--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Gillam" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This entire thread has pointed up for me the > damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't nature > of spiritual teaching.
Yup yup yup. > A teacher who won't accept the overshadowing of > a person in ignorance will be accused of insensitivity. > The teacher who shows too much compassion -- or > perhaps compassion of the wrong type -- is accused > of enabling the student's ignorance. > > A related thought: a friend studying with Course in > Miracles teacher Robert Perry sent me a lesson recently > in which Perry discussed the ways that empathy, normally > an admirable trait, can be used to reinforce the ego and > attack a person. So there's healthy empathy, which > contributes to the Course's "holy instant," and there's > dysfunctional empathy, which reinforces suffering. > > So it's another caveat for the student of spiritual growth: > is this teacher's seeming insensitivity really just tough > love? Or is that teacher's compassion reinforcing the story > I use to hide from my true nature as a liberated being? Perhaps the appropriate question is, How is what the teacher is saying affecting me? Do I find it liberating--does it inspire me to expand into it, to drop my boundaries--or do I experience it as constricting, a painful pinch that only makes me want to withdraw into myself? And if I tell the teacher it's the latter, is the teacher's response helpful, or does it just make things worse? To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
