Hi Mary-

Maybe this topic is not for a wide enough audience for a blog, or only of interest to me. I hope not. I have been feeling quite negative about this and struggle to find some sort of lesson or positivity here. I hope this isn’t too negative for your blog.

I am a spiritual teacher. I gave up a career that was quite stable to answer what I thought was a spiritual calling, eventually becoming a spiritual teacher. 

I have been doing this work for about a decade now. In the beginning it was wonderful, but over the past few years I have had a few students steal my work. They took my work and copied it and began offering workshops using it. 

The last time it happened was two years ago and I just can’t let it go. I feel so betrayed and angry. I feel like I want to give all of this up and stop teaching. 

I do love your work and your unique insights so I am reaching out to you in hopes that you understand, and can possibly offer me some help in letting this go–

Blessings,

ST

(note: edited for length/identifying information)

Hi ST-

First off, I do want to say that I am sorry for what you have experienced. Your pain comes through so clearly and it impacted me deeply.

It sounds like these experiences have caused for you to question your calling, and your path, which is always such a difficult thing to find your way through.

I will share that every single spiritual teacher of worth that I have discussed this same topic with over the years– either as friends, colleagues, or with clients– has unfortunately experienced this.

Ideally as spiritual teachers we help people come to their own insights. They take what they have learned from us, grow as human beings, and if they are called to this work similarly, will take the entirety of their being forward into creating something new, something entirely their own, into this world.

Even with students that I have given the “go ahead” to teach my work, they bring who they are to the table. Put in more esoteric terms, their soul is engaged with the work. That soul engagement is what is so necessary in this work to find yourself somewhere real and true (or to lead someone else to somewhere real and true).

All of us who have put body and mind and soul into a spiritual path knows the toll it takes. It is not an easy path, but it is a path of soul-creation. It is a path of great homecoming, a cyclical coming into being that can only be achieved by authentic communion with something greater than ourselves.

But there are so many who are stuck in a state of spiritual poverty. In their state of disconnection and suffering they are hungry for spirit, for something soul-led and connected, but are not yet ready to put in the effort… or to give up notions of separation to get to the point where they can achieve this for themselves.

Or perhaps, most simply, they have not yet found someone to help guide them in doing so. As teachers we can only take someone as far as we have gone ourselves. It is both the wonder and the unfortunate nature of this work. 

It is why each spiritual teacher I value is in a continual state of becoming, as when we intersect with the divine, with our students, and come into the infinite states and varieties of connection that are possible we both expand and ground, becoming more human, less defended, and more aware in the process.

So how to Heal this?

The first thing to do is to know that you are not alone. Anyone who has touched the sort of void that connects someone to the Other will have others make pale facsimiles of their work.

While all of us who have sight to see can empathize and even feel compassion for this type of spiritual hunger, and how trauma and social conditioning and collective spiritual disconnection combined with capitalism and spiritual colonization create it, you have a right to your feelings.

You should feel hurt. You should feel betrayed. Let yourself feel every single inch of it. Do not make apologies for it. Do not tell yourself that you should be the bigger person, or that what you are feeling is negative. I promise you if you let every part of you rise that feels anger, grief, betrayal, fear, disappointment, and whatever else you are feeling, and you let it know that it has every right to be… you will eventually find the people who have betrayed you in this way forgotten in the distance.

As I am a very practical type of person, if you have any type of copyright for your work, I would do what you can with that on the “mundane” level. If you have not yet copyrighted your work, I would check into doing so.

On a more esoteric level, these individuals still create disquiet in your soul for two reasons:

The first is that to do the type of work that we do requires sacrifice: of time, of energy, of self. In return for that sacrifice, we become more connected, we become more whole, we become more in touch with greater spiritual reality.

But this is not a sacrifice that is easily talked about with others who have not experienced it, the blood and sweat and tears and muck of it all. The years and decades, the strange dreams and illuminations and spiritual comings and goings that can bring so much, but also exert a toll in the process.

For someone to simply take your work and copy it in a disconnected way, without the type of effort that was put into any truly connected spiritual offering, is hurtful.

It is soul theft. Soul theft is the stealing of soul from a person or group. This is often done without regard, without any type of understanding of the enormity of what has been taken.

We can be compassionate and say that it is likely that the people who have taken your work in this way lacked the awareness or capacity to understand what they have done, but from the conversations that I have had over the years, as well as my own experiences, I can say that the people who have committed soul theft against me were entirely expected.

It was in line with their character, with what I knew of how they operated in this world. People feel the need to steal, to lie, to cheat, to manipulate because that is how they were taught they needed to survive or to thrive in this world. 

If you know anything, know this:

On a surface level, soul theft may work. But on a soul level, it never does.

Even if it never comes up into their consciousness their soul will experience increased suffering by the harm that they have created. Soul theft creates further disconnection and emptiness, a divide between a masked spiritual self and the reality or inner self of the individual. 

There are those of us who feel whatever darkness we have, feel compassion for it, and through this we develop our character. We transmute darkness into something soulful, something that can create benefit, instead of harm.

There are those who, despite their spiritual inclinations, will only have their shadows loom larger, their darkness become more substantial.

The type of help they will need to rectify soul theft will be out of their reach, as with most things, it requires recognition as a starting point to resolve.

The truly top-down spiritual answer to this is that even if they create that pale facsimile of your work, even if they steal your workshop down to its name and time and date, it does not have you teaching it.

Your connection, your efforts, your character, your knowledge, and your soul will lead the people truly ready and willing to connect to you.

Sometimes we cannot let go of a person, or a situation, because it has become emblematic of a line of existential inquiry that is playing out.

Put more simply:  you have placed upon such people the massive weight of your questioning whether you should remain as a spiritual teacher and continue your path.

They are convenient scapegoats, they really are. But I would let yourself take this energy back and realize that the second reason that you struggle with this so mightily is that they represent something that is playing out within you. 

There is a part of you that wishes to go back to your “normal” existence, that wonders what might have been on your prior path, and there is a part of you that is engaged on your spiritual path and with your spiritual calling as a teacher.

I would speak to both sides of yourself, listening to what they have to say. 

There will always be no shortage of charlatans, rogues, and people struggling with clarity and connection in the spiritual field. Ultimately, we are talking in many ways about power, and there is nothing more that the megalomaniac loves than to be seen as demi-god, and the spiritually bereft to act out their pain and inadequacies on a larger stage.

My best advice is to re-focus on yourself, feel what you need to feel (welcome even the darkest and most negative feelings of injustice, wrongness, and betrayal to come through you).

Then let these people go. As spiritual teachers we often welcome even those of bad faith because if their enormous suffering is even healed a bit, even if they begin to take the slightest personal responsibility for themselves, they are no longer creating as much pain towards others or within themselves.

But your responsibility is to your current students and to those who are ready and willing to engage with your work. Put more simply, those prior students that you mention are in your rearview mirror for a reason.

Sometimes there is no lesson to learn from these things; we can see potential and light in people but also be realistic about the nature of the suffering that people carry and how that expresses itself into the world.

If such people were connected in any way, they would have their own words, their own ideas, their own workshops, their own soul-led creativity bringing forth something vital into the world. 

The deadened soul can only copy, not create.

And that is unfortunate, not for you, who has fostered that connection, but for them, who feel the need to commit such acts. Recognizing, re-focusing, and feeling whatever gratitude you can for the connections to the Other you experience could be the “lesson” in all of this (if you are in need of one). 

Realize that what truly matters is your relationship to the divine and how it is of service to others in a positive and much-needed way in this world. In your connection you have the power of creation within your grasp. Use it to re-focus, re-group, and your path will open up.

Thank you for your work ST, whether you decide to stay on this path or go back to what we might define as a “normal” career. 

As always, I do hope that helps, or at least brings forward something of interest to you and others–

Mary Mueller Shutan is a spiritual teacher, practitioner, and author of several books including The Shamanic Workbook series, Shadow Work for the Soul, and The Complete Cord Course.

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