Partial Awakening and the Work That Remains
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A question about how spiritual teachers who have genuinely awakened can still behave harmfully, and how the relationship between growing up and waking up explains this.
Partial Awakening and the Work That Remains
A question about how spiritual teachers who have genuinely awakened can still behave harmfully, and how the relationship between growing up and waking up explains this.
If it's true that you need to grow up to wake up, and wake up to grow up, then how do you explain spiritual teachers who do terrible things, who are clumsy or harmful in their behavior?
Well, obviously, if we assume those teachers have had some level of awakening, there's an explanation. Because some of them haven't actually awakened at all, and that itself is the reason for their behavior.
Some of them certainly have, though.
The role of partial awakening
For those who have had some level of awakening, the explanation is very clear: either the awakening was partial, and that's simply where they are, or they are assuming their awakening is total when it is in fact partial. In that case, there is a lack of the growing-up work.
But you said they have to grow up in order to wake up.
This is where terminology matters. What I would say is that you need both in order to arrive at what I would call a more full awakening.
I see.
Growing up is never finished
Otherwise it is always partial. Even if you've had a total glimpse, until there has been a great deal of growing-up work, I would still say the work isn't done. And in truth, the work is never fully done. That's why it gets a little messy talking about this.
No, that makes so much sense. What you're saying really lands.
The trap of "infinite integration"
There is also the other side of what you're describing: when somebody says they are in the process of infinitely integrating, that "it's just a process of integration now." That is a trap.