Rick and other posters on this forum have used the phrase "spiritual maturity." Recent posts have gotten me thinking about this term, and how I'd define it. I would say that for me it equates to a lack of spiritual groupie-ism.
"Groupie" is a term that unfortunately has developed sexual connotations over the years, but it didn't start out that way. Among musicians, someone being a "groupie" was not defined by whether they had slept with a musician or had created a plaster cast of his private parts. A groupie was thought of as someone who gained most of their sense of self worth from their relationship -- real or imagined -- with a celebrity. The real defining quality of a groupie from the point of view of the musicians was that they never had anything to talk about *but* their encounters with the musicians; they'd never really done anything on their own that people could admire or look up to, so they tried to gain that admiration by associating themselves with someone more famous. This is one of the factors that still leaves me fascinated by the spiritual smoragasbord, even though I lost my fasc- ination with spiritual teachers years ago. It's not the teachers themselves I find worth watching; it's their students and how they handle themselves. Often it's *not* with a great deal of spiritual maturity, as I would define that term, and the main reason is that many of them have never gotten past this stage of measuring their own self worth by associating themselves with someone else. One of the defining characteristics of the spiritual groupie (besides never having done much of anything on their own) is a tendency to live in the past. The things they talk about and bring up over and over and over tend to be their interactions with some spiritual teacher, many of which took place decades ago. What, I find myself wondering sometimes, have they done SINCE? Sure, they stood in a "flower line" three decades ago, and Maharishi smiled at them. Big whoop. Am I supposed to be impressed by this, and as a result "weigh" the person who is a legend in their own past more highly? I think not. On the whole, I am always more impressed by -- and more likely to gravitate to as friends -- people who rarely speak of the past, and their past (or present) association with some spiritual teacher. My guideline in such matters is that if they have to "go back" more than a week or so to find something "spiritual" in their lives to talk about, then their lives aren't very spiritual, are they? So I tend to see this tendency of spiritual seekers to gain their sense of worth from their relationship with a teacher as not entirely a positive thing. In many cases (and not just in the TMO) this dependence on Someone Else's Achieve- ments has prevented them from ever achieving anything of their own. Saddest of all, in my experience, are the seekers who DO accomplish things on their own but who then give all credit for what they did to their spiritual teacher. "I dedicate this album to Sri Someguru, without whom it would never have happened. It is in a real sense *his* album. He created it, because he created me." (This is a real quote.) Another negative byproduct of the spiritual groupie mental- ity IMO has to do with the defensiveness we often see in spiritual groupies. Challenge or criticize the teacher they are groupies to, and the perception of the groupie is that you are challenging *them*. The reaction is often harsh, and almost always inappropriate. How would you react, after all, to someone who flew into a rage and started lashing out at you because you criticized a rock star the person had met once or twice? You'd think they were bonkers, right? But when spiritual seekers fly into similar rages when their spiritual teachers are criticized -- teachers that in some cases they never even met -- people make excuses for them, and treat them as if this reaction is somehow normal. It isn't. It's the reaction of someone for whom the *source* of their own self worth has gotten confused with someone or something outside themselves. They feel somehow "diminished" if someone criticizes who or what they associate with to feel good about themselves. And this leads to what is IMO the saddest byproduct of the spiritual groupie mentality, the perceived need to demonize or "diminish" the critic. It's as if the same people who believe that their self worth or stature is somehow "improved" by glorifying the teacher they draw it from are convinced that their self worth or stature is *also* increased by diminishing the stature of his critics. All in all, color me not impressed by spiritual groupies. Among my friends, many of whom have spent large parts of their lives studying with one or many spiritual teachers, the ones I'm closest to and feel like hanging with almost never mention them. They've got things going on in their own lives, and don't feel the need to associate those lives with someone else's to feel good about themselves. That's what I would call "spiritual maturity."
