It is natural for many people to work with a spiritual teacher for awhile and then leave. Maybe they learned the lessons they needed. Maybe they needed a break. Maybe they were getting to close to a core issue, and the ego wanted out. Lots of things happen.
And sometimes, the student fails miserably. They fail by falling back into their old ego habits, creating a new spiritual ego, and generally denying reality by covering it up with new illusions. But in some cases, the person is just conscious enough to eventually realize this, and they realize that they need to return to the teacher whom they left.
This, of course, is an act of humility. A lot of prideful egos won’t want to do it. But if they do, people like me generally just re-embrace the person. There’s no ill-will or judgment. That’s not how teachers at my level operate. So if someone has found that they are failing miserably on their spiritual path, it can be re-assuring to know that there is space to return to the teacher they once left.
Humility and the Prideful Intellectual Ego
