I\u2019ve met a number of people,\u00a0probably more than my share due to the nature of my work, who think they have\u00a0all the answers. A book client of mine appeared on a TV talk show some years\u00a0ago and she claimed to be a \u201cspiritual relationship expert.\u201d Couples from the
audiencce described their relationship and marriage woes, and her job was to solve\u00a0their problems. With each question, the camera zoomed in on her as she told\u00a0everybody what was right and what wasn\u2019t, what they should do and what they\u00a0shouldn\u2019t, what worked and what didn\u2019t, all according to her alleged psychic\u00a0powers.<\/p>\n
I thought about the heavy burden\u00a0she was carrying. Imagine having to \u201cknow\u201d unequivocally how to unravel the\u00a0universal conundrum of how men and women could get along when times were tough.\u00a0She never said, \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d Or \u201cGive me a minute to think about that.\u201d
Instead, she was overconfident and didactic, cannonballing her well rehearsed\u00a0answers, failing to mention that as she sat there telling people what to do,\u00a0her fifth marriage was on the skids.<\/p>\n
Joining her on the colorful list\u00a0of \u201call knowing\u201d people I\u2019ve met are a clairvoyant psychiatrist, a psychic life\u00a0coach, a self-declared enlightened seminar couple, a horny tantric guide, a\u00a0thousand-year-old entity channeler, an anorexic nutritionist, a tarot card reading
witch, and an auric massage therapist who grabbed a layer of fat around her\u00a0stomach and told me, \u201cThis isn\u2019t mine.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhose is it?\u201d I asked her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI absorbed the negativity of
someone I was healing. It\u2019s his.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
These kinds of assertions were\u00a0nauseatingly common during the sixties and seventies, when spiritual arrogance\u00a0was on the rise and they still exist today. \u00a0Individuals say that you can be enlightened if you offer them your undying devotion, your money, your body, and your firstborn child. Obviously I\u2019m not being literal, but a host of gurus from the East enjoyed a lot of self-gratifying devotion during the \u201cNew Age,\u201d grabbing at everything they could get their hands on, all in the name of helping others get closer to God.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very spiritual,\u201d I\u2019ve heard\u00a0people say, \u201cand I know you better than you know yourself, so let me tell you\u00a0what to do.\u201d Arrogance is always annoying, but I find spiritual arrogance to be\u00a0shameful, damaging, and at times, criminal. Examples come to mind, like motivational\u00a0speaker James Arthur Ray. He served two years in prison in 2010 when several\u00a0people, supposedly under his guidance, died in his sweat lodge. Jim Jones got\u00a0more than nine hundred followers, some who volunteered, others at gunpoint, to\u00a0drink Kool-Aid laced with cyanide so they could move beyond this existence into\u00a0an Eden-like afterlife. They died with their tennis shoes on.<\/p>\n
There is nothing new under the sun\u00a0about teachers claiming ultimate knowledge and garnering wealth by reaching their\u00a0hands into someone else\u2019s pocket or their pants. I never followed one of these
\u201celightened beings,\u201d which is why I still have my home, my bank account and my\u00a0own opinions. I was privy, however, to stories from friends about secret,\u00a0sacred rituals of famously revered gurus. One self-proclaimed Eastern master\u00a0who settled in the West had thousands of devotees who gifted him with a fleet\u00a0of Rolls Royces and Rolex watches. He claimed to be celibate while he
handpicked certain women (pretty ones with large breasts) to dance topless for\u00a0him at hush-hush spiritual gatherings in his private quarters where he brushed\u00a0his white-robed body against them, touching here and stroking there, gifting them with his \u201cspecial\u201d blessings.<\/p>\n
But while the number of\u00a0charlatans is staggering, I have to say that back in the day, a group of authentic\u00a0and wonderful teachers from the East showed up and offered guidance on meditation,\u00a0prayers, and yogic healing to whomever was ready to take the next step in his\u00a0or her spiritual development. Refusing to toe the line and accept the rigidity\u00a0of our parents, the youth movement that began in the sixties, of which I was a\u00a0part, shunned the status quo as we experimented with psychedelic drugs and meditation\u00a0to expand and heal our minds and hearts.<\/p>\n
The very concept of healing, in\u00a0all of its varied shapes and forms, has been much debated for centuries, and\u00a0opinions vary as to what it really means and who is responsible for the\u00a0results. In my extensive research, I\u2019ve discovered that the true source of
healing power comes from the healer and the patient working together. I saw that\u00a0when a person lies down on a healer\u2019s table and says, \u201cFix me,\u201d or when a\u00a0healer says, \u201cLet me fix you,\u201d they are both missing the point.<\/p>\n
One of the most damaging lies is\u00a0the idea that we brought our illness upon ourselves. I\u2019m not a proponent of the\u00a0belief that we create our own reality. No one deserves to be responsible for\u00a0the brunt of someone else\u2019s ill will or violence. Of course we can choose to be
postive or negative about how we view our lives, but the concept that we are to\u00a0blame for our cancer or AIDS, invites guilt and shame which are bad for the\u00a0immune system and create insurmountable obstacles.<\/p>\n
A Philippine friend of mine who did\u00a0healing work with herbs and massage told me, \u201cIn my earlier stages of healing, I\u00a0was caught in an ego trap. I had a few techniques within my grasp, and I walked
around with spiritual arrogance, a holier-than-thou attitude. I said I was\u00a0serving humanity, but I wasn\u2019t coming from my heart. I have since learned that\u00a0real and effective healing can only happen through self-awareness and humility.\u00a0It\u2019s a personal search, a personal awakening. We are learning to heal for\u00a0ourselves, not for others. And while we want to feel better and help our\u00a0friends feel better, we are not goal- oriented. What is important is that we
have not separated ourselves. We are connected to the whole and to other\u00a0people. That is where healing comes from\u2014a lack of separation, a true andindestructible connectedness.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve met a number of people,\u00a0probably more than my share due to the nature of my work, who think they have\u00a0all the answers. A book client of mine appeared on a TV talk show some years\u00a0ago and she claimed to be a \u201cspiritual relationship expert.\u201d Couples from theaudiencce described their relationship and marriage woes, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2363,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2362\/revisions\/2363"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}