What is a guru? The term comes from Hinduism or Buddhism and later from Sikh religion who assign the term to first ten teachers. A guru name is attributed to a spiritual teacher also called a master who helps his followers to initiate into spirituality. In our times most of the gurus are nothing but charlatans who are attracted to power and material possessions. Finding an authentic guru is difficult. Those charlatans have realized that having an old appearance with long beards and long hair, speaking slowly and with pauses, wearing traditional Indian clothes make them look authentic. In reality, they want money and as many followers as possible to inflate their egos. The sad part is that people fall for it. They become followers and worship that individual as a God. To make it clear, the concept of God in that sense will never be found in a human. If we ever accept that attribute, we deviate from our purpose, and we fall into sin.
However, do we even need a Guru in our spiritual awakening process? Especially in western society, we may not have time to find or follow a guru. We can find teachers all over the world through the internet, and we must go with our truth. When listening to someone or reading a book, we can right away acknowledge what is resonating with us and go with it. If we feel Jesus is our teacher we follow his principles and we move forward. If we resonate more with Buddha or Lao-Tzu, we listen to them. However, at some point, we may adopt all of them as our teachers because every single one has wisdom that we can acknowledge. We can find so much wisdom in almost any religions or spiritual practices. We only need to look at life with an open mind and the Universe will adjust to our needs. We see the path that we want to follow, and we would know that is the right one.
Through meditation and prayers, God will direct us to the right reading or the right person that will guide us. How many times that happen and we were looking at it as it is a coincidence? Everything is arranged for us in one direction or another. What we have to do is to be ourselves and think for ourselves. Doing so, we break the habit of laziness and become spiritually active and independent. With or without a guru we become enlightened if that is our will.