In terms of my participation on this forum or any other dealing with "spiritual" stuff, I'm kinda like Chauncey Gardner in "Being There" -- I like to watch. One of the things I watch for is trends. I'm not all that concerned with or interested in individual manifestations of a particular form of behavior, only the fact that the behavior is so universal, and appears in so *many* spiritual trips, that it has become a trend, and thus predictable.
One of those trends is the tendency of followers of some spiritual teacher or lineage to project authority onto those teachers or lineage and, after having done so, treat almost anything they say as authoritative or true, if not Truth Itself. The followers themselves, when called on this, come up with various reasons WHY they have suspended disbelief, and have gone instead with almost total belief in the things the person they project authority onto say. A common rationalization for this behavior is to say that the authority figure is enlightened, and thus his or her words are *by definition* true, since the enlightened are "in tune with the Laws Of Nature" and thus what they say *has* to be true. When I or someone else points out that 1) the reason they consider the authority figures enlightened is because *they* said they were, and 2) that the "definition" of being enlightened they're using was given to them *by the very person they're judging*, a deafening silence usually ensues. It's almost as if having gotten into the habit of treating the person as an authority figure, they can't break that habit or hear any argument that suggests that maybe they're not all that authoritative. OK, that's one trend. The one I'm more interested in in this rap is what happens to such followers later in life. What is it they aspire to in their own lives, and what tends to happen when they start having more interesting spiritual experiences of their own, like the early stages of the enlightenment process? The secondary trend I see among those who have spent years or decades bowing to an authority figure is that they hope to or expect to someday become perceived as authority figures themselves. Their goal in life or spiritual "career path" is modeled on the person they bowed to as an authority and how he or she was treated. They expect to be treated the same way once they start having what they consider spiritual experiences. And so what we tend to see -- NOT just in the TMO but across the spiritual smorgasbord -- is people who have some spiritual experience (minor or major) and then start talking in pronouncements, *exactly the way their teacher did*. And they expect to be treated with the same awe, deference, and obeisance with which they treated their teacher. What's fascinating to watch, for an "I like to watch" type such as myself, is when that doesn't happen. What happens when someone rolls into cyber-Dodge City carrying two sixguns engraved with the words "I'm SO enlightened," and tries to hold court in the local cybersaloon? The New Gun In Town (on *any* spiritual forum or discussion group on the Net, not just at FFL) struts across the saloon, leans back against the bar, and starts pontificating and speaking in pronouncements. Clearly this new gunslinger is expecting everyone in the bar to focus on him and listen to what he's saying as if it were the Truth Incarnate he's convinced it is. Trained by years of doing it himself, the Enlightennewb expects everyone to project the same authority onto him that he projected onto his teacher, and treat him the same way. And sometimes it works. Sometimes the Enlightennewb runs into an easy crowd, and they DO start treating the things he says as authoritative. In those cases the Enlightennewb tends to be happy as a pig in shit; his spiritual goals have been fulfilled. He's finally being treated as an authority. But sometimes it doesn't work. The Enlightennewb picks the wrong kinda bar, with the wrong kinda crowd. He makes a few pronouncements, expecting people to treat them the same way he treated the pronouncements made by his teacher, and It Just Doesn't Happen. The other folks at the bar listen to his rap, and then turn around and get back to their drinks or to the conversations they were having before the Enlightennewb arrived. They don't treat him as special in any way, or as any more of an authority than anyone else. THAT is an interesting moment. THAT is where the rubber meets the road for an Enlightennewb. How do they react? THAT I find fascinating, even if I don't find the Enlightennewb himself interesting at all.
