What do you think of guru-ification of teachers, and living a transparent life? What’s your take on all the “lifestyle gurus” out there preaching their own version of the Truth™, then dealing unfairly or abusively with their followers or family?
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I had the glorious good fortune to be landed with a beautiful, dear elder as a primary spiritual teacher: Corliss “d” deLarm. You’ve probably never heard of him, he was a local shaman in my Missouri hometown. His behavior was above reproach and his lessons deep and evolutionary. What I’m seeing pass for spiritual teachings today, and from far less scrupulous teachers, is pablum. The fortunate circumstances of my own learning give me a sense of the standard I have to live up to, and what I need to teach.
d’s single most impactful teaching on us all was this:
“You are Love, You are Loved and You are Loving”
Simple words, but when you think about it – deep as the ocean. Everything pretty much does devolve back to love in the end, as anyone who has sat with the dying can attest. And d. would have had a conniption if he ever thought anyone saw him as a guru. Humble, loving and with enough patience and compassion to fill that ocean. That, by me, is a true spiritual teacher. And I didn’t for one minute turn him into a guru. He would never have allowed it.
In commenting on a blog post on living a transparent life elsewhere, I ended up writing an article I’m reproducing here, on living an open, transparent life, the blessing divorce can be and keeping people’s secrets. Here these comments are:
…I had a similar experience of divorce from my first husband in 2000. It was all about how I sucked being married to him and how very much that relationship pulled me down into the depths of our own private hell. I had to get out or face devolution.
How very empowering divorce is! We should all be allowed at least one starter spouse. <grin>
Transparency can be an uncomfortable place until we start paying more attention to inner direction rather than hooking into the persuasiveness of the painbody of those around us. Humans have a hard-wired urge to wallow in misery. Takes starch in your bonnet to get past that. Brava for us!
Transparency for me must be 100%. When first online in the early 90’s someone threatened to “out” me from behind my screen name. Since I had nothing to hide, I outted myself and have opted for my own name over a false persona ever since. An object lesson in how other areas of life, for me at least, need to be run. It’s so relaxing not to put feverish energy into maintaining a front.
You mention transparency in business. Much of what I see in business, especially small business is not transparent, but built upon tissues of lies and airbrushing the inconvenient details to look as perfect as possible. We never have a year in the red, everything’s just dandy even after the iceberg hits our ship of business, and the gaping hole is apparent to all. The worst I’ve seen are the gurus, who present a shiny facade but are having problems, aren’t as wealthy as their press says they are, and are really NOT perfect.
No one is!
How much more attractive it is when we are able to cheerfully admit our foibles and go forward, for it places us then not in the lofty clouds of those who are icons, but with our feet firmly planted alongside the people we are meant to serve. Transparency may not seem to be sexy when you’re in the trenches, but it can and does become so, and much easier and more supportive, the more you exercise the transparency muscle.
There’s also an issue we’ve danced around here on transparency or “translucency” per Arjuna Ardagh (his book: The Translucent Revolution is a good read for folks interested in this – http://www.translucents.org).
As a therapist and later a coach privy to extreme secrets in people’s lives, I’ve had to be a secret-keeper for others even when choosing to live openly myself. Whether you’re a professional with privileged information or not, we all have other people’s secrets to treat with care and discretion.
P—’s example of her partner’s carefully constructed marital facade and her desire to bore through this to live in the open is one very useful example. Sometimes the urgency to live free causes us to say things that may feel right at the time but be inappropriate, because they are others’ secrets to keep, not ours to reveal.
I’m not speaking of P—’s situation in particular as I don’t know her, but of the many that are similar. For example, we might know that our partner has a sexual kink that she or he doesn’t want revealed in public. Or that they were involved in illegal activities as a teen. Or have a mentally ill family member. Or “secret” children from a youthful liason. None of these are our secrets to tell, no matter how bad the urge is to do so.
Example: I was married to a man who was a serial drug abuser. His alcoholism was well known, so in examining the ethics of our situation, his drinking was something I felt I could speak of when asked, without elaborating further on other things he would not want known. When I wrote my last book, our relationship figured mildly in the prologue as one of the prime motivators for changes I made.
It was necessary to describe the situation, but to do so in ways that didn’t betray the confidences he had entrusted me with.
Each of us needs to figure out what is fair, compassionate and ethical in revealing others’ personal details. It’s not something to treat in a cavalier manner or to decide upon in the heat of anger and the acrimony of relationship breakdown.
So much for personal secrets, but what about the “gory details” of the relationship itself?
Sometimes we think since we were there and it happened to us, that we have the right to publish. The he-said/she-said of anyone’s relationship is really no one else’s business, and is rarely illuminating or beneficial in public dissection. Certainly not for people who are striving to live a conscious life.
Why do people like to reveal “gory details” in public? It gives us emotional satisfaction for a variety of reasons. But not consciousness. Nor an open or transparent life. Never that.
You can see this in the current foofooraw surrounding Tiger Woods’ reported infidelity. Are you tired of hearing about this? Are you even interested? As I’ve observed, the less interest you have in this kind of thing, the more aware and conscious you tend to be. Now think on this – are any of the people in this situation conscious, or close to conscious? Much less living transparently?
I applaud the way people handle divorce and teaching by sharing the universal themes around it without revealing intimate details.
To enhance your state of consciousness and life of transparency, choose compassionate discretion in the heat of the moment. You’ll thank yourself later on. If it ever becomes necessary, you can always share more down the line.
If a significant part of your life includes someone else’s secrets, to reveal them (especially without consent) is to be attached to both the secret/s and the outcome of your revelation. And to dive back down into unconscious living. If the person you’re in contention with wants to keep living unconsciously and under a facade, that’s their business and their right.
When we are beginning to live more consciously and out in the open, it’s important to remember that this is *our* choice – BUT – we do not have the right to make this choice for others. It hooks us into attachment which always takes us backwards.
Who’s for living life in truth, in the open and out loud? And what are your thoughts on “Fake Gurus”?
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