When Good Spiritual Teachers Go Bad

      It’s a pattern, and it doesn’t seem to matter which religion or spiritual teaching or denomination is involved, where a spiritual teacher, pastor, or priest begins very well intentioned and able to teach effectively, appears to be enlightened and can lead others to their own spiritual awakening, enlightenment, or salvation as it were, and then further on down the road veers off, beginning to see himself or herself as the only one with the answers and discouraging anyone from listening to anyone else, even sometimes taking advantage of their positions of leadership or power and seducing their followers sexually. This happens frequently among New Age teachers, but it also happens more frequently among Christian pastors from all denominations than those denominations will care to legally admit. One can only look to all of the scandals which have popped up over the last thirty years to see this.
     And this begs the question, “Why?” How could someone who started off so well and so well intentioned end up going so far off course, sometimes even leading their followers into debauchery or, God forbid, suicide. Fingers are often pointed at the spiritual beliefs in question, the doctrines taught, and “If they were only following the truth (i.e. the way I believe), then this wouldn’t have happened.” Except this happens across the theological and doctrinal spectrum. There really isn’t a religion or spiritual teaching which isn’t affected by it.
     The path to spiritual growth begins with the disengagement from, as R.J. Spina calls it, the ego/mind/identity. St. Paul calls it the “old man” or literally, the “old human being,” or “old Adam.” In Buddhism, it would begin with the realization of the “self” as an illusion, and thus dissociating from or disengaging from it. No matter which spiritual path is followed, it is absolutely necessary to identify one’s own ego or self-identity and remove it from the driver’s seat. St. Paul talks about being joined to Christ in His death so that we may also be joined to Him with His resurrection, and makes this the foundation of all Christian spiritual practice that the Saint writes about in the New Testament.
     But what St. Paul is also clear about in his writings is that this is an ongoing discipline. One does not disengage from the old man, the self, the ego once and done. There has to be an ongoing disengagement, and an ongoing cooperation and submission to the Spirit of Christ, a constantly maintained connection to the Head of the Body in order to continue to be able to receive signal and ability from that Head.
     The ego/mind/identity is a product of the malfunctioning human survival responses as I have written about before, being formed from what pleases or displeases one after the connection between the brain and the Source is blocked by that constant, overreactive survival response. This deviant or malfunctioning response system has to do with physical changes in the human brain from our more animal-like, “innocent” ancestors, and, from what I’ve been able to track down, has to do with the differences between the human amygdala and hypothalamus and those of our primate cousins. Regardless, it is physical and it is hardwired into our brains, and it is there until the brain dies and decomposes. It is, in some ways, like any other neurological disorder that affects behavior, except that it is located in the deepest and most essential parts of the brain and cannot be corrected surgically. It is something we have to be aware of at all times even if we are not engaged with it but in cooperation with the Spirit, because it can and will exert itself without warning if we allow it to become triggered by engaging with our fear, aggression, feeding, or sexual responses.
     Spiritual teachers and pastors, more than anyone else, have to keep themselves aware of the hardwired nature of this malfunction, of this ego/mind/identity. It’s not something that they can do away with, but only bypass with the Spirit of Christ. It’s when they believe themselves to be fully free of error, of “sin,” of the ego and believe it cannot return because of their spiritual enlightenment or progress that this malfunction generated ego, this “old man” quietly resumes control away from the Source.
     From my observation, the biggest error anyone, especially spiritual teachers, can make is not respecting the existence and perniciousness of the human malfunction. Because it is physical in nature, it will be there attempting to exert control until the body dies. We don't grow past it. It's hardwired, and this fact has to be respected with humility at all times. This is where just about every spiritual teacher trips up believing they no longer have an ego when it is their ego that has slipped back into control unawares.
     St. Paul understood this very, very well. He understood the danger posed by his own flesh, the soft tissues of his own body, his malfunctioning brain and “heart.” He writes about disciplining and “beating” his body like an athlete training for the games, a runner running a race, a boxer in a bout. He understood that the problem was a malfunctioning organ which wouldn’t go away until he died, and so he had to put up with it. He didn’t have to like it, but like a person with a broken arm, he did have to be aware of it and take care of it without using it. There were a few times when he let his ego get away, and he felt like he paid for it dearly every time. It was enough to teach him to be constantly on guard against this adversary which he carried everywhere with him.
      Everyone walking the Path, but spiritual teachers all the more because of their office and position, must be aware they will carry their adversary with them until the day they die. They do not have to engage with it, they do not have to submit to it, but they can never risk fooling themselves into believing it is no longer there or that it can no longer exert control over them.

Prophets Texts Translated from the Septuagint

 Malachi 2:10a
Isn’t there one Father of you all? Didn’t one God create you?

Psalm 39:6-8 LXX (40:6-8, Hebrew)

You didn’t want a sacrifice and offering, but a body You made ready for me; You didn’t demand burnt offerings and those concerning an error. Then I said, look I am here; it is written about me within the chapters of a book, I wished the doing of Your will, and Your Torah in the middle of my heart.

Jeremiah 7:22-23 LXX

Because I didn’t talk to your fathers and I wasn’t commanding them about burnt offerings and sacrifices on the day in which I had led them up from the land of Mizraim. But instead I was commanding them this spoken word, saying “you will listen to My voice, and I will be to you for a God, and you will be to Me for a people, and you will go on all My paths which I would command you, so that it would be good with you.

Isaiah 1:11-17 LXX

“What are the multitude of your sacrifices to Me?” Yahweh says. “I am full of burnt offerings of rams, and I don’t wish for the hard fat of lambs and the blood of bulls and goats, neither if you should come to be seen by Me; because who sought these things out from your hands? You will not deliver these things to tread My court. If you should bring fine wheat flour, incense to no purpose, it is an abomination to Me; I am not supporting your Rosh Khodeshim and your Shabbats and the great day. My Breath of Life hates your fasting and rest from working, and your Rosh Khodeshim and your festival holidays. I’ve come to have enough of you. I will no longer let your mistakes go free. When you reach out your hands I will turn away My eyes from you; and if you should multiply your petition, I will not yield it for you; because your hands are full of blood.
     Wash, become clean, subtract your vices from your breaths of life; stop from your vices, learn to do the beautiful, seek out judgment, rescue the wronged, decide for the orphan, and do the widow right, and come here and we will discuss this.” He says: “And if your errors are like purplish red, I will whiten them like snow, and if they are like pomegranate seeds, I will whiten them like wool, and if you should want and should yield to Me, you will eat the good things of the ground, and if you shouldn’t want neither should yield to Me, a single edged sword will devour you; because the mouth of Yahweh talked these things.”

Epictetus Texts

 1.3:1-6

     If someone should be sympathetic to this doctrine, in relation to his worth that he is able, that we had all principally happened by the God and the God is Father of both human beings and the gods, I suspect that nothing low-born neither humiliating will he take to heart about himself. But if in fact Caesar should adopt you into his family, no one will raise his eyebrow at you; and if you experience that you are a son of the God, will you not be lifted high? But now we don’t do it, but since these two things have been mixed together with our birth, the body in fact common with the animals, and the logos and the means of knowing common with the gods, others in fact turn off at this kinship which is failure and a corpse, but a few at the Divine and happy. Since therefore it is a necessity for every person to assail each thing in this way as he would interpret concerning it, those few in fact, as many as suspect to have come to exist for a realization, and for a reverent awe, and for a secure stability of the usefulness of impressions, they take to heart nothing humiliating neither low-born about themselves, but the many just the opposite. “Because what am I? A miserable manikin?” and “my wretched bit of flesh.” The bit of flesh in fact being wretched, but you also possess something better than the bits of flesh. What then are you dropping that for and have clung to these things?

2.17:22b-25

…and simply want nothing else than what things the God wants. And who will prevent you? Who will force you? Not more than the God. When you should have such a leader as the God and you should wish together with and reach together with such a one, what are you still afraid you might fail for? Charitably give your cravings and your aversion to poverty and wealth; you will fail, you will encounter it. Elsewise to health; you will be unfortunate; to offices, to honors, to home countries, to friends, to children, simply if to any of the things not under the control of your own will. But charitably give them to the God, to the other gods; hand your cravings and aversions over to them, they will pilot you, your cravings and aversions have been marshaled to battle by aid of them; and how are you still unlucky?

2.8:11-14

     Yet you are a being that goes first and leads the way, you are a shred of the God; you have within yourself some part of that One. What then are you ignorant of your kinship for? Why don’t you instinctively know from where you had come? Don’t you want to have remembered, when you eat, what Being you are who is eating, and whom you are feeding? When you should have sexual intercourse, what Being you are who is having sexual intercourse? When with company? When training in exercise? When conversing? Don’t you know that you are feeding Divinity, you are training Divinity in exercise, you are carrying Divinity around with you, wretch, and you are ignorant. Is it your opinion that I’m speaking of something silver or gold external to yourself? You are carrying Him within yourself and staining Him by dirty whims and filthy practices, and you don’t take notice. And when a statue of the God is present you wouldn’t dare to do any of these things you are doing. Yet when this God is present internally and overseeing and overhearing everything do you feel no shame taking these things to heart and doing them, senseless of your own nature and object of Divine wrath?

Didache 1:1-5a, 5:1-2

      There are two ways, one of Life and one of Death, and there is a big difference between the two ways. The Way then in fact of Life is this: first, you will love the God who made you; second the person next to you like yourself; and everything whatever you would want to not happen to you, you also don’t do to someone else. And of these words the teaching is this; speak well of those calling down curses on you and pray on behalf of your enemies, and fast on behalf of those hunting you down, because what kind of charity is it if you love those loving you? Don’t also the people groups do the same thing? But you love those hating you and you will not possess an enemy. Keep away from the physical and bodily cravings. If someone gives you a strike on your right cheek, turn the other to him also, and you will be mature. If someone should press you to serve for one mile, go with him two; if someone should lift your cloak, give your shirt to him too; if someone should get from you what is yours, don’t ask for it; because the Father wants to give to everyone from His own charitable gifts.
     Yet the way of Death is this: first of all it is good for nothingness and full of curses; homicides, adulteries, cravings, whorings, thefts, idolatries, magics, drug use, piracies, false testimonies, hypocrisies, duplicity, treachery, arrogance, harm, self-will, avarice, disgraceful speech, rivalry, audacity, grandeur, false pretensions; hunters of good people, hating reality, loving a lie, not experiencing the compensation of a right state of being, not clinging to the good neither deciding rightly, passing sleepless nights not for the good, but for the good for nothing, from whom courtesy and endurance are a long ways off, loving vain things, hunting down repayment,, not being merciful to the destitute, not working hard for the one being worn out, not experiencing the One having made them, murderers of children, corruptors of the Divine form, turning back the one being in need, wearing themselves out against the one being afflicted, advocates for the wealthy, lawless judges of the working poor, entirely malfunctioning.

Passages from 1 Clement and Barnabas

      Therefore we should leave the empty and purposeless speculations, and we should come upon the famous and revered metric of what was handed down to us, and we should see what is beautiful and what is delightful and what is welcome in front of the One who made us. We should gaze intently at the blood of the Anointed and experience it like it is precious to His Father, because it was poured out because of our deliverance for all the world it brought down the charity of a change of mind. We should pass through into all the generations and should thoroughly learn  that with generation and generation the Master gave a place of a change of mind to those willing to turn around to Him. Noach preached a change of mind and they who obeyed were rescued. Yonah preached catastrophe to the Ninevites, and they who changed their minds about their errors propitiated the God having approached as supplicants and got deliverance, although being strangers to the God.
     The liturgical ministers of the charity of the God through the Holy Pneuma talked about a change of mind, and the Master of all things also Himself talked about a change of mind with a vow; “Because I live, Yahweh says, I don’t wish for the death of the malfunctioning person as I do their change of mind.” Applying also a good means of knowing: “Change your mind, house of Yisra’el, from your lawlessness; I said to the sons of My people: if your errors should be from the ground up to the sky, and if they are redder than a pomegranate seed and darker than goat-hair cloth, and you should turn around to Me from your whole heart and should say: “Father, I will listen to You like a holy people.” And in a different place He says in this way: “Wash and become clean, subtract the good for nothingness from your breaths of life directly in front of My eyes; stop from your good for nothingness, learn to do the beautiful, seek out judgment, rescue the one being wronged, decide for the orphan and set right the widow, and come here and we will dispute this.” He says: “And if your errors are like purplish red, I will whiten them like snow, and if they are like pomegranate seeds, I will whiten them like wool, and if you should want and should listen to Me, you will eat the good things of the ground, and if you shouldn’t want neither should listen to Me, a single edged sword will devour you; because the mouth of Yahweh talked these things.” Wishing then all His dear ones to share in a change of mind, He secured this by His omnipotent will.

 *   *   *

 There are then three doctrines of the Owner. 1) hope of life: the start and end of our realization; and 2) a right state of being: the start and end of judgment; 3) a love from mirth and great joy: a testimony by works of a right state of being. …
     Because it had manifested to us through the prophets that He craves neither sacrificial victims nor whole burnt offerings nor offerings, saying at the time in fact: “What is the multiplication of your sacrifices to Me? Yahweh says. I am full of burnt offerings, and I don’t wish for the hard fat of lambs and blood of bulls and goats, neither should you come to be seen by Me. Because who sought these things out from your hands? Don’t impose to tread on My court. If you should bring the finest wheat flour, it is for nothing. Incense is an abomination to Me. I am not held up by your Rosh Khodeshim and Shabbats.” He shut these things down so that the fresh Torah of our Owner Yeshua the Anointed, being without the yoke of force, should hold the offering not made by human beings. And He says again to them: “I wasn’t commanding your fathers going out from the land of Mizraim to offer to Me burnt offerings and sacrificial victims, was I? But instead I was commanding them this thing: Each one of you don’t bear a bad grudge against the person next to you with his heart, and don’t love a lying oath.” We are then obligated to apprehend with our senses, not being senseless, the means of knowing the goodness of our Father, because He tells to us to seek how we should approach Him, willing us not being led astray similar to those people. He speaks in this way then to us, “A sacrifice to the God is a heart having been shattered, a fragrant odor to Yahweh is a heart imagining the One having molded it.” We are then obligated to be precisely instructed, brothers, about our deliverance, so that the good for nothing one wouldn’t have made a loophole of deception within us to launch us away from our Life as from a sling.

1 Peter 1:3-25, Revised from "The Practice of the Way"

     The God and Father of our Owner Yeshua the Anointed be blessed, who in line with His much mercy rebirthed us into a living hope through the resurrection of Yeshua the Anointed from the dead, into an undecaying inheritance both undefiled and unquenched, having been kept in the heavenly realms for you folks who are guarded with the Divine power through the realization as far as the prepared deliverance to be revealed in the last period of time is concerned. By means of whom you are overjoyed, if at present having been grieved with many kinds of temptations is a little necessary, so that the proof of your realization, more precious than gold which is destroyed yet being proved through fire, might be found for approval and reputation and value with the revelation of Yeshua the Anointed; whom not having seen you love, into whom at present not seeing yet trusting you are overjoyed with unspeakable and glorified joy, being furnished with the goal of the realization, the deliverance of breaths of life.

      About which deliverance the prophets who had prophesied about this charity as far as you’re concerned searched out and scrutinized, scrutinizing as far as what or what kind of period of time the Pneuma of the Anointed within them would clarify the sufferings as far as the Anointed is concerned, being witnessed beforehand and the glories with these. To whom it was revealed that, not for themselves yet for you folks they were serving these things which now were proclaimed to you by means of you having been evangelized with the Holy Pneuma having been sent from the heavenly realm, into which things angels desire to bend over and steal a glance at.

      Therefore, the hips of your faculties of thought having been belted up, being well balanced, hope upon the charity having been brought to you with the revelation of Yeshua the Anointed maturely. Like obedient children not modeling yourselves on the desires of your first ignorance but down the line of the one having summoned you holy you also yourselves become holy with every behavior. Because it is written that “You will be holy, because I am holy.”

      And if you invoke the Father who decides impartially down the line of each thing done, behave with awe during the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from your pointless behavior handed down from your fathers not by decaying things, by silver or gold, but by the costly blood of the Anointed like an unblemished and spotless lamb, with it previously being made known on the one hand before the founding of the universe but having been manifested upon the last of the periods of time because of you folks who trusted through Him into the God who raised Him from the dead and given reputation to Him, so as for your trust and hope to be into the God.

      Having purified your breaths of life by fire with the obedience of the truth as far as unhypocritical brotherly love, love one another from the heart eagerly, having been rebirthed not from a seeding of decay but of undecay through the Logos of the living and abiding God. Because, “every single organic being is like grass and every opinion of it is like the blossom of grass; the grass dried up and the blossom fell off; yet the spoken word of Yahweh makes its home into the eon.”

     And this thing is the spoken word which was was evangelized to you folks.

James 2, Revised from "The Practice of the Way"

     My brothers, don’t hold the faith of our reputed Owner Yeshua the Anointed with partiality¹. Because if a gold fingered man should enter into your synagogue with bright clothing, yet a homeless guy also should enter in filthy clothing, and you should look up the guy wearing the bright clothing and should say, “You sit here the best seat,” and to the homeless guy you should say, “You stand there or sit under my footstool,” didn’t you separate yourselves among yourselves and didn’t you become judges with good for nothing inner dialogues?

      Listen, my dear brothers, didn’t the God select those destitute where the illusion of this world is concerned to be wealthy with the realization and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those loving Him? Yet you devalued the homeless guy. Don’t the wealthy wield power against you and drag you into the courts? Don’t they blaspheme the beautiful name which was invoked upon you? If you would really bring the royal Torah to completion in line with the Scripture, “You will love the person next to you like yourself,” you are doing beautifully; yet if you are being partial to people, you are achieving the malfunction; being brought to light under the Torah as violators. Because any guy who should keep the entire Torah yet should step wrong with one thing, he has become guilty of all of them. Because the One having said, “You will not commit adultery,” also said, “You will not commit homicide;” yet if you don’t commit adultery but you commit homicide, you have become a violator of the Torah. In the same way talk and in the same way act like intending to be judged through the Torah of freedom. Because judgment is merciless to those not having done mercy; mercy exults over judgment.²

      What is good is it, my brothers, if anyone should claim to possess the realization yet shouldn’t possess the deeds? This realization can’t rescue him, can it? If a brother or sister starting off naked and being left behind from their daily food yet someone from you should say to them, “Go in peace, be warm and well fed,” yet you don’t give them the suitable things of the body, what is the benefit? In this way also the realization, if it shouldn’t possess things done because of it, is a lifeless corpse by itself.

      But someone will say, “You possess the realization, and I possess the things I’m doing;” show me your realization apart from these things done, and I will show you the realization from the things I’m doing. You trust that “the God is one,”³ you do beautifully; the demons also trust and shake with terror! Yet do you wish to experience, O empty human being, that the realization separated from the things which are done because of it is useless? Wasn’t Avraham our father made right from the things he did having brought Yitzhak his son up upon the sacrificial altar? Do you see that his realization was working together with what he was doing and the realization was brought to completion with what he did, and the Scripture was filled which says, “Yet Avraham trusted in the God, and it was figured to him for a state of right being” and he was called the Divine friend. Yet in the same way also wasn’t Rahav the whore made right from the things she did having entertained the messengers and having tossed them out by a different path? Because just like the body separate from the pneuma is a corpse, in this way also the realization separate from things done because of it is a corpse.

1Lit. “receiving what someone looks like”

2As Jesus told the F'rishe, quoting Hosea 6:6 in the LXX, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than whole burnt offerings.”

3From the “Sh’ma,” Deuteronomy 6:4.