Sex, Money, Power, Trauma & Ethics in Spiritual Communities
Rick Archer: My name is Rick Archer, and I’ll be introducing the other people here in just a second. A couple of years ago, several of us– actually, I think all of us– have been on the spiritual scene for a long time. And we all, independent of one another, had become very concerned about a lot of the behavior in spiritual communities, especially by spiritual teachers. My personal concern is that I feel very deeply that the upwelling of spiritual awakening in the world, which has been alluded to many times so far during this conference as being critical to the survival of the world, was being sabotaged or handicapped or shot in the foot by this behavior, sometimes very egregious, within spiritual communities, primarily by teachers, primarily by male teachers. And I felt like perhaps I could play some little role in helping to raise awareness of what may or may not be appropriate behavior for a spiritual teacher. It’s pretty common sense, actually, because it’s appropriate behavior for a human being. But sometimes spiritual teachers are presumed to be wiser or more enlightened or something, and they’re given a pass when they behave in certain ways that ordinarily people would be called on the carpet for behaving. So, in any case, a couple of years ago, I gave a talk about this. And Jac O’Keefe attended, and Craig attended, I believe. And afterwards, we had lunch. And we said, we ought to get together some kind of organization which would try to establish a code of ethics, such as lawyers and doctors and therapists and many other helping professions have, that just kind of lays out some guidelines of what would be appropriate, what should be appropriate behavior for spiritual teachers. And I want to say from the outset, because often the knee-jerk reaction when we mention this endeavor, is that we’re these judgmental people who expect to wield some kind of authority over the spiritual community and levy fines or penalties or something if people misbehave. No such thing. We’re not like the AMA, which could grant or revoke licenses. But we’re just a bunch of people who are like all of you, who would just like to see the whole thing be neater and cleaner and stop seeing people being injured, sometimes quite severely, by the way some teachers have behaved. So, after a year or so, this organization had been formed and had been established as a 501(c)(3), a nonprofit. And in the next year, we were honored by having Mariana Caplan and Miranda McPherson join us. In fact, Miranda came to our presentation last year. And she came up afterwards. She was like, yes! And then she ended up becoming part of our board of directors. OK, so I mentioned them in passing. I just want to read a little bit longer bios. Before I do that, I just want to ask, how many in the audience here actually serve in the capacity of spiritual teacher in some way, shape, or form? Quite a few. OK, very good. Thank you. Is there anything else I should say before we do the bios?
Mariana Caplan: I’m curious how many people have been impacted by trauma and unethical behavior in the spiritual path.
Rick Archer: Again, quite a few. All right, so some of you, many of you know by firsthand experience why we feel this need. And I think others have read enough of the accounts of the scandals that come out weekly to acknowledge that, yeah, there is some sort of need for some greater impeccability in the spiritual community. So let me just introduce our speakers. To my left is Jac O’Keefe. Jac is a spiritual teacher who focuses on prior to consciousness or beyond non-duality. She pioneers non-traditional models of spirituality and is a founding member of the Association for Spiritual Integrity. She’s also been our main engine. She dedicates a whole day of each week to focusing on it. And she’s worked very hard to get it together. And Jac’s second book, How to Be a Spiritual Rebel, was released this week. Mariana Caplan– I remember running into Mariana at Sand up in San Rafael a number of years ago. And I had already read a couple of her books, such as Halfway Up the Mountain, The Error of Premature Claims to Awakening, and Do You Need a Guru? It’s a great title. And Do You Need a Guru? And I saw her name tag. Mariana Caplan, God, I love your books. And so, it’s wonderful to now be a friend and involved with her. Mariana is an author, consultant, psychotherapist, and yoga teacher who brings over 20 years of research, teaching, and the publication of nine books on topics related to the intersection of psychology, spirituality, yoga, world religions, and contemporary spiritual traditions. I’ll cut these a little short. Craig Holliday– I asked for one sentence bios, Craig gave me one. Craig Holliday is a spiritual teacher and therapist and founding member of the ASI. [LAUGHTER] Miranda McPherson is a spiritual teacher, author, and founder of the One Spirit Interfaith Foundation in London, where she trained and ordained over 600 ministers. Today, she leads the Living Grace Sangha in Northern California and leads retreats internationally, sharing a feminine approach to non-dual realization. OK, so where shall we start? I’ve talked enough for starters. And who would like to plunge in? And we have a number of specific topics we’re going to cover, which I could read the bullet points of, but you guys know what they are and what you particularly want to cover. So, who would like to go first on one of these points?
Craig Holliday: Why don’t you start with one of the questions?
Rick Archer: OK, so here’s one. I’ll just take them from the top. What qualities characterize a psychologically healthy teacher, student, and spiritual community? Who would like to take that?
Jac O’Keeffe: It’s a Mariana question.
Mariana Caplan: It’s a Mariana question. Yeah. The qualities that characterize a healthy spiritual teacher is somebody who, especially in their internal identity and heart of hearts, is a student of the path and is a servant of the path and as a function as a teacher. It is somebody who ongoingly pursues their own, not only spiritual growth, but psychological growth, that pursues knowledge of trauma healing, whether it’s for their own trauma or because most of the people that will come to them have been impacted by trauma. And those are just a couple of qualities. But in terms of students, it’s students who are willing to be empowered, to be adults in relationship to their spiritual teacher and not defer authority or assume that because somebody is a spiritual teacher or is so-called awakened, that they either have the answers, or they should be given control for their life, especially in areas that are not directly related to their spiritual growth, like relationships, money, sexuality, having children, worst of all. And healthy spiritual communities, I am fortunate to be consulting for one of them right now. And it’s a community that says, we need to continue, just like a teacher and just like a student, to pursue our ongoing growth, get external feedback, have external checks and balances where the teachers are not living and practicing in isolation and without feedback and peer support.
Rick Archer: I should add that Mariana says that for quite a few years, she has been consulting with both teachers and students who have been embroiled in various kinds of scandals and misbehaviors and so on. So, she probably knows more about the dirty secrets of the spiritual community than anybody.
Craig Holliday: I’d like to maybe add something, Rick. One of the big things that I see is, if someone’s looking for a teacher, is the teacher an adult? Are they mature? Do they walk the talk? Do they live and embody the truth? And you can see really quickly, just spending a little bit of time with someone, do they embody it? And then beyond that is, do they have a sense of humility? Are they willing to receive feedback? We are all human. We will all make mistakes. We’re all works in progress. And so does one have the humility to continue to grow, to look at their shadow? Like Mariana was saying, have they done their trauma work? Are they continuing to do their trauma work? Do they receive feedback just generally from friends, from family, from you, from their neighbor? And what kind of person are they? And then a great question as a student, I often ask myself this is, am I showing up as an adult with my teacher? How much am I projecting onto them? Because sometimes it’s us, the student, that’s projecting, and we’re wanting the teacher to be our father, our mother, our best friend. And of course, they can’t be all those. And so do we have that sense of taking accountability for oneself? So, both ways. And that’s one of the things we invited at the ASI is to have a general standard code of ethics for teachers, just a general code of good practice and conduct. But then an accompanying code and guidelines for students. How should I behave in relationship? Should I throw myself at the guru’s feet? Or can I show up as a psychologically mature individual? Can I also go see a therapist for therapeutic support and see my spiritual teacher for spiritual teaching support? So, it works both ways, I think.
Miranda Macpherson: I’ll jump in on the next question.
Jac O’Keeffe: Could I just add–
Miranda Macpherson: Yeah.
Jac O’Keeffe: Just on that, if I can just add another layer to build on what Mariana and Craig have said. You know, Craig was saying in a few days, you know, you’d have a sense, yes, an intuitive sense of a teacher. But how many students here would be willing to ask a teacher, are you open to feedback? What do you do when a crisis happens in your own life? Do you have professional support when your own psychology is up for growth? I would love to have these questions asked of me, and they’ve never been asked. Never.
Miranda Macpherson: To me, that’s huge and one of the things that I would be looking for. And that I think if anyone is teaching, it’s really an integrity issue to make sure that you build support so that you come out of the teacher position on a regular basis with somebody else who you’re willing to allow to call you to account and who isn’t just going to idealize you all the time. And to put that in place as a structure in your life, to me, is part of the embodiment of integrity and what humility means in taking on the role of teacher. That you’re not always the teacher.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Miranda, don’t you go to other teachers on a regular basis and just sit there as a student?
Miranda Macpherson: I do that every two weeks.
Rick Archer: Every two weeks?
Miranda Macpherson: Every two weeks. And I have a relationship with these two people where I have said to them, please, anything you can see in me that is not entirely integrated or any shadow material, anything you think I should be looking at, please bring that to my attention. Help me look at it. Help me go to the root of it. And I do at least two, sometimes three, retreats a year with other spiritual teachers. So, I’m just an ordinary person, just a student in the field with everybody else.
Mariana Caplan: And I would say that being privy to really hundreds or thousands of spiritual scandals, of the teachers that have been in that position, almost none of them do what you’re saying that you do as a spiritual teacher.
Miranda Macpherson: This is why I do it. Because I’ve seen that, too. And I’ve seen that it’s very easy to get caught up in a teacher shell for your ego to just get off on the idealization that being a teacher becomes and to start to buy your own propaganda a bit too much. And that’s a really painful thing for everybody.
Rick Archer: When I was trained as a TM teacher in 1970, Maharishi specifically said to us, don’t go and see other teachers. Because if you’re seen sitting in the audience, people will presume that you’re still seeking. And that you don’t actually have all the knowledge you need, or something like that. And wow, golly. That seemed– I bought into it. But now it seems crazy.
Miranda Macpherson: I completely disagree with that view. Because for me, what it embodies is that’s a trustworthy teacher. That’s a teacher who’s willing to come off their pedestal and just be a person and acknowledge that no matter what we might have realized, there’s more to learn. There’s more we can learn. And it also keeps one in touch with the vulnerability of the student. And the beauty of that, that it helps me be more respectful and honorable in my work as a teacher with others.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I should add that I got booted out of the TM movement for seeing another teacher. [LAUGHTER] OK. Good thing to have happened. But I still respect and admire and appreciate and honor all the benefit I derive from that. But it was a nice way to make the transition. [LAUGHTER] So, what’s the next point we should consider here? Well, here’s one. What defines a healthy teacher-student relationship? What is at play when the teacher consciously or unconsciously cultivates dependency in their students?
Miranda Macpherson: Narcissistic issues. [LAUGHTER]
Rick Archer: Narcissistic?
Miranda Macpherson: If there’s a need on behalf of the teacher to have idealization, you have to really look at what’s at the core of that. Well, it’s usually the teacher trying to get some kind of narcissistic supply, some kind of support for their self-image as some superior person. But what I think is a little delicate is that the process of idealizing our teacher is a natural process. It can’t not be there. So, I think the conversation about students behaving like adults, I agree with that. And just as children, it’s a natural phase of our development to idealize our parents until we grow out of that phase. It’s also a natural part when we’re opening into new dimensions that are really beyond what we even understand to lean into our teacher and their body of wisdom and look up to them. But the role of the teacher is not to abuse that, to understand that process and not to take advantage of it. And also, to tolerate when that idealization breaks down, as it inevitably will, and to be humble enough to relax and be OK with the student coming to see, hey, you’ve got feet of clay. You have arguments with your spouse. You lose your temper from time to time. You’re not perfect at everything. And to model that this is not about spiritual perfection. It’s about spiritual practice, and that includes us all ongoingly.
Craig Holliday: Also, I think there’s just a basic ignorance that people have of just lack of training. If a teacher hasn’t been properly trained, then oftentimes we just fall into the same traps that a beginner therapist would fall into, a beginner massage therapist, whatever it is. It’s easy to get caught in projection, transference, counter-transference on the path if you don’t know how to spot it, if you have no idea even what that is or what that means. It can be a beautiful thing as you come forward in your gift to get all kinds of great feedback from others. But then, if you have the shadow and a need in there, a narcissistic need, or I could even take that down a notch, just a human need for friendship, for relationship. Oftentimes, the same kind of interplay that happens, say, in an unhealthy marriage where a husband or wife is not receiving a good, healthy sense of love. Sometimes that teacher or therapist or whoever they are, they might receive that need from their students. And if they haven’t been properly trained, if they don’t have a clear code of ethics to fall back on, then we fall into these traps. A lot of times, teachers who get involved with scandals, whether it’s big or small, they’re good people who got a little bit confused and then a little bit more confused. And like Miranda is saying, if the teacher has greater humility, they get a little bit confused, and they realize, oh, I need some support. I need some supervision. I need some help. I need to receive some feedback. If they are lacking humility and they have a high degree of arrogance, then they can get in a lot of trouble.
Miranda Macpherson: Or even shame, because sometimes when we make mistakes– and all human beings make mistakes– can we own that in the spirit of compassion for ourself and use it to go, ‘oh, what do I need to learn here? Where do I need to go in order to learn that? What’s the gap?’ And address that. But I think because of this strange idea that if you sit in the teacher’s seat, that nothing should come up out of you sideways, which isn’t realistic anyway. Then there’s not the appropriate attitude, the mature attitude, that when we do make mistakes and those mistakes become apparent, often we feel ashamed about them and then hide them, which is very dangerous, rather than bring it out into the open and address it.
Rick Archer: You know– more on this or another point? OK. In the regular world, non-spiritual world, you know– [LAUGHTER]
Jac O’Keeffe: Is there a non-spiritual world?
Craig Holliday: Well, there is only one world.
Rick Archer: So, for instance, there might be an expert physicist. Einstein was said to have been a bit of a womanizer. Ulysses S. Grant was a drinker. Lincoln once said, find out what kind of whiskey he drinks. I want to give a bottle to all my generals. We don’t expect people in various relative fields like that to necessarily be paragons of virtue or to be sort of perfect behaviorally and so on. And yet somehow in the spiritual world, we associate higher consciousness or awakening with more ideal behavior as well. That there’s a correlation between being in a higher state and not acting like a jerk. But I’ve had people tell me, oh, no, you could be a raging alcoholic and yet be enlightened. Or I heard a spiritual teacher recently give a talk, who claims to be awake, advocating adultery, especially for men. Because it’s more natural for them or something. So is there a correlation or should there be between higher consciousness, however we want to define it, and more impeccable behavior?
Mariana Caplan: – By choosing the function of a spiritual teacher, there’s not an inherent correlation. Like Miranda’s saying, spiritual teachers are absolutely as human as anyone else. But to take that function, which in my case, I’ve never wanted that function. Because I believe that, not because of that, but that you have a higher degree of accountability. And your blind spots are going to be magnified by your position, magnified by the projections that come onto you. So, to take that function is not to take the responsibility to not err and not to show your errors and apologize for them, but to choose to align your life with the kind of integrity, especially in relationship to sexuality, the topics of today, sexuality, money, and power. It’s not that you know those things from the beginning, but you take it on to pursue that diligently and to keep pursuing that, because it’s your obligation.
Rick Archer: – Yeah.
Craig Holliday: Well, and one of the things, I was trained as a counselor and as a teacher, and so, I just projected the basic codes of ethics onto spiritual teaching. And so, when you do that, when you have that training in the beginning, it’s so helpful. It’s just helpful. It keeps things simple. Just say, I’m agreeing to these basic rules going forward. When you don’t have that and you jump in and you say, OK, I’m supposed to live by integrity, things can get messy real quick.
Jac O’Keeffe: – And when the teacher stops becoming a learner, I’ve seen examples of that with the idea of transcendence. I think I could probably count on one hand the amount of people who actually authentically have convinced me that they understand what transcendence is. And words like this are easy to glean from scripture. They’re banded about very easily, and they’re not understood at all. And so, what happens then is that they’re used to create a blind spot so the teacher can imagine, yeah, I’ve transcended such and such. This is the movement of your consciousness, and it’s bullshit, because they don’t realize they must keep learning. There will always be blind spots by virtue of being beautifully evolving homo sapiens. That’s the deal. And why do we want to hide in the first place? Why do we want to hide behind anything? What is that? And how do we change our culture, to throw off what we’ve inherited for thousands of years about the impeccability of a teacher? How do we throw off that false goal, which was really used to control in a way that religions control? Why would we subjugate ourselves to something that is so inherently about suffering and power in a negative way? It’s up for each of us to embrace a lifelong learning, be it seeker, be it teacher, in whatever capacity. There is lifelong learning, or else you’re denying your humanness. You’re stopping evolving. You’re pulling out of the ecosystem. Whatever lens of perception you want to look at, it’s the same gig.
Miranda Macpherson: I’d like to say something that links what you were originally asking with what you’ve just said, Jac. And that is, I think we’ve all been around teachers. And the whole reason we’ve been inspired to sit with them in the first place is because there’s something coming off them that we recognize as just beautiful, as very refined. There are these essential qualities that they radiate. And naturally, we want to be around that. And we want to learn, how do we allow those beautiful qualities of our true nature to shine forth in us as well? But my own experience– and I’ve seen this in my students, too– is that there’s not just one great big spiritual orgasm and then you’re done. There are many different levels of awakening and different kinds of awakening. And the awakening to deeper realization is the easy part. In my own experience, the actualization, the integration of those states takes years. And I think that’s, again, coming back to humility, why we need to really put in place some actual structures of support to help us work through the kinds of issues that deeper realization will push up in us. And it forces us to really deal with– and teachers who don’t, it comes up in their communities. It shows up as problems with their students or places where that teacher just can’t actually take feedback in and utilize that feedback to grow and learn. So, I think that there needs to be a little bit more understanding in the wider community about that balance between the realization and the actualization and what is actualizing what we’ve realized and embodying it into every moment and interaction that life brings in complex situations, such as what we’re dealing with now. What does that look like? And what does it involve? And what supports are needed for that to actually happen?
Rick Archer: I’m very uncomfortable with the word “enlightenment” or “awakened.” They have this static, superlative connotation. And it’s kind of like the word “education.” Would you ever say, I’m educated? That’s it. Obviously not. I mean, I’m staying in a house nearby. And I’m in the son’s room. There are all these books on the shelf about calculus and C++ and advanced chemistry and all. I don’t know anything that’s in any of those books. I’m kind of educated in certain ways. But there’s a vast world of knowledge out there that I’ll never tap into in this life. So, in terms of spirituality, I think there’s something comparable. Even though we might think of it as a specialized field, I don’t know if there’s any end to the depth of it or the embodiment of it. There’s a Sufi saying that – how is it – there’s an end to the path to God, but there’s no end to the path in God. And so, if anybody ever says they’re done–
Miranda Macpherson: Don’t trust them.
Rick Archer: Run for the door.
Jac O’Keeffe: But however, on one type of the path, for sure, there is a phase– because it happened to me– there is a phase of where you can only abide in the non-dual awareness, where you haven’t matured enough to actually have multiple lenses of perception available to you at the same time. That’s a tricky spot. So even though we’re talking about exceptions to that, that type of awakening happens for many people, where it’s generally two years. And your primary way of perceiving everything is through the unified field. It’s through knowing that this is illusion. And then, of course, with some maturity, it comes back in. Oh, it’s real and it’s not real. I see. There’s separation, and there’s– it’s the same, and it’s different, really. And how do we mature to be able to hold and honor both lenses of perception without judging one over the other?
Miranda Macpherson: Well, maybe it’s not both. Maybe it’s a spectrum.
Jac O’Keeffe: Yes.
Miranda Macpherson: Right. And again, I think that challenges us even to not presume that the models of the East are necessarily complete. And I mean, that’s a bigger conversation. But I think it’s a really interesting one to consider. How do we really come back down from the mountain? Maybe, Mariana, you have something to say about that.
Mariana Caplan: Yeah, I think, as you mentioned, Rick, having worked with so many ‘enlightened’ fallen teachers and communities, I deeply hold to the possibility of endless awakening and that it belongs, and it’s inherent in each of us, and is our birthright. And at the same time, any fixed notion of arrival is a deterrent. And I’m glad you made that point, Jac, but a couple of years of non-dual abidance, what happens? Somebody becomes a teacher. Somebody starts gathering their students. They write their book. They proclaim. And the greatest danger, I mean, besides the students, is to oneself, because then you stop the process of not only the endless possibilities of awakening. I love how the yoga scriptures, they detail this, what kind of passes for awakening in much of Western culture is but the first level of awakening in the yoga sutras, and the next, and those people at the seventh level, I’ve met one of them in my life. And that’s not even about the embodiment of that and how that applies, because then not only the possibilities of awakening are endless, but the possibilities of embodiment are endless. And that says nothing to do with how we show up ethically, our capacity, our emotional development, our development and our relational capacities. So, I think we really hurt ourselves as a culture to hold to this notion of enlightenment while at the same time not diminishing, which I fell into the trap of. I heard so much disillusionment. There was a time that I almost gave up on my own awakening process, because there was so much damage and futility. So, the flip side was that I had to call myself again, like this is inherent in each of us. And that notion of arrival or calling anybody enlightened or themselves calling themselves enlightened or awakened, it just seems so useless to me, unnecessary.
Jac O’Keeffe: Hear, hear.
Rick Archer: I think one problem with regarding a teacher as having arrived at the pinnacle of enlightenment is– we’ve discussed that quite a bit, but a problem with the student thinking that there is such a pinnacle is: that student is never going to feel like he’s reached it. And therefore, there’s a certain sort of undermining of where one is actually at, at the moment, which can be really quite nice if you relax into it and realize that every day is life. And we don’t want to pass over the present for some glorious future. And we can really be in a nice state. But if you’re always sort of pining for something other than what you’re experiencing, it keeps throwing you off.
Miranda Macpherson: It keeps you in the search.
Rick Archer: In the search, yeah. And people say give up the search. You may find that a time may come when you feel like you’re not searching anymore, but you certainly are still learning and exploring and discovering and deepening and all that. And I don’t think that ever ends. But the emptiness, the sort of, ‘oh, I’m going to die if I don’t get this,’ that drops off and this contentment dawns. But that’s definitely not the end of the journey.
Miranda Macpherson: Yeah, didn’t Dogen say practice is realization and realization is practice?
Rick Archer: Another point we have here on our list is group mind, group think. And within spiritual communities and how it contributes to unhealthy behavior or cult-like tendencies. And I’m reminded of that story, which is kind of horrific, but about putting a frog in water, heating it gradually as opposed to throwing a frog into boiling water or hot water. In that case, the frog jumps out because it notices the contrast. But if the water heats gradually, the frog doesn’t notice. And it just eventually dies in the hot water. So, you can be in a spiritual community. It can go farther and farther off the rails. And you don’t realize it because you’re in the group mind or the group-think. And you kind of just go along with it to absurd degrees sometimes.
Craig Holliday: I’ve traveled around a little bit to different communities. And it’s always been interesting to walk into the community and see, you know, what are the rules here? What are the games? You know, all the unspoken stuff. And sometimes it’s really clean and clear. And that’s nice. And sometimes it’s really weird and bizarre and neurotic and crazy. And one of the things that I’ve seen just in my work, because I work with so many different students from different traditions, is the amount of pain that people have experienced. Not only from the teacher, but say, from the group, from the sangha and the games and the power structures, the jockeying, to get too close to the teacher, to be in the inner circle, the outer circle, getting kicked in or put in, and all that stuff. And then when those communities fail, or when someone loses their relationship with their teacher, all the great pain, because then they lose the relationship with that community. And it’s a breath of fresh air, because then they get to step into something sane. But there’s great grief there as well. And so, I’ve always found it fascinating, because when you step onto the grounds of an ashram or a Zen center or a Tibetan Buddhist center, whatever it is, you’ll notice almost like this little bubble. As you go over the gates– I just had this happen when I went to Christ in the Desert in New Mexico. I felt the rules of the silence of the monks. It was pretty healthy, but still, I felt that bubble. And the group-think that was present there. And it’s within all communities. It’s not necessarily bad, but some of it’s really unhealthy.
Mariana Caplan: – Well, so many times when students have come to me with their complaints, the first thing I say is, have you talked to your teacher about that? And more often than not, they will give some version of, I can’t. I just know that I can’t. It’s in the structure of the community. I know my teacher will be defensive. And I say, well, that may well be possible, but have you tried? And what often prevents us from trying? Well, we are scared. We are afraid that we might lose some closeness, or we might lose some specialness, or we might be disillusioned by what we find. But that’s where we circle back to the absolute necessity of being an adult in relationship to our teachers. And at the same time, not expecting our teachers to be perfect. So, it’s not challenging our teacher like you do this, but letting ourselves have the questions, letting ourselves wrestle with them, and taking the courage to bring that to our teachers while giving them permission to be perfectly imperfect teachers. And I feel like that’s a very healthy part of the student teacher relationship. It’s the student raising the teacher, not just the teachers raising the students. And I think just the element there is really our own courage and being willing to risk whatever it feels that we have for truth, for a real awakening.
Rick Archer: I’d like to open it up to audience participation now. And somebody has a mike? Oh, would they have to use Miranda’s mike? OK, if Miranda wants to say something, we’ll get it back to her. So maybe somebody could run around with the mike. And please be sure you have the mike before you ask a question or anything.
Audience: Very interesting to hear you all. I’m a recovering addict. And I must admit, I have been a recovering guru addict as well. I’ve probably seen like 32 gurus. I have like 12 of them living in my house. And I’m very touched hearing what you say. And I can say a lot of things about this, but it’s fantastic what you do now, because otherwise, you get the new church or whatever out of this whole thing. So, I appreciate so much what I hear. And I read your, Mariana Caplan’s books when I got very hurt by an Indian guru, the one about if you need a guru, and Halfway Up the Mountain. And that was so important for me to read those books of you. So, I thank you so much for writing these books. Thank you. But please, guru addiction, have you heard about that? [LAUGHTER]
Miranda Macpherson: We have now.
Jac O’Keeffe: What did he say?
Rick Archer: Guru addiction.
Audience: Like any other process addiction. The co-dependency that I think you spoke about, that you can be, depending on where you come from in your upbringing, that you hook on to a guru. And I work in the field of addiction, so both ways.
Rick Archer: And some people are saying– some people are saying the guru model is over, nobody should go to a guru. I wouldn’t go to that extreme. I think that there are healthy guru situations that one could be involved in at a certain stage of their development. So don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. But obviously, it’s time to no longer tolerate or accept some of the unhealthy guru situations that have prevailed.
Craig Holliday: I think you and I, Rick, have both shown up to Amma many times and received support and a blessing.
Audience: Thank you very much. I appreciated all your comments and some very wonderful comments about some general things. I wonder if you would address specifically economics.
Rick Archer: Yeah, money. We were going to talk about money. Jac’s special. [LAUGHTER]
Jac O’Keeffe: That’s the bone I’m chewing these days. I can see some of the faces were at my talk earlier this morning. So, I don’t want to waste time saying the same thing again. That talk will be on YouTube soon.
Mariana Caplan: Do you repeat the good things?
Rick Archer: But in a nutshell.
Jac O’Keeffe: Yeah, so in a nutshell, we have more work to do around money than we realize. It’s going to take us a long time to tidy up that one. And partly because the model, as regards ethical behavior, like Craig said earlier, there’s a code of ethics that he used when he was a counselor. There’s a code of ethics in HIPAA for the medical field. So, there aren’t positive models of how to have a healthy relationship with money in the world at large. You see, so we’re a step behind. That positive model isn’t there. So, we don’t have that to draw on. So, we’ve got to start at the beginning. So, this is why I think it takes extra work to tidy up our own relationship with money and to use our own discernment regarding what is the financial cost of my spiritual development. And yes, it can be priced. It must be priced. Because your money is your energy. And you’ve got to figure out what proportion of your salary you want to spend on it. Not just because, ‘oh, I should give everything. Oh, my heart is opening with this spiritual teaching. Wait till I just write an enormous check that the universe then will pay my mortgage next month.’ You know? So, all types of tricks and hacks come in to further obscure economics. We have a long way to go. So, I wish I had a solution. All I can do is give tools. Let’s be more aware.
Audience: Hi, thank you so much, all of you, for all of this. Mariana, your book, The Guru Question, for me too, has been hugely supportive in my journey with my teacher. I have a two-part question. One is, when I came on the path– and we talk about it a lot– we feel we’re in pain, many of us who come on the path. I thought I was mature. But I wasn’t. And so, we can talk about ethical behavior. And also, as you did in your book, you talked about being a responsible student. But can you give a little bit more detail just around things for ourselves to really question and look into? Then my second question, the second part, is actually kind of bigger. I’m hearing, Jac, a completely new paradigm for spiritual communities. And so, what I see in that– and I would love more dialogue in my community, more give and take, evening the playing field a little so that we’re practicing together. So that when my teacher practices, I really get the benefit of that practice, as opposed to it being removed from me. But there is a dissolution of our current spiritual communities, it sounds like, that has to happen a bit in order for this new paradigm. Can you kind of speak to what that transition might look like? Thanks.
Jac O’Keeffe: I’m conscious of those two questions. I’ll just do a quick one for the reply. Because I’m a teacher, I think the onus is on us to make the bigger shift. It’s about us doing our work. So, I’m interested in mobilizing teachers. I’ve had copious conversations with Rick, who is fielding all kinds of painful stories, real life experiences of students who’ve been treated so badly. And he’s like, let’s mobilize the students. And I’m like, I have to do it within my own community. So, where I’m working at is, if we were open to feedback, that’s the step right now, is being open to feedback. I want students to question their teacher. So that, in Mariana’s example that she gave earlier, have you, as a student, brought that to the teacher? Have you tried? If the teacher is full of resistance and assumes it’s your projection, expect that. And say, well, have you considered that maybe this is the projection that you’re sending back on me? Because to me, it’s a projection. So, we almost need the students to be doubly aware. And I don’t want to put all that on us on the students, because I think we are the ones who are supposed to be sages. We are supposed to be the elders. We are the ones who don’t have our shit together. You know?
Rick Archer: Just to give you my argument, I sort of feel like students can hold teachers’ feet to the fire, and that very often students doubt themselves. There’s a certain aura around the teacher as being really super special and all that, and knowing something which the students don’t know. And so, the teacher can do stuff. And the students, rather than doubt what the teacher is doing, will doubt their own perception or their own judgment. They’ll think, well, he’s enlightened. I’m not. Therefore, I guess it’s OK for him to do this stuff. What do I know? So, I’m just saying, if students had more confidence in their common sense, then they would say, no, that’s wrong. I don’t care who he is. That people shouldn’t behave that way. And if they were to speak up to the teacher, like you’re just saying, then things could get sorted out, maybe.
Craig Holliday: Well, and that’s a spiritual path, too, in and of itself. Because what I’ve seen often is students actually speaking up to the teacher, and the teacher laying it on heavier, their spiritual concepts, their defensiveness for their behavior, attacking the students.
Rick Archer: Yeah, but if they’re saying these numbers, then all the students were doing it.
Craig Holliday: Yeah, but hold on. So, then the student gets doubly wounded, like a deeper wound. But then, again, for the student to see, this is part of my path to grow deeper into my own integrity, my strength, my confidence. Here is my teacher. He, she, they betrayed me. And now can I continue to go forward on this path? Because a lot of students become disillusioned in that moment, and they leave the path. And that’s heartbreaking. I’ve met people who’ve spent decades who’ve left, and then come back and said, OK, I want to give this another shot again. But not to go away for decades, to say, OK, this is the path. My teacher let me down. This is the path. I’m going to go forward and grow in my own truth, my own autonomy, my own authority. And that’s a big step, a big step for the student.
Miranda Macpherson: I’d like to just come back to what you were raising, because I thought what you were saying was really important about spiritual maturity and how inevitably most of us come to the spiritual path because we’re suffering. And we’re trying to address that suffering. And thank God for it. Often, it’s the powerful motivator that we need to really dig deeper into ourself and to really engage some musculature in our practice. But spiritual maturity develops, and it doesn’t stop. So, it doesn’t stop developing in the teacher. It doesn’t stop developing in the student. And rarely do I find when tough things happen, it’s actually black and white. There usually is some big history in the student that is driving a huge transference, that has a lot of layers of wounding and trauma and pain and confusion in it. And there’s often also something for the teacher to see. So, what I’m really interested in, what I hope that we can do together and build over the years, is a culture where there’s more honesty and more compassion and a cleaner recognition that spiritual maturity is something that continues and that a person can have a tremendous realization in some areas that is legitimate and is beautiful and we can grow and be nourished by. But that doesn’t mean that they’re, by definition, integrated in that realization in all areas. And I think that that’s, here in the West, what we get confronted with because we live in a much more complex society than the models of the East that have brought with it the guru tradition. So, we can’t just transplant something that belongs to a whole other cultural system and expect it to work here. We have to evolve with it.
Mariana Caplan: I want to add in here that spiritual work does not replace psychological work for the teachers or the students. You can be a therapist in today’s world without ever having done psychotherapy. You can be a psychiatrist without having ever done a course of psychotherapy. You can be a spiritual teacher. Spiritual teachers talk about psychology all the time. And when you actually get down on the ground and see how many teachers have done a full course of psychotherapy. For myself, I’m committed to doing that at each developmental stage of my life because, as Miranda said earlier, at each developmental stage, new possibilities and just new material emerges. So, I had a 10-year argument with my first wonderful guru about that. And I just basically disagreed. And I went back and pursued my own trauma training, my own– another course of therapy. And this is a fatal flaw that people, we come with our suffering. We get all of these big, beautiful teachings about awakening. And we assume that that’s going to address our psychological wounds and trauma. It is complementary, highly complementary, but also distinctly different. And I will say again tomorrow, I’m talking about how my idea is about ending sex scandals on the spiritual path. But there is no alternative other than to engage in good therapy that is embodied, that has a trauma component. And for every student and teacher to take responsibility for doing that. I mean, we would solve so much of the agony if people would do that simple commitment.
Craig Holliday: It’s just healthy and it’s wise. It’s healthy and it’s wise.
Rick Archer: A bunch of people on this side.
Audience: Hi. Thanks so much for all that you’re saying. I wanted to ask, is it possible that a teacher could refer a student when they feel that they’re out of their depth?
Craig Holliday: Oh, absolutely.
Audience: Have you ever done that?
Jac O’Keeffe: Yes.
Craig Holliday: Yes, absolutely.
Miranda Macpherson: Yeah.
Audience: That could be an answer if, in fact, that training hasn’t been given, but they can identify it.
Craig Holliday: Yeah.
Jac O’Keeffe: Yeah.
Audience: I think I’m going to ask about that.
Miranda Macpherson: Yeah.
Craig Holliday: It’s good to have a network to refer to.
Miranda Macpherson: Yes, yes. It’s not even if you feel that you’re not– sometimes you can just feel that a student actually would do better over there than with you. And if you really love your students, and if you don’t love it, you shouldn’t be doing it. If you really love your students, you want what’s going to serve them.
Audience: And I think sometimes as a student, a mature student to a degree, can tell when it doesn’t resonate.
Miranda Macpherson: Exactly.
Audience: The other thing I wanted to know is, is there a length of time that you would have a student come to you? Is there a time– years? Would you allow that? When do they fly?
Craig Holliday: Well, one of the things that I look at is, does the student have an actual resonance with the lineage, if you are part of the lineage? And so, I was with my teacher for decades, and I feel him with me now. And so, I just feel like I stepped into that. But I also trained in other lineages where it just felt like, I’m going to study here for two years, five years, get something good, and then move forward.
Audience: Have you had students that fly, that you have had with you? And for what period of time, let’s say, do you maintain them as long as they keep coming back?
Craig Holliday: Modern day spirituality is a funny thing. A lot of people window shop, and a lot of people come and go. It’s rare that people actually commit to something deep and stick around and are willing to do the hard work. That’s my personal experience.
Miranda Macpherson: I have different experience in that I really like to work with people over the long term. And I have two sanghas in the Bay Area, and I trained and ordained ministers. So, there was a graduation process. And then with those ministers, once they’d gone through a certain curriculum and had been endorsed to go and teach, then they become part of an alumni organization, and the relationship changes. However, what I learned going through that experience for 10 years is there’s no set time limit per person. It’s a very unique relationship that you have with each individual. And so how I work with it now over the long term is, we become more practitioners together. There’s always that love for one’s teacher, but there’s less asymmetry in the mix. And there’s an encouragement from over here in the one who’s had the teacher role to sort of encourage them to serve in some way, to see how their gifts and their wisdom want to come forth in the world, whether that wants to happen within the community by bringing forth and giving that person more responsibility or helping them mentor younger students on the path, or whether there’s some way that they feel called to embody their wisdom and for me to encourage that.
Rick Archer: We have two minutes left. So, this woman is willing to ask a question. Yes.
Audience: About 25 years ago, Arnie Mindell said to me, you will always know a great teacher because they are the people who will give their students the very tools and weapons with which to kill them. And I think as teachers, we must do that. And every time I teach a group, I will pass out forms for feedback to keep me in my integrity. And I’ve been doing that for 22 years now. And I think it’s a great thing to do.
Craig Holliday: Yeah, that’s that old Buddhist saying, you see the Buddha in the road. It’s like kill him. Yeah, keep walking.
Rick Archer: Question. OK. Yeah, go ahead.
Audience: I’m imagining we don’t have time for a full answer, but I was curious what the impact of your work has been in the recent history. And how well is your work being received and are spiritual teachers catching on to what you’re offering?
Mariana Caplan: Yesterday–
Rick Archer: You mean the ASI? Yeah.
Audience: Yeah.
Rick Archer: Tell her.
Mariana Caplan: Yesterday, we had a meeting of 45 spiritual teachers and leaders. We created a hermetically sealed confidential space, which was not recorded and without microphones. And we made a step toward bringing forth what leaders were struggling with, what their vulnerabilities, their needs. I won’t try to speak for the ASI in general, but we’re new. And I was deeply moved and uplifted by the fact that so many teachers were willing to step off of their soapbox or mountaintop or isolation. And many of us were expressing the need to– they wanted connection. They wanted removal from this isolation. They wanted peers. They wanted feedback. So that’s just one example of, I think, a beautiful step that we–
Craig Holliday: And we met for four hours. It was an incredible meeting. People showed up. They were deep. They shared their tears, their openheartedness, their vulnerability. It was a really beautiful experience.
Rick Archer: At the end, we taped something for about 45 minutes, which I’ll probably be putting up on YouTube so you get a summary of it. And each person in the room made a statement.
Craig Holliday: And by the way, if you are interested in being a part of the ASI, please join us, email us, get a hold of us. The website is spiritualintegrity.org. And we’re looking for more support because this is what we’re trying to create, a greater change in the culture, to create a greater sense of humility, growth, professionalism in this field so that we can better serve others, so we can better serve.
Rick Archer: We’re out of time, I’m afraid. So, if you had something you wanted to say, we might have a few minutes to talk individually with people up here before the next thing starts. But thank you very much for coming. We really appreciate this nice full room of people. Thank you all so much.