Emmanuel is a spirit who speaks through the voice of Pat Rodergast. In the last few years many people have gained understanding through the teachings of Emmanuel, and IMS invited him to speak to the staff last spring. One of the staff members, Spirit Wiseman, requested his views on teachers and sexuality. (Recently several spiritual teachers had been the subject of public discussion because of their alleged participation in incidents involving the abuse of power and the abuse of sexuality.)

Spirit: Through these incidents the teachers caused a lot of emotions to arise in the communities of people around them. Could you comment on the symbolic nature of these events, their relationship to all of us and our spirituality as a group?

Emmanuel: The events are confounding you and confronting you with your own humanness, and why that is a confrontation, rather than a gentle sweet reminder, needs to be explored in each of you.

Of course, the teachers are human, and if they pretend not to be, then they are no longer fit to be teachers. For humanness is not a negative state; it is a reality. In denying their humanness, or falsely and painfully believing that they must deny it, they have caused it to become a disruptive, rather than a very natural thing. Now, I am not speaking for or against any particular religious practice. Celibacy, I believe, for those who are called to it, has a reason, for a time, but when that reason is no longer viable, it needs to be relinquished.

There is no spiritual path that should be given more power than the soul that is walking it, and when something no longer fits, don’t be too quick to criticize yourself. Perhaps it is not recalcitrance; perhaps it is growth. So these dear beings who have begun their lives with vision, anticipation, love and commitment, found themselves tripping over their own love and commitment, found themselves tripping over their own humanness, and not quite knowing what to do with it, for they began to seek side roads or false power to allow for what needed no explanation or apology but simply recognition. What they need is a great deal of self love.

What should this mean to you? Why EXAMPLE, of course. Teachers teach, don’t they? And whether they teach from their growth and perfection, or from their imperfection, they teach, for that’s the posture they have chosen. What are these dear beings teaching you, except to honor the clay, to recognize its value, to see it as part of your text, the means of learning and not criticism?

Spirit: How can we support these teachers? What can a community of people who really loves one of these teachers do to support him?

Emmanuel: There is pain in these teachers that they really don’t deserve, and it’s only because they have forgotten who they really are and they have allowed the order and rules and regulations to define them, rather than the other way around.

Emmanuel is saying NEVER, NEVER, NEVER let anything define you but you. NEVER—regardless of how benign a definition may seem to be, if it isn’t yours and if it doesn’t fit, don’t accept it. Each one of you is unique, and you have such gifts to give in your uniqueness, but in your willingness to become other than who you are, you lose what you have to give.

Support them by sending them love, by recognizing their greatness as well as their humanness, by explaining your viewpoints to them. Certainly not by ignoring what is on both of your minds, but by witnessing who you are, and who you think they are.

Click here to read a thoughtful, nuanced response to this article.

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From the Winter 1984 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 1, No. 2)