I was talking to a colleague the other day who was finally being pushed to quit his job since it was interfering way too much with his growing business. He was nervous about going in to talk to his boss, and I told him, “You aren’t going in there as an employee to buck the hierarchy. You are going in there as a business owner making a business decision.”
That leveled the playing field for him. Instead of facing the difference in rank between employee and boss, he was going in as an equal, making the decision to act much easier.
It was clearly an important step for him to let go of the employee role. If you’re running your own business you aren’t an employee. Yet you may still have that “stay in line, because they have the power” employee attitude internalized.
Then you realize it’s time to learn about business so you decide to learn from someone. And that’s when thinking like you’re an “employee” of your business gets dangerous.
The Dangers of Business Gurus
I was recently reading Jonathan Fields’ post, “Guru Fatigue: Getting Paid Without Being the Wizard“. He makes some great points about how the word “guru” has been “slung around as a tool to drive money.”
What makes the situation dangerous is that many of the business teachers aren’t just teaching business. Many are doing something similar to what Heart of Business is doing—mixing business with personal development and/or spiritual teachings. Heady stuff.
At the extreme end of the spectrum you have people dying, like in the James Ray sweat lodge tragedy. At the more moderate end, you just have people surrendering their decision-making power, only doing things that are approved of by certain people.
Not a comfortable situation. And it’s exacerbated by the mythology of the crazy-wisdom teacher.
The Crazy Wisdom Teacher
Spiritual traditions have uncounted stories of student-teacher relationships where the teacher takes the student to an extreme place where the student has a breakthrough. It’s awe-inspiring to have that much trust in someone and to be taken to such heights with that kind of guidance.
In Sufism the teaching is called “Fanah fi-Sheikh,” which translates roughly as “annihilating through the teacher.” This is a rare and special relationship.
I don’t have that kind of relationship with my teacher. He tells me something, I pass it through my own heart. If it resonates, I’m there. If it doesn’t, I sit with it more deeply.
Many things I’m told have challenged my beliefs and identity, and it’s been an amazing journey to walk with those. Only once have I actually rejected something my teacher told me, all the rest resonated. But the key is that nothing is accepted blindly, and I push against and test everything that challenges me to see how it holds.
The Fanah-fi-Sheikh relationship would have me abandon that test. My teacher isn’t asking that of me. Are any of your teachers asking that of you?
Please, No Crazy Wisdom in Paid Seminars
A problem can develop for participants when using personal development and spiritual teachings because they often create really heady experiences for people. Altered states of being. In turn these states can alter someone’s ability to make clear decisions, or to know their own heart.
On top of that, when you are teaching this stuff, it can be intoxicating to you. To have a roomful, or even a single person, that you guide through some ecstatic experience, carries some heavy juju that can send nearly any practitioner astray.
It’s easy to point fingers, and fingers should be pointed, at spiritual teachers who do immoral things with their students or their students’ money. As well, compassion is needed. How well would you stand up to those kinds of temptations?
Two Questions to Ask Yourself
To keep your heart intact, ask yourself a few questions whenever you are the student.
1. What role or identity am I claiming in this situation?
For instance, my colleague had been claiming the “employee” role when he really needed to be claiming the “business owner” role. You want to find a role that enables you to see your teacher as a regular human being, equal to you, no matter what special gifts or knowledge they’ve been given.
In Sufism, the teaching says that when we face God, we are all children, and when we face the world, we are all equals. No human being is above another one in essence.
2. Are you honoring your own emotions and reactions?
Although it is good to work past knee-jerk negative reactions that keep you from learning new things, you still want to honor those reactions. To feel them, see them, and not just push them aside.
In Sufism, the teaching says that the devil cannot create anything, but can only distort the truth. A knee-jerk reaction may be an illusion, but there will be some kernel of truth within it that needs to be honored.
For instance, if a teacher recommends a particular method of marketing yourself, and you have a strong reaction, take some time to look at the reaction.
A student of ours had a reaction to making promises on sales pages. The kernel of truth within that she noticed was she couldn’t make a promise about healing, but she could make other promises about her commitment level, and she could speak her experience of people making movement towards healing.
She moved from rejecting ever making promises to rejecting certain promises and realizing what promises she could make from her heart.
Three Questions to Ask Your Teacher
1. Who are your teacher’s teachers?
If someone is claiming direct information from a disembodied source and has no colleagues or teachers to help discern what is true from what is illusion, then I would go in with my eyes extra-wide open.
Ideally you want to be able to see how your teacher relates to his or her own teachers. A teacher who is a strong student has a greater capacity for honoring and fostering the strength in their own students.
2. Are there any rules or principles your teacher doesn’t follow?
There is a story in Sufism of a great saint who had achieved a high spiritual station. One day before he made one of his daily prayers as prescribed by his tradition an angel appeared to him. “Oh great saint! Because of your high attainment, God has asked me to deliver the message that you no longer need your prayers.”
The saint immediately took off his shoe and began hitting the angel, who promptly revealed itself as a devil disguised as an angel, and then disappeared.
Whether about business or spirituality, a teacher is expected to be teaching sound truths or principles. At no point is a teacher exempt from these truths.
While it’s not always possible to participate in the same practices or exercises he or she is leading, it doesn’t mean the teacher never does them.
3. Does your teacher admit to mistakes? Is he or she willing to learn from students?
One day the prophet Muhammad passed by people who were tending to the palm trees. He asked one of his companions to ask the people what they were doing. The reply came, “They are tending the palm trees, helping to pollinate them, so they give an abundant crop.” The prophet said out loud, “I don’t know about that.”
The palm tree tenders, worried that they had somehow upset the prophet, didn’t pollinate any more of their trees that year, and they had a miserable crop. They came to the prophet and asked about it.
The prophet told them that he merely meant that he didn’t know about what they were doing. He told them that in his realm they listen to him as a prophet, and in their realm, as palm tree tenders, he knew nothing and they should not listen to him.
If your teacher is attached to being perfect, not admitting mistakes, or otherwise not showing humility, it’s eyes-wide-open time for you.
Anything I’ve Missed?
How do you balance learning from teachers and stretching more into your sense of identity and sovereignty? Or do you have any cool crazy-wisdom teaching stories to share?
p.s. Need practical help building your business from the heart?
I want to highlight our newest practitioner, Jason Stein. He’s an outstanding coach, who has this mysterious habit of helping people make money. He has a very deep commitment to spiritual practice and parenting. He’s an expert communicator, and his super-power is helping people ask for and receive help in their business.
If you’re ready to get your business moving and you’d like someone to roll up their sleeves and work with you, may I recommend checking out Jason? Read about our Organic Business Development Program, and schedule a time to speak with him.
40 Responses
Wow. Very pointed, very insightful, very interesting. I very much appreciate your eye-opening questions. Thank you.
You are so welcome.
I had the same nervousness for a couple minutes, then I thought, “What is she going to do… FIRE ME?” And I laughed. I was QUITTING, right?
.-= Michael Martine’s lastest post: Visual Blog Design
Hah! Exactly… 🙂
Wow, Mark. This is a very rich and full post. I’m left wondering how to respond in a single comment box, as you’ve covered so much ground and I’m thinking this topic is worthy of a thesis!
I once had a numerology reading done and a phrase in it stuck with me ‘Life is your teacher and the five senses your guide’… For years I took it literally.
Just last week I read the biography of an enlightened man/guru who I respect and admire whose body has passed. A student of Ramana Maharshi.
Reading some of the spectacular stories of awakening experienced by him and his devotees awakened my own longing for a teacher or guide who could take charge of my spiritual development, tell me where I’m headed and what it’s all about.
I’m guessing I’m not the only one who sometimes feels a deep need for this kind of guidance. And with that kind of neediness playing out, I can see how easy it is for a student to make a guru out of a teacher who may not really be up to the task… As if wishing that magical ‘take your problems away’ person would appear, could bring them into being in the form of the next most likely candidate.
…So it occurs to me that some of the brilliant practices that you offer through Heart of Business… Simple ways to help people make space for neediness without having to project it and play it out… Those practices would definitely be relevant here!
.-= Yollana’s lastest post: How to get clients quickly (and honestly) when you
I hope so… those practices have been so helpful for me.
And you and I really do have to connect soon.
Philosopher Milton Mayeroff’s great book from 1971 “On Caring” talks about the growth and devotion between the student and teacher. If there is something else going on then the caring is missing and needs to be called something else. Power, authority, fame and fortune are intoxicating. When there is true caring everyone benefits, even the teacher and especially the student as a separate and distinct individual in their own right.
That sounds like a great book- I haven’t heard of it. Thanks for mentioning it.
Love, love, love that you shared this…
Years ago I was attending an ongoing “spiritual” program – deep breathing, meditation, prayer, study, etc. I went because I am a ‘student’ and wanted to learn more about living abundantly in every area of my life. The students and teacher – wonderful. The experience meaningful.
That is— until the teacher and the students got ‘caught up’ in the ‘heady’ experiences… teacher and students started looking at the teacher like a guru. Then things got weird.
Something beautiful turned into crazy-making. Now, years later I love that I experienced it. It taught me in a less-than-gentle-way (but I DID get ‘it’ and live it every day now) to pass everything through my own knowing and understanding.
As you say – I now use what fits and let the rest pass.
One other thing I learned from that experience – that is: to run (not walk- but run) from anyone who sees people as broken in need of being ‘fixed.’
I went into that ‘spiritual’ program with a great mind and heart – great and wonderful things were happening in my life, happily married, good career, felt good about me, lovely friends and more… I went to the program cause I love to learn and wanted to expand more. I did not go from a “broken” place.
But when the ‘guru’ complex set in – the ‘guru’ (and the students let him) started teaching from the ‘you all need me and so there must be issues for all of you’ place.
The power of influence.
I started to think I had all these issues. Yea, I (like all of us) can evolve and grow, but ‘guru’ man benefited more if we had lots of ‘issues’ – so issues were highlighted.
I’ve typed more then I planned here – but as you can tell the guru issue is something that I experienced – and I’m pleased to have been through it and now to be on the other side of it – I am clearer about my own heart and about who I allow to influence me.
And it’s all made me wiser and happier as a result.
We are ALL wise.
We ALL have our own connection.
We are ALL guided.
We ALL have our own voice and wisdom within.
The best teachers help us access our OWN wisdom and strength.
They work to make themselves not ‘necessary’ but a part of the path. journey and process on the way to our own inner guru status.
Mark, Thank you for your article, your heart and holding these types of standards for personal and professional development.
You are appreciated.
All the Best, and More—
Suzie Price
.-= Suzie Price’s lastest post: Apr 13, Career Management Training: More Motivation & Inspiration Mini-Workshop =-.
It’s a bummer, and beautiful, and a gift that we have to go through these experiences to learn these things.
Thanks for sharing your story- really helpful- and I’m glad you drew such beautiful lessons from it.
“The best teachers help us access our OWN wisdom and strength.
They work to make themselves not
Wow, sometimes the timing of your posts are eerie for me. 🙂
I was just wrestling with the feeling that I was sort of “waiting for permission” from a business coach I’m working with on some new actions/tasks that I’m still learning how to do/trying to take ownership of…I think as learners it’s tempting to hand over power in these situations where the teacher knows more and you’re still discerning what is something that needs to be learned and understood and what is something that’s a matter of opinion or belief.
Such a rich, subtle interesting conundrum to be in!
.-= Sarah’s lastest post: Appreciation =-.
Don’t mind me, I’m just hiding in the bush outside your window with a video camera… 😉
It is so tempting… and there is something so comforting in receiving affirmation. And yet.. and yet…
Hey Mark,
Love what you’re saying here. When we hand our decision making over to “gurus,” we’re giving our power away.
A true guru won’t ask you to do that.
The most empowering thing any of us can do is take responsibility for our own lives and learning. This can scare folks because from childhood on, we’re being taught overtly and covertly to do what we’re told by authority figures, to be subservient.
Hanging out with gurus can either help unshackle us or they can just transfer the shackle from one warden to another.
My life philosophy? We are all students and teachers at the same time, that we all learn from each other. An enlightened guru will open up and receive gifts from his or her students-teachers who are simultaneously receiving gifts from his or her guru.
The circle of life in motion …
Thx,
Giulietta, Inspirational Rebel
.-= Giulietta the Muse’s lastest post: Attempt The Impossible =-.
Shackle transfers are not what we’re about, eh? Although it does happen more often than I care to admit.
The circle of life in motion… amen.
“In Sufism, the teaching says that when we face God, we are all children, and when we face the world, we are all equals. No human being is above another one in essence.”
This is a great thought that sets the tone at the beginning of my day today. Thank you.
Leyla
.-= Leyla Torres’s lastest post: A Business Card Sized Art Licensing Portfolio =-.
You are so welcome, from the other side of the day. 🙂
Mark:
I enjoyed this post a lot — in fact, I find its value so great that it reminds me why I signed up to Moneyflow’s yearlong program.
This resonates for me because, as a new business practitioner offering a service, I want to *learn* from gurus and attend conferences and events. At the same time, I need to be vigilant that their practices/teachings have usefulness to me and my clients. If the teachings are self-serving, or can’t be extrapolated to my business, then I feel a bit abused. If the value is true, then I can trust the teacher. Teachers really do have to be careful to provide what they know to be true, but not necessarily MORE than that.
I need to remember this for my clients, as well.
Warmly, Jillian
http://www.jillianjdavis.com
Be Adventurous, Wake Up to Work You Love
Woo-hoo! vigilance of the heart is very worthwhile. I’m glad you’re here.
I once joined a professional organization forum for a business path I was considering. It was very active, with lots of help for newbies and plenty of interesting conversations.
After a few weeks, I started to contribute my thoughts and ideas, and they were received gladly. That is, until I submitted a link to something outside the website.
That entry never appeared, ever. The moderators (Pres and VP of the organization) blocked it and said I wasn’t to link to anything outside their site. That they didn’t want “muddy the waters” with ideas from other places, which was interesting since I was linking to something that reinforced their ideas, not contradicted them.
I refused to be censored and left. I’ve since heard those moderators are no longer there, as they censored so readily and heavily that the participants voted them out at the next election.
So, my eyes are wide open when it comes to teachers who forbid me to read or discuss other teachings. And who don’t encourage questions.
.-= Crystal’s lastest post: You
I was going to delete your comment, but you didn’t include any outside links in it… 😉
How painful, eh? And strange… Such twistings of the heart that lead people to those kinds of protective defenses- often with the best of intentions. But so painful!
I have a bunch of crazy wisdom stories, but I think they all boil down to this: I’ve never had an unconditional relationship that wasn’t ultimately served by my outgrowing the unconditional aspect and coming into a more equal relationship.
In mystical traditions especially, two things often coexist, especially early in training: a focus on trusting one’s own experience and the need to follow a challenging or apparently-nonsensical path laid out by a teacher in order to further that experience. How confusing is that? And because things aren’t always logical in the spiritual world, it can feel hard to evaluate whether steps are actually or just apparently nonsense.
I use a couple of standards: one is looking at the teacher herself and whether her life (and the lives of her advanced students) seems to reflect results I’d like from my own practice. Another is how well the teacher supports me: someone who is able to provide consistent, compassionate guidance through challenging experiences is someone I’m much more likely to keep listening to. But ultimately, even an unconditional relationship relies on your heart: if your heart stops saying “yes!” to the relationship, it’s no longer the place to be, and you are always your own authority about that.
Well put, Sarah. I love the way you’ve articulated the paradox and the tension between the heart and the guidance.
I’ve been my own boss since I was 22 so I’ve never considered myself an employee of someone else.
The strange thing is, I still had to make the same mindset shift. Although I never really worked for anyone else, I did work for me. In the early days, I had a physical business with a few employees and we made and delivered “widgets”.
I still had to do it all, at least I thought I did. Basically I owned a job and I actually thought of myself as an employee. It’s so strange when I think about it now.
It’s like the flood gates opened up when I finally said to myself, “Dude, you own this mess. Now clean it up and start building your business.”
Finally my creativity, energy, happiness, productivity, and peace came back in full swing.
How brilliant! “Dude, you own this mess. Now clean it up and start building your business.” I love it… I’ve had that realization come in for me.. again and again… I wish it would stick. 🙂
Oh, my – I have had that thought, too! (Again, and again, and again!) I love that you both normalized that feeling for me.
Building my business is an ongoing heart wrestle for me…. I appreciate your guidance on the journey, Mark. (And thank you Andy!)
Warmly, Karly
Yay, Karly! Thanks for being here with us!
Dude, I’m putting that quote on a sticky note on my computer right now!
.-= Rachel Whalley’s lastest post: I Choose Who I Become =-.
@Rachel – It definitely works. I’ve used it many times with my friends. I’m not sure they took to well though 🙂
.-= Andy Fogarty’s lastest post: Blog Building For Your Ecommerce Site
God I love you! This is so what the conversation about internet marketing and all marketing and teaching needs to be — and where it is headed, I hope. I would add ask yourself why you would give this person permission to teach you? Make it be more than “everybody else is following them” or “their sales copy is really good.” Yeah for Mark!
.-= Jennifer Louden’s lastest post: How to Retreat with a Friend (or Daughter or Sister or Husband or
I love that addition, Jen. Yay for Jen!
Being a very boundary-oriented person from the get-go, I have always had a difficult time allowing myself to be a student of a “guru.” And yet, a part of me has longed for such a role model and mentor. I was just unwilling to accept one that wasn’t at least healthier than me.
I used to judge myself for this, but in the last year or so, I’ve come to see a lot of what you’re talking about here, Mark, and what these other folks are commenting about–that ultimately, I am my own guru. I can be taught, nurtured and supported…at times. But no one is more perfect to be my Teacher than my Self.
I don’t want to be the perfect student validating my teacher; I just want to be Present and listening to my heart, my mind, and Spirit.
As I go through a business redefining process (like a rake through stale soil, this is bringing up many wriggly, yet juicy creatures), I am trying to balance my true need for help with this other truth: that I also already contain all that I need.
Amazing that both can be true at the same time.
.-= Rachel Whalley’s lastest post: I Choose Who I Become =-.
I love being in a good mood, because it allows me to enjoy the paradox of both being true at the same time. 🙂
And I’m totally cheering on your raking process. Juicy, wriggly things mean healthy soil! Maybe not so stale after all…
Just stale on the top, baby. Underneath, fertile goodness!
.-= Rachel Whalley’s lastest post: I Choose Who I Become =-.
Excellent advice!
I’ve worked hard to see myself as a Mentor not a Guru and to be a wise teacher who is open to admitting mistakes and learning … always learning.
LL
.-= Lyle T. Lachmuth – The Unsticking Coach’s lastest post: It
Always learning, that’s the key. The last couple of days I’ve been humbled and tossed about in ways that have been painful, and have been extremely useful in this exact dynamic.
I have visited your blog before. The more I take in, the more I keep coming back! ;~)
I’m so pleased to hear that! 🙂
Good points.. what I find funny is the amount of “social media experts” and marketers and they have never ran a blog/website/online biz before?!?!
How are you going to teach me anything if you have no experience? I can read biz books myself, lol..
It is funny, isn’t it? People are a source of endless amusement.