Mindfutures

Mindfutures Death of a Superman

Written on 2009-10-28 05:30:48

This post is from my old blog. But it has a certain message which I think is important, so I am reposting it here. Marcus

Recently while I was attending a Mind Body and Spirit Festival in Hong Kong, somebody gave me a book about prosperity consciousness, by a lesser-known author. To be honest I didn’t even notice the person who put it on my table, as I was talking to someone else at the time. But later I began to read the book, and was struck by the beautiful simplicity of its teachings. The writer has been teaching programmes based around his spiritual teachings for some years now.

I found the book to be deeply moving. It’s philosophy really resonated with me, and the tools that the author advocates are easy to apply. In fact I’ve used many of them before, but over the years have neglected them. Hong Kong is a very hectic place, and for the last seven years in which I’ve lived in the greater China region, I have effectively been holding down two careers. I not only have a full-time job as an English teacher in a public school, but I am a teacher, researcher and writer in Futures Studies, and the Director of my own company, MindFutures. So over the past seven years I have worked full-time, gained a PhD, written and published the book Integrated Intelligence, published book chapters, many academic articles, delivered conference papers, and written numerous other articles for the popular media. The result of all this is that I became increasingly burnt out, and lost the deep connection with spirit that had really been the foundation of all my enthusiasm for this kind of work.

This is why the book came as such a blessing to me. It helped bring me back to the simplicity of living a spiritual life in the present moment. The author become my spiritual mentor. Then recently I went online to find out a bit more about him. Unfortunately I found something that shocked me to the core. Just a few weeks ago he was arrested and charged with three counts of sexual assault, involving two women from one of his workshops.

Now it is important to note that he has not been convicted at the time of writing, so he may well be innocent of all charges. Still, I have to consider the possibility that my new guru may have been involved in something less-than-becoming of a spiritual teacher.

This knowledge affected me quite deeply. More deeply than I appreciated at first. I stopped reading his book, as well as applying his daily “lessons’ (there is one for each day of the month). The immediate result was that my mind fell out from the immediacy of the present moment, and I lost the connection with spirit which I had gained, along with the sense of peace that goes with it. In short, this was a mini spiritual crisis for me.

I decided to mediate on the issue, and as I often do, I asked for some insight into the problem. I have a strong connection with spirit, and this includes the ability to tap into intuitive dimensions of mind which transcend logical awareness. I am also able to connect intuitively with other people’s minds during this process, something I have learned by working with gifted spiritual teachers over the years. I was able to connect with the writer’s spirit, and saw that he was in great agony over what happened. As I looked at his consciousness field, I saw an archetypal image of the man as a kind of ancient warrior with great power. The image of the snake came through, which represented sexual energy, but also with a connotation of deception and dishonesty. I saw that the guy had unresolved issues with the expression of his sexuality, and the use and abuse of male power. In short, his ego had come to take control of his psyche, and had left him open to manipulation and abusive tendencies.

I was also told that there would be “justice” to come out of this. Right now I am not quite sure what that means.

Regardless of what the outcome is, there was an important lesson in this for me. I initially judged the author as being sexually abusive, and felt great disappointment and even moral outrage. Yet the following day when I Iooked at it more deeply, I saw that this was a gift for me. What I was seeing in this New Age self-help guru was some of my own judgment of myself for some of my own sexual issues. These are mostly in the past, but I found that I was still holding guilt for them. There is also the isssue of "giving my power away" to him. In my mind I had turned him into a kind of hero, a superman. In fact even spiritual teachers are human, and may make mistakes. It was time to let go of the image of the guy as superman.

Do a spiritual teacher’s teachings become obsolete, even useless, if he/she takes an “ego fall”? The answer is, it depends. Like all of us, the level of consciousness of spiritual teachers may rise and fall at different times in their lives. The nature of the human ego is such that we are all potential frauds, if we do not carefully monitor our own behaviour, and most importantly the intention which lies behind it. The book that I read form this author was about ten years old. The issue of his sexuality was still there then, but had not developed into a problem at the behavioural level.

The bottom line regarding using fallen spiritual teachers' teachings is whether the teachings and tools are useful and meaningful to us. Moral outrage is often a function of ego states, so this in itself offers us a chance for spiritual growth. I am in no way justifying abuses and corruption by spiritual teachers. I am simply saying that in the eyes of spirit, all things are without the kind of emotive judgment that we humans tend to put on the actions of others that we perceive to be wrong. It helps to remember that this judgment itself takes us away from peace. So what do you choose, moral outrage, or peace? It’s up to you.

I have chosen. In the case of my fallen "hero", I feel gratitude. I have learned much. And yes, I am going to continue to apply his teachings, and follow his daily lessons. After all, they are the teachings of spirit, which are much bigger than the ego of individual human beings. As a Superman, my "hero" is dead (a least for me). But as a spirit, as a teacher, he lives on.

PS, as I wrote this, I suddenly noticed a song playing in the back of my mind, one of the common ways that spirit communicates with me. I think you will find it relevent, if you look at the video clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4 I'll let you take your own meaning from it.

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