The guru is really your own higher self

The greatest pain (that I have experienced) is of separation and disconnection.
Whenever a person is connected, one can see a beehive around them, i.e. all the people attracted to that connection to source energy.
Everyone needs/longs for this connection to live/survive/thrive, and therefore everyone seeks this, they are drawn to all the conduits that transmit the source power.
So when a person gets firmly connected, his extent of connection determines the attraction gravity he/she sets up.
The more powerful their connection, the larger their energetic influence, and more the people sitting in their shadow and gravity.

The opposite is seen, when there is total disconnection, the energy/power then of the person is even smaller than their own body, they simply struggle to survive, hold their own coherence.
In transformation, one can be completely reduced to pulp approaching a total chaos of the creative force (it depends on the extent of transformation that is happening).
Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, Vivekananda, Lao Tzu and all the greatest spiritual teachers in history have had enormous connection to source power.

But the degree of connection visible is only the smaller part of the truth.
Don’t judge a work in its unfinished state, esp. when it has been dismantled totally into an incoherent chaotic pulp.
It only appears like there is no connection, but one is closer to the light than ever before and one is being DONE in its image. Being transformed, being resurrected, being remade.
The total unknowing, dark night of the soul where you are blinded (none of your instruments help in this terrain), makes you understand that it is not by your efforts (what you call ‘you’) that this transformation is happening.
Infact ‘you’ yourself are being remade by a higher power.
Really, everyone is looking for a conduit to grace/god/divine/…
When your longing is deep enough, it eventually(in time, as a journey) carries you to the greatest connection/wisdom.
Deeper the longing = Greater the transformation = Greater the power/wisdom/vision/inclusion = Greater the connection = Greater the transcendence.
The longing is the potential energy that will unfold into kinetic transformation/manifestation.
It is a process of ENFOLDMENT(longing, potential, seed sprouting) -> UNFOLDMENT(actualization, kinetic, tree becoming).
All desires are potentials, and their flowering are the trees.
It is from the ground of filth that the beauty of a tree emerges.
Both filth and beauty have their divine purpose and go together.

The outer guru, is a catalyst, the hope, the potential coming/appearing, the becoming, in manifest form.
When you meet your guru, you see your own potential in its manifest state.
Your recognition of the guru, is your inner recognition of your own higher self and higher potential/possibility.
That recognition of your own higher potential (projected as the outer guru) results in the surrender/devotion that follows.

All manifest is a projection of the inner experience.
The guru is yourself, none other than your own higher self appearing to you as the guru.
Your recognition of the guru, is your recognition of your own higher self/possibility/your own higher potential.
And the surrender/devotion/work that follows is the projection of your own higher self consuming/taking you/transforming you/absorbing you into itself.