How do I find a teacher or community without regretting it?
You want people to practise with, and a guide worth trusting. You are also aware of what can go wrong in exactly this search, and that wariness has kept you alone longer than you meant.
You want a teacher or a community and you are right to be careful. The search has real hazards, and caution has already cost you years, so let us make it practical rather than anxious. First, judge by the students, not the teacher. Everyone is impressive in front. Look at the people who have been there five years: are they more free, more honest, easier to be around? Or smaller, more anxious, more certain? That is the real report. Second, ask what happens when someone leaves. A tradition confident in itself lets people go without punishment. Watch for what is said about those who left. Third, test whether questions are welcome, and then whether hard ones are. Almost anywhere allows questions. Fewer allow the question that threatens the arrangement. Fourth, keep something outside — a friend, a practice, a part of your life the group does not touch. Anything that asks you to sever the outside is telling you what it is. Fifth, go slowly, and let a season pass before you commit anything. What is true will still be true in six months. Who has been there five years, and how are they?
What changes unlock by starting
- You have a way to assess that does not rest on how impressive the front is.
- How leaving is treated becomes a thing you check early.
- You can tell tolerated questions from welcome ones.
- You keep an outside, which is what makes leaving possible if you need to.