The Ostrich and the Elephant

A blog on spirituality, science, philosophy, ETs, and mental health

Tag: Spiritual teacher

  • I’ve Been Accused of Being in a Cult

    Cults are an interesting phenomenon, and they definitely do exist. From Charles Manson to Jim Jones, there’s no shortage of examples of these charismatic yet deluded figures leading their followers, desperate to believe in something, off the proverbial cliff.

    But the word cult gets bandied around a lot, and often in a very casual manner.

    So what really defines a cult? Well, for me, the defining aspect is when the teacher becomes more important than the teaching, and the teachings are defended blindly against the weight of evidence against them.

    Now, just to get my side of the story out of the way first – I’m definitely not in a cult (said every cult member ever). As a former science student, the idea of any type of belief, scientific or otherwise, is anathema to me. Beliefs, I believe (hehe), are the opposite of the scientific and true spiritual method of making observations based on direct experience. And direct experience is ALL we ever have access to in determining truth, so using something other than direct experience to guide our lives seems pretty silly to me.

    Which is why it is so strange to me that I, of all people I think the least cultish person I know, have been accused of being in a cult.

    The cult I’ve been accused of being a part of is the one surrounding my spiritual teacher, Isira, and the organization supporting her teaching, Living Awareness.

    It seems that any time two or more people gather around a common spiritual cause, it’s automatically labelled a cult. But what did Jesus say? (another person who was accused of running a spiritual cult) – “Wherever there are two or three gathered in my name, I am there.” This is also probably why Buddhists hold sangha (spiritual community) to be the most important aspect of spirituality – because we learn more from our interactions with others than we ever could just going it alone.

    The irony is, I’m only ever accused of being in a cult by people who have never heard my spiritual teacher give a talk. Their knee-jerk reaction is: “Someone’s teaching you something that is not (yet) the norm in society?” – CULT! Anything that is the norm in society – science, politics, medicine, etc – they’re all fine to have teachers for, but nothing esoteric, nothing that isn’t easy to understand. This really is ironic because there is so much more cultish behaviour in these fields than in any spiritual field I have personally encountered. Although I do consider myself lucky in that sense – I had a good, skeptical, scientific training before ever becoming interested in spirituality, so I was always quite cognizant to never believe stuff just for the sake of believing in something.

    Which is what I think all cults, spiritual or otherwise, really boil down to: belief. In my opinion beliefs should not exist. From a scientific perspective, a belief is something you form when you say, “Okay, we’ve had this result, we’ve seen the evidence, we can make a conclusion now and stop any further investigation into the matter.” Why would anyone ever want to do that? In that sense I think beliefs have no place not only in science but in society as a whole. They are just psychological crutches people use because the world is so complex and the psychological need for humans to have some guiding principles is so great that we’re quick to latch onto anything that we feel gives us security.

    People think we NEED beliefs of some kind in order to function, but we really don’t. Casual beliefs, like the belief in time and space (they don’t really exist the way we think they do, so yes, these too, are beliefs), are fine to have and to use in everyday situations. So long as we acknowledge that they are indeed beliefs, and don’t actually represent the true nature of reality.

    I realise I’m asking a lot. Letting go of beliefs is a TOUGH road. The reason being is that our thoughts are so tied in with our emotions. They are inextricably linked to them. So to let go of a belief is not just to let go of a belief, it’s to let go of the feeling attached to that belief. And to do that, we need to experience that feeling in its raw state. Hence the resistance. We often think, “If we could just make sense of the world… if we could just finally get that last puzzle piece that fits everything into place then we’d have a full picture of how the world worked and we’d be *secure*.” We could finally relax.

    Well, I don’t think it’s ever going to work like that. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I don’t think our minds really evolved to understand the true nature of reality. They evolved for relatively mundane tasks like picking berries, having sex, spotting predators, etc etc. We’ve done pretty tremendous things with this very limited brain of ours, don’t get me wrong, but in terms of understanding absolute reality – not a chance. As I mentioned in one of my previous blogs, it’s a logical impossibility for a system that operates within a system to fully understand the system it operates within. This is what Einstein’s theories of relativity were all about – it is all relative to the particular observer, at their particular reference point in space-time.

    But this principle applies just as much to our regular lives as it does to what we could call “Einsteinian post-modernism”. I’m not arguing that we completely throw out tradition and culture – a lot of things are here because they do, more or less, work, and serve a function.

    Just don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’ve discovered the ultimate answer to something, because, you know, around the corner there’s always something waiting to say, “nah, that doesn’t describe me.” It’s a little bit like women – if you try to figure them out you’ll come up against a LOT of problems, and they will certainly let you know about them.

    So what to do in a world we can never understand fully? Well, the same thing we do with women I think. To borrow a quote from the legendary Oscar Wilde: “Women are meant to be loved, not understood.”

    Love in the face of not understanding is the key that unlocks all the doors in my estimation. Because when you think about it, love is really the end goal of everything we are aiming for anyway. Everything we do, ultimately, is to find and experience more love. So why not just skip the whole process and start with love itself, the place we’re all really aiming for anyway?

    In conclusion, keep using your ideas so long as they are useful, just be careful about turning them into beliefs of “that’s just the way things are”, because sooner or later in this incredibly complex world of ours, you’re going to run into a situation where it doesn’t fit.

    And as for my “teacher”? Well, if she suddenly started to not make sense or act a bit cuckoo, I’d be out of there in a jiffy. So far, that hasn’t even been close to happening, so I’m quite happy with hearing her wisdom for the time being.

    As always, in love and light,

    Will.

    For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!

  • The Best Spiritual Teacher on the Planet!

    As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I’ve listened to countless spiritual teachers on my seven year journey into spirituality. The number of hours spent listening to teachers on youtube would be easily in the thousands. But one still stands out head and shoulders above the rest: my teacher of the last three years, Isira.

    Now, that is saying something! Some other spiritual teachers I’ve listened to I have absolutely loved; the main other one being the American teacher Adyashanti. I used to tell my friends he was the first man I ever loved. Kiran Trace (from Mystic Girl in the City) once called him “the shit”, and it’s hard to really top that description of him. He is an incredibly good teacher.

    But, as he says himself, he’s very much a “wake up” guy – he’s not a “how to live your life better guy”. And he describes his teaching method as being very “broad strokes”. Which is fine. Wake up guys are great – they wake you up! It’s also fine being a broad strokes teacher: there’s no use getting into all the nitty-gritty of spirituality when you’re just coming onto the scene; you need someone who can lay it out in general terms so you get an overall picture of what spirituality is all about.

    My gratitude to Adyashanti is out of this world. If I saw him in person I have no doubt I would have tears in my eyes. He helped me along the way SO much.

    But, and even though it pains me to say this because of how much I love Adyashanti, I still found someone better. Someone deeper. Someone with more breadth of understanding. Someone who could talk to anyone and offer them advice for exactly where they were at, and exactly what they needed to hear.

    That teacher is a woman called Isira.

    Now, I’ve mentioned this in a previous blog before, but for those who haven’t read that: When I first came across a video of Isira, I didn’t really “get it”. I came away thinking “she seems like a nice lady”, but that was about it. There was no deeper recognition. Then, about a year later, a friend recommended her to me again so I went along to one of her satsangs (a Sanskrit term meaning “association in truth”). This time I got it. This time I felt her presence, and it was powerful.

    I remember walking into this room with all these people seated facing an empty chair at the front of the room. Then Isira came in, dressed all in white (“what’s with the white?” I thought to myself), and sat down in the chair. She scanned the room in silence, welcoming everyone. Then she got to awkward, little me, at the farthest side of the room, as far away from the centre of the action as I could get (this was always my preferred place in all situations). She looked me in the eyes and I instinctively looked away, embarrassed. After a few moments I looked back up to see if she had moved on, but she was still looking at me, with the same warm, welcoming face I originally saw. She wasn’t going to let me get away with my shyness.

    The satsang was a success, I guess you could say. This time I got a glimpse into what she was about. I felt her presence and was uplifted all the way home.

    There was an announcement that the organization was looking for volunteers, and almost immediately I began volunteering. I was the technical equipment storage and transport guy, and eventually became the tea-maker for Isira’s one-on-one consultations on Saturday mornings. I sort of fancied myself a bit like the kung-fu master who guards the Oracle in the Matrix, albeit much less skilled in martial arts. All I really did was mix tea.

    I was fascinated by this woman, as many who meet Isira are. I had never met a truly enlightened person in person before, so I watched all her actions, analysed all her movements, looked at her through squinted eyes trying to figure her out. Trying to see if she really was as enlightened as she seemed.

    The difficulty was, you see, she wasn’t your typical mountain-top, rag-wearing guru. She lived life. She enjoyed food. She had preferences. “Do enlightened people have preferences?” I thought to myself. Well, I guess it makes sense. She is human after all, and she’d much rather I hand her a cup of dandelion tea than a cup of dirt.

    You see, the idea of spirituality has become so disconnected from everyday life we think there are only two options: you either choose the world, or you choose enlightenment. You can’t have both. Isira seemed to have both, which raised a lot of questions for me. Does she still like nice things? Does she still have relationships? Does she still have sex?? I found out the answer to all these questions was yes, which gave my mind more things to ponder.

    Hmm, so it’s possible to be enlightened, and still live a completely full life in the world. That sounded pretty good to me. Most of the previous teachers I had listened to had been mostly male, and mostly just spoke about the importance of “waking up to absolute reality”. Isira talks about that too, but in equal measure she talked about issues in the world. I found that really exciting. Enlightenment didn’t mean you became just a nobody, it meant you became even more fully your natural self. Sure, the natural self was seen from a perspective of absolute oneness, but it didn’t discount the relevance of the manifest world – it celebrated it. To me it appeared she had achieved the goal I came to think true spirituality stood for: to become both fully human and fully divine.

    Now, I didn’t always like Isira – in fact, sometimes I hated her!! I was so enraptured by this woman’s presence and energy that my ego wanted her attention and love to be focused on me as much as possible. Obviously this is not only an unreasonable demand on anyone, but Isira would never let us get away with these silly ego trips. She always kept herself at a slight distance because of this. Sometimes I interpreted this as her not liking or not loving me enough, but really it was just her way of making sure she wasn’t pandering to our egos, thus making the problem worse. When you spend any amount of time around Isira, your ego gets some harsh lessons. In fact, it is sometimes even hard to be around her because of this. Some people really can’t take it and react negatively to it, projecting all their blame onto her: e.g. “she’s a fake teacher!”; “she doesn’t really care!”; “she’s only interested in herself!”; etc, etc, etc. (all these examples are examples which came from myself 🙂 ). Because you see, the thing is, when an ego comes up against someone whose ego has been thoroughly removed, it can turn pretty nasty. I remember at a retreat once a woman said: “I thought I was a nice person, but I wanted to kill you! And you just responded with the same love you always did.”

    I’ve got to be honest – as I’m obviously not completely free of the ego myself, there’s still a part of me that desires this attention. This can still make my ego very annoyed, and I think that will remain until I am completely free of my egoic attachment to her.

    To this day it still surprises me that Isira is not more well-known than she is, but I think there are a couple of reasons for this: firstly, she has not had much of an online or youtube presence until just recently; and secondly, and maybe more significantly, I think that as in my case the old saying holds true: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” When I first came across Isira, I wasn’t “ready” for her. I wasn’t resonating on a wavelength that was close enough to be able to really get her. That changed for me in the year between seeing her video for the first time and then attending one of her satsangs. And I think this will happen on a collective level as well. I think humanity may be getting nearer and nearer to be ready to be able to hear Isira, and to be ready for the message and energy she is here to contribute.

    All I can say finally is, I can’t wait! I’m greatly looking forward to a time when people en masse start to see who Isira really is, and what she is here to do.

    As always, in love and light,

    Will.

    For more information on Isira, check her out on youtube, or visit her website at www.isira.com

    For more stories like this, including mental health, extraterrestrials, and spirituality, please subscribe to my blog, follow my Facebook page “The Ostrich and the Elephant”, or find me on Twitter @willkenway, Medium @willkenway, or Instagram @will.kenway. Thanks!

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