I’ve written a few articles about modern issues with spiritual teachers. Students often see enlightenment as a superhuman perfection. We see the teacher as beyond mistakes. If a teacher buys into such ideas, they can create a large blind spot. Unresolved identity or unconscious needs are bound to be acted out with students. Expecting perfection, students may excuse the behaviour as “crazy wisdom” or similar.

The Westernization of spiritual teaching has meant that most teachers are now independent, sometimes affiliated with a lineage and sometimes not. They’re often outside of any peer-support structure and often lack understanding of relationship power dynamics. It’s a recipe for trouble.

One simple principle is that if someone has a human body, it’s because there is still karma unfolding. After they become enlightened, they’re still working out their sprouted karma from before enlightenment. And enlightenment itself takes time to integrate and mature. How long did you take to become an adult?

The karma that is unfolding now doesn’t reflect their current state. But how they respond to it does.

Recently a reader shared one of Jerry Freeman’s essays, “Why There are No Perfect Teachers.” Jerry is a prior BATGAP interviewee that writes occasional insightful essays. He makes many excellent points on this topic I’ll explore below. He also gave me permission to share his essay. Quotes are from his text, linked below.

“Those who come closest to a true, mature enlightenment do not hide their humanity. They do not cover themselves with an “enlightened” persona. They are at peace with themselves exactly as they are. They present themselves exactly as they are: human, fallible, flawed and still a work in progress even though some of them, the best of them, may already be deeply enlightened.”

Much as we may love to think otherwise, “…enlightenment does not confer perfection.” It is a major and progressive upgrade but we remain human with all that entails. That is how enlightenment is lived – in our humanity.

Initial enlightenment just takes a moment, a brief recognition of the Self by itself. Pop! But for that to be embodied in a life takes time. Each progressive level of our expression is more dense and slower to change. We have a lot of habits that take time to wind down.

Perfection

There are a range of spiritual sources that point to statements that suggest perfection. Jerry mentions the Brahma Sutra of Vedanta. Shankara’s commentary says “It therefore is an established conclusion that on attaining Brahman there results the extinction of all sin [karma].” The Bhagavad Gita makes similar statements about right action.

We’re supposed to be perfected in Brahman* then, right?

This is qualified 2 verses later. Only those karmas from our backlog that have not yet begun to unfold are destroyed by knowledge. That is considerable. However, we also brought in a “suitcase” of seeds to this lifetime. Many of them have sprouted. Those parts of our past continue to unfold after enlightenment. We have a new relationship with our life but the blueprint or script continues.

Shankara says “Former karmas, i.e. actions, whether virtuous or sinful, which have been accumulated in previous forms of existence as well as in the current form of existence before the origination of knowledge,