Who Inspires Whom - the Teacher or the Student?

The teacher inspires the student and the student inspires the teacher. When you are in a cycle like this with your coach, mentor, guide; that is when the relationship is most productive and contributes to both the teacher and the student to reach their highest self. This is how the teacher-student, guru-shishya, coach-coachee, mentor-mentee, parent-child, leader-team member relationships are meant to be - relationship of equals.

Love, gratitude, reverence flows both ways because the teacher would not be the teacher without the willing student and the student would not be a student without a teacher equally willing to learn from, grow and evolve with the student through the process of teaching. Giving cannot take place without receiving; and both the giver and the receiver equally give and receive in that exchange of energy. Similarly, teaching cannot take place without learning; with both the teacher and the learner equally teaching and learning.

If the teacher is not learning, growing, evolving through the process of teaching the student; the student is really not learning, growing, evolving. Each puts the other on the pedestal by giving their unconditional love, gratitude, reverence to, trust, faith, belief in the other and that is how they both rise higher and higher. 

The teacher continues to work on themselves to be worthy of being a teacher and does 10X of what they ask their student to do. The student challenges themself even more than what the teacher has asked them to do and create what was impossible, unimaginable before. One inspires the other in an ongoing cycle of growth, evolution and transformation.

If we step back and focus on our breath for a while to still our mind, we will realize that is the purpose of each of our relationships - to connect with our teacher in the other; especially in our most difficult relationships. That relationship is difficult just because we are meant to learn something that we are resisting, that we are unwilling to learn. We can shed that resistance by standing with our hands on the side and bowing down to the teacher in the other, as we would do in Martial Arts. In the Indian tradition, the student bends down to touch the teacher's feet. Only in our bending to acknowledge the teacher in the other is the learning possible because then we are saying to the Universe, I know not. It is when we know, that we block learning and growth from taking place.

I recently came across these lines in an amazing book (Real by Catherine and Duane O'Kane) which beautifully captures the essence of this -

"An enlightened master is not a master who is omniscient and certain of the truth about all things all the time. An enlightened master is a person who bows to not knowing the truth about all things and is open to knowing more about all things all the time."

The joy of learning is what gives us the joy of living. As we relate to everything and everyone around us as our teachers, we will find the joy coming from even a chance encounter with a beggar on the road. 

Organizations will grow to their highest expression in impact and profitability, if they acknowledge and embrace the secret that leaders are meant to be teachers, guides, coaches to their team members; and learn to lead their teams by walking the path towards their own personal mastery of who they are as human beings. 

May we all come back home to ourselves and experience the joy, fulfilment and freedom of being who we truly are.

Love, Jyoti.