We cannot have real relationship with anyone where we are agreeing to sustain a false relation.  For instance, let us say you have an emotional, affectionate and pleasurable sexual relation where you cannot ever have a truly deep and intelligent heart-to-heart discussion about an important life-problem you are sharing together or a spiritual issue about Zen Enlightenment, Siddhayoga, Mexican Nagualism, The Sufi Way, Krishnamurti, Rajneesh Tantra, wife-swapping or anything else where you have serious questioning of your assumptions but where your partner is obviously superficial, ignorant and evasive; where it is always you who brings up the important, urgent topic, which means that however much they seem to listen and even agree, they are just superficially agreeing and not really thoughtful or creatively engaged.  You thus find yourself lecturing your loved one as a superficial ritual of “helping them understand”, but somehow it is always a ritual they will “agree to” but never spontaneously instigate from some real inner seriousness of their own.  In fact, if you do not have such a problem or inner false relationship of pseudo-seriousness, you are most probably yourself pseudo-serious and will get nothing real from this article, which means you will only read through it, if even that, one time only, and not study it deeply from time to time or recommend it to other people who are mature enough to make good use of it.

 

This article is for you as a semi-mature person who is ever caught in the trap of trying to teach, counsel and help an immature person in your life because of your own personal need there.  The Sufis have a very wise old saying:

 “Whoever tries to advise a heedless person is himself in need of advice.”

Hence another famous old saying in the West:

 “To try to give advice is the worst vice!”

 

But it is not always sexual bondage that is sustaining a false, unserious relationship.  It can also be a would-be spiritual teacher who is retaining false students who do not have real respect, learning ability or an attitude of service, but are secretly (!?) doubtful, disrespectful, unteachable and selfish with only occasional genuine helpfulness to the situation.  The false discipleship will be sustained for a variety of reasons, which may be sexual, financial or even just the self-esteem of the would-be “Guide”, “Master” or “Teacher” who is yourself perhaps trying to imitate figures you have met or read about.  In such a false spiritual group, the so-called “disciples” also never bring up something serious in a real way, but will endlessly agree to be lectured, stimulated, given personal attention, or even be criticized or challenged.  Hence, Krishnamurti once rightly said, “The teacher destroys the followers and the followers destroy the teacher.”  Where there is a false teacher with false followers, that is precisely what an erroneous and debilitating cult actually is.  No genuine Teacher with true learners in a real learning situation can be validly characterized as a “cult”, even if certain ignorant worldly idiots try to label it as something like a wrong and abnormal “cult”.

 

In all these cases (sexual partner, “disciples” or “employees”) no real good will ever come from false relationship.  False relationship cannot be progressed to the true or serious because the false and superficial cannot possibly be a foundation or beginning of the true and serious.  To sustain the false to somehow “help” the false “become the true” is an immense self-deception on the part of all who are involved in something false.  So, will you really face it?  Vernon Howard once put it like this:

 “If you do not remove false, wax fruit from your cupboard, you will never have any place to put genuine, edible fruit.”

    

The problem is that most of us want the real thing to arrive to replace the false first before divesting the false.  But clinging to the false keeps away the true!  Out of fear of going without sex for awhile, losing a financial contribution, no longer having certain work performed for you, or having no one to lecture and seemingly advise so you can feel like a “leader” or “teacher”, you continue in the ruts of a degenerative, dysfunctional and debilitating relationship that chronically becomes a recurring crisis where you are treated with real disrespect or resentment side-by-side with false respect and false cooperation.

 

If the false relationship becomes disastrous enough, you may of course be fortunate enough that it is so obviously bad and wrong for both you and them, that both you and they will somehow candidly agree that you must find a way to gently disengage and create new situations without each other.  On your part, this means you will gently but firmly and courageously find a way without them, without trying to “save” the relationship.  They, on their part, will therefore finally have to be less false through learning to either be more real with others or be knowingly false with some other blatantly false mutual-exploitation.  “Birds of a feather will flock together.”  To rid yourself of the false and therefore deliberately do without certain things for awhile is not a “renunciation”, but rather bespeaks the emergence of an inner strength that can alone enter into real relationship in whatever dimension the real is desirable and necessary for your own development.

 

I have myself throughout my life had all the kinds of false relationship one can have.  I have had false sexual partners, false students and false employees or material helpers.  And through all these personal disasters I became even more truly awakened.  So now I dwell in a wilderness cabin rather than a mansion on the edge of town, and now I do not accept would-be students, but only contribute to spiritual issues anonymously.   Replacing self-esteem with Self-realization, my inner life is far greater than when I was a “Guru” who had already had some fantastic breakthroughs and higher experiences.  No longer another little “Guru” on the New Age scene as I once was, I am now working for real behind-the-scenes as a member of the Great Brotherhood.  Paradoxically, the less well-known I am, the more helpful my contributions.

 

For ages, genuine Sufis and Taoists have been transmitting this approach, but most seekers destroy themselves by learning to work miracles and gather followers.  But even here, I can testify that my “miracles” are much greater when they have no personal audience looking toward me.  On this Earth, the biggest miracles are those that happen through us without shallow exploiters finding out that it was through us.