A Spiritual Teacher IS…
Even with such a person universally acknowledged as a teacher, my perspective is that instruction is offered most often because it is what ‘students’ expect/demand. It is like getting someone about to panic to focus on your moving finger—a hypnotic induction to calm, allowing the student to return to a natural state of his or her own knowledge/wisdom.
It is not the mystic’s perspective that changes our reality, but experiencing their reality that changes our perspective.
The real change comes about within us from spending time in the higher vibrational field of a true teacher…either directly in their presence or indirectly in the rhythm of their teaching (as a mantra may introduce peacefulness in meditation). They have seen the ‘face’ of the Absolute, they remember it, and the memory of that experience radiates from them—within or without word. One way or another, a true teacher holds open a sacred, safe place for the student to explore and lay claim to their own truth. A teacher reawakens one to the resonance of the Absolute so that the student can–on their own–find their way home to the Absolute, to their true Self.
A teacher, or at least a skilled teacher, is perceptive enough to comprehend the information most needed by the student, intelligent enough to purposely construct the means of the instruction, adept enough to elicit the learning without being intrusive on the student’s experience, and wise enough to realize he or she was led in the process by the spirit of the student.
A true teacher does not give so much of self or knowledge, but reintroduce the student to themselves, to their truest nature.
