A friend of mine complained recently about a spiritual group she has been involved in for more than a decade. A set of sad circumstances exposed her to what sounded like jealousy, desire for control, even outright cruelty, and above all what I would plainly call a general lack of good manners, and of an open heart.
Interestingly, her group is a Sufi group. I am specifying this simply because for the Sufis, adab – the term generally translated as “proper attitude” or “good manners” – is the ground on which the whole teaching is supposed to be unfolding, while the heart is the very centre of the spiritual life. Sufi practices are centred in the heart, beautiful Sufi poetry is often about the heart. So, one would wonder, what gives?
For her, it was shocking. For me – very sad, given that I knew quite a few of the people involved.
But surprising, for me, it was not. On the opposite, I believe that the absence of the sad experiences like that would be miraculous. In fact, it would show that something is wrong.
You might say, oh, come on, this must be your friend’s particular “karma!” Surely, people who get to be in these kinds of communities are generally kinder, gentler, of a more honest and loving nature. They come together because of their mutual interest in spirituality, desire for awakening, and devotion to the path.
All that is probably true — including the part about the “karma.” However, that is precisely why this kind of experience, is a rule, and not an exception, although of course it doesn’t have to be this traumatic.
If we are blessed to find a spiritual teacher of our heart, especially someone around whom there happens to be a community of any size, we tend to quickly dismiss the fact that everybody there comes – surprise, surprise! – from the same world that we do.
What I mean is that, subconsciously, we have an expectation that joining such a group magically transforms people.
Being full of hopes and bright pictures of our enlightened future, we are quick to project on our peers our ideal of a spiritual friend who is kind, fair, devoid of egotism, free from such worldly things like uncontrolled sexual desire, greed, envy, and wish for power.
It is true that people come to the spiritual path and spend time with their peers usually because they want to change, they want to become better, they are working on themselves. And by doing that, they quite often are creating a sanctuary where a seeker can indeed find respite and support.
Yet there is one thing that many spiritual seekers tend to ignore, or forget when things go well. No matter how great a teacher one has a good fortune finding, no matter the teaching, the practices, the lessons that she or he might offer, the sweetness of the community of the like-minded, warm-hearted friends; for each and every human being there is one teacher that will always stay supreme, will remain unsurpassed in the skill, the insight, the perfection of timing, the precision of showing us exactly the point that “needs work.”
That teacher is our life.
We can think that our spiritual community is there to support the experiences we have, to help us develop discipline, to assist in overcoming many difficulties that the path provides, to have true friends. That all has its place.
But the ultimate goal of any spiritual group we might get involved with is to simply be a part of our School of Life. And so, it will provide all sorts of painful lessons until we learn, and until we embody enough light to fully clear and transmute the “Velcro” in us to which those undesired experienced get attracted.
For make no mistake: each of us carries a complete responsibility for our own life.* While it is not what we are brought to believe, habitually thinking ourselves to be victims of circumstances or of people, just like my friend did, it is the truth of our life in this world of games and appearances.
It is only our blindness that “saves” us from seeing the whole cause-and-effect chain of events that result in something unwanted. And it is one of the major steps on any spiritual path to realise the extent to which we create our own life.
Perhaps if we remember that, then our expectation will be well managed, our compassion and understanding of our own behaviour, as well as that of our friends, will grow, and we will be willing to extend our own hand and heart to the fellow student much more readily.
* There is a number of reasons why some people get displeased, or even enraged, when hearing this. Those can be very real reasons, and I am not making light of all the many difficulties that we meet with in this life, some of which are immensely tough, especially if we encounter them in our childhood.
However, my experience to date shows me that every one of us is a “projection” of our (indestructible) soul, playing a part in a 3-D game, the main reason for which is learning to experience and express love in the very challenging circumstances of the earthly life, and that we come into this life with a plan.
In addition to that, it is my understanding that the reasons for many of the things that happen to us in one given life do not necessarily come from what we can perceive by our physical senses. And in some cases those reasons have nothing to do with us, but instead are completely aligned with the goals of the people we get closely connected to. (An example of that is often found in families of the children with special needs, where the main purpose of the child is to help the family members to learn love.)
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