Trying to bypass your humanness by judging and rejecting your teacher's

I mentor people who are healers and teachers for others so I have a somewhat unique insight into the complications that can arise in teacher/student dynamics. Today I want to talk about one of the trickier areas here: it is not uncommon for a student of a teacher to bring their hierarchies, fantasies, assumptions, and unaddressed needs into the relationship. It is also not uncommon for some teachers to play into this, but that's something I've addressed elsewhere. Today we're talking about the one who seeks out the teacher. 

One of the trickier places in this dynamic is when a student experiences the teacher's humanness. We have, in modern culture, an invisible assumption around what a teacher should be that often includes "powerful", "all-knowing", "superior", and "beyond human needs". Indeed, many people can only navigate certain aspects of their own becoming in a container free of the teacher's humanness. If this is the case, a more traditional therapy container would likely be a better choice until this need is no longer present and the student has an increased capacity for the nuances that exist outside of hierarchy and has greater skill with, and capacity for, complexity.

Another issue is that many people who do not have a solidly developed sense of self and/or who are unclear and insecure about their own power and vulnerability need the teacher to exist in stark contrast to their own struggles - seeming clear, certain, invulnerable, and authoritarian.

Again, a therapy container would likely be best for a person in this place. This is because therapists are trained to be more like blank slates that allow people to work through their issues with less likelihood of projections, snares, and triggers. But in the spaces that exist outside of therapy, in spiritual and healing spaces, these types of containers and a more one-sidedness are less engaged.

Indeed, your teacher's humanity can be a wonderful place to witness and experience what a human in more of their own wholeness and acceptance of self looks and feels like. Not as a person who has “transcended” their human, but an integrated one. 

It is unfortunate that so much of the modern view of healing and spirituality is about insulation and control. People want to be insulated from the hardships of life and in control of things so they can feel safe. This is certainly valid. Unfortunately, teachers who promote insulation and control as a form of spirituality tends to be quite popular. It would be better for everyone to just call it what it is and create grace around that. 

As a student, or seeker, one of the best pieces of advice I can give you is this:

Figure out what you are really looking for and be honest about it. 

You may have multiple things you are wanting or needing: Safety, a sense of control, orientation, comfort, support right alongside deepening your relationship with life, cultivating your sorcerous abilities, establishing more consistent practices, or broadening your access to wisdom and belonging.

If you leave out any parts of yourself from the relationship with your teacher, it is likely problems of some sort will arise.

There is an order to your own becoming. If you do not address your more vulnerable needs before you seek power, spirituality, growth, or "walking your true path", things will get messy.

I cannot tell you how many times someone has come to me saying they want to live their purpose and, when I ask them if they have energy left over at the end of their day and they say they are drained and exhausted, I say "let's deal with that first because seeking your purpose requires energy you do not have.” There are teachers who would not ask this, would not use discernment, and just plunge right in along with this person. This is rarely wise. There are dozen of situations where the order of things is ignored or diminished. 

There are plenty of people who use the title of Teacher who will not bother to understand or integrate your humanness into their work with you. But there are even more "students" who do not want to face, much less put in the work to address, the things within themselves that can and will undermine the relationship. These are people who are needing a distraction from their own truth and hop from teacher to teacher seeking someone who will really "see them". They fantasize that someone will be powerful enough to work with them, help them, recognize them.

It is honest and real that many of us are maxed out on keeping our heads above water and dealing with the many tender and difficult places in ourselves that life kicks at. It is natural to fantasize about a way out. And it is natural to fantasize about being special enough to escape what is, what we are and have been through. Instead of leaving these things behind and being our shiny, special, powerful selves, the real work is to find a person skillful enough to create the possibility of integration and wholeness who doesn't power trip or perform some role but is integrated enough themselves to have genuine tenderness and space for what we are in our own becoming.

That order of things? It's so we have a solidity to ourselves - a place we can root from, a place we can orient from, a place where we have an experience of actual power and not our ideas about it so we can live in this life and not our stories about it.

Too many people leave one teacher and go to the next as soon as they see their teacher as too human, human like they are. Their inability to navigate this stems from the rejection of their own humanness and their "solution" of imagining a teacher who is somehow beyond such things. This speaks to the vulnerability and lack of integration present. It speaks to living in a story. It speaks to ideas about things rather than mature experience with them. It speaks to needing to be in control and being unable, or unwilling, to be with WHAT IS. 

A good teacher can hold this space and skillfully navigate it with you. But only if you let them.

This means not always having to be in control. This means not having to know more or be more than your teacher, or to know less or be less than your teacher. It means focusing on your own relationship to wholeness, nuance, and complexity and your capacity for paradox and wild wisdom to move both of you. 

The trust needed for this takes time to build, even if you feel like you trust your teacher right out of the gate. Feeling super trusting early on is often an indication that you are imposing a fantasy onto the space. It takes time and a variety of experiences with a teacher for genuine trust to exist in the space between you. And the opportunities for that trust to become established are often misinterpreted and used as fodder for bailing.

It's tricky, this space. Because some experiences are red flags that shouldn't be ignored. And some experiences that feel like red flags are actual break-through places that can lead to deepening, healing, and growth.

That's why we have to talk about these things - about all of it - about your fears, hopes, avoidance, needs, tricky spots, truth, and your own gifts and experiences.

So get clear about what you want. Get clear about what you need. Get clear about what you are, right now, not what you hope to be or believe is your "real truth". Right now. And if you don't know, be open to your teacher helping you discover and name and claim so that gentleness and care for what you've been through and the vulnerability of your own humanness, that we all have, can be present and held.

Final tip: we have all internalized criticism and being overly criticized. Modern society functions on this. So when a teacher shares their insight with you, their perceptions of you, it is very natural to interpret this, to feel this, as criticism. Notice this and share it. Because if you can't get a handle on this phenomenon in your body, you will not be able to take in and benefit from a ton of what your teacher can offer you.