Spiritual Abuse & How to Avoid It

Let’s talk about spiritual abuse: how to see the warning signs in teachers, why it happens, and how to lead a healthy spiritual life. This is based on my experiences working as a meditation teacher, meeting and studying with other teachers, and walking the meditative path for nearly a decade.

We all know spiritual abuse happens. Spiritual teachers from all traditions, modern and old, have been known to abuse their power and bully their students in various ways. I think there are always warning signs, but often we don’t interpret them as such.

Here are my eight warning signs: if you see these in a teacher, they may well be capable of physical or emotional abuse.

8 Warning Signs of Spiritual Abuse

• Detachment and indifference: They claim to teach as a service to people, but seem detached from others and the world. They deny ordinary problems rather than sympathise, and say things like “when you become enlightened, you won’t have any problems.”
• Making fantastical claims: Claiming they can heal, fly, levitate, or any other forms of witchcraft and wizardry. You might laugh, but one modern spiritual teacher claims he can change the weather, do telekinesis, levitate, and so forth. If they say this, be careful. They might be losing their grip on reality.
• Claiming to be the next Messiah or Jesus: Especially when they advertise and really believe in it.
• Inflated, Machiavellian superiority complex: Egotistical and narcissistic to the point of revolting. They talk down to people, believe they are better than them, and create an enormous distance between themselves and followers.
• Focusing on profound states and nothing else: They lock themselves in their spiritual bubble and won’t talk about anything else. Their spirituality has taken over their entire life, in a restrictive way.
• Overidealising enlightenment and lulling students with sexy language: How do they talk about enlightenment? Do they endlessly build it up? Do they get obsessed with sexy language?
• Not admitting own shortcomings and basic, earthly humanness: Do they claim to be perfect, to never get angry, to never suffer, to be perfect? Do they deny their problems? Not a good sign.
• No boundaries, innuendos: There should be a certain distance between teacher and student. If there’s not, it might be harmless, but it could be a sign of something else.
• Bonus Sign: Bad Vibe! They just give off bad energy… it might be subtle or hard to grasp, but you can feel it.

What Causes Spiritual Abuse?

We’re all human, and we all have imperfections. That’s true of spiritual teachers too, of course. Yet how do they go from having basic human imperfections to committing spiritual abuse?

• They get the opportunity to. Let’s be honest, in what context does any leader spend several nights or even several weeks alone in a secluded environment with those that they lead and who admire them? There aren’t many. Yet in spirituality, with retreats, this is a common occurrence. This close contact gives them more opportunity to abuse their power.
  
• They don’t train develop the Bodhisattva enough. In Buddhism, being a Bodhisattva is as important as becoming enlightened. This means using your awakening compassionately, serving the world, helping others on their own path. If this piece is missing from their training, they may be more propense towards abuse of power.
  
• Students overidealise them. We all overidealise spirituality, enlightenment, and teachers. This leaves us open to their influence, in whatever guise it comes.
  
• Forgetting they’re just some guy, or some girl. No matter our level of achievement in any area of life, we’re all just people. Our life is as valuable as the next person’s. We must all remember that this applies to spiritual leaders too, rather than idealising them.
  
• Trauma, sense of inferiority. The most narcissitic people I know are all very weak in character. I wouldn’t get into a fight with them, that’s true, but they clearly lack self-love and self-confidence. This is at least partly responsible for why they become combative and abusive.
  
• Spirituality isn’t regulated, outside of the traditional lineages. All you need is audience and reach, and you can teach whatever you want. There are no degree certificates or objective measures of authority. The lunatics are running the asylum!
  
• Hidden motivations and needs. They might have motives for power, wealth and fame that they haven’t worked through or satisfied in other ways, and unfortunately they attempt to do so via their teaching work.
  
• Power can corrupt; the corrupt often attain power. This is an iron rule of human history.

Healthy Spiritual Life & Relationship to Leaders

Let’s round off by discussing how to lead a healthy spiritual life and maintain a sane relationship with those who choose as leaders.

My first piece of advice is to let it inform the rest of your life, not hijack it. Remember that this was one of the reasons I proposed for why leaders end up engaging in spiritual abuse. If you grab on too tightly, it’ll fester. I explain this topic in much more depth in my article Live As a Monk… In The World.

I gently encourage you to get a life… life is about way more than just getting enlightened. In a similar vein, I highly recommend you don’t deny your problems using spirituality as an excuse. This is a form of spiritual bypassing. Take the opposite approach: use your spirituality to help you more effectively deal with your everyday problems.

Don’t overidealise spirituality. Sure, committed spiritual practice is transformative, but perhaps not in the way you imagine. It’s like the Mirror of Erised in Harry Potter. The more you imagine how spirituality should be, the more you miss its essence. Live it with every breath. Go to your direct experience, not to your fantasies about non-duality and enlightenment and bliss, or any other spiritual concept.

And always remember you’re just some guy or some girl… regardless of what others say, you’re not a saint, or a Buddha, or a guru. You’re just one of the 8 billion humans on this planet. Don’t swallow the Kool Aid, and keep your feet firmly on the ground.

In the Indic formulation, an enlightened being is a god, is an archetype. But in the Chinese formulation, an enlightened person is a… pudgy, easily approached guy hanging out in the streets, available to people.

Shinzen Young: source