Characterizing Spiritual Abuse
Perhaps, as a means of trying to get the discussion -- or part of it -- under way, let's consider the following possibilities. Spiritual abuse is any interaction which seeks to:
compel -- whether through force, pressure, intimidation, emotional blackmail/duress, or other methods of covert control -- anyone to believe or act in certain ways. At the heart of any spiritual/mystical path is the inherent, God-given freedom to accept or reject the Divine purpose of life, and while individuals may wish to disagree or discuss various possibilities concerning the precise nature of what that Divine purpose is or what this purpose might entail, no one has the right to impose on others what this should be or demand that people must comply or conform with such possibilities. The freedom to choose -- which is a Divinely given gift -- should not be curtailed through coercive means -- physical, emotional, psychological, social, or spiritual.
Or, approached from another direction, spiritual abuse is:
any interaction in which the intention or niyat of one person is to corrupt, obstruct, undermine, interfere with, subvert, mislead, destroy, or impair the essential relationship which each person enjoys with his or her Creator -- that is, spiritual abuse is any interaction in which there is some intention, agenda, purpose, or goal other than a wish for the constructive enhancement of another person's life -- not according to what one may believe is in someone else's best spiritual interests, but according to what God's plan for that individual is and, ultimately, the only person who has the responsibility for deciding or judging what God's plan is for an individual is the individual himself or herself. Others -- such as a spiritual guide, teacher, shaykh, murshid, guide or pir -- may be called upon as resources in assisting an individual to try to reach the best informed decision possible, but it is a breach of spiritual adab or etiquette to seek to manipulate that decision making process -- especially when this is done for self-serving purposes ... no matter how nobly and beautifully packaged this manipulation may be.
Or, approached from, yet, another direction, spiritual abuse is:
any form of interaction which seeks, intentionally, to treat deception, disinformation, lies, misinformation, and falsehoods as if they were spiritual guidance rather than error ... it is one thing to have differences of opinion about this or that teaching and to explore those differences in methodical, rigorous, but diplomatic ways, and it is quite another to use discussion as a tool of obfuscation for the purposes of influencing people to seek other than the truth -- for the truth is all that stands between us and error.
One might also say that spiritual abuse is:
any form of interaction which is authoritarian in nature and which provides few or no degrees of freedom for full disclosure -- or, as much as is feasible at any given time -- with respect to critically examining -- in an appropriately respectful and discrete manner -- issues involving identity, doubt, faith, truth, questions, concerns, purposes, meaning, methodology, justice, knowledge, understanding, integrity, adab, morality, duty, responsibility, or disparities between what is said and what is done with respect to any of the participants.
Two further characterizations of spiritual abuse are as follows:
(1) spiritual abuse is any form of interaction which induces a person to have fundamental doubts about trusting the intuitions of one's essential nature that abusive behavior is taking place (more on this shortly);
(2) spiritual abuse is any form of interaction which is designed to exploit the genuine, sincere yearning of a human being for contact with the Divine and transform this yearning into serving someone else's agenda of the nafs (the unredeemed tendency to rebel against truth) or dunya (the entanglements which are created by the collective interactions of the nafs of different individuals).
If we go back to the first added characterization or definition of spiritual abuse noted above, there are several qualifying points which should be made. First, many of the postings by group members have all alluded to the experience of (to borrow from Hafiz) 'there's something just not quite right about this camel ride' which we all have had when interacting with fraudulent teachers.
Unfortunately, many of us -- I know I have -- have tended to shelve these intuitions ... that is, put them aside. On the one hand, these things which involve the behavior of an alleged teacher have bothered us, and we often have a clear intuition that there is something which is wrong about what is transpiring -- although we may not be able to put our finger on precisely what this is. Yet, on the other hand, despite the gut or heart sense that something is problematic about the sham-shaykh's behavior, there is a tendency to want to make excuses for the so-called teacher and write off our intuitions with “Well, I guess I don't understand, or I guess there must be something deeper involved here which I don't understand and that what I think is worrisome really isn't”.
The fact of the matter is, in an essential way, we did understand what was going on ... but we discounted it at the time. Fraudulent shaykhs take advantage of this basic tendency in human beings to distrust themselves, and the abusive teachers induce people to develop this so that, over a period of time, people are more and more inclined to doubt the sincerity of the alleged spiritual teacher.
In addition, fraudulent shaykhs get people to censor themselves such that whenever these nagging intuitions rise to the surface, we push them back out of consciousness, feeling anxious, guilty or ashamed that such thoughts are present and treating such intuitions as if they are just further proof of how spiritually low we are -- after all, only someone who is vulnerable to the whisperings of Satan (Iblis) would be so vile as to have such doubts about someone so noble, wonderful, yada, yada, yada as the shaykh.
There is a very delicate problem in all of this. We all are beset with an inclination, if we are not vigilant, to follow the impulses, desires, rebellions, intentions, and base behaviors of the nafs. Furthermore, we are all vulnerable to the whisperings of the shaytan (those who would lead us astray from the straight path of truth).
The existence of such vulnerabilities is one of the things which renders us all in need of spiritual guidance. We need to learn how to navigate around the rocks and reefs to which the inclinations of nafs and the whisperings of the shaytan give expression within the phenomenology of our consciousness.
At the same time, God has given certain faculties -- such as the mind, heart, sirr (mystery), kafi (hidden), spirit, and aqfah (the most hidden) as tools through which to realize the truth as it is manifested in different dimensions, realms, worlds and levels of Being. Ilham (literally flashes of intuition) or kashf (unveiling) are both means through which we may be opened up to an aspect of the truth by the Grace of God.
When we had intuitions that there was 'something not quite right about the camel ride' in conjunction with a person who claimed to be a shaykh, we tended to discount them. Instead, we listened to other sources of influences which led us to believe that we could not trust our basic intuitions concerning the truth of things.
A true teacher helps an individual to constructively enhance one's capacity for veridical or true intuitions and unveilings about the presence of Divinity in one's life and within one's being. A false teacher seeks to invert this and tries to get us to listen to, and trust, his or her world-view rather than our own inner, God-given intuitions and understandings.
The purpose of the Sufi path is not to make us into carbon copies of the teacher. God has given to each of us a uniqueness which is inherent in our spiritual capacity, and if we were to try to become our teacher, this facet of uniqueness would not be served -- for Creation never repeats itself, and one of the purposes of Divine manifestation is to give expression to the full infinity of the Hidden Treasure which is -- as we are told in a Hadith Qudsi -- the reason why Creation was brought forth in the first place.
A true teacher knows all of the foregoing and, consequently, works with a seeker to help the individual struggle toward realization of this spiritual uniqueness. A false teacher does whatever he or she can to subvert this process and re-direct everything to express service to, adoration of, and sacrifice wishes of the teacher ... and seen in this light, the two additional definitions or characterizations of spiritual abuse cited earlier make a great deal of sense.
Many individuals have pointed out how difficult, sometimes, it is for newcomers to distinguish between Haqq (Truth/Reality) and falsehood with respect to the mystical path. The fact of the matter is, this problem of differentiating between truth and falsehood is often very difficult for even people who have been engaged in suluk (spiritual travel) for many years -- even in relation to some shaykhs (and there are numerous stories in the literature about how some shaykhs have fallen from great spiritual heights precisely because of having difficulty dealing with this problem of differentiating between Haqq and falsehood).
The foregoing problem of differentiating between Haqq and falsehood is why one needs an authentic shaykh -- that is, someone who is capable of, God willing, being able to intuit or understand the difference between the two in order to be able to properly guide a seeker and help the seeker avoid the numerous swamps, dangers, and predators which can be found along the way of spiritual travel. False teachers understand the nature of this need and use it to gain a foothold in the hearts and minds of those who yearn to learn the difference between truth and falsehood.
Once a false teacher has insinuated himself or herself into the psyches of seekers, then, little by little, the so-called teacher begins to poison the seeker and turn her or him into a spiritual invalid who becomes totally dependent on the teacher. The horror of this is that someone who has been turned into such an invalid believes that the false teacher is really interested in one's welfare when, in truth, they are only interested in using a seeker's spiritual yearnings, needs, potential, and inclinations to serve the interests of the false teacher ... the central delusion of people who continue to be captivated by a false teacher is that the process of poisoning and corruption of spiritual potential which is going on is actually being done for the spiritual betterment of the individual -- this is how crazy and sick things are.
The foregoing is not exhaustive. However, it does serve to establish something of a beginning, through which further discussion and critical exploration might take place.
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