Spiritual Mentors, Not Martyrs

I used to be someone who could become disillusioned quite easily by others. 

As such, I also used to be someone who could quite easily become elated or inspired by others, including spiritual Seekers, teachers or guides.

Western Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron, referred to this tendency in her 2002 book The Places That Scare You in a chapter called “The Spiritual Friend.”

She writes:

It’s important to understand that the minds of the teacher and the student meet, not by making the teacher all right or all wrong, but in the ambiguity between those two views, in the capacity to contain uncertainty and paradox. Otherwise our adulation inevitably flips into disillusionment. We bolt when the teacher doesn’t fit our preconceptions…

We’ll hang in for a honeymoon period, endowing the relationship with all our longings to be loved in an ideal, nonmessy way. Then inevitably our expectations are disappointed, and unresolved emotional issues arise. We feel used, betrayed, disillusioned. We don’t’ want to feel these painful feelings and we leave.

As you can imagine, just as Pema Chodron describes it so eloquently, this pattern of hair-trigger vacillation  can be exhausting and limiting at times.

However, I do think it also serves a function—as most of our habits do—to provide a feeling or perception of safety.

Yet, despite this very real function of perceived safety, it has come to my attention that I now engage in this habit of all or nothing devotion far less these days, including in my spiritual life with other Seekers.

In fact, I might even say as of late, that I actually feel more kinship, and feel more drawn to those Seekers who have vulnerably shared their doubts, their questions, and the sources of their unremitting pain while still walking the path, one foot in front of the other; people who are living (or lived) in the ambiguity and the mess and the contradiction, as opposed to those who project absolute certainty.

This shift came home to me the other day when I was watching the 2014 film The Letters about the life of Mother Teresa after she left the Loreto Convent to live among the people of Calcutta, India who were (in her words) the “poorest of the poor.”

Of course, most would agree that a human life such as hers, so dedicated to alleviation of suffering in others, is, well, saintly. 

But that was not what got me.

What got me was the level to which she was able to willingly persevere in this dedication (“I am a little pencil in God's hands. He does the thinking. He does the writing.”) alongside what we now know as an internal landscape of real spiritual conflict.

To me, this complexity in Mother Teresa makes her more real, more human, and more authentic. And therefore someone I am much more likely follow as a teacher or mentor.

Another 20^th century example of this type of more 3 or 4 Dimensional role model is Dutch Catholic priest, author and professor Henri Nouwen, who ultimately published a book called The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom based on what he referred to as his “secret journals” kept between 1987-1988 during a period of severe depression.

In the Introduction he wrote:

Several other friends encouraged me not to hide this painful experience from those who have come to know me through my various books on the spiritual life. They reminded me that the books I had written since my period of anguish could not have been written without the experience I had gained by living through that time.  They asked, ‘Why keep this away from those who have been nurtured by your spiritual insights? Isn’t it important for your friends close by and far away to know the high cost of these insights? Wouldn’t they find it a source of consolation to see that light and darkness, hope and despair, love and fear are never very far from each other, and that spiritual freedom often requires a fierce spiritual battle?’

Recently I watched another set of films that reminded me of some of these same themes and ideas which were the two documentaries: Dying to Know: Ram Das and Timothy Leary (2014) and Ram Das: Going Home (2017).

Most people know western spiritual teacher Ram Das (aka Richard Alpert) by his 1971 classic book: Be Here Now.  Most people know Timothy Leary as the Harvard University Psychology Professor who conducted studies in the 1950’s on the use of psychedelic drugs like LSD (though Ram Das did too).

The two films are quite different in terms of feel and take-a-ways, even though they share the same subject matter. 

However for me, what they had in common was a clear depiction and demonstration of the utter humanity of humanity in the life of a Seeker.  And that was very refreshing.

You see, I believe Seekers need mentors, not martyrs, to guide them.

And therefore, we need not look for or find perfect people because:

A. They do not exist.  And

B. Perfect people are not what we need.

Instead, we’d do well to look for perfect teachers or mentors.

In my view, a “perfect teacher or mentor” simply means that we identify people (or animals or landscapes or ideas) that offer wisdom, or compassionate knowledge, about something in which we are in need of.

 

 

I suppose that is why I have always liked the writing and wisdom of people in addiction recovery like poet and memoirist Mary Karr and memoirist and novelist Anne Lamott; people who publicly embrace their hard-won wisdom, and continued struggle, from a place of humility rather than one-up-ness.

So here’s to the imperfect spiritual mentors and teachers, who may offer us thoughtful guidance and navigation through our own perfectly imperfect spiritual journeys.

May it be so.