain moved through.
At the table sat a young Australian waiter who had moved to India, and next to him an older American man wearing a shoulder brace, clear evidence of a serious injury. He told me he had crashed his motorcycle in the jungle. High speed. Devastating impact. The recovery took almost a year.
He spoke about how the accident slowed him down, forced him to be still, and completely changed the way he saw himself. Pain had become his teacher. Immobility, I would say, had become a remarkable way for him to discover that inside, he could still move with complete freedom. He carried that unmistakable American individualism. At the time, I judged him quietly. He was much older than me, and still, I did not give him enough credit.
In Romania, we have a saying: “If you don’t have an elder, buy one.” I had one sitting right in front of me, and I did not recognize him.
We began talking about spiritual experiences, sharing stories while, in truth, we were all waiting for the rain to stop.
I told him about my devotion to yoga, about my conviction that I had to find the master who would guide me toward enlightenment. I was deep inside the master-disciple paradigm. To me, that structure represented the highest truth available to a seeker. I was full of certainty. Somewhere, a guru was waiting to be found. I was ready, or at least that was my belief.
The American, who had been coming to India for forty years and knew the terrain, the culture, and the spiritual marketplace there very well, looked at me and calmly said:
“I believe the only and most important master is the one within.”
No preaching. No bragging. No attempt to contradict me. He simply placed the sentence between us like a bridge. It felt like an invitation, a passage, something that could be both a barrier and a bridge at the same time.
I looked at him with quiet skepticism. I nodded politely. Inside, I can honestly say, I dismissed him.
I thought: “He still has a few things to understand.”
Years passed.
I went through initiations in Mahavidya Tantra, advanced Kriya transmissions, and initiation into the Phowa path of Tibetan Bon Buddhism. Alongside that came medical mantras, karmic purification rituals in the Balinese temple waters of Sayan and Sebatu, and tantric deity practices with Bagalamukhi, Kamalatmika, Tara, Kali, and so on.
At night, I participated in esoteric ceremonies you could not really imagine unless you had been in those rooms with me.
I pursued depth sincerely. I offered devotion, discipline, time, and space from my own nervous system to every sacred structure that promised expansion. And where did all of it take me? Somewhere I do not think I ever expected. Back to the same place.
Back to the inner master. Back to that voice I had heard one scorching day in Rishikesh. Back to the intelligence that whispers without spectacle, and to the teacher that needs no temple, no lineage, and no external validation.
External masters can refine you, that is true. They can accelerate your friction, expose your blind spots, show you maps, routes, and ways to carry your steps through the hidden valleys of ignorance.
But the map only comes alive when the inner compass awakens.
- The guru you seek has always been the one searching for a guru.
- The lineage you honor eventually arrives inside your own nervous system and your living energetic body.
- The authority you projected outward matures into inner sovereignty.
That American man with the shoulder brace had understood something I was still trying to reach through complexity.
- Sometimes wisdom appears spontaneously, unexpectedly, in a rainy cafe.
- Sometimes it even wears orthopedic equipment.
- Sometimes it waits patiently while you choose the longest road.
- And most of the time, you only realize it long after you have seen it.
The inner master does not compete with external teachers. It perceives them as voices of the same higher consciousness. It discerns what belongs to your path and what belongs to someone else’s mythology.
And when you finally begin to listen, its voice becomes impossible to mistake.
To hear the voice of the inner master, humility is not optional. It is essential. But humility alone is not enough. It must be accompanied by the curiosity of a child, by that sincere, unguarded openness that allows you to admit you may not know as much as you think you do. True humility does not mean making yourself smaller than you are. It means developing the ability to understand that you are an eternal student.
When you stop assuming your interpretation is the final truth, space opens for you to see objective truth. And that is the first step toward listening. At the same time, we cannot ignore the existence of a powerful current of Eastern-flavored spiritual propaganda, beautifully packaged, aesthetically refined, and deeply seductive, yet often delivering far less than it promises.
The language is polished and elaborate. The symbols are exotic. The promises are enormous. For many people, the actual result remains superficial, or it creates a subtle dependence on external authority. We are seeing more and more spiritual figures fall, gurus who built entire systems around themselves and who, over time, were revealed to be involved in manipulation, abuse of power, or sophisticated forms of psychological control. Sometimes you get the sense that the ideas preached with almost messianic intensity are not even fully believed by the people promoting them. They are maintained because they preserve influence, status, and symbolic capital. When questionable messages, alliances, or relationships emerge between public “spiritual” figures and controversial people from the worlds of power or finance, the myth begins to crack. It becomes obvious that spirituality can be used as branding, as a shield, or as currency in a game far more worldly than the official story suggests.
Paradoxically, alongside this pseudo-spirituality, a militant form of atheism has also developed, promoted by certain academic or scientific voices that reduce inner experience to neural mechanics or cosmic accident. In some cases, the same hunger for ideological influence and control can be seen at both ends of the spectrum, whether under the flag of religion, spirituality, or anti-religion.
What becomes truly alarming is not the ideological difference itself, but the shared appetite for power.
- The desire to shape the masses.
- To dictate meaning.
- To control the narrative.
And behind this machinery, one often senses an inner emptiness that neither status, followers, nor notoriety can truly fill. This is why returning to the inner master is far from a romantic slogan. It is a form of spiritual hygiene. As long as the source of discernment remains outside of you, the risk of manipulation remains active.
But when clarity, personal responsibility, and mature consciousness become the real criteria, neither idols nor propagandists can occupy the altar anymore. And you can no longer place blame or responsibility on someone else’s shoulders.
Stay grounded,
THAT SHAKIN' GUY
