Leadership, Service and Ego

Why do so many spiritual leaders take advantage of their power and position? When abuse is discovered, why are there so many apologists for those who use their position of spiritual authority to hurt others?

It seems that every week there is a story in the news, whether it is pedophile priest or an evangelical preacher indulging in prostitution. These stories are so commonplace we hardly comment on them anymore.

There is a great deal of concern in the Christian community about the weakening of ranks and the swelling of the “spiritual but not religious” community. Many church defectors seem to claim their disgust with church leadership as a reason to seek out new ways to express and understand their spirituality.

The sad news is that abuses also exist in New Age, Pagan and spiritual-but-not-religious communities.

Imagine going to a Reiki healing circle and being hit on by one of the healers.

Imagine attending a sweat lodge to later discover your sweat lodge leader was a registered sex offender.

Imagine your yoga instructor touching you inappropriately while helping you master a pose.

Imagine your reader at a psychic fair inviting you to a private room for sex.

I have personally witnessed all of these things, and more, in my years in the New Age community. I still believe there are fewer abuses in our community than have plagued Christian churches over the years. But I also believe that any abuse is too much. In this regard, we need to be above reproach.

Back to the original question – why does this happen? I think in some cases the answers are the same for both Abrahamic religions and the New Age community

One aspect that is the same in all communities is power and ego in leadership. The dangers of creating spiritual leaders who feed on ego and power cannot be overstated. This happens everywhere, from pentacostal churches to Wiccan covens.  The sad thing is that the followers of the leaders feed into this destructive cycle.

How do we feed the cycle? We all want someone to admire, someone we can put on a pedestal. Instead of simply looking for a facilitator or a teacher we look for someone to tell us what to do. We relinquish our power willingly to those who would abuse us. We want to believe there are people in the world who are better than we are, not just in a particular field of study, but actually better at being human.

Something else that happens in religious and spiritual communities across the board is the tendency to shoot the messenger. There has been a lot of talk about whistle-blowers recently. Within most communities, people who speak the truth about internal abuses are generally not looked upon with favor. This is a sad state of affairs. That organizations hide their dirty laundry creates the atmosphere where abuse can happen, and hurts our standing in the community at large.

Another commonality is an overblown sense of entitlement that comes from believing we are somehow “chosen,” or more enlightened than others. We see this everywhere, from Prosperity Gospel Churches to those who misunderstand the Law of Attraction. Sometimes those who believe they possess greater knowledge and truth than everyone else feel they deserve more than everyone else, even if that more comes at someone else’s expense.

One area where the spiritual community diverges from the monotheistic community is in the discussion of sex. In the Abrahamic religions, sex is still a bit of a taboo subject. Many recovering Christians seek out the New Age community as a place to claim their sexuality in a healthy way.

That’s a good thing, and there is a lot of opportunity to do that. But we must be clear that this also sets up a potential dynamic for abuse. A person who is just learning that sex is a spiritual act and that sex isn’t a sin is easy prey for a coven priest with an agenda.  Sometimes we are told that if we say no it is because we are still dealing with our puritanical hang-ups. We need to support each other in telling our leaders that we know the difference between a puritanical hang-up and a lack of sexual attraction.

For all we work to help each other heal from those feelings of guilt and shame, we also need to be teaching each other how to have good boundaries, and how to not let people take advantage of us in the guise of spirituality.

Just because someone is a revered leader does not mean we want to have sex with them or stroke their egos in other ways. And, if they suggest we should, they are no longer worthy of their position – end of story.

The abuses within spiritual communities are not just sexual. There is often arrogance and competition to a level that is disgraceful. The Pagan community even has a name for it – “Witch Wars.”

If we can’t cooperate with each other we don’t deserve the leadership position or the faith that people have put in us.

Every human community has human issues. Ego, power and abuse exist everywhere. It is our responsibility to choose good leaders, to speak the truth and to have boundaries that work for us.

Those of us who are leaders have a special responsibility to be in service to our community.  The more we focus on service, the less we are caught in the trap of ego and power.

The more we strive to teach others in an effort to replace ourselves, the stronger our communities will be. Our egos want to hold on to status and position. Our higher selves in service seek to empower others.

Perhaps, at the end of the day, leadership that serves without ego is the goal for which we all must strive. Community isn’t there to serve the leader. The leader is there to serve the community.

Community is a circle, not a pyramid. 

Dirty Little Secrets

After many years of being involved in a variety of communities and organizations I have learned a few things.  First on the list is this. Every organized group of humans has its own dirty little secrets

Sometimes those secrets are relatively minor, other times they are downright abusive. Sometimes the secrets involve financial mismanagement, nepotism, poor treatment of employees, failure to follow safety regulations, falsified documents or cover-ups of abuses against people.

I am sure these sorts of things exist in organizations as small as church social groups and as large as our own federal government.

Is it simply human nature to show the public something shiny and conduct dirty business under the table? Are the public's expectations for integrity impossibly high, causing inevitable dealings to have to be conducted in secret? Do individual people in power always become corrupt regardless of their original mission?

These are questions I am not sure how to answer, and are not really my topic today.  At this point I assume a certain level of corruption and poor ethics are a matter of course - simply what happens when humans gather in a group. I am sure at certain times in my life I have been guilty of small infractions as well. It does not serve us to judge every single human error.

But what happens when those human errors become really harmful? What happens when they involve sexual abuse, or taking financial advantage of the most vulnerable people in our population?

When someone brings these offenses to light, they are called a "whistle-blower."  In general, whistle-blowers are not well-liked by anyone. Whistle-blowers mess us the status quo and should mind their own business, according to many. I tend to admire whistle-blowers. To me they are the child who has the courage and wisdom to proclaim the emperor naked.

It is interesting to watch the reactions when dirty little secrets are brought to light.

One common reaction is refusal to believe the truth. My father was guilty of that one. When the police department in our small town was named the most corrupt PD in the state my father refused to believe that the department head, a member of our church, was involved in drugs and prostitution as the allegations insisted. Of course the allegations were correct and my father was wrong, although nobly loyal.

Another common reaction is to know the truth and discredit the whistle-blower. This happens a lot, and has happened to me. If you plan to be a whistle-blower you better be perfect in every way. No matter what heinous acts you are exposing your own history will come under scrutiny rather than the injustices you are trying to expose. And, if they can't find anything damaging about you they will simply make stuff up. It's all about deflecting attention from the problem and shutting the whistle-blower up. The person who exposed injustice becomes the problem, rather than the people who are committing it.

Often organizations will simply cover-up their wrong-doings and hope no one notices. This can work for a while, and during that time many people will be hurt. In the end, it stops working. At least, that's what happened with the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America.

Personally, I would like to see organizations police themselves. It's always worse when officials have to step in.

But the real question is this. Why are so many people fine with standing by and watching or participating in obvious abuse that clearly hurts people?  Let's ask the cards.

The card I pulled in answer to this question is the Eight of Wands reversed. To me that speaks of stagnancy - inability to move forward. It could simply mean that abusers feel there has always been abuse and there is no way to change it. Onlookers may disapprove, but may feel the same way.

Another interpretation for this may have to do with people feeling that no one will ever discover their wrong-doing. The upright Eight of Wands can be about communication. In its reversal the communication doesn't happen. People actually believe they can control the follow of information in the information age.

Will a new generation stand by with the same "that's the way of the world" attitude? I think perhaps some will not. In the words of Pete Seeger, "Your child may be the one to exclaim  'The emperor is naked today'!"