Grieving the Teacher - Spiritual Rape, Betrayal, and the Mirror of Healing

Two decades ago, a teacher entered my life who changed me forever. Through his words, his presence, and the truths he held, I found a doorway into the depths of myself and reality. He helped me awaken to a profound understanding of existence, of spirit, and of the divine order that connects us all.

For this, I carry an immense gratitude that feels woven into my bones. He was not just a teacher—he was a catalyst, a mirror for the best parts of me that were waiting to emerge.

But what happens when a teacher becomes unrecognizable? When the light they once shared is consumed by shadow?

In recent years, this same man—once a mirror to my highest truths—has become a vessel for hatred. His words now spew violence, disconnection, and narratives so twisted they feel like an affront to the very fabric of reality. Watching him descend into this darkness has been like witnessing a star collapse: incomprehensible, painful, and terrifying.

It’s easy to condemn him. To cast him aside and write off his fall as another tragic tale of someone consumed by their own shadows. And yet, that’s not what breaks me. What breaks me is the mirror.

What is he reflecting in me that still holds power? What blind spot of mine is he showing me? For his actions—detached as they are from love, from reality, from the teachings he once embodied—still cause me such profound sadness and hurt. I feel their sting because somewhere, a part of me recognizes them.

This recognition is agonizing. It points to my own distrust, my own cracks in the foundation. Watching his words ripple through a small but influential circle of thinkers stirs a quiet fear in me. It unsettles my certainty that the divine plan will hold—that truth will always prevail. It shines a light on the places within me where I, too, still waver in trust.

And there is another layer to this wound, one that feels unspeakable and yet demands to be spoken: the violation. What I feel is not just betrayal; it is a kind of psychic abuse, a spiritual rape. To hold the sacred power of teaching—to awaken souls, to guide them toward truth—and then to turn that power toward hatred is an offense so deep it reverberates through the soul.

This betrayal leaves scars not on the body, but on the spirit. It twists something holy into something vile.

I name this not to dramatize, but to make clear what has been lost. It is a grieving, not just of the man he was, but of the part of myself he helped awaken. The light that he once held for me now feels tarnished.

And yet, even here, there is a teaching.

The fear his influence stirs in me—the fear that darkness can overtake truth—is showing me exactly where my faith still falters. It is inviting me to anchor myself more deeply in certainty. Because the divine plan is not threatened by shadows. No rhetoric, no distortion, no collapse can undo what is real.

In this way, perhaps his final teaching is unintentional. His unraveling has become my catalyst to strengthen my trust, to root myself so deeply in the divine that no storm, no betrayal, no falling star can shake me.

I write this not as someone who has reached the other side of this grief. I write this because grieving itself is a sacred process. It is a reckoning with what has been lost, a making sense of what remains. To grieve a teacher is to grieve the part of yourself they reflected—the part you now must hold on your own.

This pain reminds me of my humanness, of the fragile beauty of trust, and of the fierce responsibility we all carry to wield our gifts with integrity. To honor truth even when it’s inconvenient, to align with love even when shadows tempt us.

I don’t yet know what this grief will teach me in full. But I know this: no matter how far someone falls, they cannot take truth with them. What they once gave, if it was real, still remains.

And in that knowing, I begin to reclaim what was never theirs to destroy.

This is my grief. This is my healing. And this is my trust—strengthened, though it was forged in fire.