On the toxic expectations of purity

I have been feeling and holding a layer of grief for the true teachers and healers I have known in my life, and the enormous expectation of virtue imposed upon them by seekers and students.

I think of how consumptive the projection of purity is upon our transformationally compassionate and good humans.

Good.

Not pure.

And I ask an impulsive question...what do we really want, more saviours? How’s that paradigm been working for us in the last 2000+ years? Have we become more loving, peaceful, compassionate, penetrative, powerful?

Or have we become the neglected children to the unseen narcissistic parental units we imagine as we pray for mercy from the lash?

I consider the passion of life to be a relentless meeting of suffering with vulnerability, sometimes exposing the deepest ecstasy.

And

You have to be human to feel this.

The pantheon and primordial beings would have sacrificed all of their received worship and purity for one day of this sacred and profane animus.

To feel it all.

Human teachers and healers feel pain, suffer, are forged in passion and rise, again and again. And they do the most loving thing that ever could be offered: they share their stories and hold space for the teacher and healer that is you.

Speaking for myself, I want my teachers and healers to be

deeply human.

Necessarily impure.

Sacred and profane.

Present with the medicine that emerges when we conspire.

(Written while holding a stone that represents Michael Stone. A very good human who walked among us with a powerful flashlight and rose petals while his brain was on fire. For me, a very fine teacher he continues to be.)

©️DDO

Photo of Michael Stone (1974-2017) by Caitlin Strom, from CBC/Facebook)