Why I Stopped Following Spiritual Teachers Years Ago

I remember walking into a crowded room where people gathered to see a prominent spiritual teacher make an appearance. I heard the whispers, I saw how excited his students felt. When he showed up, I watched people hang on to every word he said.

It was then I realized that I felt uncomfortable at seeing followers treat teachers as if they were deities. There was something unhealthy in the air.

For some people, following a teacher can unintentionally reinforce patterns of self abandonment, powerlessness or codependency. Sometimes people willingly give their power away simply because they have never been shown what it feels like to stand in their own. Some remain in victimhood, looking for someone to rescue them.

The more our energy is wrapped up in following someone else, the easier it becomes to drift away from our own authentic path.

The more we lean into the teacher, the less we see or recognize that we are guided from within and I’ve observed how some teachers, perhaps unconsciously, draw energy from their students’ projections.

Over the years I also began to notice another pattern in my own spiritual journey. Many of the teachers I was learning from were primarily white male figures of authority. Without realizing it, I trusted that form of authority more readily than others.

When I looked deeper, I discovered something uncomfortable: somewhere in my unconscious I held a mistrust of the feminine, both outside of me and within me.

Seeing this was frightening.

I realized I no longer wanted to see teachers as white male figures of authority whom I placed above myself. I no longer wanted to give my attention, my energy, my money, or my authority to someone I had elevated in that way.

At some point I realized I no longer wanted to follow any teachers to follow.

Letting go of that structure was not easy.

For a while I felt lost.

Without someone guiding me from the outside, I had to rely on something I had not fully trusted before, my own inner guidance.

That period invited me to slowly peel away the layers that had been covering my inner authority.

One of those layers had to do with worth.

Who was I to take authorship of my own life?

For centuries women were treated as property. Women’s voices were dismissed. Women were denied the ability to make their own living or shape their own path.

Part of my work became reclaiming my feminine power, a way of being rooted in the body, intuition, cyclical wisdom, and deep interconnection.

And then something else unfolded.

I began reclaiming the masculine energy within me as well, not the rigid form shaped by patriarchy, but a grounded masculine rooted in the heart, as much as the mind. The one who held the capacity to provide and protect in a healthy way.

Slowly I began to see that both energies were needed.

And beneath both of them was something even deeper.

A quiet knowing that the divine does not live outside of us.

It lives within us.

One scene from The Matrix always stayed with me. When Neo finally meets the Oracle, he finds her in a kitchen baking cookies.

She isn’t sitting on a throne. She isn’t dressed in elaborate robes. She isn’t surrounded by thousands of followers.

She is simply present in an ordinary moment of life.

And yet she offers him profound guidance.

She does not control him. She does not tell him what he must do.

She simply reflects something back to him.

That image has stayed with me because it reminds me that true wisdom rarely needs a pedestal.

Whenever someone is placed on a pedestal, another dynamic appears beneath it: someone else must stand below. Authentic relationship cannot exist in that dynamic.

True teachers and leaders do not erase their humanity.

They acknowledge their struggles. They recognize their shadow. They remain accountable to the same teachings they offer others.

Moments when teachers face their shadow can become powerful opportunities, opportunities for humility, repair, and deeper integrity. Not only for the community, but for the teacher as well.

I believe we are living in a time when many traditional hierarchies are beginning to crumble.

And perhaps this is an invitation.

An invitation to ask ourselves:

Who will we become when we no longer blindly follow the teacher outside of us?

How can we be guided by a teacher without loosing our own sense of authority and sovereignty?

What happens when we begin listening to the teacher within, the quiet voice we may call intuition, soul, nature, or the divine?

A true leader does not create followers.

A true leader creates other leaders.

And the most honest teachers know that they are walking the same path as their students.

None of us stand above the teachings.

We are all learning.

We are all becoming.

If you are navigating a period of uncertainty or something important in your life is ending or you are facing a difficult decision, I want to let you know that I offer private coaching and healing sessions to support that process.