Another One Bites the Dust, or, Why are so many of Our Spiritual Teachers so Screwed Up?

 Very well said, John.

Rudolph Steiner said that from an Evolution of Consciousness perspective, in the West, the time for Gurus is over. He said, that it is time for the individual to take full responsibility for her own spiritual development. Of course, not everyone may have reached this level of development. Still, I'm beginning to suspect he was right, and this latest mess only confirms this suspicion. No matter what the Poobah is teaching, the "medium is the message" as Mcluhan said. And the medium of the Big Poobah bestowing his wisdom to his attentive students, perpetuates what is perhaps an old, outdated modality that may actually inhibit development.

I wholeheartedly agree that the practice is the Guru.

 theres alot to be said on this.....but regarding peoples reactions....other than those directly involved, meaning the two individuals and they're families....theres alot of projection surrounding the topic...

peace

Indignation has its place. It stands to defend those who cannot defend themselves.

Thank you for bringing this.

At the same time I am also sad because this is the same speech pattern heard in pulpits all over the Bible Belt in reaction to homosexuality. So when you say this:

"...And, if you are a spiritual teacher, then you better initiate a practice that is Integral and includes and deals with your emotional, shadow, and sexual issues or you are a disaster waiting to happen. To paraphrase Ken, “Sex is not bad; bad sex is bad.”"

I know that you know this too. We have to do better here. Much better. Evolution requires it of us. The stakes are getting higher and higher. The Traditions are running out of time to stop doing hierarchy the same old way. The Personal Autonomy of the Student must be included into the process or they will simply dry up and blow away like the Oracle of Delphi. The weak boundaries of Traditional Spiritual Students has been exploited in service of teaching them...  and also in service of the almighty cock. Putting the cock in a cage has worked about as well as prohibition. So, I'm thinking the Students need to learn how to learn differently. Starting yesterday.

Hope springs eternal in me. To a fault. I give assholes more chances than they need to get bored with being assholes and straighten up. So, in that tradition, here's my Hope: That it was everything that happened up until he confessed that was fucked up and toxic and him renouncing his position (the disrobing term is a dreadful joke in this context) is the beginning of getting things right." If that is true, then I can support him now. But I have this pattern of acting as if such a thing is true and then getting nailed... so...  ?

--

"The Left Hand Path, not merely the Right ... must take the lead."

~SES pg. 148

As I’m sure everyone knows by now, another one of our founding Integral teachers imploded under the weight of a sex scandal (not his first).

I didn't know and still don't know much.

But it makes me think of a conversation I had on this website with someone. The point I was making was that a person should not be judged according to what "level of development" here is the quote :

Many who consider themselves developmentalists think it is valid to make holistic developmental assessments that determine the essence of a person. Moreover, because higher-levels are hypertrophied it is thought that more developed people are better people. Generally, it is thought that we use developmental assessments to find out how good people are so that we can then give them the acclaim, trust, and responsibility they deserve.

To which I replied (I took away the argumentation but let me know if you want to ready it :p)

I could not strongly disagree more, not with the fact that people think this, but that this is wrong. Higher stages that reach further to not change the inherent value of the subject if there is any value at all even, cause that depends on the subject, not the process that it undergoes when growing.

[...]

I took Ken Wilber's definitions of "it", "we", and "I" and developed my argument [...]

I concluded with :

When we are saying a person is good at something. We are judging the "it", the Beautiful.

When we are judging whether a person is a good person or not (superficially, with regards to the person's actions or the way he treats people). We are judging the "we", or the Good.

When we are judging whether the person is "good deep inside" (translation from the French expression, "avoir un bon fond"), we are judging the True.

And of course, a mix of all of these will affect our judgement, whether we know it or not.

But these 3 pillars of what we are in this reality can all reach higher stages of development while retaining their inherent "goodness" or "badness". Of course they can change value, the may shift, but due to other factors provided by the environment, the context, basically, experiences. Whether a person is good or bad does not depend on his stage, otherwise, you wouldn't be able to change people (of course, I mean this without helping them evolve to the next stage).

And the true value, the core of what we all are, the essence of a person, never shifts. At least not in this lifetime.

Conclusions of conclusions, do not judge a person according to his stage of development.

So, my point of view is it is possible to be enlightened, and a "bad person" so to speak. It is possible to be at purple and a right cunt. Likewise, it is possible to be archaic and a very good person.

Teachers though, are selected not according to who they are, but how they are (i.e how much they are considered to be "developed".)

All of this is assuming that Ken is correct and within the context of what I read on this website and in his books. Basically I'm not saying it's true, I'm saying if that's true, then this is how I see it.

--

One day, you going to need someone  to stand by you

www.youtub

I so appreciate you discussing this whole issue.  It makes one question everything when a spiritual teacher does not behave like one.  I spent many years, for over a decade, in California, doing personal growth work, taking seminars, healing courses, intuitive courses, and Tantric courses, both red and white Tantra.  For years I felt like I was meant to become some kind of California guru, but at the same time on a spiritual level I was really looking at this whole guru/teacher phenomenon, and is it actually a role that truly serves the purpose it is intended to serve?  

I have been meditating for over 18 years now, and I meditated on this a lot, the more hierarchical, and patriarchal, kind of role it is; so many more women have become teachers/gurus over the last decade, which is wonderful - yet initially I always questioned the validity of this particular role, because in my personal journey I have not ever wanted an intermediary to show me how to be one with God.  I have wanted the direct experience myself, and also to prove that it is not necessary to go through another human being to achieve what we call enlightenment.  Now having been on this path so long even the term enlightenment... it appears there are experiences, states of being, ability to have Presence, to channel... there are so many abilities, aspects to this, yet being in human body...

When I was studying Advaita Vedanta many years ago we were learning about how with different and deeper levels of identification with concepts of self or ego, I am this, I am that, one gains density; or becomes "lighter," more free, less dense, less actually physical as one lets go of identification.  Being the eternal (but gently inquisitive) rebel I am, I asked our professor, "in this philosophy then it follows that, as long as you are in a body you have an ego, because once you completely let go of ego, you are no longer physical" - something to that effect.  He did not choose to answer this question - he found a way to subtly change the subject - but we became friends during the course and remained friends for quite a while after (he did not attempt to sleep with me ;-)   ).

A "teacher" who has sex with a "student" is almost, I don't quite know how to put into words what I am thinking...  I was friends with a Guru who pursued me for a relationship, and it was quite interesting; I was not attracted to his personality because he was actually quite narcissistic and dominating, and extremely patriarchal, even though I felt true love for his soul.  We would watch movies together, hang out, eat meals together, one of the movies he rented for me was, I think it's called U-Turn, with Jennifer Lopez and Sean Penn.  She is in an incestuous relationship with her father (or is it her step-father), she is trapped in her life, and Sean Penn basically rescues her, and it ends dismally - you don't want to watch it.  It's gruesome.  This Guru, I won't give him a name, afterwards, in a lively discussion, was condoning incest, saying that it happens all the time, that its commnonality makes it more or less okay, he saw it as part of the culture in society (naming a few in particular where it is more common).  Having had to heal from it myself, I spoke with him about how it takes a woman's choice away.  He didn't even understand what I meant.

I question this role of guru, of teacher.  What we need to be asking ourselves, is who is the real teacher?  While a person is in a body... I do trust human beings much more than I used to, and love some of us deeply, yet, I know... the ego can be a tricky monster. Perpetration is simply WRONG, and I think there may be something about a system that creates hierarchical roles where you are made to be convinced that you can only achieve something through going through one person or another, or a modality/construct, even a particular process; and places one person, or more, or a particular kind of system in a position to have power over human beings, with there being an over and and under, rather than there being a unilateral equality and equilibrium between beings and structures.  There should be some dismantling (and re-creating) of structures that would allow or support this kind of occurrence of perpetration happening.  It is not only completely antithetical to life for a "spiritual teacher" to be perpetrating a student - I consider it a perpetration because there is a power differential, or a family member perpetrating their own younger offspring - we should be questioning the kinds of structures within connections that people have with each other to recreate systems that support life and not damage it.  Perpetration is violence to the whole, and completely antithetical to what spirituality is all about.

The underlying truth is, if we are all One, than everyone can be observed as a perfect manifestation of this, in some manner.  It takes no One to become One with One, or all that is. You are that. That is that.  It is. The apparent implication of some level of construct necessary in order to become One with all that is, is not really necessary.  This is my opinion.  Only an awakening to the awareness of this... practice is the Guru, as someone else in this thread said.  Maybe this would be what a real Guru would say, that practice is the Guru.  I question this role, yet I bow to the sacredness of what I feel it ultimately was created for.  

Much love to all,

Rachael

Hi guys, I have a very simple question: how is that bad for genpo to have sex with his students? I simply don't see how it is - and it looks so obvious from this discussion that I'm wondering what I'm missing here.

I can see how this is wrong from a "zen tradition" perspective, but from a more basic moral one? I don't.

I relate to the "dark side" that we all have, and the greater the power the greater the capacity to screw up - but I simply don't put "having sex with students" in the dark side bucket.

enlighten me

Dagobert

Long story short. "They" are screwed up because people seek them out for a special short-cut provision to enlightenment. The more you accommodate not being whole yourself by giving Guru your joy, the more energy they amass until they are stripping in public.

I would like to tell you about the core group of males that are most out of balance in this way.

I was with a core group of males that taught what they called "conversion" through social aggression or mental confrontation. This frustration and organization around the lead male caused a free for all in breaking vows, sleeping around, teasing mates, taking advantage of young females, mental orgies into the energetic systems of being just standing passively by. It was an assault on everything by everything in its worst moments. The forming of the group reminded me of the Lord of The Flies in the beginning where squirrelly teenage boys could defy their own poor male parentage and create rules of their own in a society that covered each other's backs by collapsing energy and erasing the misdeeds. Why does this cluster of stars sit around the gaping black hole? What is creating all this heat in the Orion Nebula? --That big. The lead teacher, I believe, is part of the tale end of the luciferic rebellion that urantia book speaks of. And other spiritual books point to a assembly with a proclaimer identity, a sethite and an earth male that work in consort to demand attainment through embodiment late in time. They have no lineage as they teach this is the end of time and everything must serve to overcome death --which would be any concept in time according to their mission. They do not even provide for the necessity to integrate in time, calling it death. After the leader transitioned a few years ago, they dispersed into europe and elsewhere. There I heard reports that women where tearing into public forums and complaining of the "master of God" speaking to them in their heads and seducing them. A few of the young ones battling each other to be with him all under this intense pressure on the kundalini movement as a "primal lust/ primal call" of this huge "light-bearing" paradigm he brings forth. These orgies go deeper and deeper into the core of the being and disrupt the continuity of prayer, time and communion/ attainment over time. Forget about a plan of atonement in this mess--and they are fierce advocates for A Course in Miracles which has absolutely nothing to do about a paradigm of escape death and physical resurrection. it is meant as a path to attain personal prayer and peace --to be able to hear and receive ones own plan. They at the extreme are very dangerous and should be discussed. This group I speak of would be the dark side of the endeavor academy group including the leader who transitioned, the teacher in spain, holland and there is one, an earth male as they describe it, in the U.S. --But you'll get a sense for the demand, the sharp male intellect, and deep penetration into the belly. On the other side, bright, bright light--the story of reclaiming souls and "going home". Beware. Never leave your belly for Oz. You are an important voice that needs to bring forward your own message of truth. Go the long way home as they say and make it an honest path.

--Back to the beginning:  See the problem is with these societies is that they hold a corner of truth and can become their own steering committee. It has nothing to do with the offense, but that there is an abuse of power building itself into the new--edging out God, yet again.