What Your Guru Forgot to Tell You

Here's something that complicates the narrative: my current teacher actually told me.

"Verify everything," he said. "Don't take my word for it. Test it against your own experience. If it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work — no matter who said it."

I've heard him say this dozens of times over the past twenty years. It's not hidden wisdom. It's not the secret teaching you get after you've proven your devotion. It's right there, in the open, from day one.

And yet.

Look around any meditation hall, any spiritual community, any self-help circle. Count how many people are actually verifying versus how many are just... trusting. Absorbing. Nodding along.

The ratio is not encouraging.

Which raises an uncomfortable question: what if the problem isn't that your guru forgot to tell you? What if the problem is that you forgot to listen?

Two Systems, Two Approaches

I've practiced in two different spiritual traditions over thirty years. The contrast taught me something I couldn't have learned any other way.

The first system — the one I spent seven years in during my twenties — never explicitly told me to verify anything. The emphasis was on trust. On surrender. On the assumption that the teacher knew things I couldn't yet understand, and my job was to follow until understanding came.

It didn't come. What came instead was a slow erosion of my own judgment, a gradual outsourcing of my thinking to someone else's certainty. By year seven, I'd stopped asking questions — not because they were forbidden, but because questioning didn't occur to me anymore.

When I left, I promised myself: never again. Next time, I'd keep my eyes open.

The second system — the one I've been practicing for over twenty years now — said something different from the start. "Don't believe anything just because I said it. Verify. Test. Make it yours or leave it."

Same invitation to learn. Completely different relationship with authority.

And here's what surprised me: even with explicit permission to question, even with a teacher who actively encouraged verification, most people in the community still don't do it.

They hear "verify everything" and nod respectfully. Then they go right back to trusting without testing. Following without questioning. Absorbing without examining.

Why?

The Comfort of Certainty

Here's my theory, after watching this pattern for two decades:

Verification is work. Trust is rest.

When you verify, you have to think. You have to hold ideas provisionally, test them against your experience, notice when they don't quite fit. You have to tolerate uncertainty while you figure things out. You have to accept that you might be wrong — about the teaching, about your interpretation, about your own perceptions.

When you trust, you just... trust. Someone else has done the thinking. Someone else holds the certainty. Your job is to receive, not evaluate. It's cognitively easier. Emotionally simpler. Psychologically restful.

Research on cognitive load supports this: our brains are wired to conserve energy, and outsourcing judgment to authorities is one way we do that.¹ It's not stupidity — it's efficiency. A useful shortcut most of the time.

The problem is that spiritual and personal development aren't "most of the time." They're exactly the domains where outsourced judgment fails. Because what works for someone else might not work for you. Because the teacher's path isn't your path. Because the whole point is to develop your discernment, not to borrow someone else's.

"The most seductive thing about gurus isn't their wisdom. It's the relief of not having to figure things out yourself. I know because I've felt that relief — and I know what it cost me."

The Responsibility Shift

Here's what changed when I moved from a system that didn't encourage verification to one that did:

The responsibility landed squarely on me.

In the first system, if something didn't work, I could blame the teaching. Or wonder if I was doing it wrong. Or assume I wasn't advanced enough yet. The locus of control was external — success or failure depended on forces outside myself.

In the second system, the teacher said: "Here are tools. Test them. Keep what works. Discard what doesn't. Your development is your responsibility."

No excuses. No one to blame. If I wasn't growing, it wasn't because the teaching was flawed — it was because I wasn't doing the work.

That's terrifying, if you think about it.

It means you can't hide behind the system. Can't wait for the teacher to fix you. Can't assume that more time, more practice, more devotion will eventually produce the transformation you're looking for.

It means the transformation is your job. The teacher can point, but you have to walk.

I think this is why most people don't verify, even when they're told to. Because verification leads to responsibility. And responsibility means there's no one else to blame if things don't work.

Easier to keep trusting. Easier to keep hoping. Easier to stay on the comfortable side of the equation where someone else holds the answers.

What Verification Actually Looks Like

Since we're talking about something most people don't do, let me be specific about what doing it looks like.

Verification isn't skepticism. It's not walking into a teaching with your arms crossed, looking for flaws. That's just another way of not engaging.

Verification is testing. The teacher says: "This practice will help you X." You try the practice. You notice: does it help with X? Does it do something else? Does it do nothing? You pay attention to your actual experience, not to what you're supposed to experience.

Psychologists call this "experiential learning" — the process of making meaning from direct experience rather than abstract instruction.² It's how adults actually learn best: not by being told, but by doing and reflecting.

Verification is asking questions. Not hostile questions. Genuine ones. "This part doesn't match my experience — am I missing something, or does the teaching not apply in my case?" Good teachers welcome this. They'd rather you understand than agree.

Verification is noticing dissonance. When something the teacher says doesn't sit right, you don't immediately assume you're wrong. You hold both possibilities: maybe you're missing something, or maybe this particular teaching isn't accurate. You stay curious rather than collapsing into either certainty.

Verification is taking your own experience seriously. This is the hard part. We're trained to distrust ourselves, to assume that the expert knows better. And sometimes they do. But your experience is data too — valid data, worth including in the evaluation.

"Verification isn't about proving the teacher wrong. It's about proving the teaching right — in your own life, through your own experience. That's the only proof that matters."

The Failure Mode I Keep Seeing

After twenty years in a community that explicitly encourages verification, here's the pattern I've watched repeat:

Someone joins. They hear "verify everything." They nod.

Then they start practicing. Things go well — or not well — and either way, they don't really examine why. They assume the practice is working because the teacher said it would, or they assume it's not working because they're not doing it right.

Years pass. They're still practicing. Still trusting. Still not testing.

When you ask them about specific aspects of the teaching — why this technique, why this approach, what have you noticed — they often can't answer from experience. They can only repeat what they've been told.

This isn't failure of intelligence. These are smart people. It's failure of engagement. They're present but not participating. Following but not learning. Absorbing but not digesting.

And here's the thing: you can spend decades like this. You can be the most devoted student in the room and still be essentially passive. Devotion and discernment aren't the same thing.

The system told them to verify. They chose not to. And the system can't force them — that's not how development works.

Why This Matters

You might be thinking: so what? If people want to trust instead of verify, that's their choice.

True. But there are consequences.

Consequence one: You don't actually learn. You accumulate information without understanding. Techniques without mastery. Years of practice without proportional growth. I've met people with thirty years of meditation experience who seem no more developed than when they started — because they never engaged deeply enough to actually change.

Consequence two: You become dependent. If your growth depends on the teacher's guidance rather than your own discernment, what happens when the teacher isn't available? When they die, or move, or turn out to be less wise than you thought? You're left without the internal resources you should have been building all along.

Consequence three: You're vulnerable to manipulation. Not all teachers are trustworthy. Not all systems are healthy. Verification is your protection — the practice of checking what you're told against what you experience. Without it, you're relying entirely on luck: hoping you've chosen a good teacher, a good system, a good community. That's not a strategy. That's a gamble.

Research on cult dynamics shows that the single biggest protective factor is the maintenance of critical thinking.³ People who keep questioning, who keep evaluating, who keep trusting their own perceptions — they're the ones who notice when something's wrong and have the resources to leave.

What I'd Say Now

If I could go back to my younger self — the one who spent seven years in a system that never encouraged verification — I wouldn't say "don't trust teachers." I'd say:

Trust AND verify.

These aren't opposites. You can respect a teacher deeply and still test what they say. You can commit to a practice fully and still notice when something doesn't work. You can belong to a community wholeheartedly and still maintain your own judgment.

In fact, that combination — trust plus verification — is the only healthy relationship with any teaching. Pure trust becomes dependence. Pure skepticism prevents learning. You need both.

And to the people who are in systems that DO encourage verification — who've been told, explicitly, "test everything" — I'd say:

Are you actually doing it?

Or are you nodding along while quietly outsourcing your judgment to the teacher anyway? Are you testing your experience or just trusting the framework? Are you developing your discernment or just following instructions?

The invitation to verify is just that — an invitation. You still have to accept it. You still have to do the work. The teacher can give you permission, but they can't make you think.

That part's on you. Always was. Always will be.

For You

Here's the uncomfortable truth this article is pointing toward:

Your development is your responsibility.

Not your teacher's. Not your system's. Not your community's. Yours.

Good teachers know this. They offer tools, not answers. They invite testing, not trust. They want you to outgrow your need for them — that's the whole point.

But even the best teacher can't make you engage. Can't make you verify. Can't make you take your own experience seriously.

So the question isn't "what did your guru forget to tell you?"

The question is: "What have you forgotten to do?"

Because the instruction is probably there, if you listen. The permission is probably granted, if you pay attention. The invitation to think for yourself is probably sitting right in front of you, waiting to be accepted.

What's missing isn't the teaching.

What's missing is your response.

~ Soren Ross

Notes & References

¹ Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kahneman's research on cognitive ease explains why we default to trusting authorities — it requires less mental effort than independent evaluation.

² Kolb, D.A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Prentice Hall. This foundational work on adult learning shows that genuine understanding comes from testing ideas against direct experience.

³ Singer, M.T. & Lalich, J. (1995). Cults in Our Midst. Jossey-Bass. Research on cult dynamics consistently shows that maintained critical thinking is the primary protective factor against manipulation.