---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote :
Whether they like to admit it or not, everyone on this forum was presented with a clear Career Path once they got involved with the TMO, or whatever other form of the Enlightenment Quest they pursued. It was presented in subtext in every talk given by the guy or gal at the front of the room. You looked around at the awe and reverence with which many people gazed at the guy or gal at the front of the room. You watched as people listened raptly to whatever the guy or gal at the front of the room said, incapable of even conceiving of doubting that all of it was true, and probably Truth. And many people wound up WANTING SOME OF THAT for themselves. Consciously or subconsciously, they started wanting to become spiritual teachers. Jeez Barry, the above sounds like an awful lot of projection, and/or speculation. Perhaps this is autobiographical, which is fine, (and maybe explains some things), but I really feel you are missing the mark with the great, great majority of anyone I knew involved in the organization of TM. And that's probably why most teachers aren't active anymore. The idealism wore off, and they had no desire, I repeat no desire, to be the big cheese in the room. We were seeking for something. We found something that worked for us, at least for a time. Then other pursuits came to the fore, and our involvement tapered off. It was not a matter of self aggrandizement. I think you miss the mark. As far the Zen stuff below, (which I skimmed), so what. I think the true path to enlightenment always has some nifty ways to break down the ego. And what's not to want? If you've got an ego (Duh...everybody!), or a hint of narcissism (almost everyone drawn to spiritual teachers), or are an attention junkie (more on this later), you wanted to be like the role model at the front of the room. You wanted to be able to say shit and have everyone accept it as true and possibly Truth, just because you said it. You wanted to be perceived as "knowing" things that others didn't, just as you perceived that in the particular guy or gal at the front of your rooms, whether or not it was ever true. A part of you tried to convince other parts of you that you wanted this for altruistic reasons, to *help* people and assist them on their path to enlightenment, but if you think about it, there's a shitload of ego and hubris even in that justification. But mainly, most people just wanted the attention. On the mundane level of the word "attention," they wanted to be perceived as if they were special. They liked how other students around them treated the guy or gal at the front of the room, and they wanted to be treated that way themselves. Becoming a spiritual teacher was like becoming a rock star in terms of the amount of attention you could potentially attract to yourself, and you didn't even have to learn an instrument. All you had to do was to become enlightened. Or at the very least, claim you had. On a more occult level, however, "attention" refers to a transfer of energy that takes place when a person places their conscious attention on another person. There is an energy transaction going on in that situation -- the person focusing their attention on another person is giving them some of their energy. Ask anyone who has ever been onstage in front of crowds of over a thousand people about this energy transaction, and they'll tell you it's for real. Being the focus of attention for thousands of people is a RUSH. It gets you high. It's like Ego-Crack. Many people in spiritual practice -- especially in the West where they have fewer established traditions with clear-cut and enforced "rules and regs" about who gets to become a teacher and who does not -- start to have a few early enlightenment experiences themselves and think, "Wow! I did it. I got the promotion I've been longing for. Now I can hang out my shingle as a spiritual teacher." As Ahnold says so well in the film Predator, "Bahd idea." They have "rules and regs" in older, more established spiritual traditions because they've been around long enough to know that one of the worst karmic mistakes a person could possibly make is to attempt to become a spiritual teacher before they are ready to do so. In the "rules and regs" traditions, they would advise students that given the choice of a free lifetime's supply of heroin and becoming a spiritual teacher before you are capable of handling the pressures of being one, you should probably go for the heroin. Your life would be shorter, but you'd die happier and do harm to fewer people. I can think of no worse choice for someone starting to have early enlightenment experiences than to place themselves in a position where people start to look up to them as "wise" or "knowing." It's like saying, "OK, I've paid my dues and *earned* me some attention. Now it's time to kick back and smoke me some Ego-Crack." A better tradition in my opinion is the one practiced in a Zen monastery in Japan. There, whenever a student started having "something good is happening" early enlightenment experiences (which they defined as 24/7 clear samadhi for a period of months), they took the student off of his previous duties and gave him the shittiest jobs in the monastery. The enlightennewb was expected to clean the toilets and scrub the floors and wash his fellow students' laundry. Furthermore, they were put in charge of going into the village and carrying back food and other supplies, and thus having to interact with all of those <ugh> non-monks. The thinking was that if the enlightennewb was still having 24/7 samadhi and hadn't developed any bad ego qualities after doing this for a few years, they *might* be trusted enough to begin to learn the rudiments of actual teaching. I've met a few people who I think were pretty cool spiritual teachers, and who handled their roles well, and with a seeming absence of ego and elitism. All came from such traditions, and had to pay their dues for decades before their teachers decided they were ready to teach. On the other hand, I have met hundreds who "jumped the gun" and wound up smokin' Ego-Crack. The former produce students who look like they're actually benefiting from what is being taught. The latter produce students just like themselves, whose highest level of spiritual aspiration is to someday become the guy or gal at the front of the room, finally getting "their turn" at the Ego-Crack pipe.
