On "correcting" your Spiritual Teacher

On "correcting" your Spiritual Teacher.

Not many people are blessed to have a Spiritual Teacher. I am not talking about a new age workshop mogul.  More in the Eastern Tradition, a Spiritual Teacher is one chosen, not self-chosen, to take on the challenge of helping others to find balance. Balance between logic and intuition, Earth and Heaven, ego and ego-less, always seeing an opening for a serious student to take one more step towards his/her personal cultivation and evolution.  Bringing a person into balance means first getting him/her unstuck from his/her original position. One needs to empty the cup to then be willing and able to seek a new balance point. Otherwise one stays stuck, feeling safe, preferring the known no matter how bad it is to the fear of the unknown, the new balance point.  A Teacher will need to mix it up to confound your stuck-ness, to trick or seduce the left brain or simply wear it out before you will be able to receive something so new, you cannot yet even comprehend it, you cannot ask to learn about it because you don’t know it exists.  Zen Koans fulfill this purpose, however in the West you will not find anyone willing to live in or with that kind of contemplation.  What a Teacher must do is a bit like distracting a child so you can give a shot without a fight. The new material is not a shot at all, but the resistance and the fighting and the fear of what might be coming is like that of a child.  In biology an organism fights to stay the same, and it is only stress that forces the seed to grow, the fruit or nuts to drop off the tree.  So it is with Spiritual growth.  If you stay on a Path, you will  become accustomed to the process of destruction of current circumstances or beliefs, release, and then growth.

There is a saying in 12 Step meetings: Take the best and leave the rest. What this means is keep the focus on your own recovery and do not get sidetracked into analyzing and criticizing what you hear and learn in meetings. Be selfish and fully consume what works for you and let the rest go, it is not your concern whether or not the meeting is going perfectly, and it is not your job to “help” others by making “brilliant” observations. Your job in recovery is YOU. In the West, students spend lots of time analyzing, criticizing, and unconsciously (and sometimes consciously) to “forward” some imaginary “career” goal in the student’s mind and therefore  “competing” with their Teacher. They will compare notes on what was said, how it was said, how it could have been said “better”, what it must mean about the Teacher, speculations on the Teacher’s shortcomings or even personal life are made and what that might mean to the student as to whether or not to consider what the Teacher is teaching. To me, this is like four year olds getting together to discuss how well their parents are parenting.  This is not condescension. I am still a student myself.  It is not to say that doing this is “wrong”, simply that it is a diversion. You are on a Path. Your job and focus as a student is to BE a student and learn all you can, whether or not the Teacher is “good” or “perfect”.  Focusing on whether or not you think your Teacher is “good” (or “ advanced” as new agers like to boast) or needs improvement and how those improvements should be made is a diversion from your own work, a diversion in order to not feel uncomfortable feelings.  It can also be the ego needing to feel “better than” and therefore less vulnerable. As a professor I always noticed and stated that I have seen great students come out of mediocre or even lousy schools, and horrible students graduating from prestigious institutions. How is that? It is because true learning comes from the student. One can never be forced to learn. One can only be offered the learning, and then you as a student have to consume it, pursue it, immerse yourself in it, keep your focus on your own learning instead of focusing on the Teacher’s teaching style, personal life and other speculations.  Is it wrong to do this? No. It is simply a waste of your time and off topic, unless there is of course sexual abuse or cult manipulations going on.  Will you still do it? Probably.  It seems to be human nature, at least in the West.

Learning as a Spiritual student is completely different than Western school education which teaches only to two learning styles out of over 11 multiple intelligence styles psychological research has identified. This means if you are a Westerner, you will need to “unlearn” how you have been taught to learn for over a decade, and for some over two or three decades of you have graduate degrees and post graduate work. That unlearning is necessary to make room for Spiritual learning. Unlearning does not mean throwing out what you have learned so far, it means empty the cup, put what you have learned into your  mental library, so you can make room to receive. Even this concept, which takes the cultivation of Yin energy, is foreign to Westerners and therefore reading about it here in a very short article (but even if this were a book) makes it impossible to truly grasp. It is like explaining a spiritual orgasm in a book and thinking you have any idea at all what that is, what it will feel like and all the levels you will be affected emotionally, energetically, mentally, physically. It is better to simply say to all of this, “I don’t know” and “We’ll see”. And then enter the adventure of pure discovery, pure learning of something you absolutely cannot conceive of in your current state of development.

“If I blindly follow a Spiritual Teacher aren’t I leaving myself open to becoming seduced into a cult?”  Yes. Just like blindly following the rules and regulations of Western style education makes you susceptible to becoming a ”sheeple”, perfect fodder for fascism, to blindly follow a dictator as you have been educated to do as you are told, follow orders, comply, do not stand out, do not question.  Everything in life can be taken to an extreme and extremes can lead to disastrous consequences.  You have to find both your balance and trust in balance in all things in life: love, parenting, friendship, being an athlete, dieting, etc.  All can be taken to unhealthy extremes and you can also dodge the work needed to successfully take on the challenges of life by being fearful and/or lazy, two extremes.  Thinking/not thinking, too much logic/too much airy fairy if it is meant to be it will happen, obsessive dieting/not taking care of yourself at all, on it goes. Life is an endless series of finding balance in all things. Not grey boring numbed out bland in the middle balance, the balance to take on the double black diamond slopes of back country skiing should that be fun for you, the balance to be able to write a research paper and then let go enough to astral travel and talk to your living Grandmother. Balance is exciting. It gives you an unlimited horizon, the capability to fly without crashing, swim without drowning. You can stretch your ability to balance beyond your imagination.  With extremes however, you will crash. That is guaranteed.  Why? Because life is fluid and ever changing like the art of balance, and extremes are rigid and one sided. If you pursue or get lost in extremes, life will force you to find balance. Better to seek balance rather than have it seek you.

 A Spiritual Teacher has to get past your Western education as well as a cultural norm that worships extremes. You need to be woken up and shaken up just to start on a Path, and immediately encouraged and coddled so you don’t run screaming in fear, or you need to be reined in as you run towards some fantasy goal (Westerners are always taught to pursue goals) that you will now channel Jesus or bring Lazarus back from the dead with your newly discovered “healing touch”. From the second you begin working  with a Spiritual Teacher you will run like a trapped mouse from one extreme to another, from  “I am amazing” to “I suck”.  As you move like a ping pong ball, your Teacher will be your partner meeting your moves and counter moves with skill. And to you, this will look like contradictions, inconsistencies.  How else can you interpret it? You cannot see what you are doing, and you have no idea how to get your own self out of the game of avoidance, bouncing from extreme to extreme.  Even if you “hang out” with your True Teacher, the Teaching will still be on.  It is the nature of this tradition. You might think you are being friends and hearing “special stories” (so you will boast to your friends) but I will counsel you to not tell yourself that story.  

An Eastern Teacher is consistently Guiding when around students (even when “hanging out”) because his/her connection to Spirit is strongly integrated and is “on duty” whenever around students. In the Eastern tradition, learning is not confined to the classroom, in fact the “big stuff” never happens in the classroom. Classes open the door and the miracles occur outside of the classroom, in epiphanies, in life encounters, including spending “down time” with a Teacher. This is also true with Indigenous Shamans and Medicine People. The magic is always present. In my 40 plus years of study I have been with, lived with and traveled with people from all of these Paths. If you choose to look at your time with them as mundane, if you choose to analyze them or your experiences with them from your human left brain insecure ego self, you will lose all the beautiful and subtle learnings and gifts you get from a Teacher even when casually “hanging” with one.  You will “gain” things to gossip about, analyze, criticize etc. All the goodies that keep you from your Path, your growth, even your feelings because your attention is now on what brilliant observations you have made about someone of status, a Teacher and you just lost your job, sacrificed your opportunity as a student and went from learning to gossip, participation to observation and judgement. Remember, True Teachers also have their own Teacher and Path and you are not it. Yes Teachers learn from their students, but not because the student choose to teach them but rather because True Teachers are also True Students and are masters of Learning in all circumstances no matter who they are with and what the situation might be.  This is the Tao.  It is natural and normal for Eastern and Indigenous cultures and foreign to Westerners , even new age Westerners.

Everyone is on a Spiritual Path and either Life is your Teacher or for some, you choose to accelerate your evolution working with a Teacher in a body.  A Teacher needs to get past your mind, your Western inclinations, your ego, your logical brain, your desires and grandiosities. Life does this to you in order to teach you. A Teacher is Guided to find ways to get past all of your stuck parts, your ego, your prejudices, your propensity for extremes and your attachments to logic and your “story”.  If you think that is going to look logical and consistent, look to the turning points in your life, what it took to wake you up, get your attention, get through to you in some area that your previously were absolutely convinced was “true for you” and now after a great upheaval you have discovered it is not so at all and in fact you had been living with your head up your butt with some fabulous fabricated story to justify or “explain” it all.

Keep the focus on you and what you are learning.  If you truly don’t like a Teacher or think you are “better” than him/her  or that you are “done” with him/her, move on. Be careful thought.  Often this “moving on” is the ego’s way of protecting itself.  This topic truly cannot be conveyed in an article or even books. There are some good books to read that can help ease your fears but still the experience of working with a True Teacher or Indigenous Shaman/Medicine person will be a shock to your Western reality (and the new age is all Western based and acceptable to your current paradigm which is in part why it is so commercial and popular).  Below are some books (a short list compared to what is out there) to read, in no particular order, but no links. If you are truly interested you will make the effort to find them. They are not “easy reading”. Reading these books take some concentration.

Journey On

Daughter of  Fire, Masters of the Himalayas, The Kin of Ata (based on Sufi teachings), Marriage between Zones Three and Four, Lame Deer Seeker of Visions.