The first agreement is that you will not, under any circumstances, treat me, the author, as your teacher, your guru, your mentor, your guide, or a superior individual to you in any way.

For all intents and purposes of this book, I am simply the origin of words that appear on this page, and you shall do your best not to identify those words with me as a human being. That is to say, if you like something, you should refrain from judging me positively for having written those words. Similarly, if you disagree with something or don’t like a certain portion of the text, you should not jump to judgment of the individual who is me. This last part, naturally, is very convenient for me, but hey, it’s my book, and your life is yours.

That said, there is a point to this, which I will immediately explain.

Let’s jump into the nitty-gritty detail of why one should not have a Guru (although there are very valid reasons to have one too, which we may or may not explore in future parts of this book, or in a chat/call, should you want to have a call with me).

A Guru Is An Escape Mechanism

When you decide that someone else is your superior - guide, mentor, or a guru - you are most often tricking yourself and losing the possibility to generate wisdom.

If your goal is to create a million-dollar business, you would probably turn to a startup mentor at some point and ask them for advice. They might tell you something quite specific, such as: “In order to fundraise successfully, you need to put all of your due diligence documents into a Google Drive folder in advance, have two different pitch decks (one for getting the meeting, and one for sharing after the meeting), make a list of 200 potential investors, set deadlines for your fundraising period and e-mail everyone within two weeks.”

If you follow this advice and get funding, you will know that it is not truly your own being that achieved this result, but that the laurels belong to your mentor (especially if they also introduced some of the investors).

On the other hand, if you follow the advice and do not raise funding, you can easily brush off your “misfortune” to bad advice from your mentor.

Either way, what you are doing is avoiding responsibility for both the potential success and the potential failure for your goal, but generally speaking, for your life. It gives you a chance to proudly say: “It’s not me.”.

Therefore, many of us run for mentor to mentor, guru to guru, seeking the “right one” that will tell you exactly what you want to hear, and give you the perfect opportunity to use them as a scapegoat for your life. Unfortunately, many mentors and guides in the modern world are all too happy to provide such a service and will not punish you for using them this way. If you encounter such a person, do not take them as your guide, and seek someone who will challenge you instead.

A Guide Disables Critical Thinking

Luckily for me, I have always treated my teachers with a grain of salt, which was a huge pain point for my parents. At some point, I filed a complaint against my history teacher for being biased and not awarding me full points when she marked a single mistake on my exam, claiming, “There must always be room for improvement”. Another time, I went to the head of the Economics department, arguing that the examiner did not understand my arguments in economics and misunderstood my ideas, and thus gave me too low a grade. Recently, I was hugely suspicious of my tea ceremony master, which forced me to look for other paths in my tea journey.

Not sure how my parents managed to install this quirk, but it helped me to have a thirst for knowledge and forced me to look for wisdom on my own. However, it also prevented me from learning from some of the greatest minds that were available to me, as it was too easy for me to dismiss them.

That said, when you trust another fully, you often stop yourself from approaching the situation from a critical perspective and can easily fall victim to dogma and tradition.

There is an old story about a family, where the lady of the house always cooked the most delicious turkey for dinner, but she also did something very strange - she cut the left and right sides of the turkey away entirely and disposed of the extra meat. The husband got very curious and asked her why she did it. Her reply was that she learned the recipe from her mother, and she always did it this way. The husband went to his mother-in-law and asked her about the recipe, but she said that she learned it from her own mother, and also simply followed the recipe. Luckily, the old lady was still alive, and the husband came to see her, and asked about the recipe and why the two sides had to be thrown away. The old lady looked at him, as if it were the dumbest question that had ever been bestowed upon her, and replied: “Oh, sonny, it was such a long time ago. We were poor, and our oven was simply too small for the whole turkey.”

The moral of the story is that when you trust a source too much, you stop thinking for yourself. We don’t want that, and therefore, I ask you to think critically, but also creatively, throughout the process of reading this book.

Wisdom Generated By Others Is Not Yours

Sometimes, we encounter true wisdom. This wisdom may come from a book, a lecture, a quote, a live experience with an enlightened or simply wise being.

Here are a few examples that come to “mind”:

“You are involved by-and-large in a very strange business system, which divides your day into work and play. Work is something that everybody does and you get paid to do it because nobody could care less about doing it. In other words, it is so abominable and boring that you can get paid for doing it.” - Alan Watts

“To change man, the audience by which he judges himself must be changed. A man is defined by his audience: by the people, institutions, authors, magazines, movie heroes, philosophers by whom he pictures himself being cheered and booed.”

―Luke Rhinehart,The Dice Man

All wisdom, and all change begins within the realm of the body. When we live in the world of the mind, we are not in touch with wisdom. To access the deeper fabrics of the universe, you must be in touch with your body first and foremost. It is the glue. - Unknown Writer

You have just read three quotes that encapsulate a #$#%hole of wisdom. Do you feel like thanks to reading them, your life will change as of tomorrow?

Will Alan Watt’s quote make you go to your boss and throw the pink slip in his face? Or perhaps, when you read The Dice Man, you will decide to change your whole social circle and to stop judging yourself so harshly? Finally, maybe thanks to our ghost writer, you will pick up daily meditation or book your Vipassana retreat? Well, I am sorry for being skeptical, but I highly doubt it.

On the other hand, I strongly remember the feeling with which I realized that the world and other people don’t have a personal vendetta for me, and that if I simply add the words “For Me” at the end of what others are telling me, I will not feel as offended. This was a novel idea that came to me, and to this day, it is a practical part of my life.

Similarly, I remember the moment I realized that if I followed the meditation instructions of different schools and teachers, I would limit myself from exploring what meditation means for me personally. To this day, I meditate and explore, experiment and try to find my own individual techniques.

Unfortunately, I can guarantee you that if someone told me to explore meditation creatively, or to not be offended by what others say, I would agree with them, and continue on my merry way to ignore their wise advice about five minutes hence.

Therefore, we need to constantly look for wisdom that is not simply passed onto us from others, but the wisdom that comes from within.

Having a Supreme Authority Is Irresponsible

Too harsh? Perhaps, if we treat the word within its accustomed framework. Should we look at it literally - “an inability to respond”, then we might just be stating the obvious.

When one looks up to a higher authority for an answer, one is simply saying that they themselves are unable to respond to the challenge before them and that they require someone else to do so in their stead.

Therefore, over-reliance on a “higher source” (your thinking is the only thing that makes it ‘higher’) is bound to lead to trouble, inaction, or action that you might ‘regret’ later on.

It is thus logical to take responsibility and to act out of your own accord.

How To Use A Mentor Or A Guide

Now, this is not to say that reading books or talking to exceptional individuals is a waste of time. If I had not listened to hundreds of hours of Alan Watts, I would not be where I am today. If I did not spend countless days with my martial arts Sifu, my body would be a wreck by now, although sometimes, after a few fights, it does feel like a wreck anyhow. If I did not look for teachers all the time, I would have very little to talk about (See, how I refrained from using the word ‘teach’ there?)

Everything in life has a flipside. If you proudly try to make your own path, you will most likely make thousands of mistakes you could have avoided if only you had talked to some people who have already walked this path before you.

The trick is not to simply take their world for it, but to constantly think creatively about how you can build on top of what they have achieved, or about what they may have missed, or to simply let them be, what I call - ‘creative noise generators’.

Our brain is a magnificent machine that is constantly looking for patterns. These patterns, once formed, help us to create action and wisdom. However, it is not always easy for us to create these patterns without some input. This is where all of the people, books, and other tools come in.

When talking to mentors, reading books, if you are very diligent, and if you are consciously looking for improvement and wisdom, you will find it. Moreover, you will not just find the wisdom in what you are experiencing, but your mind will create its own wisdom, and that is the gold that is infinitely precious.

Therefore, the way to use this book, a mentor, or a movie is to try to focus on what your brain is generating ‘between-the-lines’, so to speak. In order to do that, we need to be aware of what exactly the brain is doing. This is where the next agreement comes in.