Barred from Intiation?

[Diana]

Something that gives me comfort though is a quote I heard many years ago, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

It has been my experience that messages are always there, in everything we see and experience. So, as referenced in the quote, I think the teachers are always there, and it is the individual who must be ready to be open to receiving.

A message might be in a cloudy sky, a singing bird, a homeless person. We all understand catalyst, but to open the mind enough to learn from that which we label as different or not intelligent enough, or a person thought of as a "loser," or a tree that doesn't talk, or an STS individual, is to cast aside aside judgment and break down walls in the path. A guru of any kind, for example, is not necessarily someone to learn from; a guru tends to be someone who tells you how to do something. Whereas, when you commune with a tree, you may learn what that tree has to teach by its example, such as to unconditionally accept other creatures and shade and protect them because they have come under your care, and to do so with an open heart expecting nothing in return—and this is more of a teaching in my view than someone who tells me how to do something.