Reimagining Spiritual Practice
As Teachers
One of the things that really strikes me about Buddhist retreats is how serious, joyless and unfocused they can be. It just feels like everyone is there to still on a cushion, with no particular clear purpose behind it. I believe that we need to be a bit more focused with why we are practising and what we hope the intended outcome to be.
I don’t mean that we need to set goals and targets. Spirituality is no-doubt mysterious and it is important to respect the mystery and not over-analyse our practice, but we can still be a lot clearer about our intentions and the impact that our practice has on our wider life. A big question that feels deeply important to at least ask is, why do we practice?
So let me ask you. Why do you practice?
It is also my experience that the mystery of not-knowing exactly why can be fun and exciting. This can be part of the reason we practice. If the mystery is explicit we can approach it with curiosity and playfulness and it becomes a lot easier to go a lot deeper into our practice. Although that is probably just my approach coming through.
There is no right or wrong way to teach people spiritual or meditative practice, there is room for all the different approaches, but what is important is that traditions and teachers are clear about what their values are so that students can make considered choices.
Spiritual practice is inherently ‘fuzzy’; the purpose is less clear than it is in things like raising a family or running a business so it is more difficult to assess whether someone’s behaviour is appropriate and whether they are a good role-model. It’s important to be able to do this for anyone who is entrusted with a leadership position. By being explicit about values, we can expect teachers to be embodying these and be able to hold people to them if their behaviour strays too far away from it.
It’s important for teachers to consider these things because it’s a role with such a high level of responsibility. Spiritual leaders and teachers are some of the highest respected people; they shape people’s world views, impacting on people’s experiences and beliefs about themselves. There is a huge amount of power there to either improve people’s lives or harm them. If you aren’t willing to spend time considering what the outcome of the way you are teaching is, on the way that the people you are teaching are living their lives, you should really consider whether you actually want to be a teacher.
It’s about time we dismantled some of the old hierarchy and structures that exist around spiritual practice. One thing that goes in common across pretty much all spirituality is the search for either freedom or love and the importance of truth.
Hierarchy destroys both of these things. Status is the biggest mask for truth. Whenever someone is more worried about protecting their status than being open, it closes them off to seeing things how they really are.
When we give spiritual leaders a ‘golden ticket’ of unquestionable truth it can mean that they end up sharing messages that are either stupid or actually harmful. Ideas get valued on the perceived merit of whose mouth they came out of, rather than on the merit of the ideas themselves.
Equally, if we are following orders and instructions unquestioningly from one person or from an elite subset of people, then no-one is free or loved. Everyone is bound by their fixed roles in the formal, hierarchical system. Never mind how this can also be a cover-up for explicit abuse.
The other problem with hierarchy is that it inherently favours the people who can commit the most time to being in the system. The people with the power have done well in the hierarchy so they believe that this is a good way of doing things. They probably don’t want to give their students the power to question them, it makes them feel exposed.
There are ways of working together that don’t require any hierarchy, but any step in this direction would be better than the current model, which is that teachers sit at the front doing all the talking and are generally assumed to have the answers. Students sit quietly, listen carefully, do what they’re told and are assumed to know a lot less than the teachers. Considering that spirituality is about exploring and embodying your own experience, this model strikes me as absolutely absurd.
Almost everyone thinks they know what collaborative working is. It is my experience, as a collaborative working expert, that pretty much no-one actually does. It is not cooperation or compromise or a token gesture towards getting feedback from people. It is a radical way to approach life and work.
Whenever I introduce real collaborative or non-hierarchical working into a new group of people they are uncomfortable with what it entails and yet once it is up and running almost everyone finds it a deeply transformative and life-changing experience. It requires everyone to show up and take responsibility for their role in the group. It gives space for everyone’s voice to be heard.
To start with, people who have power don’t like it being taken away, it makes them feel vulnerable and exposed. People lower down the hierarchy don’t like being given responsibility, it makes them worry about getting things wrong and being blamed for mistakes. Real collaborative working principles mitigate both of these and create a culture of self-responsibility and trust in the team that they are working together towards a shared purpose and harnessing everyone’s gifts and wisdom towards this.
If you want to make change in a system or group of people, collaborative working is the only way to do it at any pace and to make the change actually meaningful. Spiritual practice is all about change – changing the way we perceive ourselves and our experience – and I would hope that everyone wants the change to be meaningful, so it makes sense to take on this approach.
This also has the potential to give teachers more freedom in embodying and sharing the things that they really care about and the ways in which they really want to make a difference in the world, rather than teaching the things they think their students should be doing. It also empowers people to try new and interesting ways of doing things, that aren’t fixed structures that were created hundreds or thousands of years ago.
When we loosen the hierarchy, we find that everyone has some wisdom to share. People learn from each other much better when it feels like a friendly relationship and there is less pressure on the teacher to know all the answers. It can become a space in which teachers can share their wisdom and students are more empowered to take responsibility for their own development and learning, they aren’t expecting someone to be their mum or dad.
The most important step towards less hierarchy and more clarity in our spiritual practice is for everyone to think about what their values and purpose are. These can be our guiding force for how we teach, learn, practice and live. If we can understand them clearly we can communicate them to other people, which helps us all make informed decisions about who we want to practice with and why.
It can also be used to shape and guide our teachings and as a way to hold ourselves to account. We don’t need to rely on hierarchies to guide us because we have a clear set of values to be our guiding force.
Values don’t require us to be in a certain role for us to be embodying them. Our values can carry across when we are learning, teaching, working, having fun or just being. They increase a sense of fluidity in the way we approach life and practice because we can see that all of these roles give us an opportunity to express and fulfil our values. Once we can see this, we get less het up about trying to get something out of people or achieve a certain level of status.
It becomes about the teachings rather than the teacher. We are guided by the values, rather than feeling like we have fixed ideas that we want other people to adopt. This buys us space to all explore the ideas together, rather than have one person dictating a concept or a way of doing things to everyone else.
In order to get clear on our values and our purpose, there are three different elements that we need to consider: our intentions, our desired outcome and our approach. It’s my experience that it’s best to keep values really simple – boiled down to single words, if possible.
I have shared my values as an appendix to this, to give an example of how this can be done and applied to a real-life situation. I’ve also shared the set of values cards that I’ve designed so you can use these to help you explore your values.
Our Intentions
This is about answering the questions, why are we practising and why are we teaching? These are the values that inspire you as a person. It’s the core values that you live for.
Here are a few things to think about with this:
If we can get clear on our intentions, it gives us a fundamental place to move from. We will know the things in life that we find fulfilling and we can embody this through all our expressions in the world. It is deeply rewarding to be able to express our core values and intentions out in the world. It will create a much richer experience for students if teachers really give a shit in this way and if their motivation is coming from their own personal passion, rather than an exterior motive. Students are much more likely to learn quickly and make lasting change if they are moving from their deepest intentions.
Our Desired Outcome
What would you like the impact of you being in the world to be? Specifically with spirituality it’s about the outcome of your practice and your students’ practice. Here are some questions to help you explore your desired outcome:
Getting clear on our desired outcomes allows us to evaluate if we are being effective. It also helps us to focus on what we are there to do – make an impact on the world and people’s lives, rather than get caught up worrying about our status or how we’re perceived. If we can see that we’re making an impact on people in the way that we hoped, then we know we’re doing a good job. If not, we can change the way we do things.
Our Approach
This is about how we bridge the gap between our intentions and our desired outcome. It’s about getting clear on the way we interact with people and the world. This can be really useful for helping us find our tribe – the people that we gel well with will have complementary approaches to ours.
Some questions to help you get clear on your approach:
Clarity on our approach can buy us a lot of freedom. There are lots of different ways to be a leader and none of them is inherently better or worse, it’s just different. We don’t have to do things the way they’ve always been done and it’s actually a lot better to teach or learn in a way that suits you. If you can be explicit about what this entails then you are likely to attract people who will appreciate that and you’ll be able to bring out the best in them, too.
Conclusion
Spirituality really needs to change. It is depressing that it has become synonymous with ancient hierarchical religions and practices of trying to empty our minds for hours on end with no clear purpose.
In order to manifest the discovery of truth, meaning and freedom that a lot of spirituality talks about we need to be able to empower people to show up to their practice so that they can discover what this means for them.
Hierarchy crushes personal empowerment, freedom and truth. It turns people into blind followers who need to be told what to do and think.
Practice needs to facilitate people to make meaningful and lasting change to their own perspectives and lives. This is ultimately what it’s all about and if it’s not achieving this then something is not working.
If we want students to be able to do this, we need to be able to do this as leaders; to be able to model this behaviour to people. You need to have some passion about the things that drive you and the difference you want to make in the world. You need to empower learners to take responsibility for how they personally understand and embody things and give them space to do this, including questioning your ideas. People can hold different viewpoints and still be working harmoniously together.
Ultimately, everyone needs to be clear on their values so they know what meaningful change actually looks like and we can hold each other to account on it. If everyone had crystal clear values and had the capacity to show up and live their lives by them, we would live in an entirely different world. The change would be unimaginable.
There is nothing more fulfilling than finding a place in the world to express your deepest held values. When we are driven by this motivation, rather than how much we earn or what people think about us, we learn what the word enough means. We stop striving for more and more attention, resources, power or money, because we are inherently doing the things that are meaningful for us. We can move from the deepest place within us and hopefully make a difference in the world in a way that we find satisfying. This is the most spiritual practice there is.
I have a process that I can take people through to uncover their values. Each of the three sections has an introverted element and an extraverted element. I’ve used my process to help lots of businesses, groups and individuals transform how they approach things. If you’re interested in doing it with me let me know.
My Intentions
Creativity is fundamental to my joy in life. I enjoy writing and photography and my favourite type of practice is imaginal practice or shamanic journeying.
I believe that creative expression is a much more effective way of teaching and changing people than lecturing them. Learning and changing becomes a joyful experience when it is done through creative means.
Creativity also gives us access to the parts of ourselves that are normally unacceptable to us and others. It offers a unique opportunity to turn darkness to light. It also opens us to the richness of our subconscious and archetypal realms. Waking these elements of ourselves up is deeply transformational – it can fundamentally change how we interact with the world, naturally bringing us more joy and compassion.
I see life as one big adventure. My idea of a relaxing holiday is booking a flight, packing a bag and heading off into the distance.
In my practice this has presented as being very motivated to push the boundaries, make new discoveries and go out of my comfort zone.
When working with others, I want other people to do the same. It doesn’t have to be as epic as my version, but we only learn if we go out of our comfort zone. Supporting people to do this is what I really care about.
My Desired Outcomes
As a project manager, I’ve seen how easy it is for projects to get swamped in external requirements and objectives that stop the project from achieving anything worthwhile. Things are much more meaningful, rewarding and effective when we focus on the one or two things that matter to us.
I’m a minimalist and I’m not a very busy person. I only have time for things that I want to focus on.
I facilitate conversations with people that help them find out what their deepest intentions and desires are and burn through all the crap that are not those things.
If everyone focused on the things that really matter to them, the world would be a different place. It would take the wind out of the sails of capitalism and people would be doing the things that are inherently rewarding and helpful.
I believe that we will change the world by inspiring individuals to take responsibility for their actions. The only way to do this is for people to focus on what matters to them and what the impact of that is.
It’s really important to me that I’m sincere with people and that people feel they are able to be honest around me. One of my favourite things is conversations where people relax into who they really are and stop feeling like they need to have any formality or pretence.
Practice for me is all about discovering who your true self is and becoming an authentic expression of it. We can only create a better world and lives if we know ourselves well enough to understand what gives us joy and how we want to show up in the world.
I take people on deep dives into their inner worlds so that they can understand themselves better, get rid of any crap that has been put inside them through their conditioning and know what they are here to do and why.
My Approach
This is an introverted element for me; my idea of fun is having a very deep and involved conversation with one or two people or creating something together with people. Although I do like a good joke and I laugh a lot.
I use this approach by trying to make as much of work and life a pleasure, as possible. Designing this exercise was originally a way to turn long boring work meetings into an interesting and enjoyable process for people.
Fun is the perfect bridge between creativity and focus. If you can make something fun people become less rigid. They relax into their creative side a lot more, are able to focus on what’s important to them and they stop worrying about what everyone else thinks.
For people to be able to make changes in their life, they need to be a lot less concerned with what everyone else is doing and thinking and a lot more concerned with what serves them. Spiritual practice that is a pleasure to take part in, even when it is hard, is the best way to do this.
Unsurprisingly, this is my extraverted element for how I approach things. It is the perfect bridge between adventure and authenticity.
When I get a group of friends together, I always use a collaborative approach to figure out what we’re going to do. This gives space for everyone’s voice to be heard about how they feel and what they’d like to be doing. No-one knows before you start where you’re going to end up because each person only holds one piece of the puzzle. It becomes an adventure to suit how everyone feels on that day.
It is fundamental to spiritual practice that people feel empowered to express their world-view and that their own experiences are validated. Without this, everyone will be stuck pretending that they are something they are not or trying to emulate something that is not true for them.
All of life is a collaboration between the individual and the outside world. Spiritual practice is fundamentally concerned with understanding, shaping and embodying this relationship. It is time for the idea that a teacher or spiritual leader can dictate their fixed perspectives onto people to die. This needs to be replaced with people being supported to understand their own consciousness and experience of the world.
This is how we will stop people from being zombies – teachers that are concerned with status and practitioners that need to be told what to do and think – and get people to take responsibility for showing up in the lives and embodying their experience and deepest held values.
The important thing with choosing values is not to overthink it but at the same time to ground it in reality. Use the questions above to think of real-life examples of times when you have felt good about yourself and then choose the values that represent those best.