We lean on crutches, afraid to take a single step on our own. The truth is pouring into us, but freezes as it makes contact.
Understanding is not produced through authority, tradition, ritual, teachers, personal rigidity, exclusivity, rewards, or superficiality. It is the opposite of all these. We do not need these crutches. By fearlessly renouncing these inessential and divisive methods of belief, we reach the starting point of understanding. Understanding begins with humility.

External or indirect transmission

Authority
Authority is arbitrary self-justification. It appeals to esoteric sources of knowledge. It raises itself up by suppressing others. It creates followers and masses. The idea that is propounded may be true, but this makes little difference. It is impossible to help coercively: the act of submission depresses the active, probing mind; it denigrates the illimitable human potential.
Truth stands entirely on its own, validated with its own meaning and insight—and so should human beings.

Tradition and ritual
Tradition and custom is the repetition of experiences and ideas. Ritual and ceremony is the re-enactment or acting out of what was done before. It feels good, it establishes community, it gives something to do. It may provide a reminder of insights or discoveries, but it is not the thing itself.
Is there any value in tradition? It is better to find out for oneself, directly, but we all need help and guidance at times. By acting, one becomes. It is possible to breathe life into a ritual: but in that case it’s not the ritual which has life. The life is what you bring to it, and its origin is elsewhere.

Teaching and leading
Teaching is flawed: this universal practice is at the heart of misunderstanding. Regardless of their intent, teachers dominate the will of their students, who are forced to submit. They wield knowledge, authority, and power.
There’s a place for teaching, in the dissemination of technical knowledge, and in childhood, before students are capable of autonomy. We can help each other, by exploring truth together; but it is not possible to teach matters of fundamental importance, and any attempt to do so is likely to have a deleterious effect.
Leading in general is an unnecessary and injurious method and aspiration. It involves hierarchy, control, and domination. It enforces singularity of perspective. Leaders speak, and others listen; they order, and others follow. Where there’s leaders, there’s followers.
Learning begins when teaching and leading ends: in utter freedom, in fearless commitment to seeing truth, without any hierarchy of pre-ordained knowledge.

Superficiality: Platitudes, pretense, cleverness

There are numerous forms of superficiality: these are the art forms of the modern age. Platitudes substitute the trivial for direct challenges about reality. Pretense is the trickery of forms, the acting out of recognized ideals: underneath, and inside, authentic being lies in wait. Cleverness is agility of mind, the manipulation of ideas, the creation of pleasing images: it turns on its own image: it wants to elevate itself, not to be elevated.
Saying it does not bring it into being. Acting it out does not make it so. Almost any theory, or claim about solutions; almost any reference to God, or other transcendent idea: imagination and wishful thinking trumps reality. Superficiality gestures and points; depth reveals and delivers.

Personal limitations: Intellectuality and sentimentality

Intellectuality is the top-heavy attempt to resolve problems with mind alone. Sentimentality is content with the feeling of the thing, rather than the thing itself. The excessive use of reason, and self-indulgent feeling, are both fragmentary means of perception.

Limited interest: Exclusivity, rewards, pleasure

The purification of one’s own motive is the starting point for understanding. Understanding is impossible if there is weakness of commitment, narrowness of interest, and unwillingness to sacrifice.
Exclusivity narrows one’s focus to those with whom one agrees or is comfortable, and ignores or renounces others. But when the shell is pierced, and the light of the whole world shines in, the little rewards of self-aggrandizement dry up. For a time, the passionate commitment to authenticity is likely to produce suffering. In our lukewarm world of mediocre pleasures, this is not such a great price to pay.