Quote
tellyoulies
I am also aware this is a "moderated forum" and "Your message will remain hidden until it has been approved by a moderator or administrator" ... I am not sure why so much control is placed here. I get the point we don't want the (KRSNA) people taking over... but let it flow...

Quote
tellyoulies
I am also aware this is a "moderated forum" and "Your message will remain hidden until it has been approved by a moderator or administrator" ... I am not sure why so much control is placed here. I get the point we don't want the (KRSNA) people taking over... but let it flow...

Quote
Shyam Dodge
After breaking my monastic vows and publicly relinquishing my position as a guru I had not entirely given up on the possibility of continuing to be an arbiter and teacher of spirituality and meditation in this post-guru phase of my life. My entire identity and self-understanding was based upon being a spiritual authority. If you spend nearly twenty years, since you were five years old (as I was), actively pursuing enlightenment and submitting to an intensely orthodox Hindu tradition, as well as finding consistent validation from the community you are a part of, it is extremely difficult to conceive of, let alone construct, an identity outside of the role of “spiritual master.”

After leaving my tradition I continued to teach workshops and meditation intensives in the larger world of American and European yoga. Needless to say, I persisted in carrying many of the teaching methods of the guru tradition, as it was the basis of my religious education, into this post-guru phase.

In particular, I taught a six week intensive in the Midwest, about a year after I first left being a monk, which made me confront the ethics of my teaching methods. Through dharma talks, one-on-one sessions with students, and other forms of yogic/Vedic ritual I found that I was merely perpetuating the very same dysfunctions of the guru tradition that I had left and was now trying to reform. This was an incredibly heavy realization to come to. Not only was I continuing to hold my students’ idealizations of “the enlightened spiritual prodigy” but I, as a teacher, had not constructed or learned a healthier alternative teacher-student dynamic.

In essence, I was continuing to psychologically enslave my students in a relationship where they were dependent upon me as both conduit for divine grace and as a kind of spiritual autocrat who had control over their internal lives. This is the basis for the guru tradition. Gurus are the spiritual authorities gifted not only with privileged mystical insight but are also the gatekeepers for the divine. Essentially, the representatives for the divine on earth, who act as intermediaries for the rest of humanity. While, I was not overtly practicing this educational model it was implicit within my teaching methods.
...

I engaged with my students as if I had some special insight into their innermost being, which I alone had access to. Not only that, but I could somehow divinely intervene in their spiritual development by rapidly processing and pushing past their interior boundaries through the power of my unique personality. I was presenting myself as a kind of potent catalyst for spiritual change and evolution. I was forceful. I was charismatic. I was highly trained. And I could hold another person’s gaze longer than was humanly natural. My students, in the Midwest, described me as “walking love.”
My advertisements for workshops, at that time, were of me with long guru-hair, smiling with supernatural love and “knowingness.” I basically looked like Paramahansa Yogananda.

I ended the six week intensive in the Midwest two weeks before it was scheduled to finish both due to a family emergency (which is briefly discussed in the book) and because of my own dawning revelation that I was not holding appropriate space for my students precisely because I had yet to process my own experience in the guru tradition. I was simply perpetuating the very same sickness I was seeking to heal.

When I wrote the book (a year after the Midwest revelations) I had come to the conclusion that I never wanted to be a guru again, even a “post-guru Guru.” I had come to realize how dis-empowering that educational structure was for the students I was teaching and how isolating it was for me. By continuing to be a kind of guru, I was taking the power necessary for real spiritual growth away from my students by enabling them to project their idealization needs upon me, while erasing my own humanity by continuing to hold those “spiritual” projections.


Still, I had something to offer in sharing my personal history and the insights I had come to. I chose the silly title and book cover in order to hobble my own tendency to invite and sustain the “spiritual” idealizations of others as well as guard against the impulse of spiritually curious people to overly idealize someone with my kind of pedigree. I wanted to satirize my own tendencies toward messianic pretense. Self-deprecation has immense value in this regard....

Abuses of power by spiritual teachers is incredibly common, I believe, precisely because the metaphysics often support such behavior.

If the teacher has access to some invisible supernatural domain, which is outside the purview of most “normal” people, then it only makes sense that the power dynamic will be vertical with the spiritual teacher resting upon an unimpeachable pedestal of unhealthy idealization. Add that to the vulnerability most sincere seekers bring to teacher-student relationships, especially in spiritual contexts, and you have a recipe for dysfunction.

The power dynamics of the guru tradition are very different than other educational systems. This is because both the expectations and what is actually at stake is much greater for the student than in other domains of learning. No one expects their high school English teacher to answer and fulfill all of their existential longings and questions, nor do they expect them to have supernatural insight into the universe as well as their innermost being (at least I hope not). But these are the expectations inherent to the role of the guru or enlightened master. This idealization of supposedly “enlightened beings” is, again, underpinned by a metaphysical model that privileges the insights of the guru as being supernatural and beyond the ken of most “normal” humans.

But, if spirituality is not privileged in this way and is actually grounded in the reality we all live in, this earth, this body, then there are no “gurus” who have a kind of privileged insight inaccessible to others. If our spirituality is naturalized in this way then spiritual authority rests within each individual.

The divine we are looking for is then located in our own body, our own breath, in our humanity as being inseparable from the natural world. Teachers, then, can act as facilitators for the authentic process of their students, not as divine intermediaries. This requires both public education, so that appropriate expectations are set for spiritual teachers, as well as educational reform to reflect this more horizontal teacher-student dynamic.

Obviously, there are even more complex ethical concerns at stake here as well as many more nuances in how to effectively advance such an educational model. But, I think, this reinvesting in the body, in our humanity, as being the source and basis for spirituality is the first step towards developing healthy models for mind-body therapists and teachers. It is, as Mary Parker Follet said, about having “power with” rather than “power over” your students. This happens, I believe, in the simple articulation of locating spiritual authority in human nature, rather than in some unseen supernatural dimension. This makes spirituality immediately communicable, shareable, and knowable for anyone at any time free of any need for divine intermediaries.

...

The altered states achieved in meditation are not dependent upon developmental maturity in order to be experienced. And, developmental growth is not necessarily dependent upon achieving altered states of consciousness. But, I think, that both traditions ignore one another at their own peril.

To speak from personal experience, many long-term practitioners and teachers of meditation, while very accomplished in contemplative practice, are often developmentally stunted in their psychological maturity. It’s also true, however, that a lot of profound psychological growth can happen due to and in light of experiencing altered states of consciousness.

In my own life, I know how much certain meditation practices enabled me to further dissociate from difficult emotional and psychological material, which only served to stunt my growth as a person. At the same time, many profound experiences in meditation have given me further insight into my own psychology that has aided my developmental growth. So, they can be complimentary systems if properly integrated..