A great teacher will do two things for you: give you a living teaching, and awaken your spirit. A living teaching, when practised obsessively, seems to take on a life of its own, leading a merry dance along a seemingly tortuous path, which, when viewed in retrospect, is seen to be relatively direct. Awakening your spirit is very much a collaborative effort – the teacher piques your fascination to such a degree that your attention can go nowhere else and you begin to realise that the work is all there is. You are totally immersed in a reality entirely outside the bourgeois bubble. You have broken free into a world of danger and intensity and you need all the help you can get. Spirit to the rescue.