One colleague’s behavior has me musing on how sometimes those who make a name for themselves as spiritual guru’s, despite all their displayed wisdom, sometimes display a tendency to descend to vilifying others for “having the audacity” to demonstrate that their contributions and methodologies were not beyond improvement. These “sources”, despite having made some positive and meaningful advances and contributions to the catalog of useful and beneficial counseling techniques, were clearly subject to the liabilities and misbehaviors resulting from the inability to treat others as equals. There appears to be a common identity behind this attitude, a role in a game over who can dominate, manifesting a common mental mechanism that is essentially something held in place to protect one from something that is perceived as posing a threat. It is a great failing for someone who in fact has contributed great advances in spiritual processing, to take offense when another person adds to or modifies their contributions. The effort to “protect the paradigm exactly as it is, or else all will be lost”; viewed from an external, larger viewpoint, it amounts to an effort to resist change, and thereby to prevent corrections, improvements and progress. Those having that attitude can turn nasty and condescending, ridiculing and vilifying “transgressors” of the status quo of their paradigm, or give lip service of being complimentary or “tolerant”, albeit in a transparently condescending tone,”praise from the all-knowing master”.
The road to knowledge is paved with the understanding that we can all learn from each other, and that this road is best kept open without imposing such artificial envisionments as “some people being at higher/lower levels than others”. The insights I gain from listening to what my clients share from their viewpoints are of no less value than what can be learned from “recognized sources”, and that ability to recognize others as equals has rewarded me greatly in my path.
Love, Dex