How do you tell if someone is truly awake or not? This is a question that comes up a lot in groups. The reason people are always asking this question is because they want to find somebody that’s not going to suck them into a cult, or steal their money, or fool them in some way.
It’s a fear based question. So, that’s the wrong reason to ask the question. But how to tell?
It’s my contention that the only way to really tell if someone is truly awakened is if you yourself are also awakened. So, for the seeker, that makes it an unanswerable question. The seeker will never be able to tell; they can get an idea, maybe they’ll stumble across the right person. But basically it’s pure blind luck.
Or maybe not… I have one little criteria that I would like to share because, if I’m right, it’s a game changer.
My contention is that the only person who can truly recognize another enlightened being is another enlightened being. So if you are trying to figure out if someone is enlightened or not let’s work with this criteria: do they recognize other enlightened beings? Do they see who’s around them? Are they capable of seeing that?
It’s a tough criteria because so many of these spiritual teachers, who get popular, get stuck in a bubble. They are stuck in a bubble with their own students, and it’s very difficult to see what’s going on outside of the bubble.
But if we made this a condition of recognition maybe it would open these bubbles up so that people can start interacting with each other more. This would help us come up with new ways to express spirituality. This would help us learn how we, as human beings, should be living on this Earth.