My husband sent me an article about “fallen gurus” from a website called Longreads. I agreed with what the author was saying, but I felt she was throwing the baby out with the bath water. I feel just because a teacher/guru has discredited him or her self does not mean the years you spent at their feet are for naught. I say this having my own experience with my guru/spiritual teacher falling from grace. My teacher’s teachings were on the mark. His personality was off putting at times, but that is how I knew he was not putting on airs. He was one full package who taught his students how to discern. When we live in a society of black and white we fall prey to missing the mark in most situations. I will try to express my meaning here, which is not all to easy for me. In a this vs that society we have assumptions about people, situations, world events and more. If a teacher who has a gift for teaching a deeper understanding of life, but also has a thing for his female students we may feel he is flawed. Then we may assume if this is true then his teachings must also be flawed. This is where discernment is needed. We can instead ask ourselves how does this feel to me. We may experience resentment or betrayal, all kinds of feelings might come up. The next question is, can we take it deeper? What one might find is the teachings are flawless although the man is not.
There is no true learning in a culture of this vs that. We must do our best to take our biases to a deeper place inside ourselves. It takes time to understand things, we must try to integrate the mind with the heart. This means viewing our experiences in life as multi layered and try to reflect on those layers before coming to a concrete definitive opinion of any given situation. I’m not saying to stay in an area of oblivion contemplating life. But what I am saying, as my teacher would say, "life is not a straight line" — after reflection and self honesty it’s good to move in a forward direction. But at the same time see if you can stay in the area of the unknown and act anyway. When you start living life outside black and white thinking you realize being right is a fool's game.
My guru helped me dip in and out of dualism. He had/has a gift or siddha if you will, to help those willing to step outside of themselves and observe what is. I was with him for 20 years until nature/karma brought it all to a halt. It took me many years to let go of needing him to answer my questions. But I finally let it sink in that my time with him was over. At the same time I still have what he gave me at a cellular level and I will be taking it with me when I die metaphorically or physically.
I guess articles in their nature are meant to bring a point home. But life is so much more than we can even imagine once this vs that fades away.