Panel Discussions on Ethics and Spiritual Teaching
Summary:
- Panel Introduction: Rick Archer introduces the panel members and their roles in the Association of Professional Spiritual Teachers (APST).
- Ethical Challenges: The panel addresses the complexities of regulating romantic relationships between teachers and students in spiritual communities.
- Diverse Opinions: Panelists share their varied perspectives on whether such relationships should ever occur and under what conditions.
- Community & Accountability: The importance of transparency, accountability, and community feedback in spiritual teaching is emphasized.
The conversation explores the balance between personal experiences, cultural norms, and the need for ethical guidelines in spiritual practices.
Full Transcript:
Rick Archer: We’re out in San Jose, California, in the home of some friends at the moment. But the reason the four of us are sitting here is that tomorrow we’re going to do a panel discussion at the Science in Nanda Valley conference. And we wanted to generate some video content for the Association of Professional Spiritual Teachers website. And so we thought we’d record something tonight. I may also add this to the Buddha at the Gas Pump channel as an addendum to the video of the panel discussion we’re going to do tomorrow. But since this may also be a standalone video on APST, the APST website, I should probably briefly introduce the people sitting here. My name is Rick Archer, and I was somewhat instrumental in the formation of APST, although not nearly as much as the woman to my left, Jac O’Keefe, who has really been the champion of this whole thing and has put in huge amounts of time and effort to bring it together. It wouldn’t have happened without her. And Jac is a spiritual teacher. I think her bio is… all of our bios are on APST. To her left is Craig Holliday, who is one of the original three musketeers of getting together the APST. And in the panel discussion we’ll do, we’ll elaborate a little bit on how the whole thing was conceived. And to my right is Caverly Morgan, who is from the Portland area these days and has done some incredible work with teaching mindfulness in schools. And when the three of us thought who we would like to have as a fourth for our panel, Caverly came to mind as someone who would be a perfect fit. So we’re really glad to have her here. In our panel discussion tomorrow, we have quite a wide range of topics that we’d like to cover. And I’m speaking in the future tense, but by the time you watch this, you may have actually already watched the panel discussion. But we also thought that there are certain points upon which… Some people, when they first hear about our efforts with this thing, they jump to the conclusion that it’s going to be some moralistic, judgmental thing where we’re going to… where we consider ourselves qualified to pass judgment on teachers and their behavior and so on. And we just… we’re going to emphasize from the outset, and probably continue to emphasize, that that’s not our orientation and that we have a very… hopefully a very humble attitude toward this whole project. We all feel in our own ways that it’s something that’s very much needed in the spiritual community, that there have been far too many examples of teacher misbehavior, which has caused a lot of pain and confusion and disillusionment among students. And if we can contribute in any way to the sort of elevation of understanding of what is or may or may not be appropriate behavior by a spiritual teacher, we feel we will have done something significant. But not only are we not sort of adamant about many of the points that we’re presenting, we feel the whole thing is fluid, a work in progress, something that we welcome and need the input and collaboration of the whole community in, because everyone else’s judgment and opinion is as valuable as ours may be, and even amongst ourselves, our judgments differ. There have been certain points which we’ve been bantering back and forth all year and not reaching agreement on. We haven’t argued in a contentious way, it’s been very friendly, but, you know, we just… everyone has their subjective perspective, and in trying to evaluate or formulate a code of ethics, we’re trying to achieve a balance between our subjective perspectives and whatever universal standards there might be that fit our contemporary culture and ought to be respected. So one such example of something that we’ve had trouble reaching agreement on is the issue of relationships, romantic relationships or sexual relationships between teachers and students. And this is probably one of the most important points to consider because it’s probably the area in which the most egregious violations have occurred, which have caused the most harm and confusion among students and have gotten teachers in all kinds of hot water. So we’ve discussed among ourselves over the previous months what would be an appropriate approach to this, how can you regulate such a thing, should there never be any kind of romantic relationship between teachers and students, or should there be a cooling-off period in which the teacher-student relationship has ended but the romantic relationship has not started for X number of months or years or whatever. And again, there’s been a range of opinions on this, and we’ve sort of each shifted our positions and discussed it back and forth. And we thought that with you watching this video, we’d like to just do a little bit of that in real time and explain some of the processes we’ve gone through. And you may see even now that we’re not in complete agreement. But I think you’ll also see that none of us is rigid or adamant in our opinions. We’re sort of trying to approach this in a thoughtful and sensitive and introspective way and to learn as we go and kind of search our own conscience and our own understanding as deep as it may go to come up with something that’s really going to be useful and helpful for people. So, who would like to take it from there? Craig Holliday; Okay, so I’d be happy to start. As far as if we’re looking at the spectrum of teachers being able to fully be in a relationship with their students and teachers having zero relationship with their students romantically, I’m in that very conservative camp of no relationship.
Rick Archer: Ever.
Craig Holliday: Did you say ever?
Rick Archer: Ever.
Craig Holliday: Well, that’s an interesting question, ever. Of course, as a human being, there’s going to be exceptions to all kinds of rules, to any rule. There’s going to be cultural exceptions, there’s going to be different organizations that have learned how to do that beautifully, like in the Jewish tradition of rabbis. And it’s very common to have the rabbi be married and have it to be someone from within the congregation. And that’s, of course, absolutely acceptable. But what I have done as a therapist, I’ve just taken the rules of traditional psychotherapists and the way you relate to clients is you don’t become romantically involved. And the idea that is taught in graduate school is, the idea is, it’s never. If you look at the exact codes and the rules, this has gone over many years of great debate. When I first became a therapist, I would have to wait two years from the last time I saw the client if I was wanting to date them. And so it just made it really simple that that probably wouldn’t happen. Since then, it’s been raised to five years. And I’m a fan of this approach.
Rick Archer: By the governing body that governs therapists?
Craig Holliday: Yeah, by the governing body that…
Rick Archer: Grants and revokes licenses.
Craig Holliday: Grants and revokes licenses, yes. And see, to me, it makes it really simple that as a spiritual teacher, I’m here, I’m showing up as a servant for my students. I’m not here looking for a date. I’m not looking for someone to sleep with. I’m not mixing those two worlds. And it keeps things radically simple as a teacher. There’s no messiness. And I can even say, from a place of humility, when I first started teaching, my life was literally a train wreck. I had all kinds of busyness going on outside of my world of teaching. But what I found is, because the relationships I was in were not fully stable, that that confusion bled into the world of teaching. And so I would show up, and I would be a little bit confused or stressed or thinking about what had just happened with my partner at that time. It was a great distraction. And so when one has a conservative view, it’s like you take that confusion. I think we can all agree that relationships tend to be the most messy place in most of our lives. It tends to be that evolving edge. I see there’s people in the room that are smiling when I say this. It tends to be where we struggle. And so it’s nice if that struggle is not mixed with my teaching community, with the Sangha. And it’s like, what are we here for? Are we here to sit in meditation? Are we here to connect in the truth? Are we here to step into these greater realms of consciousness? Or are we here looking for a date? And there can be a lot of trouble when we start to mix those worlds. And I know, of course, it’s not that simple. But sometimes, like as a therapist, I may meet someone. I may find, oh, this person there, they’re like my best friend. They’re coming to me. I see them fully. They see me fully. There’s this connection that begins to form. There’s this dynamic. I see their beauty and divinity. They see my beauty and divinity. And as a therapist, you can say, oh, well, this makes perfect sense that the two of us should now be an intimate relationship. But as soon as we start going in that direction, all this potential for growth and vulnerability and a sense of having a clean and clear, safe place, all of that really quickly begins to crumble when those boundaries are crossed. And so, to me, it’s a very simple thing to say, I don’t cross that line, and it keeps my teaching community fairly safe for my desire. And if my students know this as well, and they say, okay, then I’m not going to cross that line with Craig. And then it keeps, at least it keeps that realm intentionally safe. It keeps it safe. And I could go on and on, but I, of course, don’t want to hog the mic here. I’d be happy to hear.
Rick Archer: Thank you.
Jac O’Keeffe: And then sometimes your spiritual path commands you to break your golden rule.
Craig Holliday: Absolutely.
Jac O’Keeffe: Because it will destroy the controller. It will make you fly in the face of what you believed to be a moral high value. And there is such divine efficiency when our spiritual path just says, oh, you think you’re like this? Okay, let’s turn you upside down, and we’ll make you be the opposite of who you thought you were.
Rick Archer: So give us an example of something like that.
Jac O’Keeffe: Oh, gosh, some of us have had that path. I certainly have had that path when I was doing my spiritual practice. Whatever I held to be a clear value of, like, I would never do that, it’s like, oh, my God, I have to do it, I have to do it, I have to do it. So I remember, you know, there was this golden rule with my first husband. Absolutely, absolutely, the one thing we will always keep sacred is being loyal to each other. And I knew at some point, like, spiritually I know I’m going to leave him. I know I will have to choose God because I’m attached to him, so I’ll have to choose God. And at a retreat, it was like, I’m going to– this is where it’s going to happen. This is how my marriage is going to break up. I’m going to be disloyal to this person, to my husband, with this person. I don’t know how this is going to happen, but this is how it’s going to unfold to get me out of the marriage. So every value system I had had to be destroyed in that process also. And divine efficiency unfolds like that sometimes. And so, yeah, I mean, I was just in tears, taking off my wedding ring, thinking this is horrendous. I feel like a 35-year-old virgin. It was just so nervous, so awful, but I have to do this. I have to do this and destroy everything that I held as sacred. Now, of course, I was on a retreat as a student, and he was another student. But I can see that same energy of divine compulsion pushing through in other people’s lives. Sometimes it happens to a teacher also, where they’re like, “I don’t know how this is going to happen. I don’t know how we’re going to get from teacher-student to being two equal adults who are consenting to be together sexually. How are we going to get from here to there?” And that’s what I’d like the APST to do, is like, how do we map that journey? How do we guide others through that journey? Thankfully, I had a mild aversion because I was a student and he was a student. It only broke my own marital vows. But when there’s a teacher and a student, sometimes it works like this. And to say that consciousness will never make us break a rule like this, it’s like, you know, as soon as you think consciousness won’t work like that, consciousness will come up and say, “Huh, you think you know how I work? Try this one.” And that’s what happens. So I would like us to find a way to navigate in those rare exceptions and also for our community to know the difference between what Craig is talking about. It’s like, just know when there’s desire and K-N-O-W, when there is desire. And that’s when you take the higher ground and don’t follow desire.
Craig Holliday: And there’s a radical difference between a rare exception and desire. There’s a difference between me sleeping with 35 women in my sangha and coming to a point of, okay, it’s one relationship, we’ve moved on into a deep level of commitment. But I think what I see more often than not as a therapist is I see train wreck after train wreck after train wreck and hear these horrific stories. And so I’m willing to put my vote or my sense of, how do we go forward? I’d rather protect students than protect teachers and the path of teachers and what a teacher thinks that they’re going through and they need to do with this one particular student. I would much rather protect the thousand and one students than worry about the one in a thousand teachers who needs to feel like they need to be married to this person or sleep with this person or invite this person back to their room to look at their special spiritual books. We’re going to have tantric sex and all become enlightened.
Jac O’Keeffe: Yes, and you’ll reach my vibration and all this kind of…
Craig Holliday: I’ll raise your vibration with my lingam or whatever silly kind of conversation we’re going to have. And I’ve heard these stories and to see the tremendous lifelong pain that an individual has been open and vulnerable with the teacher and then left the path for 10 years or 15 years or 20 years because of the tremendous violation of trust that has happened.
Rick Archer: I heard of a woman who committed suicide because of a violation of trust and it wasn’t even that overt a situation. It was more like she just got so disillusioned by the behavior. It wasn’t even overtly sexual, but it was wanting to go in that direction and it shattered her ideal vision of this person who is a well-known and highly respected spiritual teacher now deceased. But before we get to Caverly , I just want to… Your statement confused me a little bit and it opens up a possible alibi for people doing whatever they want because they feel like there’s this karmic, cosmic thing just driving me and I have no choice about it and I realize it goes against all the conventions, but the devil made me do it.
Jac O’Keeffe: Yeah, I hadn’t finished it. So I think the point, the gift that we can open together and share together and grow together on the APST is that what’s the level of maturity of the teacher? So if the teacher has their own needs, if they haven’t transcended desire, if their own loneliness, their own shadow has not been explored at all, they will project this into their sangha. And then this is when the teacher will use any bullshit concept in order to justify their behavior. That stinks. That stinks. And that’s the teacher not doing the work for themselves. But there are times when there is a mature, objective scenario that is a rare exception and I would like teachers to know the difference. For teachers to educate themselves, is it my shadow, what’s going on here? Or is this actually divine will in somehow? And how can I safely navigate if it’s divine will? That’s the area that’s not known. That teachers don’t know the difference of when it’s their own shadow and when there’s absolutely a divine intervention moving them in a certain way.
Rick Archer: That’s the tricky one.
Jac O’Keeffe: That’s the tricky one and that’s the immaturity that I want the APST to address through education. Let’s mature the sector so that there is more autonomy and transparency in how we work.
Craig Holliday: Even bringing the conversation into the light I think is greatly helpful because the reason that this has gone on for probably a couple thousand years now is that it’s hung out in the shadows. And so the willingness to have this conversation, to talk about it, to bring up the rare exceptions and to bring up when it’s inappropriate I think is a helpful conversation. I could stand here and say, “Oh, it is never appropriate ever.” And of course, I’m not–
Jac O’Keeffe: That’s going to make it go underground, you see?
Craig Holliday: That’s going to make—
Jac O’Keeffe:There’s no growth there. There’s no learning there.
Craig Holliday: I’m not wired in that way to hold that kind of stance. But there is just a real sense of what are normal expectations. If a student comes to a sangha and the teacher is a male teacher and he’s only answering questions with the beautiful young ladies and afterwards he’s inviting them to all hang out with him at the secret teaching after party, it’s like, “Come on.” And we laugh, but it happens. It happens again and again. It happens with well-known teachers, not-known teachers. It happens with Catholic priests and monks. It’s across the board. It’s unfortunate.
Rick Archer: I want to give Caverly a chance to speak. I just want to interject one really quick thing before I give you a chance to speak, which is that one thing that’s very confusing is that a teacher can be radiating like a lighthouse and appear to have an incredibly high level of consciousness, have tremendous charisma and powerful darshan and all that other stuff, and yet still have major unexamined shadow areas and undeveloped aspects of the personality, immaturities and so on, that makes them act in ways that seem so completely incongruous with their apparent enlightenment that it can be extremely confusing. And sometimes they act out those shadow things in secret behind closed doors while publicly portraying an aura of saintliness and perfection. Cavwely. [laughter] Cavalry Morgan; You know, one thing that’s– Yes, I have witnessed that that is the case. But something that’s interested me about the conversation you all have been having is the building of accountability and transparency. So I think a lot of what we’re witnessing these days is scandal that’s happening when there’s a teacher, often male, at the top of a pyramid and is untouchable based on not having models of shared accountability within larger communities. So there’s sort of an island effect that can happen. And I saw recently one case, and I’m sure there’s more than one, but I’m just present to this one, where even after a sexual scandal comes to light, this person still–they’ve become an island unto themselves and can continue to teach even though the board of directors has left them, their own community has fallen apart. And so I think it seems to me from the little bit I’ve gotten to learn about how this has formed is that what’s powerful about it is that there’s not– if one’s signing on to be part of this shared accountability learning-together process, it’s no longer possible to live in that kind of isolation.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And isolation can be very dangerous for the teacher and for the students. I know one case of a very popular teacher who just shut down constructive criticism. If anybody offered any, they were sent packing. And he just kind of got more and more off into bizarro land of strange thinking with no critical feedback whatsoever.
Caverly Morgan: No mirror.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Craig Holliday: One of the beautiful things that happened with me early on is when my life was very much what I call in train wreck land, because I was young and many of my students were also my friends, they sat me down and they said, “Craig, we really love when you’re up there teaching and we have a wonderful time in your class, but these things are incongruent,” is basically what they said. And I can remember they kind of harassed–I call it harassment– they harassed me a little bit and I defended myself a little bit. But I realized, you know what, you guys are right. And it was really helpful that my students came forward and they said this to me. They looked me directly in the eye and they said, “You’ve got to clean your life up, Craig.” It really touched me and it was radically helpful for them to come forward and speak to me. And it was funny because I was talking with one of them today and there was this third person who came up and they said, “Well, Craig, how’s your life going?” Because the last time I talked to this person was maybe 8 years ago and it was when my life was pretty messy. And the good friend of mine said, “Oh, his life’s actually really wonderful and it’s really clear and it’s simple and things have calmed down and there’s peace there and there’s freedom there. And it’s supportive of the teaching, it’s supportive of the community, and it’s a wonderful thing not to be involved in this train wreck. And it’s a wonderful thing to have students that will come forward and speak to you and say, “Hey, maybe you need to look at this.” And I think this is a really valuable thing, that as a teacher, to be radically open to feedback, to criticism, to just constructive feedback is really helpful. And if we’re looking at, “Well, what does it mean to be free and human?” “Okay, so I’m open, I’m willing to hear, I’m willing to listen, I’m willing to grow, there’s humility there.” These are things that make a very supportive community. But if we play this other game, like Caverly was describing, where it’s a person and they’re on their own island, they’re untouchable, you can’t give feedback to the teacher, there’s this inner circle of students defending the guru and not letting you speak with him or her. And that can lead to a very neurotic community. And oftentimes we see that. Those tend to be the communities that have the most struggle and the greatest shadow. But it’s hard to have a big shadow if there is that open feedback within the community with the students, and they can come up and say, “Hey, I think you’re a little off here, what you said, I don’t know if that’s really spot on.”
Jac O’Keeffe: Another source for that kind of feedback that might seem really simplistic, but I think it’s something that every teacher should think about or every spiritual leader should think about. What circle of friends do you have? Are they all your students, or are you just a regular Joe Soap? Are you just a regular Jane to a group of people who can call you out, who can get annoyed with you, and there is no power play at all. And I think if you’re a teacher or a spiritual leader who doesn’t have regular, normal friends, then you have to ask why. You have to ask why. Because there is an absence of accountability, there is an absence of connection with the regular value system of transparency and openness. And are you able to have regular relationships? Because if you’re not able to have regular relationships, that dysfunction, if you’re living in a Western world and outside of an ashram, that dysfunction is going to come up and out and some pain is going to happen as a result because you’re not taking care of your own humanity, your own need for community and for peers. You’re always on a pedestal and that’s not sustainable because you have to have some form of– we all have to have some form of a mirror of how to function in a regular world, in regular life. You know?
Craig Holliday: Well, that’s one of the things we’re trying to do with the APST, is to create this sense of community and a willingness to talk with each other. So we’re not just all these individual teachers hanging out in our own little communities, in our own worlds where everyone’s telling us we’re right all the time and there’s this perfected state of consciousness that so-and-so lives in. But this willingness to come together, to see each other’s humanness, to see each other’s divinity, to support each other in our highest. And also to provide support. “Hey, I’m really struggling in this way or that way or in all these ways and I need some friends here.” And I think it can be a beautiful thing.
Jac O’Keeffe: And we’re coming from a couple of thousand years of the guru is beyond reproach. So look at the change in the culture we’re trying to bring about. So of course there’s going to be backlash. But of course there are, because what we’re seeing is like taboo.
Rick Archer: And when you say we’re trying to bring about this change in the culture, the culture is changing.
Caverly Morgan: It is.
Rick Archer: And we’re not doing it.
Jac O’Keeffe: No, we’re responding to the change.
Rick Archer: We form little characters.
Jac O’Keeffe: Yeah, exactly.
Rick Archer: And people are universally feeling the need for something of this nature. And we’re just trying to ride a wave that’s cresting anyway. And trying to articulate it, give a form to it, some words to it, so that it can be helpful for people. But we have to keep reminding, using our terminology carefully to make it perfectly clear that we are not some kind of governing body and have no aspirations to be. And we have neither the wisdom or the authority to pass judgment on anybody. We’re just trying to enliven in the sort of spiritual community of which we’re a part, an appreciation of this stuff and an articulation of what is and is not appropriate that hopefully we can more or less agree upon, all of us.
Caverly Morgan: It seems to me that it’s the creation of another type of sangha. It’s another sangha that honors the collective, that honors what’s larger than maybe your individual sangha or what you call your individual sangha.
Rick Archer: Yeah, there must be some universal values. Maybe some sanghas are going to be a little bit more off on this end of the spectrum and others off on that, and others won’t want to have anything to do with it because they really like orgies or something.
Jac O’Keeffe: Sure.
Rick Archer: If that’s what you want to belong to, then…
Jac O’Keeffe: Yeah, there’s space for all of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it has to be evolving because we’ve got learner plates on, you know. That’s an Irish thing. Your first two years of driving, you have to…
Rick Archer: On the car, yeah.
Jac O’Keeffe:Yeah, you have to have a symbol on the car to say that you’re still learning. So we have to be learning all the time. If we’re not willing to grow, well, then that’s shadow. That’s shadow. There it is. And if there is more blind spots that you see or you don’t see in yourself, it doesn’t matter. It’s about having the availability and the transparency to say, “Yeah, of course there can be hidden shadows within me. “Of course the work can still continue.” And if we can create that, you know, in ourselves and spread that a little bit so that there’s that openness, that transparency, that willingness to have a genuine effort to walk our talk, and if we can continue to do that and understand how others talk and walk is very different to us, but where can we meet and where can we support each other so that we don’t get locked into being one type of a supportive body but can be flexible and organic enough to be inclusive? That would be great. I don’t know what that would look like, but it would be great to try to do that.
Rick Archer: If this thing survives and thrives, it’s probably going to look very different in five years than it does now. So this is just a real fledgling little attempt. And we really hope that as it grows, there will be this sort of collaboration and ebb and flow of opinions and information and input and so on among anyone who cares to be involved, and that that sort of mutual collaboration will really enable it to evolve. We hope it never becomes ossified.
Jac O’Keeffe: Yeah.
Rick Archer: Yeah.
Jac O’Keeffe: Yeah.
Rick Archer: And so it’s apparent to me that we’re not going to resolve in this conversation whether there should be a two-year moratorium on relations.
Jac O’Keeffe: I mean, we’ve had so many conversations about this. So many.
Rick Archer: Any such thing. And that’s fine. I mean, this is the direction this conversation is taking. We’re just sort of painting with broad strokes here.
Jac O’Keeffe: And giving a sample, I suppose, of the kind of dialogues that we have. And no resolution comes, but we keep coming back to the drawing board and talking about it again.
Craig Holliday: Well, the important thing is to study, to study ethics, to grapple with them, to see what’s true, what makes sense. I mean, one of the beautiful things about studying ethics before you step into really messy ethical situations is you can form an idea of, okay, how will I respond to this when it comes forward. I mean, one of the things that I see the organization being really helpful for is for young students–I’m sorry, young teachers or new teachers who are coming forward who maybe have never studied ethics before, who don’t know it. Well, what is a dual relationship, and why would that be messy? Or how could I get in trouble with being friends with my students or becoming romantically involved? And it would be much better to study that, to understand it, to sit with that, these questions for hours and hours before you find yourself as the head of some community and then the community falling under some incredible messy nightmare where tremendous pain has been caused because one didn’t take the time to first study this, to examine how would I respond, how should I respond, what makes sense, how do I professionally navigate these things. And I think it’s something that, as we know, it’s radically lacking. Rick has brought this up a lot, that we would assume that most spiritual teachers have really strong ethics and have a strong high moral, high ground for the place they live and teach from, but if you look at history, if you look at recent history, even this last summer, our email boxes have filled up with scandal after scandal after scandal, and it’s like, oh boy, and these were teachers who had high levels of realization, and it didn’t… it ended in a really messy way, but the sense of if we educate ourselves, if we sit with these questions and deeply inquire, then we can, in a greater sense, serve our communities better.
Jac O’Keeffe: And boundaries are learned, how to work with power is learned. We need to learn these things. There are skills that we need. And to acknowledge our humanity and that these skills don’t just come down the track. It’s very rare that that happens, that the perfection of humanity is directly in line with the movement of consciousness. Very rare, very, very, very, very rare, can I say?
Craig Holliday: Yeah, a lot of myths teach it that way, but in reality, it’s rarely…
Rick Archer: And the word enlightenment has been associated with saintliness, all these enlightened people, and so the implication is that there’s a tight correlation between a high level of consciousness and moral behavior. But from what I’ve seen, it’s a very stretchy rubber band. There may be some correlation, eventually it gets pulled along, but boy, it can really stretch far.
Jac O’Keeffe: Yeah, exactly.
Caverly Morgan: Well, that doesn’t take into account how much practice is involved in being able to have your actions continually be refined such that they’re reflections of your deepest and greatest understanding. It doesn’t acknowledge that refinement process, to assume that it’s just like, “Oh, the lights came on, so we’re good to go.”
Craig Holliday: Yeah, and it’s much nicer to do that refinement work, so within a space, within a supportive community, before the nightmares begin to unfold or the shadows start to become unpacked, to be able to do that in a supportive community, to me, that’s a tremendous gift. And that’s what we’re trying to bring forward, is this sense of support and community and a willingness to together examine these questions. And again, like what Rick was saying, we’re not some judging authority, that is the furthest thing from my nature, our nature, is to judge, but rather to explore these questions and to see this as just a part of the spiritual practice, as a part of the path, to me is a beautiful thing.
Rick Archer: So this will be an ongoing conversation. And we could probably make a video a week and explore different aspects of it.
Jac O’Keeffe: Still not come to an agreement.
Rick Archer: Yeah, so I guess we should really conclude and say, “Stay tuned.” I mean, it’s getting late here, it’s quarter of eleven, and some of us are on East Coast time or Midwest time, and we have our panel discussion tomorrow and everything, so we want to be fresh for that. But we just wanted to make something and get it out there and put something on the website and stimulate some thought and discussion. So we hope we’ve done that and appreciate you watching this. If we had the energy and perhaps some more refreshments, we could probably go on for another few hours.
Caverly Morgan: Don’t give him anything to drink.
Rick Archer: But anyway, thanks for this, thanks for watching, and please stay tuned and get involved in whatever way you like in the Association of Professional Spiritual Teachers. And go to the website, www.professionalspiritualteachers.org and just explore around. It will be a work in progress and we hope you’ll find it very useful over the coming years.
Caverly Morgan: May the next Buddha be Sangha. (Applause)