Jac O'Keeffe on Guru Problems and How Colonialism Shapes Spirituality
Today's guest is Jac O'Keefe, Spiritual Teacher and Executive Director of the Association for Spiritual Integrity, an organization that fosters the fundamental role of ethical principles in the ongoing development of spiritual leaders and communities. In this episode, Jac and I talk about how colonialism impacts how people engage spirituality, the importance of maintaining personal power and agency, and the key to creating a more ethical and credible spiritual environment.
One of the great challenges in spiritual spaces is that people arrive with a great deal of pain, but rather than use spirituality as a means of liberation, they use it to nurse the wound without healing and place teachers on pedestals. This repeats colonial patterns but simply cloaks it in new forms. I think this is a conversation that is really important for the unfoldment of a new culture, and I hope you enjoy the insights and the wisdom that Jac brings.
Key Topics
00:00 - Introduction
00:48 - Start of Conversation
02:12 - Colonialism’s Impact on Spirituality
06:54 - Jac’s Spiritual Awakening Story
13:17 - “Truth for Its Own Sake”
18:03 - How the ASI Got Started
22:55 - Spiritual Spaces & The Pain Body
30:21 - What Is a Projection?
35:25 - The Human Needs of Spiritual Teachers
39:05 - When Spiritual Teachers Have God Complexes
41:57 - What Could a Spiritual Learning Environment Look Like?
50:09 - Does the Spiritual Teaching Profession Need Structure?
55:29 - The Role of Younger Generations
58:27 - What Happens When You Believe Systems Can’t Change?
01:03:15 - Close of Conversation
01:04:53 - End
Jac O’Keeffe
Jac O’Keeffe is a spiritual leader, author, and trailblazer in the exploration of consciousness. She has followed a disciplined spiritual path for over 25 years including 15 years as an international spiritual teacher. Her books include Born to Be Free and How to Be a Spiritual Rebel. She is a Theology graduate with post graduate studies in Adult and Community Education.
Transcript
RJL: Jac, thanks for being here and welcome to the new Paradigm Leadership Podcast. It's really, really good to have you.
JO: Oh, this is an exciting one. I'm looking forward to where we can take this. So thank you for the invite.
RJL: Yeah, absolutely. I'm curious what might have struck you because we're actually very young in this process and I'm just grateful that you've said yes. What kind of drew you to say yes to this particular conversation?
JO: I think it's because of where we met. We met at a conference at Harvard where we were exploring colonialism and its influences on alternative spiritualities. I think conferences and events like that are a particular way of creating community of like-minded people. So I'm very interested in the interface between colonialism and models of spirituality that are creating possible dysfunction, that are pitfalls, that are not insightful. So it's like, oh, yeah, let's talk about that because it's not spoken about enough. It's not understood enough.
RJL: Honestly, one of the things I love most that keeps me coming back to this is having the opportunity to have these frank discussions, to platform these voices, to get deep into things that I think are often beyond the surface of what everyday conversations sometimes look like at this moment in history anyway. So I really appreciate that. And you're right. When I attended your talk at the Harvard conference, one of the things that stood out to me really early was how you talk about being from Ireland and then how colonialism had its impact. Can you say a little bit more about maybe your context? And it's interesting for us to be starting at colonialism, but also why not? What did you see? And what's been your experience around the topic?
JO: Coming from Ireland, reared in a country that was 600 years under the rule of of the UK. It gets integrated into our Irishness that we can be oppressed. We use the arts and use creativity to express what we want to say. Our voice is often shunned. You can expand, but don't get too big because you'll probably get killed for it. And these are things that are not spoken about, but they're understood. Yet Irish people will help each other. in ways where other countries will go, ah, well, that's their mess. Let them sit and swim in it.
You know, it's their own mess of their own making. And with Irishness, no, there's a sense of we got to help each other because we're in this together. I lived in India for a few years, and I didn't notice that India has a similar ethos until I moved to the US. And I'm like, oh, now I see what makes colonized countries create a different cultural expression in its people. And in the US, I got flack for being the oppressor because then I was European. I wasn't Irish. I was European. And then I was an oppressor and I'm like, okay, this is really interesting. I'm now on the flip side. I'm a colonizer.
Oh gosh, okay, let me see what I can unravel here. And then I ended up living in Hawaii, which of course, an island, a colonized community, you know? And so I resonate with it. It's familiar to me. I get it when your language is taken away from you, when your culture is stopped, when your own religion is shunned. Something deep in my bones understands that. So I feel a great sense of belonging here in Hawaii. You know, I think whether our country of origin was an oppressor or oppressed, it's really interesting to see how have I absorbed that influence into my system? How did it shape who I am?
And how does it influence my choices, my behavior? And that's really interesting. So tends to be Very much obvious to me when a spiritual teacher who speaks with an English accent comes to the US or a country that was colonised by the UK. I see it a mile off. Like there's this automatic respect for a British accent. Automatic. It's like, wow, there's the surrendering of personal power. There's the assumption that, oh, they know what they're talking about. It's like generations old, but it's in ourselves. It's like epigenetics. You know, we take on some, oh, there's that British accent. They must know what they're talking about. That's colonialism still petering out, you know?
RJL: Yeah, I'm really resonating with what you're saying. And you're having me think of things that I've been reflecting on a lot lately. And one of the themes is ancestral work. What I mean by ancestral work is when you're actually looking to the generations before you, because everyone comes you know, from some lineage, right, wherever they may be from, whatever background they may have. And a lot of times, once you start feeling into, wait a minute, why is this person in my lineage behaving in such a way when I think that the behavior could look like this, but it's actually looking like this instead, and instead of moving through whatever that shape is, they're stuck there. So sometimes it's, let me put my head down, let me not challenge the status quo. Let me keep myself small to stay safe, right? And that can show up in everything from the workplace to, I was recently talking with somebody who fell ill with COVID-19, which is still circulating right now. And when I said, hey, is there anything that I can send you? No, I got it. I got it. I'm okay. Which I thought to myself, oh, interesting. If they really are, I trust them.
And something in the transmission sounded like they were trying not to inconvenience me and trying not to be the center of need. And to which I thought, how much of this is actually an extension of a colonial message?
JO: Yes.
RJL: So, you know, I feel like if we're not careful, we could talk about colonialism for maybe a little too long. So I'm wondering if we can maybe take two steps back. And I'd love to just ask you a little bit about you. You are a spiritual teacher. You have kind of been in this work and this practice for quite some time. And I'm sure you've learned a lot of things along the way that I think our audience is very excited to hear and learn more about. You talk a little bit about what I think you call an awakening process. I'm wondering if you'd be willing to share a short story or a few sentences, what that looked like for you, and maybe how that sets the stage for things like the Association for Spiritual Integrity, which we'll get to later.
JO: Similar to the topic of colonialism, I could talk for hours. on what my journey looked like. I had the first huge awakening at 30 years old. I was a happy atheist going along my own way and quite materialistic. However, raised in a socially democratic environment, so that's different to the US materialism. And my third eye opened. And I saw dead people. So I thought I was tripping. I mean, literally all of a sudden lifting my head in the middle of a lunch with friends and I'm like, whoa, whoa, it feels like LSD. And of course it wasn't. My life was hell for a while.
So much so that I remember saying things like, okay, so my entire belief system is being challenged. I'm petrified. I have no boundaries around these people. I'm being physically pushed around the place. So there's physical abuse happening with this. There's psychic abuse. If I sleep, they have access to me. I'm dreaming about them. They're there when I wake up. They're there when I'm asleep. That was a scary place. And I knew I needed help. I needed help. So I talked to a couple of friends around it and eventually I discovered, okay, There's a set of skills you can find around dealing with energies. And I'm like, energies, what the heck? What are we talking about here? I haven't got a clue.
It was pre-internet as well, you know, way back. So very benevolent spirit guide appeared to me about a week after the first incident and told me, your life will change. If you say yes to this or we can shut it all down and it'll be, wow, that was an interesting few weeks in my life.
So what do you want? So I said, what's in it for me? It's in it for me. There goes the materialism. Let me get something out of this. If you're going to rattle my life, I want to know how I gain. Of course. I look back at it now. It's like, wow, OK, there's a 30 year old.
I see her. And so I got this experience of unconditional love that's not in this realm. It's not in this realm at all. And it happened a few times. I was like, okay, do it again. So I know what this feeling is. Don't just overwhelm me with it. Let me be present to this experience.
And this feeling was extraordinary. And I asked this spirit guy, what is this? And he said, that's unconditional love. And I'm giving you a teaspoon and there's an ocean. I said, why don't you give me more? Because it'll blow your circuits. All you can manage is a teaspoon.
This is knocking your socks off and this is a teaspoon. And I went, oh my God. He goes, yeah. Like, that's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm guiding you towards. Like, okay, I'm in. I'm in. So he told me what to do, how to phase out my, I was a consultant for arts organizations, don't take on any new contracts, phase them out, start moving spirits from people's houses, it will just take off. And then I'll tell you the next phase. Everything happened exactly as he said, exactly as he said. And then I started working with living people. And that started with my mechanic.
I would go and as he was like fixing the car and chatting, he was like, well, well, OK, what spooks did you move this time? And where were they and what was going on? And I'd be saying, oh, yeah. So there was this guy who did not know what electricity was.
And he was just standing in a wall because there was an electric power on one side and there was a shower on the other. And he could feel energetically that electricity and water was dangerous. So he was standing there for like 100 years. like trying to stop the power line from hitting the water.
So things like this happened, you know, and you know, there would be illness in a house like that, there would be noises, there would be poltergeist stuff happening, and it was quite spectacular actually at times. And so moving a spirit through their belief system, through their feeling that their right to surrender themselves and their own progress for the sake of a misunderstanding, that's mostly what it was. that they would be kind of a sacred doormat, you know, doing something from a heartfelt place, but actually sabotaging themselves. So I would learn from the spirits who were stuck too. I'd be like, oh my God. Okay.
So between that dimension and this dimension, this is how you perceive it. And your perception is making you suffer for like a few hundred years. Okay. Okay. So all the while, when I was doing this work, the limitations of my own thinking were dissolving. You know, it was like, hey, anything can happen. This moving spirits from places and from people, it's nutty stuff. So I start to begin to see that, you know, I'm not limited by cause and effect here. The cause and effect that we want to believe is guiding our day and common sense and approved by science.
It's like, that is such a micro of actually what we're playing with here. It's so limited, you know, to what is right in front of us. But we're scared and our nervous system isn't able for it. So we take teaspoons and we rely on cause and effect because we like to feel we're in control.
RJL: And we take the electrodes and we like prod that like little tiny cross section of reality and say, oh, yes, we understand reality. When the real thing is like this big.
JO: Enormous. Yeah. if we're, I don't know, whole enough in ourselves to not go for the entertainment of the infinite, not go for the dissociated field, you know, let's dissociate and go into that reality and not be grounded here. It's like, let it come here. Who are you in your humanness? If you truly know you are infinite, if you truly know that there is only the infinite and that our minds create the limitations. What would it be like to live from that infinite place?
RJL: This is making me think of something I read from some of your stuff, because on its own, I was like, I'm not sure how to interpret this. But, you know, the words truth for its own sake, you know, are words that I've seen written from you. And is this kind of this thing you're speaking about? Is it kind of touching into that? Like, what is and if so, what does that mean to you? Like, what is truth for its own sake?
JO: Yes. Saying yes to the spiritual path is a singular, solo endeavour where your commitment above all else is to know the truth. I'm not talking about phenomenal truth of what day of the week it is. Truth that resonates viscerally inside us and that we eventually find words for.
Our mind plays catch up, but there's a knowing deep inside. That's what I'm pointing to as truth in this context. And if we want to find out truth so that we can make more money, so that we can have a nice life, I'm not interested in that. That's not going to do it for you.
Go and get a job. Do whatever it is that makes you feel well. Those things can't be the primary purpose. And so there's not many souls that actually, or people who actually want truth for its own sake. It's usually truth for a nicer life or truth because it's hip thing to do these days.
And it has to be for its own sake if your breakthrough is going to be authentic and sustainable.
RJL: Yeah. Yeah. I really appreciate that. There's something that I'm resonating with a lot, which is the dropping of illusions.
JO: Yes.
RJL: What actually happens when we let the illusory ideas, constructions, projections, these things that we actually kind of create, we let them go so that we can find the thing. Some people call it source, whatever the case may be. You were talking about seeing deceased people. You were talking about seeing spirits and moving them and certain ones stuck sometimes for decades or generations in certain places. And I think there's a connection here, but I'm wondering if it lands for you or if it feels true for you. It feels to me like this experience that you had of seeing spirits also seems to connect with this idea of unraveling colonialism and maybe the illusion of what that is. Do you see a connection there in your work, in how you have maybe moved yourself or also helped others move through some of those frozen postures?
JO: I hadn't drawn that thread through line before. I don't know. You're probably seeing something that I'm not seeing so clearly yet. I wonder if it's the movement of truth, you know, and recognizing how having power over somebody or a belief system having power over us, like why we surrender our agency, our autonomy. I definitely see a linkage there. And knowing that we needn't be living the oppressed experience, you know, like our personal power is always there.
I remember reading Nelson Mandela's biography way back when he published it. And I hadn't even gotten into the spiritual work. I was still in my normal professional life at the time and going, huh, Imagine being in prison for over 20 years and still holding on to your personal agency and your autonomy.
You know your body is locked up in this 8x12, whatever it was, but your inner is so solid, your potency is so intact through it all that whether you're in or whether you're out, your agency is unaffected. Now, that is truth. That is the action of inner truth, of knowing what really matters, of aligning with something deeper than my human phenomenal experience. And so when we align in that way, it's easier to see what parts can be moved out of the way, what's ready to be moved, what can be dissolved, what am I giving my power to? And, you know, if we look at abuses of power, yep, colonialism.
The pattern will continue until we see the falseness, the false structure and how we're hiding behind this because we're scared of our own light. Going back to Nelson Mandela, you know, the Marianne Williamson piece that he quotes. You know, we're scared of our own light. Yeah, that's really what's going on rather than take my own agency. Oh, I'm trapped. Oh, I can't do it. Oh, I'm scared of. And it's like you're scared of your own light, actually, of what it means to be responsible, be accountable.
RJL: I think this is actually a great connection point to the idea of spiritual integrity. You've already drawn these connections between colonialism and its logics, as well as I call it the guru complex. You may have different language for it, but how these abuses of power can sort of seep in through both contexts. So I'm curious if you can say a little bit about maybe what you started discovering as you started doing spiritual teaching and how that led you to creating the ASI today.
JO: The seeds for the ASI, I think it's part of my soul's purpose. I'm not somebody who kind of advocates purpose, but when I look back, I'm like, huh, this was always there. This was kind of set up as a destiny thing for me because as a teenager, I went to the school principal and said, I need our religion teacher to tell us when she's talking from experience or when she's talking from textbook, because it's entirely different. I don't trust when she's talking from textbook and she's sick of me saying, Did you have that experience? Do you know that to be true for yourself?
And the principal said, would you think about becoming a religion teacher? She goes, well, if you don't like the way she's doing it, then do it differently. I'm like, oh, okay. So at the time in Ireland, I didn't know that studying to be a religion teacher meant studying Catholicism. And oh my goodness, that didn't work.
However, I finished off the degree and I suppose it gave me an opportunity to look at the model of surrender that happens in some religions. That means surrender your autonomy, your agency, be like a little child. It's like, actually, no, not literally. Not literally. And what would it be like to have your own agency through it all?
To know the difference between your personal choice staying intact and the level of surrender that is required of the ego in order to dissolve into that which you came from.
RJL: I'm listening to you talk about this and I'm going, oh my goodness, wait a minute. The ASI, it is a decolonial project that is essentially stemming from your life's experience. Growing up in Ireland, learning about religion, learning about how the religion and probably colonialism were intertwined and interwoven and learning how to pull that apart and go actually back to the golden shadow you were talking about. Being a little child is not outsource your thought process. It's reclaim your inner authority.
JO: That's right.
RJL: Two completely different things.
JO: Completely different things. That's right.
RJL: I'm taking in what you were probably noticing and experiencing, not just from your school days where you were like, oh, I don't like the way that this teacher is doing things. But then as you started getting into this work, you were probably continuing to see more and more, wait, what's going on in the land of spiritual teaching?
What's up in self-help or new age spirituality or coaching and development circles? Yeah. What are people saying and what's actually happening? And I'm wondering, what did you observe in those days before you were like, you know what? I think I need to start this venture.
JO: Working as a healer on people, moved into taking time out because I felt my own spiritual and personal growth was getting stunted because I was just so busy. I left everything, walked from marriage, business, a healing center, programs I'd set up, walked from everything and spent a few years in India and wrote my first book.
And long periods of silence. Yeah. going within, doing nothing all day, every day. And I lived on peanuts, and you can do that in rural India. Doing that every day to where all I was doing was watching my thoughts. It's like, okay, did I buy that thought? What happened there? Who's the one buying the thought?
Okay, what does this mean? What is it that's going to motivate my action? Okay, let's just do nothing for a few days, unless I'm motivated by something that's not a thought. I did that exercise a lot. So I would find myself just sitting, waiting, use the bathroom, prepare food, sitting.
Like not much happens actually if my mind isn't active, does it? All right, drop that thought. Nothing unless I moved from inside. And that cleared up and cleaned up a lot. And moving from inside, I got to feel the difference between when personal gain is running the show and when there's an energy that moves from the inside.
Now, life then presented me with teaching opportunities because the book came out, somebody made a YouTube channel, somebody else built a website. I had no interest in any of this, any of this at all. So I got kind of grabbed by the hair.
You know, it's like you are going to sit here and give satsang for the weekend. Okay, fine. And so it started like this organically. After a couple of years, and it took me a couple of years, I'm like, no nobody's getting it why they they just want to talk about their pain body actually. That's what they wanted to do—talk about the pain body and be validated and held in love, and I'm like, you are love and they're like “oh.” It went over their head.
Right over their head. I'm like, okay. I got to do something different here because people, the ground isn't fertile. They're not able to hear these direct path pointers. They're not able to hear it. And in Ireland at the time, therapy was free in university. Dang, did I make use of that service. So like from 19, from when I discovered that, I went to therapy continually for those four years, continually. So I had a lot of tools around how to observe my thinking. And so then, of course, training and education and life experience, bringing me back to what I knew as a teenager. I'm only going to talk about what I know from experience.
And if I'm doing textbook stuff, I will either qualify it or I'll refer people out. But I'm only going to do what my religion teacher did not do, which is I'm only going to teach from experience. And I suppose that really was part of my own internal surrender to the truth, you know, the capital T truth that is in the center of all of our beingness. knowing that like whatever experience I have, I welcome it. I will get through it no matter if I'm, you know, paralyzed in terror in my bed for, you know, fighting demonic beings, blissed out on something, losing my function and having to take around a dictionary because my capacity to understand words are gone. I said yes to all of it. Something in me, I suppose, was wired to have a lot of experiences so that I could gain some wisdom. The wisdom brought me back to like, actually, you know, Simplicity.
A simple mind, simple thoughts, slow lifestyle is invaluable. And there's more to be noticed from slowing down than from running around to every workshop around the place. Slow that down.
RJL: There's one piece of this that's really standing out to me because you saw I put my hands to my face where I was like, ah, like because you were talking about how people show up in spiritual spaces and the way you put it was people just want to talk about their pain body. And I've seen this over and over again in spiritual spaces where there's a line in the course of miracles that kind of makes me think of this, that goes something to the effect of some people come so that they can be illusions and never learn the truth of their reality. And it just, when you were talking about your observations in the field, because you've been doing this much longer in a professional capacity than I have, right? But I've seen the same things. I just thought to myself, oh, This is like on the, on the student or seeker side, this is one of the things that's happening.
And then, you know, what I want to bring some attention to is because of that pain body, because at least my observation is so many people feel that they're, they're not enough. They don't, love themselves because when a person loves themselves you can feel their emanation at least that's been my own experience that's right and and then what I've seen in so many spiritual spaces including times when I've worked with people myself and they've wanted to sort of almost like lob on or latch on to me a little bit I've been like no this is not what that's about I am here to work with you.
I obviously would like for you to hear what I have to say, but don't put me on a pedestal here. It's not going to help you. And so I'm wondering if you can say a little bit more about what you started to see both on the student side and on the teacher side, where you were like, this is a pattern. I think this is a problem. I think something has to change. What did you start seeing in that space?
JO: The projection that you're leaning into there. When a teacher gets off on that projection of like, you know, bowing and prostration, that's beautiful as a sign of respect, but let the teacher do it back. You know, like, as an equal. as an equal. I remember, I traveled, I toured internationally for 15 years as a spiritual teacher.
And I remember one woman having an enormous breakthrough and she was bowing and I bowed and then she went lower and I went lower. And the two of us had our foreheads on the floor, bowing to each other. I mean, everybody was roaring, laughing, but oh my, I can still feel the awe that I had for that woman. I can still feel it, you know, the beauty of her burst open heart, you know. But we have teachers who like that agination, who get off on being revered, who get off on making every issue that the student brings up about their ego.
You can do that. It's very easy to manipulate teachings, very easy. And to believe your own manipulation, that it's actually for their good. What I have learned and became my teaching style was that every single path is different, every single one.
And it's about really listening to see what is the best thing for this person at this time. And what are the obstacles that are in their unique experience? And how can I illuminate a way around or through that obstacle for them so that they find more freedom, so that they can move on from me, so that they can move on?
Make myself dispensable. That's the key, you know? But we have human needs now. No matter how elevated or no matter how realized and attained our spiritual level, if we are denying our human needs or if we don't have sufficient space to support our human needs, we will project them onto our students. This creates harm.
RJL: One of the things that I've often experienced in my own journey, educating, teaching, sharing, is a lot of times many people don't even know what a projection is. you know, even though it's often, I would say it's one of the first things that people do when the unconscious needs a defense, right? How would you define a projection? What happens that leads a person to do this? What is it? And why can it be problematic?
JO: Your definition might be more accurate, because I didn't study psychology, you know, I think it's something that we do a lot. So it stems from the way our brain works to look for what's familiar. Because otherwise I wouldn't recognize that what I'm holding now is a glass of water unless there was continuity.
So then I assume its function because I remember from yesterday and I pull the pattern together that this is one of my glasses. Okay. It's also a mason jar. So... What we do is how we function has to do with these different ideas that we put on top of something as simple as a glass.
And when we meet people, we look for what's familiar about them. Our brain does this to feel safe. It's like, oh yeah, they have a name like so-and-so. Oh yeah, I know where they work. Oh, and we find comfort and ease when we find harmony and similarity with them.
And if we can't find similarities with them and any part of our life, our brain will make it up. We'll make it up. We'll project, oh, I assume this about them. Sometimes we don't even know what's an authentic interpretation of who they are and what have we stuck onto them because it helps us to categorize them, understand them, give us a sense of feeling safe around them. So we project all kinds of stuff on people all the time. Yeah, they look like they're a nice person. What the heck does that mean? Where did you learn that? And now you've put nice on this person because of how they look?
What does a person look like if you are going to assume they're not nice? And what kind of a chance are we giving somebody to express themselves if you've already decided that? So projections in the most simple way happen all day every day, particularly in the guru model, because we project God.
This is one of the reasons why male teachers get so much more press and attention and fall into the guru model much more. Because, you know, well, God is a man, no? Really? Not really. But that's an unquestioned belief. We want to genderize God. You know?
RJL: Not, yeah, no, not my favorite. But I understand. I mean, we have millennia of just conditioning that has not really been shed. Questions that have barely started. People are barely asking, like, what is God even? Yes. And to really like, I think spirituality, metaphysics, just understanding knowledge sometimes is so interesting, because there are certain questions, like,
I think if a person were simply to even understand the answer to that question, so much would change. You don't even have to do the work once you understand certain questions. There's so much that flows from a core understanding. One of the things that you, I thought, really brilliantly pointed to as you were describing projection is that people look for what's familiar. So even if what's really there is completely different from how a person is experiencing the event or trying to paint the event. The thing that is familiar is often how it shows up.
And where I started thinking around this was how, for example, a lot of people who seek spiritual teaching and wisdom often are not doing it just because it's a nice, fun hobby and they're thinking, why not? A lot of people who come to this space, they're in a lot of pain. They have probably come through some very difficult traumas, whether that was at the hands of something around them, in the home, in the family, in society, at some point in life, something happens, and then they come into these places. So you had me think of how one way that a projection can work is a person can come in, and you know what? This guru, this teacher...
I don't know how to relate to him, her, or them from the perspective of they're just another person because the family dynamic is re-engaged. Oh, well, if I put them on a pedestal, if I make my needs small, Well, that feels like safety, doesn't it, for a lot of people's nervous systems?
And then when that meets a teacher's own things, and maybe this is a good next topic for us to discuss, but teachers are humans, they have needs. My own experience has been such that you do a lot of work, you come a really long way, you have a lot to offer, and then you start to feel alone. And how well can you handle that aloneness? Because if you do not have good supports and ways of handling it, somebody else giving you that you're so amazing, you know, all the things if you're not careful, if you don't have your own ethical guideline, boom, that that will get weird and encroachy very, very quick.
JO: That's right. That's right. That's right. And I think documentation over the centuries, ancient scriptures have not helped to clarify this point either. You know, that all problems will disappear once you realize that who you think you are is not who you are. Well, yeah, your questions might disappear, but how you pay the rent is going to be just as real as it was before your huge awakening. So what are you going to do about your humanness? And the aloneness is a real thing because you have to go into truth alone. You have to do that alone. There's nobody I can talk to.
That's been written by an awful lot of teachers, even going back. Paramahansa Yogananda used to say it a lot too. Ramana Maharshi used to say it a lot. It's like, okay, what were they really saying here? What were they really saying? And for me, it's about that balance between I have not integrated my own human needs.
The role I'm playing as the teacher is the only thing people want from me. So I have forgotten how to connect in a regular peer-to-peer human relationship. If we're not in practice, we forget. The aloneness comes from forgetting how to engage and support your humanness so that it's a constantly evolving aspect of who you are.
That's where the aloneness comes in. And then the teachings kind of, they can encourage, they don't do this deliberately, but because of lack of clarity and understanding of this topic, they can compartmentalize the belief in separation. You know, my human needs means that there's some part of me not realized enough.
So let's deny it because I'm a teacher, no? And it's like, don't compartmentalize separation. Interesting. That's not something to be transcended. You transcend your illusory thinking and you honor the cause and effect in the illusion. Can you do both? Now that's maturity. Can you do both and honor your ongoing human evolution? Because then you will be accountable. You will be responsible.
RJL: You'll know how to deal with hard emotions. You'll know how to be confronted. You'll know how to take responsibility for yourself and to be accountable to others. So it actually seems, yeah, I mean, it seems like so much of what you're pointing to is almost this, I sometimes think of it as fantasy island spirituality. And it's dangerous is what it feels like. It's dangerous.
JO: It's dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, if I can link that back to the first few years when I was teaching, like to do end game teachings, and call it spirituality, just like mindfulness for anxiety is spirituality. Whoa, these are so different things to each other. So different. So the wellness and spirituality has kind of, you know, snowballed the deep teachings when you really are only going for truth and how to make your life better. And in there, it's like, hold on, we've got this whole mess of an assumption that the Guru has got at their side. It's like, really? Really?
I'm thinking of a case right now, actually, of a guy who said, the goddess said it was okay that I have this relationship with this consenting female student. And like, there's a power differential right away, right? There's a power differential. There is no such thing as informed consent with that level of a power differential. It's not informed consent. It's not.
RJL: It cannot be. Not to mention, the goddess said is just, in my opinion, it's newer lingo for the old god said. Well, god said. To which I'm like, did you even read the text? Did you understand it? Or did you take the first thing that... put you on fantasy Island of which colonialism is one. And yeah, I can just have my way to which I'm like, Where's the wound? Where's the wound? Where's the wound? Oh, it's back there.
It's in this shape. And are you going to hang out in this container with me or not? Let's ground. And some people, I think the brave ones, they go, I need to look at it. I need to look at it. I don't know what to do. To which I'm always like, you don't have to get there today.
But the ones who look at it, That's where I'm like, yes, yes, grow that. I think what I reflect on is how sometimes it seems like when we run into those cases where people just kind of almost drag the pain body around and nothing changes.
I remember early in my journey, I said some truth that I think sounded harsh. I was saying to certain friends and companions, you know, I don't know if I feel really comfortable in such and such as presence, because one of the things I'm seeing is that this is a 30 year spiritual circuit tour.
They've gone to all the workshops. They know all the names. They've read all the books. They've probably read more books than I have. But I'm a little doubtful about how many have been applied, and that worries me. The reason I'm sharing this is because I think it's a pain point in the spiritual community that we have seen and that we have felt. There's probably way more true transformation happening than we can really see. But when we see the things that are not working, it's very easy to think, oh, there's so much of it.
What do we think the function of spirituality, spiritual teaching, spiritual learning - what should that be about? If only because we hear so much about the guru complexes, the 40 years in the desert and never coming out of it, what could an alternative spiritual learning ecosystem look like, do you think?
JO: In my lifetime? This is going to take a bit of work. The organization that I helped set up in 2018, which is just steadily expanding and growing every year, what we do is we are... Asking spiritual leaders who want to be accountable to join, sign up to a code of ethics, be part of a system of accountability, go to webinars, consider being educated, consider ongoing training. Noticing the resistance that's happened over the years since we've been set up, I can see how the culture is changing. It's changing faster than what I thought it would, which is really exciting. However, even at a board meeting on Monday of this week, one of the board members said, well, you know, such and such a teacher, they don't see that they need to join the ASI, so they won't bother because they're too well known. And I actually went into a kind of a... I was so shocked I could say nothing. It's like, wow, so ethics is something you do... to get more well-known, what, what?
It's like it created a log jam in my brain that it wasn't integrity for its own sake. That alignment between truth and how it shows up in my humanness. That's what we're aiming for. How does truth, honesty, integrity show up in your humanness every step of the way? How do we get there?
So not alone is it talking to spiritual leaders around, hey, you know, if your humanness isn't being taken care of, you will do harm. You will. It's inevitable if you're not taking care of your humanness, because those needs are going to come out somewhere. They're going to come out. So on one side, it's that. It's like the education that needs to happen. So that spiritual leader is like, oh my God, I just roughshod over my humanness actually. And I just thought, well, the truth will, you know, I'm fine. I'm fine. Leave me alone here. The truth does it for me.
RJL: Jac, you're having me think of like people who have these peak experiences or these spiritual experiences. They build entire careers. They're very successful. They're very talented. They have insight. And then on core things, things that have been there for years. 30, 40, sometimes 50 plus years. Yes. And people have, you know, people have approached these people. They've said the things. They've said, you know, this is the thing I'm seeing. Boom. Clamp down. Distort. Project. Evade. Dodge. Retaliate. Right? Oh, no. Love and light.
For me, when I see stuff like this, I'm like, I can see the archetypal forces and I'm going, ah, this is a deep abandonment fear. And abandonment and questioning feels like betrayal to this person. But they'll say, they'll say, well, I'm not wasting my time here. Tell me what's going on. You say the thing, but that same complex kicks back in. And then the part that has me feel saddest is I care so much about not just individual spiritual progress, but how spiritual progress at the individual level actually coalesces to wider systems change. And one of the things that I feel saddest about often is that a lot of times there's so much potential and then it's these little areas where a person's not willing to look at themselves or they're not willing to do the work or they, you know, they can have millions, they can have an incredibly successful high profile career and then never tend to this one part that's always kind of just been there. Yes. And this is something that, you know, like the right therapist and yes, You can do in an hour.
JO: Yes. And how do we normalize that? How do we normalize that in the culture? You know, one thing is to encourage the teacher through exactly what you're saying, showing them, here's the wound. I'll create a container for you to explore this wound. So what about the students then who are supporting the system of colonialism and guruism? Like the student is buying into it too by giving it power. You know, we're maintaining it.
RJL: Jesus calls it the blind leading the blind.
JO: There we go.
RJL: You know, it's this I'm sure the Buddha has language for it as well. But like, yeah, on the student side, what I see and it's very difficult because there is a difference between a fan, a supporter, a follower and then a cult. And a cult is the teacher can't be wrong. And the student's value comes from affiliation with or agreement to the teacher.
JO: That's right.
RJL: To which it's like, I thought we came to free ourselves from oppressive homogenization. And then love and light in so many places turned into the same thing. And where there was radical potential, even when the spiritual teacher themselves is talking with their mouths about the radical potential, you don't see the mobilization. You don't see the results, which is metaphysics. If you don't have it right on the core level, it does not manifest outwardly. But then when the people are actually there...
JO: But the projection, you see, blinds them. Yes. From actually seeing what's really happening. Because then, like, if they can really see and stop projecting of what's happening, what does that mean?
RJL: And that means... They'd be powerful.
JO: Yes. And ‘I made a mistake’ and ‘I got duped’ and ‘I bought the Kool-Aid’. And actually, I, you know, I have to change teachers and there's that too. But by goodness, let all that happen and stand on your personal power and walk. How do we set up places where we can normalize this?
And then the one thing we didn't mention, Rayner, is there's neurological changes that happen in our brain when we are a leader who is removed from feedback and out of practice of taking care of their human needs, which means being a normal person without playing the role of being a guru. Like if you don't have any space, your brain changes. You lose capacities to be empathetic.
RJL: And connection. Like I think of like oxytocin, you know, like actually being in nature and not being in nature as like nature as tourism, but nature as I feel it. Oh, it's what all the indigenous teachers and ancestors are, what they're actually trying to point most of us to. Do you feel it?Does the wooden table or does the plant, does the wildflower, does it really share the purpose of the universe? Or is that just convenient spiritual lingo that sounds really nice on your fantasy island?
JO: That's right.
RJL: Do we think the spiritual teaching profession needs more structure? And if so, what kinds of structure might we offer without choking the potential as well, right? We don't wanna be controlling, but we wanna create enough scaffolding so that we can have the solidity and hopefully the legitimacy that often goes missing in the broader culture.
JO: Oh, yeah. I would love if every student asked their teacher, can I see your code of ethics? And it might be that they started off as a yoga teacher and that's the only code of ethics that they actually read in 20 years. Are they abiding by them or are they not? And, you know, how do you take care of your own personal human growth? And if they're saying God does it, God takes care of my needs, get out of Dodge. Get out of Dodge. If they say, oh no, it's too illusory to obey or to abide by a code of ethics. I've heard that a lot.
If you're interested, I'm quoting somebody, if you're interested in ethics, you're not interested in truth.
RJL: That is, scary is not even the right word. That's frightening. Yeah.
JO: Yeah. That's right. That's right. I was in the same town as that teacher, you know, and I said, hey, I'm in town for, this is just last year, I'm in town for a while. Can we go for a walk or a hike or something? Nothing to do with me. I mean, I'm not available. Okay for like 10 days?
I'm sure it can feel threatening to you know very and it's like okay sit with that threat sit with it. How does that make you feel and why is there so much resistance? Sorry, Rayner, I keep talking over you. It's an Irish thing.
RJL: You're not talking over me at all. I just, I'm like, should i quote the bible? Sometimes the truth hurts and it's hard to hear, you know, but like, I think of how Jesus would talk about when you build a house on sand versus you build it on an actual rock. The sand is kind of the illusion of security. And so if, if a person is building that house, that spiritual teaching house, you could say on sand and here you are, Jac, the wave can be like, hello, let's go on a walk. ‘No, don't come.’ But if it was built on a solid base, what is there to be afraid of?
JO: What is there to be afraid of? The defense and resistance wouldn't arise. Correct. If there was genuine openness, you know?
So like, where do we start? You know, that's what I often think is like, is there any way I could do more? You know, how can I leave the world a better place? How can I leave the spiritual sector a better place? You know, I mean, yeah, it's a decolonializing.
RJL: Yeah. I really appreciate that comment because one of the things I think about is systems thinking or structural awareness, not mechanistic cause and effect in the narrow scientific materialist sense, but true cause and effect in a broader metaphysical sense, which includes scientific materialism, but isn't limited by its constraints.
I'm wondering, can you have real integrity without structural awareness?
JO: I don't think so. Because for me, what I feel I see is that everything from where we started at the top of this conversation around colonization and systems and ancestry and the ways cultures are shaped and how that shapes our psyches and our pain bodies to the path of Learning to free ourselves from that.
RJL: If I had to put it on a map, let's say there's like 10 levels and level one or level two is that place where people are still projecting. A teacher might be a level 10 cognitively because they read a thing and they're very brilliant at this thing. And they're teaching at level 10 from an informational transmission perspective. But then the actual behavior is at a level one or a level two.
JO: Yes. Right. There we go.
RJL: And what comes back for me is, can you ever get there without systems thinking? To which I'm like, I don't think so. And I'm wondering, are there any ways that you think this way of seeing or understanding could be embedded into how we think about the spiritual path?
So that instead of people stepping on the first rock and stepping on the second rock, and being taken down by, I don't know, a gator in the pond, we can actually build bridges to the other side where they go, that's me. Oh my goodness, now I'm free to do things. Just curious if you have any thoughts on that.
JO: There's a lot of potential in your generation. I didn't have the insight that you have now when I was your age. I didn't. People in their 20s right now have the vocabulary, the wisdom, the insight. It's like you guys have a nose for the BS that we bought into, got hurt by, and they went, oh, what's going on in my environment? That awareness has hatched, birthed much earlier for your generation. I think you guys have huge potential. huge potential. And in order to change a culture, it is about the older generation speaking to the younger generation. It is about these types of conversations are the transformative ones.
Where a lot of what I learned was the hard way. Where I caused harm and had to go back and make amends. I'm like, oh my God, how did I not see that? How did I buy the Kool-Aid? Accountability was not registering. It was not registering. So it's like, what is the systems thinking that would come in that would support that? Like, where is the book that explains that?
RJL: I'm working on those. They're coming.
JO: Yes, they are coming. And I want to encourage them because they're coming from your generation.
RJL: I'm a millennial and Gen Z, the subsequent generations, we came about at a time where one, we had much more access to information much more quickly via the internet. But secondly, we were born in a generation where we actually had to look at the rot. And we had to go, wait, we probably need to go to therapy.
Once we get to therapy, we probably have to decolonize the therapy. Once we do that, we have to figure out how on earth am I supposed to show up in a time and in a world where for however many decades or however many hundreds of years, the world was built in a certain way.
And now that it's starting to expire, how do we find our way amid collapse and calamity? At least for me, it's been this watch it, notice it. You don't have to consent to it, but you have to accept it if you're going to be powerful. And then you do something. We're not all born into the same things.
We don't all go on the same paths per se, but I want to say the desire at some level is there. And then who's actually willing to go and execute it? Because if we go and execute it, we will change things. And if we stop hiding, if we bury our heads in the sand and we feel that we cannot do something about it. And I've seen even people in older generations, you know, who have been on this planet much longer than I have been, who had all the right ideals, who really went out and devoted decades to trying to change systems.
And then I would read a simple thing, something that they would say in a paper or something. And I go, oh my goodness, the quote I was just reading about something today, it was, you can't change the system, to which I thought, are you kidding me?
JO: Holy maloley.
RJL: What do you spend 35 years trying to change a system and then having things come out of your mouth? Like you can't change the system or even better. And this is something I've been getting into recently is you have complexity scientists. These are people who they have the mathematical models.
They have the Western democratic style, slightly European values who have studied complex systems and complexity science, and then you listen to them talk about how systems actually work. And the same thing, Jac, the words coming out of their mouths are, you can manipulate some of the vectors, but you can't change the system.
And my spiritual scientific self is like, what do you mean? This is academia. Define your terms, bro. Because if by you can't change the system, you mean that the fundamental underlying patterns of reality always come from the same first principles? Okay. But I don't think that's what was meant.
Because in all the things I'm hearing, in what these people who are have honestly good intentions, right? Who have devoted themselves are doing, they've made frameworks, but then I look at the execution and what they're saying, you can't, what do you mean you can't change it? And I think the big part of that is: who took your courage?
JO: Yes. Yeah. Where have you traded your personal power?
RJL: Yeah. And I think that just comes back to what you were saying. Who's ready to stop hiding?
JO: Yes. Yes. Because to believe the system can't be changed means I want to support the system as it is.
RJL: I consent. It's kind of saying, I consent, which is, that's not power.
JO: That's right. They're supporting the problem. Yeah, there we go.
RJL: A person who is in their power, things don't stop them. They have obstacles. They have real challenges. They have horrendous things happen in their lives. Yes. But they still, I mean, I think of Alan Watts or, you know, the Taoists, you still flow like a river. You get an obstacle, you just flow around it. And the people who don't feel that something comes in their way, it's done.
JO: Collapse. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful.
There's a lot of hope in this conversation, you know, even though it's a frigging mess, you know, there's a lot of hope and yeah. Yeah, I don't know what I'm saying that, but there is a lot of hope. It's like it's an embodied hope. Like I don't like the cerebral hope, you know, because it denies what's here. It's like, as you said, the world is expiring. All right, accept it, be with it. Now, what's my call to action? How can I still participate even though the ship is going down? This is still every step is worth taking.
RJL: Exactly.
JO: Of course it is. Of course it is. And how am I supporting the system that is the core problem for all of this? How am I continuing to support it today? And by goodness, there's layers and layers and layers and layers in that exploration, all the ways we support that.
RJL: Right, and I think of the beauty of when people say, you know what? I'm gonna take the first step. I'm gonna inquire and I’m gonna challenge my own assumptions, just be a little bit closer to that today than I was yesterday, and I think people may not realize that that is actually enough.
JO: Yeah. Can I do one thing today that makes me know that I am a little bit more whole and make me feel a little bit more whole and complete? Can I adult a little bit more today just this internal turning the dial?
RJL: So, Jac, this has been a really lively conversation.
JO: It has been great fun. We covered so much ground.
RJL: We covered a lot of ground and managed to weave it all together in something that actually feels coherent, you know? Well, not just me. It's a co-creative process.
JO: But you're the weaver. I'm Irish. We just rant, you know?
RJL: Oh, is that so? Is that how it works?
JO: Yeah, we just talk and talk and talk about it.
RJL: Love it. Love it. Well, somebody has got to supply the conversation, right? So I think that's very fair. Where can people learn about your work?
JO: The organization, Association for Spiritual Integrity, the website is spiritual-integrity.org. We are not funded at all, and I seem to have not enough time to go after funding. It's all voluntary. And it's just too important not to do it. So if there's a funder out there, great, talk to us.
If there's a spiritual leader out there who wants support, who wants community, who wants to look at the code of ethics, go onto the website. Do not be alone. There is no reason for you to be alone. If you're a spiritual leader, coach, influencer, if you're guiding anybody on their spiritual path, join the ASI. And then myself, I see some private clients and that's jac-okeeffe.com.
RJL: Thank you so much for being here. It was such a pleasure just to spend this time with you and explore this together. We look forward to being in conversation again when the time's right.
JO: Super. I'm up for it.
RJL: Thanks, Jac.
JO: Thank you for the invite. Thank you so much.
