How to Trust Your Teacher

How to Trust Your Teacher

If you have a Spiritual Teacher, how do you know you can trust him/her? Weren’t you told to trust yourself first?  Wait, how do you know you can trust your therapist, or even your doctor? Especially with all the sexual assault cases coming to light with doctors, it is scary to think that someone who is supposed to be your protector, care-giver, or mentor will use that position to manipulate you into a situation that is abusive, sometime violently abusive.  Thinking about this can be horrifying, but so is not thinking about it. This is (as I always state) a complex subject that cannot be fully addressed in a short article.  I write these articles not only to arouse the consciousness, mindfulness and thinking abilities of people, but also to help you understand how I work with such subjects should you read one of these articles and realize you need some assistance to recover or get to a better balance point. Reading these articles, it is just information. It is only through action, your choices and decisions to behave differently, and having a real Spiritual Practice will information become wisdom.

What about the idea “trust yourself”? The problem with just trusting yourself is that if you grew up in an alcoholic, druggy, addictive family, or in some of the more subtle dysfunctional family dynamics such as having a narcissistic or wounded parent, your radar for self-care is damaged (google c-ptsd for more detailed information). You do not yet have the skills to discern what is healthy for you. Your brain and nervous system is literally (not figuratively) wired for dysfunction as your default normal setting. This means you will choose the dysfunction you know, because it is all you know. You will seek out an alcoholic lover; you will find jobs with narcissistic bosses.  Once healed through recovery work, these challenges will still exist however they will now be challenges for you to learn rather than you making self-destructive choices because you are in denial or have not re-educated yourself to make other choices that are better for your self-care. On another level for those of you 5^th dimensional and above beings (or those of you who believe yourselves to be walk-ins etc), you might have concurrent lives bleeding through and also affecting this life. If you don’t know what I am talking about, ignore these last two sentences.

Until you have some recovery and healing under your belt so to speak, how do you get to this place, out of the dysfunction and into making healthier and safer choices? And what do you do in the meantime? There is no easy answer. In the beginning if you are coming out of denial and have begun to realize that you grew up with extreme abuse and/or extreme dysfunction in your family of origin you will be raw. The tendency is to latch onto something, anything, anyone, as a life line.  This is often how many new age people begin. It is more fun to blame it on your “chart” and chakras and to use oils and crystals than dive into shadow work. To escape a painful past and an even more painful awakening they talk to their angels, spirit guides, etc.  No problem with this, unless, in my opinion (as all of these articles are….. my opinion based on experience and education and “gifts”) you then stay there, as a form of avoidance rather than a stage of healing.  This is often when people join cults as well.  Running “to” something or someone is often really running away from pain and predators and perpetrators can read this “run-away” energy like a hawk or an eagle and will welcome you in with open arms (claws). P.S.  So will entities.

When you first “wake up” as the new age says, or come out of denial as is said in psychology you will be very fragile and unstable. Honestly the safest route is a 12-Step group or any other healing group with no one leader, a facilitator yes, leader, no.  Why? Because there is no one person in charge. No one person in charge means there is no one to latch onto you,  no one person for you to try and latch on to and then later hate because s/he  does not (and cannot) become your savior, and with groups there is no one person with power and an agenda. If you decide to work with a therapist or a Teacher or Healer, add a support group to your recovery work in order to ensure you are safe. Abusers survive in secrecy only. Many abusers pose as priests, group leaders, and new age prophets or “gifted ones” each claiming no accountability except to God lol. What a scam. When no one talks to each other, in the darkness, individuals (either sick or with an agenda) will prey on you. If you go to a group you can talk about anything including your therapist or healer or Teacher you are currently seeing, and others share their stories as well. If you share a story and it sounds like someone is abusing you or you even ask people for feedback after the group meeting, you can bet someone will come to you after the meeting and talk to you. You learn as they say in 12-Step by hearing others share their “experience, strength, and hope”. No one is there to impress you with their expertise, degrees, “gifts” or powers. You will be with peers, not experts. Keeping secrets, feeling special by being recognized as “someone special” by someone in power is a sure avenue for predators.  And if you are wounded you are desperate to feel special or at least “normal” and this desperation makes you prey .

Moving on in your journey of healing it becomes different. Once you are on a path of healing, or awakening (if you need a new age endorsement) there is another turning point to look for and pay attention to.  Unless you are in an ashram following bhakti teachings (and that is a huge discussion not addressed here) a huge turning point to pay attention to is if your mentor or “leader” etc. offers you endless acknowledgment (often called support), affirmations, “being positive” etc.   After the pain, comes the pleasure. After being lost, you want to be “found”, discovered, recognized, encouraged and praised.  Yes, all of that is a wonderful and necessary part of healing and growing but it is only a part of healing. Going to yoga, getting affirmed, praised, acknowledged, yes, do it all. However remain mindful as with everything that can get out of balance and can turn into a feel good festival and actually risks developing a kind of “I survived so I deserve___________” kind of narcissism.  These feel good industries (and they are industries now) attract a different kind of predator, some versions are benign some not so much. The billion dollar industries (billion dollar) that sell “feel good”, “hope”, “you can do it”, “you deserve”, “you have gifts or talents” etc. are just looking for (and selling to) people who need to  “feel good” and are, at least in the moment, unable to generate feeling good about themselves from the inside out.  The feel good industries (rampant in new age) are filled with and often led by the walking wounded who need to feel good by making you feel good. Then your adoration or praise of their ability to make you feel good fills the emptiness (or ego) in them. That neediness can and will at some point become predatory. In fact, this is how cults get started. Getting feel good vibes from the outside in is not wrong, but it can become out of balance and then it is destructive. 

Okay, so now what?  If you are working with a Teacher, therapist, healer, that is new to you and you are coming out of deep pain, I suggest that first off you have a support group, preferably a recovery group rather than just friends who have no experience or training in recovery.  Friends are typically incapable of telling you things that are hard to say. They don’t want to lose the friendship and/or have no training or abilities to handle the blow back that can come with saying something controversial to someone they love or care about and don’t want to lose. Second, slow down and take your time, with everything. You will feel fear. Sometimes that fear is real, sometimes it is demons and old patterns inside of you that are terrorizing you because recovery, growth, healing, is scary and all kinds of resistance will come up. For example, statistically, women who live with men who beat them up (sending them to the emergency room or hospital) typically go back to the abusive relationship on an average SEVEN times before being able to actually leave for good and start recovery.  People tend to make a U-turn when faced with recovery and can in fact run away from a Teacher, therapist, healer and back to dysfunction, abuse, alcohol etc. This is when a support group can be super helpful. They can help you stay even, help you to find courage. They have been through what you are going through and are on the other side. They can help you stay clear about others you are working with such as a Spiritual Teacher, a healer, a therapist. They can help you discern if those helping you are abusive or it is just your fears coming up and chasing you away from a mentor or helper. Again, slow down.  Ask lots of questions.  Meditate. Breathe.

Finally if you are working with an individual (Teacher, healer, therapist) and all s/he does is make you feel good, that is a red flag (again unless you are working with a Master of bhakti). Recovery, in fact life and any kind of healing is not all about just “feeling good”.  Someone who continually makes you feel good and tells you they love you when you are paying her/him (or somehow supporting their organization), may be someone with a wounded ego (or even, worst case scenario, a narcissistic personality disorder) who needs others to adore them….. and to keep paying them or coming to their classes etc.  A Teacher’s (healer etc.) job is to make you strong, strong enough to self-soothe, strong enough to not be dependent on others telling you that you are wonderful or needing others to feed you endless accolades, strong enough to withstand criticism or boundaries set by others.  This doesn’t happen by you following orders, doing mindless rituals that you are told to do etc.,  nor should you be stroked with endless affirmations and acknowledgements.  To help you get strong inside, a Teacher will stir you up and allow you to pull away to take some time to consider what is happening. They will not threaten you with consequences if you pull away or do not “do as you are told”. In fact a Teacher of the Light will encourage you to fight back, argue, pull away and not be a sheep. And there will never be consequences or threats of consequences if you argue back (though boundaries might be set regarding how to argue and when etc.), or if you choose to leave, or leave and come back.  A red flag to look out for is if you leave a Teacher (therapist etc.) without a good closing session or discussion. If you just cut the cord and leave with no discussion there is a really good chance that are you are running away in avoidance and fear, not moving on with your growth.  The challenge is being able to maintain a balance between managing your fear, your desire to run away from healing and using your fear and avoidance to criticize and blame your Teacher as a way for you to justify running back into familiar dysfunction. There is not much you can do about this except to slow down, have a Spiritual Practice of meditation (not just tarot, oils, crystals etc.) so you can listen to Divine Guidance, and hopefully have a support group of experienced people (not just reactionary over protective friends).

In the long run,check the evidence, look at the facts, not just your feelings. Your feelings are not facts. Especially in the beginning recovery, coming out of denial, does not "feel good". You are climbing out of a deep hole and that is uncomfortable and scary. Write down facts. Notice if your Teacher is making you  stronger, if the quality of your life is improving.  Or is s/he or making you more dependent on getting his/her attention and approval? Notice if your Teacher pisses you off once in a while and  stands his/her ground when you argue or when you try to make him/her to change what s/he is saying to you  because you don't like it.  Notice if your Teacher tries to make you feel better if you threaten them with anger or leaving rather than giving you the space and option to leave, with no threats of shunning or shaming. When healing, people often manipulate like crazy because they don't like what they are feeling, or seeing for the first time, or to people please. They can’t help doing that, it is what they learned under abuse; make people love you so you don’t get hurt, manipulate rather than discuss or confront.  

A good Teacher will ask you to complement yourself, to note your own progress rather than do that for you which would rob you of learning the skills to care for and love yourself.  A good Teacher will not treat you like a victim and offer condolences but will hand you a cane and ask you to get out of the wheelchair. Yes, process your pain, but then look at what the Universe sent to you so you could expand, learn, grow, and get strong. You can cry, but get out of the wheelchair. This will not be comfortable. So if your Teacher sometimes pisses you off, stirs you up, gives you space, doesn’t insist you come back, can handle your temper tantrums and your screams and manipulations that you are a victim and “can’t do it”, doesn’t hand out complements like candy, you  just might have a good one.

Journey On