Jesse Cooper Levy:
It's funny, because I've had occasions where I've walked and talked with David for hours on end, then periods of no interaction. Can't tell if he's testing me or is so consumed in his practice he isn't responding. It's unpredictable, but it isn't cruel.
His work is also confusing because, like, it's kabbalah. It is clear, however, that it's heavily focused on realization.
My first spiritual "teacher" was an Old-Catholic priest (Latin rite), a few years older than I, who was clairvoyant and a metaphysician (and your relationship with David sounds very similar to the one I had with my "teacher"). It took me a few years to get over him, but get over him I finally did. He seemed sincere and honest all the way up until the end when I began to see him for what he truly was.
Sometimes experience is a better teacher than so-called "spiritual traditions," as it helps to clear the mind with actual first hand experience about what is important and what is not. You can tend to learn quicker when placed in the middle of a fire than when you just sit observing from the sidelines.
If you're still enthralled with this man, keep seeing him and watch where he takes you. You'll be in for a journey, to be sure. Maybe it's what you need; I don't know. I don't know you or your situation based on one forum post.
What I
do know is that, based on my experience with the "teacher" I had, he did, when I was able to look back on the experience with equanimity, teach me things that I needed to learn at the time, even though some of the lessons were painful. But I also learned that the experience need not have been so painful if he had just been truthful and honest with me (which he wasn't always).
I don't recommend that people learn in this way, but some of us are just stubborn and won't have it any other way! Not until we get the s**t kicked out of us will we come to our senses about what is happening. It can all seem perfectly justified as we are undergoing the process (meaning that we can justify it in our own minds because it seems we are making some kind of progress toward our personal goal).
But, when we stop to step back and take a cold, hard look at what has happened, another picture begins to unfold, and if we are honest with ourselves and what we have done and our intentions and such, we begin to see that some of this s**t need not have occurred! We might also begin to see that the person we were so impressed by in the beginning, is blind to his own shortcomings, and is passing along to us these same shortcomings! At least that's what occurred in my case, and why I ended up leaving this man's presence and seeking someone with more integrity.
I found that someone in the recorded discourses of Gotama and in his practice of the Noble Eightfold Path.
Have you read the Kalama Sutta yet? If so, what were your impressions?
Jesse Cooper Levy:
My guess is that I'm somewhere past the A & P, in the dark night. Not crazy anxious to get out, but anxious to begin working well with a practice or tradition, rather than the muddy, nambi-pambi practice I've got going on now.
This is something your own personal
kamma (karma) will eventually sort out. Either you'll continue in the direction you are traveling, or you'll get tired of it and try something new that you have come to have faith in. Either way, you're in for a journey.