Alright, so here is another one of our pet peaves, spiritual teachers without a social context.
Priests without a perspective or (as we like to say) gurus without a clue.
We’ve all read a book by this person, right?
Some of us have even met them in the temples and the ashrams and the “sacred” grounds. Heck, Oprah even promotes this person. This is the (usually) guy who presumes to speak about God and presence and being in the now and morality and virtue and karma and what’s expected from Spirit and all that other spiritual stuff without really having a clue about what it takes to live this life. They sit in their fancy chairs, or assume lotus position on some guilded podium, and prognosticate about karma, consciousness, the cosmos (sometimes) evolution, galactic alignment, and what have you without having a real clue about the day to day happenings of the world.
And the problem with this?
Well as one bright person once said, we are not humans beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience. Seems sensible right? And if it is, if the Truth is that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, then how can someone with limited human experience, who lives in social isolation, who has no kids, who can’t maintain a long term relationship, who lives off donations, and hasn’t a clue what it means to move around in the “real world” have anything useful to say about what it means to be spiritual in a human body?
The answer?
In my opinion, they don’t.
They can’t!
“Live in the now?”
“Be fully present?”
“Work on your karma.”
“Be a good person.”
“Follow the commandments.”
“Learn your life lessons.”
“Just sit and attract.”
I mean, there appears to be as much spiritual insight and good advice in any of these standard answers as there appears to be blood in a stone.
How does one “attract” wealth and prosperity when the economy is collapsing around them?
How does one one “live in the now” or be “fully present” when the wife is home by herself and the little kids needs to be changed, fed, and napped at the same time?
How does one even concentrate when the poverty is so grinding you can’t even get a single good meal?
You can offer platitudes of the “smile and wave” variety in these situations I suppose, but really the advice you get is often singularly ridiculous, abstract, and meaningless. It’s often more of a “pretend everything is OK despite your collapsing world” or “it’s all your fault because of your bad karma” kinda of advice.
And it’s not just the personal and social vacuity you often face from these “give a bad name to spirituality” folks, it is the political and economic as well. As if poverty in South Africa, or Haiti, or in the slum downtown is the result of “failure to attract” or bad karma. Rather a more plausible explanation is two hundred years of colonial exploitation. And if people in Haiti are poor it is because the French government stole money from them and forced them into enduring poverty when it demanded 21 billion (in today’s) dollars just to quit colonizing, exploiting, and enslaving the people!
It is therefore necessary to look back at the struggle for emancipation waged by the Haitian population, because in retaliation against this double-faceted revolution, both anti-slavery and anti-colonial in nature, the country inherited the ransom France demanded for independence, amounting to 150 million francs (that is, France’s annual budget at the time). In 1825, France decided that “The current inhabitants of the French part of Santo Domingo will pay into France’s Federal deposit and consignment offices, the sum of one hundred and fifty million francs, to be paid in five installments, year after year, with the first term due 31 December 1825. The money will be used to compensate the former colonists who will demand compensation.[3]” That is equivalent to approximately 21 billion dollars nowadays. From the outset Haiti had to pay a very high price. Debt became the neo-colonial instrument used to maintain access to this country’s many natural resources. (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17042).
Of course, so many spiritual teachers will tell you something different, but what do they know really? Have they ever taken a political science or sociology course? Do they understand the psychology of oppression, learned helplessness, and that sort of stuff? Do they realize the level of exploitation that occurs in this world? Have they ever looked into the function of the World Bank, or the International Monetary Fund?
No.
Most of them are too focussed on their dog and pony show to really care about any of these more substantive issues, or how these might be related to spirituality, spiritual experience, and incarnation–except perhaps to say “it’s your fault” or “you chose your suffering” or “you get what you sow.”
Of course if that were true, Haitians wouldn’t at least get principle plus 2% interest over 200 years and they money they handed over to France. So, obviously something else going on.
So why is this such a concern and what can we do about it?
Well it’s a concern because frankly it makes a mockery out of spirituality and really throws into question the veracity of most claims to wisdom. If spiritual teachers and gurus know nothing about the basic truths of this world, how on earth can they be a) respected or b) believed. If they are so clueless that their only explanation for the quake in Haiti is they “chose to sacrifice” (rather than the fact that poverty led to sub standard building led to ubiquitous collapse of buildings). How substantive and accurate can their accounts be if they cannot even take into account the exigencies of women’s existence, the reality of colonial exploitation, or the propaganda of a global media system? And perhaps more to the point, how can anybody respect spirituality in general when the answers that are provide by your average pundit are so ridiculously naive (from a political, economic, social, or psychological) perspective as to defy even basic common sense? No wonder so many people are so hostile to any discussion of God and spirituality since it so often leads to senseless and meaningless platitudes.
And what are we going to do about it.?
Well, speaking as two people who have written and thought a lot about spirituality, we think we need to raise the standard for spiritual dialogue and advice. Ask your guru or priest some hard questions. What do they know about life, politically, economically, socially? Do they have families? Do they know anything about children, or how difficult it is to raise them? Do they understand the reality of exploitation (of women, of children, of workers)? What is there explanation for poverty in Africa, or the massive destruction in Haiti? Do they offer “non-answers” (well that’s just “God’s plan”), or excuses, or justification (they “chose” to suffer), ridiculous causal explanations (The Mayan Calender made Gaia do it) devoid of any grounded reality?
And take a look at their surroundings.
Are the Deeksha gurus using money to help the poor, or are they building themselves massive altars to their own egos?
And if they don’t have good answers?
And if they are providing justifications?
And if they do seem clueless?
Well it’s up to you. We are not going to tell you what to think or do. However if you believe the aphorism that we are “spiritual beings having a human experience,” (which we certainly do), and if you are concerned about the nature and quality of that experience, then just like you wouldn’t take your red Ferrari to a person that doesn’t know anything about cars, why would you take your physical body (your physical unit as we like to say) to somebody who clearly lacks psychological, sociological, political, or even economic sophistication? I mean, just because someone says they talk to God (or Spirit), and just because they’ve claimed to have a a mystical experience or two, does not necessarily make them anything more than a spiritual neophyte, confused seeker, or even snake oil salesmen. Personally, we think it is time to raise the standard on what counts for spirituality and spiritual dialogue.
Gina and Mike
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