Why I’m not a Spiritual Teacher… anymore
I remember the day I took my then 5 year old son, out of school. I walked past a class where I heard the teacher speaking like many a teacher would. Now class, she said in a booming slow clear and condescending voice, what day is today? And the class all sang in well-rehearsed unison. Monday! And is today hot or cold? Her voice bellowing in authority as that same well-rehearsed song of the children answered loudly; cold! The questions continued, all of the answers painfully obvious.
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I was feeling a chill, winter weather aside, it wasn’t just the superiority in her voice it was how that class knew with certainty who was in charge and it wasn’t them. They were talking about the weather but what was really being taught was that when the teacher asked a question, they answered it in the way she wanted them to, at the volume she wanted them to, at the pace she had taught them to. By asking questions that undermine the intelligence of the children, she became in my mind, a beacon of everything I did not want my children to grow up with.
I wanted them to grow up knowing that they were equal not undermined or underestimated. Whilst there are people who may be intellectually smarter than them, their innate wisdom is unsurpassed and uncompromising and should always be respected, as should everyone else’s.
If when we were children, our wisdom was revered and respected, we would know with certainty that we are more capable than we think we are, and we would trust ourselves far more than we do. Because we were surrounded by adults who showed us that we were less-than, we often inherited their beliefs and became obedient to external overshadowing of ourselves. For most of us who went through a semi-traditional schooling system we were systematically indoctrinated to believe that we knew nothing unless the teachers told us so, and that what we knew or thought was irrelevant, making us by extension, the same.
In the spiritual community I see a lot of teaching going on and it makes me uncomfortable. I share a lot of information and I sincerely hope that I convey to you that all I am doing is putting words to what you already know but have possibly forgotten or hidden or in need of reminding.
I notice when people correct others, as if they are Gods leading authority on what words to choose and how to use them and I cringe, because in those moments I am back at school with those familiar feelings of being in a classroom with a teacher reminding me that I am less.
I am not here to be corrected, I am here to be reminded. The difference is huge.
In reinforcing the student status of another, there is no empowering, there is no respect, there is no equality. There is subtle domination enforcing superiority of the teacher and if the “student” accepts their role as less-than, by default they cannot transcend the “teacher” and will be stuck in a seemingly endless battle to free themselves of the shackles of a barely perceptible power struggle.
What makes this cycle relentless is that so often the teacher appears as one who should be venerated and the student becomes loyal, devoted and in a covert way, enslaved to their role as student. Neither the student nor the teacher can ever progress from their unwitting roles in this power play until one or both of them declares themselves equal, not just to the other, but to ALL.
I am human.
I have often proudly flaunted my human status as evidence of my fallibility and declared pride in my imperfection. I stand true to that. I am human. And I am beyond human too. I am the divine embodied in this temple of imperfect perfection, and so are you. We are equal.
In my humble humanness, I remember calling myself a teacher some years ago, and I cringe now in retrospect as I see what that word means in the context of human beings awakening to the divine truth of who they are.
There can be NO TEACHERS for having someone teach you who you are, defies your mastery and your brilliance in such a way, that by sheer merit of creating student-teacher relationships to further your exploration of your multidimensionality, serves to inhibit the journey, and cease the exploration until such time that you overcome the notion that anyone but you has the authority to guide you home.
I am a reminder, a beacon of embodied divinity serving to catalyse others who are ready, to see that they are the same. Nothing more.
I lay no more blame at the feet of the teachers, than I do at the students who empower them and beg them to keep teaching. This is the dance we all learned to dance, and in true Kerry-style I lost my step, got dizzy, fell down and decided that not getting up was far more pleasant. I realised that I could start a whole new rhythm and that it was my own; and each one who dares to do the same becomes part of an orchestra that hums God-Source-Consciousness back into the fabric of creation and into the living fibre of their being.
with love
Kerry K
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