Self-Realization and Other Awakenings

This area exposes the issue of trust and surrender,
which I will not discuss here, but will at a different
time. This is still an area filled with opinions and
judgmentalism, but once you find your teacher, even if
he/she is not your final teacher, learning to trust and
surrender is incredibly important and necessary. Those
who never learn to trust or surrender to a teacher,
have a very difficult time making any progress, as their
minds are always judging, judging, judging and
remaining in control.
You see, sex was only one issue around which every
teacher was criticized and found wanting in some way
or another back in the 1970s, and I suppose even now
because the concept of therapist/analysand was used
by westerners as the proper boundaries and
judgmental framework for the teacher/student,
guru/chela relationships.
At that time little was understood about the nature
of Eastern spirituality and the inevitable opening of
the heart to long buried emotions, including love,
jealousy, anger, and the more refined states of bliss
and ecstasy that develop out of love, yet the western
mind needed to have a framework imposed in order for
the busy mind to judge everything. They imposed old
rules on a new type of relationship.
Other issues arose such as money, donations,
volunteering time and energy for the sake of the