Part of working with a teacher is trusting them to hold you.
Part of that holding is communicating what abandoning yourself looks like and knowing that someone else will always reflect to you, even in the face of your Ego screaming and your inner children wailing, the reminder of what you said was out of bounds.
Spiritual work is sobriety work.
You are getting sober from a lifetime of trauma, wounded patterns, bad habits, Egoic delusions and more.
Your teacher is your sponsor.
You can ALWAYS do as you want. But if you were an alcoholic and you kept getting drunk your sponsor may choose not to work with you.
As a teacher I have extraordinary amount of patience until patience is no longer serving and then I hold a firmer reflection. But no matter how drunk you might get off your own Ego or wild in your own process of self discovery, I will always look you in the eye and say “NO. You told me that was too important to you. You told me that’s first. You told me the deepest thing is …X.”
And you won’t be able to convince me otherwise. We used to call this a Spelunker.
The person holding the rope when you go into the cave.
The person holding the anchor.
I promise you I will never drop the rope.
I promise to guide you back out.
But my god of course you have to trust your teacher.
And I need to trust you to tell me the truth.
Without these things there is no foundation.
It is why I teach the foundational work at a distance and it’s so self guided.
Because before I’m going to hold the rope while you jump into the abyss I need to know you are prepared and have the skills.
It’s why my upper level paths start with a two year preparation.
This is the time to join.
