A student recently asked me, “how you do you know when something is worth pushing through or it is time to give up?” In other words, when on a path, when do we persevere, when do we ease off, and when do we move to another path?
Many spiritual teachers will tell you that when you get close to something very important on your path, that will be the time when you will most feel compelled to stop. A seemingly impassable wall can arise along with pain, terror, even illness. It is as if some part of you is fighting for life. Many teachers will tell you that this is the very time to renew your commitment to the path, the study, and push forward with all you have. To seek a breakthrough.
But the charismatic and manipulative leader who has none of the student’s best interests at heart will say exactly the same thing. As will the teacher who has seen this pattern before and has concluded that if it works for one student, it will work for all.
One answer does not fit all students and circumstances. Indeed, persevering on the path can be yet one more form of protection, denial and distraction from the student’s best direction. Or it may be exactly the right approach, right now, for this student. As a teacher, part of your job is to guide the student through these inflection points. How do you know when the student is on the right path and should continue? Push harder? Retreat? Move to another practice?
This is a touch-stone question in teaching, especially in spiritual teaching. How a teacher answers this question has everything to do with how they understand profound teaching, and how they care for a student who has trusted them with their deepest self.
Since teachers are not infallible, ideally this answer comes largely from the student’s deepest and truest knowledge of what they need. To help the student navigate, we must enter into a partnership with the student in which they tell us what we need to know to best guide them. Toward that end we must already have taught them, engendered within them, an ability to look through their own terrors and limitations, independent of our influence, so that when we ask them to look at this wall and tell us if their best way is through or around or over there, they may be able to.
It is too easy for those of us with charisma and authority to convince our students that we are right, that they simply lack commitment, when closer to the truth is that we are limited in our sight and the path we have helped them set may be flawed. This is why some of the very best teachers use a surprisingly gentle approach at this time. It is simply too easy to press the student in a direction that they cannot sustain or that is deleterious to them.
If you have a student whose momentum seems stalled, who you believe could reach a new level by persevering and recommitting themselves, before you encourage this push, look to yourself to see how your own journey echoes the student’s. Review your own, similar stalls, your own connected fears and terrors, and your own walls. Only then, when you are familiar with the landscape in yourself – past or present – should you advise the student on their best path forward.
And if your past does not echo the student’s path at all? Then be even more reticent to advise.
As teachers we need not be perfect in our abilities or knowledge, but we must be perfectly committed to seeing into ourselves. What we teach comes through us, so we must work to clear our way of hidden walls and demons. Only with our commitment to our own such path can we fruitfully advise our students on theirs.
Hi, I have been with an amazingly gifted teacher for seven years who told me that he was giving me psychotherapy. He somehow merged psychoanalysis in with teaching and tantric energy flows, no physical sex, and providing himself as a model to learn from. I didn’t give consent for any kind of therapy, and I told him all about my childhood, about all of my life to this present moment as a friend, not as a client. Although he is an amazing teacher, he has now totally revealed himself as having a deep committment to psychotherapy. I trained in Sacred Theatre which is completely different and doesn’t leave a person in a deep state of distress, but leads them to a state of Oneness, of Joy. I’m at the cross roads with him, I don’t think that it’s safe to go back. I had to withdraw from my exams and have come close to withdrawing from my degree. I have been exhausted, angry and depressed. I’m an Initiate from an order and I understand myself quite well, but since the only other teacher that I had warned me not to go near therapy and that internal Alchemy is what I’m trained in is all that I need, I agree. I originally whent to this psychospiritual teacher for company along the way, but he just couldn’t resist his attempt to fix me, when I didn’t need any fixing, with the therapy that has helped him. He just couldn’t see that a Beautiful Alchemically trained person just wanted some like minded companionship. He may well think that I have reached this place where I can go no further , when really I will be asking him just to stay with all the amazing teachings and energy flows that Bless me deeply. Helen.
Helen, thank you for writing and being so open about this hard time you are facing. Since I don’t know you personally, I must answer generally, so take in what I say using your own good sense, mind and heart, as a gatekeeper.
When we go deeply into a relationship with someone – teacher, therapist, parent figure, trusted friend – we necessarily become vulnerable to them and what they tell or teach us. What the teacher (or therapist or friend) does with this vulnerability can vary greatly, and what we take from it can likewise vary. But can become quite vulnerable, and consequently feel great distress when things come apart.
When it comes to deep teaching, there is usually some shifting and distress is a sign that something is shifting. Whether that shifting is valuable for you – teaches you something of value – or not is another question entirely. Deep teaching is like breaking eggs for an omelet. The question is, as a students of a deep teaching, in a particular circumstance, are we the eggs or the omelet?
You may find it useful to read When the Student Comes Apart, where I write: “Damage and profound change are not far apart. The difference is one of context and time: damage that is healed from is no longer damage, it is change. Major insight and breakthrough sometimes can come only from radical, sudden shifts.” That said, not everyone has consented to such radical shifts, or to relationships in which one partner attempts to create such shifts in the other.
It may be that because – or in spite of – this man’s teachings, you have gained something of value. But right now it seems to me better to focus on taking care of yourself, to self-nurture and self-care, perhaps to look for other friends to help you get some distance and perspective on this.
Ultimately only you can decide whether someone’s company, whether friend, teacher, mentor, companion, is good for you or not. If in this circumstance you are not sure you are able to distance yourself from this teacher, that alone may be reason enough to do so, at least for a short break to be sure that you are in control of where you put your attention and focus.
Be aware of blame and anger, which will bind you to this difficult situation, so soften both where you can. Feel free to write again, either privately or here, whichever you prefer.