the two kinds of spiritual teaching

Once you pare it all down, there are basically two kinds of spiritual teaching. There is spiritual teaching that speaks directly about spirit and there is spiritual teaching that speaks indirectly about spirit. The purpose of both kinds is to clarify that everything is spirit, including you. We need this clarification because we tend to forget.

We tend to forget we are spirit, even after we awaken to this awareness. The habit of being asleep about it and going back to sleep about it is very strong. There is something mysterious about sleeping that spirit seems to enjoy immensely, as if it's playing a cherished game by doing it. Unfortunately for the sleeper, the game always leads to personal pain.

Personal pain is the reason for both kinds of spiritual teaching. If we never experienced any personal pain, we would no longer need spiritual teaching of any kind. We would no longer have any. Personal pain and spiritual teaching are inseparable. By addressing the causes of personal pain, all worthwhile spiritual teaching is attempting to put itself out of business.

It goes about this charitable mission in two ways. The first is to say what we are without qualification. We are spirit. We are spirit as it manifests into specific shapes and forms. The human being is precisely such a shape and form. Everything is. But beneath the shape and form is the source from which it sprang, and that's what we are.

The second way is to point out what we're not. This angle is completely context-specific. It always occurs in the context of questioning superficial notions of self for the sake of greater spiritual awareness. A superficial notion of self is any lasting conviction that we are primarily something other than spirit. Whatever that something happens to be, this form of spiritual teaching aims to release us from it. In that sense, this form of spiritual teaching is indirect, because it spends its time on illusion in order to dispel it.

The intention in both cases is exactly the same. The intention is always and only to bring you back to what you already are, to remind you and reinforce for you that you are originally spirit, and as spirit you are temporarily taking shape as everything else. Sometimes you take shape as direct teaching, sometimes you take shape as indirect teaching. You aren't the one or the other. Speaking indirectly, you aren't the person hearing them either.