Indigenous hero worship or respected teacher?

We have all been there haven’t we, where there is someone we admire, whether we have met them in person or they are a more of a distant celebrity type figure, and we just feel excited about everything they do and say! Well, a lot of that also happens in the spiritual and shamanic circles, whether the person invites it, indulges it or ignores it.

Recently I went to a ceremonial retreat held by a South American medicine man who has been running events here in the UK for several years. The experience was overall really beautiful and I received what I needed from the retreat. But there was something that I wasn’t expecting to notice, and perhaps it has always been there, as I went to one of his retreats many years ago. And perhaps it is because during these years I have done a lot of work around my cultural identity that I notice things I did not notice before. Or perhaps it is where I am on my own solitary practitioner path or perhaps it is the viewpoint of being in perimenopause. (Well, it seems I making a lot of excuses for what I am about to say.)

What I noticed first and foremost was the lack of understanding of the different cultures in the room i.e. only me. During one particular discussion the group of twenty people were addressed in a way that only acknowledged the English people in the space. A quiet lack of acknowledgment that I should be used to by now, but still surprises me in shamanic spaces, and I undoubtedly know that this was due to a absence of awareness about diversity and inclusion in England or the UK. It was also clear to me that a few of my insights about my own journey were probably a little confronting for this medicine man, as they challenged cultural dynamics due to my own background of being a first generation UK born Punjabi Sikh woman.

But the point I am really trying to get to, is what surprised me the most, was the hero worship. The over laughing at jokes, the assumption that everything shared was a prayer and some deep insightful wisdom, and the continual praising of how good or amazing he was. Yet I saw something different. I saw someone who looked tired from the travel and holding space through the night. I saw someone who stayed away from the group at every meal time to get some peace. I saw someone who expected everyone to trust whatever he offered without explanation.

I saw someone who was positively human.

I really don’t have anything bad to say about him or his work, but the experience left me wondering - is it me? or is it them? We all know the them and us thinking is what separates us from each other, however a massive theme of the retreat for me was how I walk my own path - different to everyone else, and to accept and embrace my differences with deep love. But I couldn’t help wondering why I didn’t feel the same hero worship as everyone else.

I have touched on this subject in different ways on my other blog posts, but I really do think some of it comes down to the unconscious colonial attitude - flipping from one extreme of someone being less because they are different to the other extreme of exoticism. Do all medicine men and women from South America deserve the title of respected teacher? Or perhaps more poignantly, if that person was English, would we give them the same level of respect?

I think the reality is no, we would not.

Hero worship, especially because of your ethnicity, is dangerous territory particularly in healing spaces. Maybe I am biased in some way. Most of my family are from a different country so there isn’t the same novelty for me, if anything I am a little wary. I am also a little longer in the tooth as a practitioner, so I have had the experience of every teacher I have ever had falling hard off any pedestal I ever chose to put them on. My first mentor lavished being on the pedestal and it hurt like hell for us both when they fell off. Others encouraged it, enjoyed it, never wanted, asked or even knew of it. But it taught me we are all human, even our most respected teachers will show you their flaws.

The best teachers will honour and own their flaws. They will make space for you, hear you out, honour your thoughts and feelings, and respond with kindness. Those are my favourite kind of teachers, and the ones that will always have my respect.