New Age Spiritual Movement Frustrations

[zedro]

This is why I'm always surprised that people don't understand shadow work and dismiss it as negative navel gazing, instead of regarding it as the most important healing tool one has access to. Superficial healing through false positivity will eventually cause a crash and burn.

Yes that is exactly what I am trying to say through encouraging the sharing of experiences. How does one know what it looks like in order to use these practices in real life? Maybe they don’t share stories because they don’t have any? Either or, they are giving a bunch of spiritual toddlers tools and allowing them to run around with them on the playground without supervision, which is a very dangerous practice to encourage. 

Shadow work indeed. You cannot learn your way into healing or enlightenment. You cannot go, “well all is one, we are all the Creator, so I’m going to focus on my bliss at the expense of all other feelings, including the ones I need to heal within myself.” Never a good idea, as they will always come back, and with more and more intensity.

Two thoughts come to mind. First, the complexity and nuance of spiritual experience can be very difficult to share or communicate, I find myself sometimes unable to summarize my experiences in a truly complete and thought out way, or at least in a way that would would tangible or teachable. But this goes into the 2nd thought, it is difficult to do so when one is still engaged in their own seeking/learning, and if one tries to pivot too hard into being the teacher, it may impede their own seeking as they start to look outward. Perhaps this is what you are observing.

Third thought from the above: perhaps calling them teachers or gurus is not accurate or appropriate, as I believe the main spiritual driver at this juncture is to be a messenger for awakening, and perhaps give a little orientation material and send people on their way. In other words, why put so much stock in these 'teachers'? They have probably already fulfilled their role with you awhile ago, although there is always more to learn from the meta-analysis you are pursuing now. And if the bother is worrying how they can mislead others, well that is part of everyone's path, to learn discernment.