If it fails to do that, the concept is useless. Hence, a concept is not to be clung to if it does not work. A common mistake among spiritual seekers is to regard concepts as truth itself, and thus to cling to them. This is like worshipping the finger rather than looking at what it is pointing towards. Different spiritual teachers use different concepts, but always for the same purpose.
Acceptability usually means that the concepts agree with the seeker s intuition and experience.
However, as a seeker matures, the concepts used by a teacher may be less and less useful for disidentification. Indeed, they can even begin to generate more suffering than they relieve, because they can begin to produce more and more conflicts with the seeker s intuition and experience. In such cases, the seeker scarcely needs to be told to abandon the teacher. However, this can be easier said than done if the seeker has developed a strong personal relationship with the teacher, or if the seeker is deluded by the teacher into thinking that staying with him or her is the only way to salvation. This kind of delusion is responsible for the many stories of seekers having clung to a teacher long after the teacher s usefulness has faded.