{"id":221,"date":"2011-04-02T07:29:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-02T07:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2011\/04\/advice-for-someone-seeking-a-spiritual-guide\/"},"modified":"2011-11-01T15:02:58","modified_gmt":"2011-11-01T19:02:58","slug":"advice-for-someone-seeking-a-spiritual-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2011\/04\/advice-for-someone-seeking-a-spiritual-guide.html","title":{"rendered":"Advice for Someone Seeking a Spiritual Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><div dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align: left\">\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-oaK2XT21g4c\/TZcIjo4LADI\/AAAAAAAADtc\/0hiizFTpcmc\/s1600\/hakuin+self-portrait.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/-oaK2XT21g4c\/TZcIjo4LADI\/AAAAAAAADtc\/0hiizFTpcmc\/s320\/hakuin+self-portrait.jpg\" width=\"250\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p>Off to a day-long zazenkai.<\/p>\n<p>The sermon still needs some work, but the timing seems in hand\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Joan Halifax forwarded this quote from Thomas Merton, which considering much that is going on in the Zen world, seems particularly appropriate.<\/p>\n<p><i>The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided  by nobody.  He trusts his own visions.  He obeys the attractions of an  interior voice, but will not listen to other men.  He identifies the\u00a0  will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a\u00a0  big, warm, sweet interior glow. The sweeter and the warmer the feeling, the more he is convinced of his own infallibility.  And if the sheer force of his own self-confidence communicates itself to other people and gives them the impression that he really is a saint, such a man can wreck a whole city or a religious order or even a\u00a0  nation. The world is covered with scars that have been left in its  flesh by visionaries like these<\/i>. <\/p>\n<p>Wise man.<\/p>\n<p>Good advice to anyone looking for a spiritual guide.<\/p>\n<p>Now, off to sit for a few hours\u2026 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/33904114-4461432405176667113?l=monkeymindonline.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Off to a day-long zazenkai. The sermon still needs some work, but the timing seems in hand\u2026 Joan Halifax forwarded this quote from Thomas Merton, which considering much that is going on in the Zen world, seems particularly appropriate. The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Advice for Someone Seeking a Spiritual Guide<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Off to a day-long zazenkai.The sermon still needs some work, but the timing seems in hand...Joan Halifax forwarded this quote from Thomas Merton, which\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2011\/04\/advice-for-someone-seeking-a-spiritual-guide.html\" \/>\n<meta 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