06-26-2022, 07:05 PM
(06-26-2022, 09:52 AM)kilaya Wrote: Nice thread! So many interesting points that are certainly complex but important to wade through. My own thoughts on the issue go back to the teachings of the Buddha and Socrates: any degree of greed, lust, or anger in a "teacher," no matter how well-meaning he or she is, creates a difficulty in that person's ability to think through what they're doing and whether it's truly effective for the betterment of themselves or others. There are way too many examples of very elevated "teachers" in recent and distant history whose hidden inner anger, lust or greed led them to act in unbeneficial, unloving ways, which they were the last to acknowledge as so. In all cases they all harmed themselves most, in choosing to save others publicly before they had full control of their more negative thoughts and tendencies.
This is very very difficult to assess in a spiritual teacher without spending a lot of time closely observing them. Mostly because they're usually quite charming and totally convinced of their selfless, purely positive motives to help others. When I was searching for genuine teachers I would get turned off quickly by being sold things or charged more than modest and practical fees for teachings/seminars, etc. Ironically, Socrates criticized the most famous spiritual teachers of his day for charging for their service. In Plato's Protagoras, the famous teacher Protagoras gives a lengthy explanation of why he is justified charging large sums of money to become his student. This was in 500BC Greece! Socrates wasn't having any of it. He said that if Protagoras was actually capable of making people into better people in the way he claimed he wouldn't need to charge any money because his students would voluntarily give him money after becoming better people because of him. This makes a lot of sense to me.
I agree with this completely. You can see examples of it all over the internet, people with good motives getting corrupted because they are unwilling to put themselves under the same microscope they are asking others to willingly do. If you are not willing to look at yourself with 100% honestly, then how can you ethically expect your students to do the same? There are so many corrupt spiritual teachers who become cult leaders and this is why I think it’s absolutely imperative to be completely transparent in your teachings.
I have only watched a couple spiritual teachers, and only one with great intensity, and that is because of my personal connection to them, and I’ve been watching them get swept up in the adoration, the constant compliments, never being challenged by anyone, hardly anyone every doubting anything they say… this teacher even made a pretty tasteless joke at Carla, Don and Jim’s expense, and the Law of One is the basis of their whole school of thought. Because he laughed at it, all of his commenters were also laughing. I was like… wait… no one thought that was rude? No one is going to call him out on being rude?
This is why I think it was tasteless… I posted a reference to it in the comments on that particular video and it “mysteriously” got deleted. The Death of Don Elkins .
How does one get so detached from their own teachings? I heard in an interview of him saying he was on his 9th read through of the Law of One books. 9 read throughs and you still haven’t gotten the concept of how important being loving is? The way our society is set up, is designed to manipulate even those with pure motives, to the point where they are just as corrupted as a politician if they aren’t taking a good hard look at themselves as often as they are asking their students to do so.