Finding Real Wisdom in an Age of Fake Gurus

3 Ways to Find the Best Teachers

The ancient Jewish sages said every person, should "Find for yourself a teacher, and acquire for yourself a friend." A truly transformative teacher often becomes a close friend. That has been true in my experience, as it has for so many others.

But experiences over the last year and a half have led me to rethink this idea. Why? Not because my teachers don't make good friends. It's simply because we have now have access to so many more teachers. 

With YouTube, podcasts and billions of websites, we can find teachers on anything and everything. And we will probably never meet many of them. But they can still transform us.

So now I interpret this text differently: Find for yourself a teacher who you know would make a good friend. We may not meet all of our teachers. But the best teachers transform our lives in the way good friends do.

How do you find great teachers? It's much harder than it sounds because on YouTube or Facebook, the most extreme and controversial voices get the most attention.

We can be easily misled by self-proclaimed experts and teachers whose greatest skill is marketing themselves.

Where are the truly great teachers, the one would call friends? How do we distinguish the true from the false, the real from the fake?

We can find them by asking three key questions. Do their words resonate? Do their lives model the values I uphold? And have their teachings been tested by time-tested and battle-hardened?

Resonance

Words resonate with us when they speak to our needs and values. People resonate with us when we feel they understand us. Think of great teachers you had as children or adults. They got you. They didn't speak down to you. They spoke directly to you.

There's an eighteenth-century Jewish story about a group of students who studied with a famous rabbi known the Baal Shem Tov. They had just finished class and were talking amongst themselves.

One of them said to others, "I'm sorry, my friends. You must have been so bored today because the Rebbe was speaking directly to me." "No, he wasn't," another student said, "Didn't you hear him? He was talking right to me." "What?" another student said. "He was talking only to me."

That's what a great teacher does. They speak to our uniquely felt needs and dreams.

Model

Many coaches say the quickest way to success is to find someone who is doing what you want to do, and then do what they did. I think this approach oversimplifies the path to real success, which requires creativity and knowing your unique gifts and skills.

At the same time, role models are indispensable because they remind us of the purpose of learning . We learn not to cram our brains with knowledge. We learn to become nobler and happier human beings. We learn so we can contribute to the world and find a measure of contentment living in it.

A teacher who models this state of being can speak more persuasively to us.

The late great Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel captured this truth when he said the world is not in need of more text-books. It is in need of more text-people.

Time-tested

In the 1970s comedian Flip Wilson had a comedy variety that often featured a fake pastor named Reverend Leroy. He led the "Church of What's Happening Now."

Reverend Leroy was always trying to make the church feel relevant by using contemporary language and music. The audience laughed at his unrelenting focus on doing what was popular and cool rather than what was consistent and faithful. His faith was in the new and untested rather than the tried and true.

Unfortunately, we see the same phenomenon in spiritual, economic, and intellectual life today. We look for the newest technique or trick or discovery. We are eager for latest gadget or hottest new author.

But real wisdom is test-tested. It survives because it works. That's why I wrote the book The Happiness Prayer based on a 2500-year-old Jewish prayer for a meaningful life. The lessons and actions prescribed in the prayer have sustained the Jewish people over the last 2500 years.

We live in an extraordinary time where we can access the best teachers in whatever fields interest us. You can listen to meditation lessons from Joseph Goldstein and Tara Brach. You can study Talmud virtually with leading rabbis in Israel. You can improve your tennis game with instructions from the best coaches in the world.

It is an amazing time to be alive. But it is also a dangerous time because we have so many choices. We find it hard to know who to trust, and our attention gets caught up in the loudest and most extreme voices. But God created us with internal tools to find the teachers who can transform us.

This teaching from the Buddhist tradition highlights the reality of those inner tools. "The teacher arrives," the Buddha taught, "when the student is ready."  We are ready when we we know what resonates and what works.

Who are your greatest teachers?