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#2633 - Friday, November, 3, 2006 - Editor: Jerry Katz NONDUAL HIGHLIGHTS
I like what Rob Rabbin says in this article. The crux of it is this thing between Eli Jaxon Bear and Gangaji. Like he was cheating on her secretly for three years or something and of course all his followers were naive enough to belief he was this wonderful perfect guy or something. Same old same old. Well, big deal. They're a married couple. End of story. They're not more special than the married couple in the trailer park or living in their VW bug under a stack of old newspapers. Why is everyone so shocked? They're people. They're not floating above the floor of their living room singing in angelic choirs. They're sitting on the couch watching Jeopardy. They are gifted teachers perhaps, but everyone has a gift and one isn't better than another. Here's Rob...
It Don't Mean A Thing If
It Ain't Got that Swing
by Robert Rabbin
"What we have received is
the ordinary mail of the otherworld,
wholly common, not postmarked divine"
-- Les Murray, Australian poet
A friend sent me a letter written by Barbara Denempont,
executive director and board member of the Gangaji and Leela
Foundations, the organizational supports of well-known US
spiritual teachers Gangaji and Eli Jaxon-Bear, in which she
writes:
"It is possible that you have already heard about a
heartbreaking disclosure within our community. On Sunday, October
1, 2006, Eli Jaxon-Bear, founder of the Leela Foundation and
Leela School as well as Gangaji's husband and partner, revealed
to the entire Board of Directors that he breached the sanctity of
the teacher/student relationship by initiating an intimate
relationship with one of his students, who is also a teacher in
the Leela School. This relationship lasted for three years. Eli
told Gangaji about the relationship in October 2005. At the
student's request, neither Gangaji nor Eli disclosed the
relationship." Later in the same letter, Barbara writes,
"Eli takes full responsibility for his actions and the harm
he has caused. In response, he is willingly stepping down from
teaching immediately."
In an article written for the Ashland Daily Tidings, 14
October 2006, Robert Plain quotes Eli as saying, "A lot of
people are upset with me. I'm human. I make mistakes. This has
been hugely humiliating, but I am willing to stand and face that.
I feel like this itself is a teaching for people. It's a great
test for everyone to see what is true within their own hearts. My
prayer is that people don't discard the teaching because of the
flaws of the teacher."
The "sanctity of the teacher/student relationship" is
tricky business, and I don't want to take up the complexity of
that notion here. It does seem odd, however, that, as stated by
Barbara, "What was initially seen as a matter between adults
is now recognized to be a betrayal of the teacher/student
relationship and an abuse of power." I wonder what happened
in people's minds between "initially" and
"now." I wonder if Barbara and the other board members
who approved her letter have really taken full responsibility for
their perceptions, projections, fears, doubts, choices, and
actions. I also wonder about the characterization
"heartbreaking disclosure." For whom is it
heartbreaking, and is this true? Barbara does not appear to apply
the famous satsang ju-jitsu move, "Who is it that is
heartbroken?" I wonder if the people have failed the
teachings, or if the teachings have failed the people.
I don't think Eli is flawed, and I don't think he should stop
teaching. In fact, I believe only now is he qualified to teach,
now that Toto has shown us the man behind the curtain. If there
is a flaw, it is in the teaching.
What is the teaching? Perhaps the teaching is pointed to in this
statement made by Eli in response to the question, Who are we?:
"Silent, empty, conscious, intelligent love." (John
Darling, Mail Tribune, 31 December 2004)
The flaw in the teaching is that "silent, empty,
conscious, intelligent love" is not the whole story of who
we are. The whole story is quite huge, and we would do well to
remember Rumi's comment, "However you think it is, it's
different than that."
Any teaching that is based on a transcendent ideal at the expense
of our human beingness is flawed. We turn towards meditation,
self-inquiry, and inner exploration to find our innate connection
with the universe, with the all that is. We enter silence in
order to reawaken our conscious feeling for the enormous
endlessness of who we are, to set free our exhilaration for life,
to initiate ourselves into the mystery and magic of creation. But
the enormous endlessness of who we are is anchored in our
humanity and in our life on this Earth, in full relationship to
every detail and aspect of daily life.
The transcendent ideal of spiritual attainment is flawed. It is
an incomplete, distorted picture of who we are. Ramana Maharshi,
from whom Eli and Gangaji claim spiritual descent via their guru
Papaji, did not go far enough on his journey of self-discovery.
He only went away; he didn't come back. And we, in
our hunger for truth, peace, and meaning, have come to mistake going
away as the ideal. Ramana Maharshi needed to come back into a
full, robust, sensual, sexual, passionate embodiment of that
silence. We should not make his mistake. Silence does not
neutralize our life and living, it animates them. We should stop
impersonating an ideal that is flawed. The archetype of sage as
aloof witness to the world is an old, tired one, as cumbersome
and ineffective as the typewriter compared to a new Apple
Powerbook. I would be more interested in what the Buddha might
have said had he returned to the palace and become king. He, too,
went away; and he, too, didn't come back.
I don't know why we have traded away our human beingness for
transcendent ideals. Perhaps its because, like any form of
fundamentalism, it creates a false sense of security and
certainty. We love the idea that we are emptiness, or silence, or
pure consciousness. We are these things, but not exclusively. We
are also a teaspoonful of DNA, but not exclusively. We are this
body/mind, but not exclusively. We are all of it, aren't we?
That's the hard part: to integrate enormous endlessness with our
daily life. If the teaching is to be full, the teaching must
exist within the context of our lives, as we live them. If
we are going to ascend, then let us remember to descend. If we
are going to travel to otherworldly realms, let's not forget to
come back to the kitchen where we eat.
Barbara continues, "The Board intends to create a Foundation
code of ethics, or similar document, to address the teacher and
student relationship, as well as other pertinent issues."
Why is this necessary? It seems to be another way in which people
can avoid life, trading personal responsibility and the thrill of
spontaneity for rigidity and fear of self. If we live out in the
open, moment by moment, and if we are unafraid to ask direct,
personal questions about how our teachers live, why is a
"code of ethics, or similar document" necessary? Why do
we need to regulate behavior, banishing our impulses to our
individual and collective shadow-bags? Once the document dealing
with pertinent issues is created, can we then peacefully,
blissfully, and blindly go back to asking Who am I?
Who am I? is only half the question; the other half is How
shall I live?
Who am I? and How shall I live? is the full, challenging, and
redeeming spiritual question which we would do well to take up
with our whole heart, without looking away, without trying to
escape or oversimplify the often untidy totality of our life.
How shall I live? can not be swept under the carpet with
spiritual ideals of transcendence. We can not live as pure
consciousness except in this body, in this world, with each
other. We need to look honestly and openly at how we actually
live, taking the whole thing into our enormous endlessness:
body, mind, emotions, relationships, money, sex, power, desires,
health, work, fantasies, imagination, intellect. And there's more
that we need to include in our living: conscious lifestyle
choices and participation in the social, political, and
environmental issues of our times.
I do not think Eli is flawed, and I do not think he should stop
teaching. I only wonder why he did not live openly from the
beginning? Three years is a long time to be secretive about how
one is actually living. If we want our spiritual teachers to be
sexless, that is our problem. If we want our spiritual teachers
to be above it all, that is our problem, too. If we want our
spiritual teachers to look and sound remote and different from
us, that is our problem. What exactly are we trying to be above?
What are we trying to escape? Why are we so afraid of our lives
as we live them? Eli's humanity is not the flaw; the flaw is a
teaching that forces us to live in shadows and carry secrets.
Really, it's time to grow up and stop playing
dress-up-like-some-old-Indian-guy. Let's stop hanging giant
pictures over our giant chairs, pretending to meditate on the
Self when we are just medicating the self. Let's stop giving our
power to the Wizard of Oz, creating the very source of our
disempowerment, disappointment, and disillusionment with our
own projected power. Let's have the courage and originality
to invent our own lives, according to our own natures (both with
a small and capital "s") and deep desires, our passions
and artistic tsunamis, our concern and caring for the things of
this world where we live.
Everyone alive has to deal with emotions, money, relationships,
desire, doubt, fear, insecurity, paradox, heartbreak -- the whole
lot of it. If they say they don't, they are lying, or they are
living a tiny life surrounded by Tin Men and Cowardly Lions.
The great jazz pianist/composer Duke Ellington, wrote:
It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing
There's something else that makes this song complete
The song that makes our life as enormous endlessness complete
is our human beingness, our embodiment, our actual living and
loving. I suggest we get real, not ideal, in our satsangs. I
suggest we stop impersonating "realized" beings who
themselves only went away. That is not a big deal. The bigger
deal is coming back.
Will we do that?
__________________________________
© 2006/Robert Rabbin/All
Rights Reserved
__________________________________
Robert Rabbin is a pioneer in
executive/life coaching, a keynote speaker,
leadership/communication consultant, teacher, and author of five
books and more than 250 articles. He is the originator of
"Presencing," a holistic style of public speaking and
communicating based on the integrity, transparency, and clarity
of the speaker. For contact and further information, please visit
www.radicalsages.com and www.presencing.com.au.