I feel the need to be clearer.

I don't want to embody what I'm criticizing here, and at the same time Its important for me to assert this.

I find the 'break the ego down for you' approach to be very abusive. It is designed specifically to 'wash' people clear, so they can take in the energy of a guru. this presumes that they are filthy as they are, and only the teacher can clean them, and that this person is the best one to fill them back up because they are more divine.

this thread began with coyote sharing HIS OWN guidance, and mr yogi saying 'this is the wrong guidance'. THAT is abusive. it seems subtle, but it essentially communicates that he shouldn't trust himself.
(I, rather than trust themselves 'because they are not ready'.

A child is ready to learn how to trust themselves.

the insidious nature, is that once someone has been 'cleared' in this way, they feel very clearly that they should help others 'clear' in the same fasion. they see the ego game they were subjected to everywhere.

There is some medicine in this, and a lot of misuse. for some people, it may be the best medicine. but it is not designed to elevate everyone. I really want to make that clear. yogi maden even said it, he's only searching for the select few..., (despite having 34534r friends). these few are 'elevated' in a paradigm that needs peons. that is what happened in India.

I am grateful, deeply grateful, for the gifts of yoga. and I'm also aware that it has been, for millenia, an elite practice of a caste system that KEPT the lower classes down, at all costs. they were not allowed to be anything other than the lower classes, by birth. and they played the role of feeding the upper classes their spiritual energy.

as the practices comes to america, we have the opportunity to be part of a transformation, where their wisdoms and gifts of learning to feel, to balance, to breathe, and to explore both physically and spiritually are freed to the world, and we discard the klipatch, the husk, the patterns of dominance that were perhaps necessary to keep the fire burning through ages where culture could not afford to support many people who didn't work to create shelter and food.... but are not relevant to our present age.

Now is different. we are more in touch with our eternal selves. we can draw on ancient wisdom easily and naturally. most of us are highly literate, and we have it available to create a world without war.

we begin, by removing the need to dominate each other. knowledge is never more important than love.

learn, accept teachers. but do not surrender personal divine guidance as the ultimate root. teachers are part of divinity, and each of us is always divine.

the same balance on excess, the same stability that highly revered teachers provide, can be replaced by something much more dynamic and fun. spiriutal collaboration. we balance eeach other.

thje only prerequisite for participating at the lowest and highest levels, is that we honor and respect the divinity already present in everyone. no level of consciousness can be embodied that exempts any of us from being humbled by a child, or a bird.