Devotion without Delusion: A Final Word on Yogi Bhajan and other Gurus

Sat Nam, and Welcome in...

Yogi Bhajan's story just keeps getting told.

And retold.

And retold again.

The rise. The robes. The empire. The fall.

The abuses. The denials. The reckonings.

And the exhausted practitioners trying to hold paradox and practice in the same breath.

But at some point, we have to ask:

**When will we see this as a pattern in ourselves?**

The Pattern

We find someone who brings light.

We let the light blind us.

We ignore the shadows-ours and theirs.

We build pedestals.

We call the pedestal "devotion."

We call questioning "doubt."

We call silence "loyalty."

And by the time the truth cracks through, we're already invested in the myth.

So we retell the story.

Only now, it has an asterisk.

And somehow the myth survives anyway.

Why We Do It

It's not just Yogi Bhajan.

It's not just Osho.

Or Hegel.

Or Trungpa.

Or Bikram.

Or fill-in-the-blank philosopher, guru, revolutionary, or spiritual titan.

It's us.

We long for someone who knows more than we do.

We crave clarity in a world that's overwhelmingly complex.

We want guidance, certainty, answers.

**We want a parent.**

We want a north star so that we don't have to carry the burden of discernment every damn day.

We want someone to *know better* so that we don't have to wrestle with our own inner conflict.

We want relief from the radical responsibility of spiritual adulthood.

So we give our power away and call it faith.

We see their charisma as confirmation.

Their certainty as sanctity.

Their shadow? A test of our loyalty.

But Eventually...

The truth leaks out.

Always.

Someone speaks up.

Evidence mounts.

The whisper becomes a wave.

And now we're here:

Trying to square the practice that healed us

with the person who harmed others.

Trying to sort the eternal from the ego.

The sacred from the scandal.

This is the work.

What to Do Instead

Here's the radical shift:

We learn to:

- Bow, without kneeling.

- Listen, without surrendering our inner compass.

- Love the teaching, without becoming apologists for the teacher.

We stop outsourcing our divinity.

We stop trading our intuition for proximity.

We stop mistaking the vessel for the source.

We grieve what was lost.

What was betrayed.

What will never be as simple as we once believed.

And we teach others to notice the pattern early-

Not when the headlines hit,

But when the voice inside first whispers,

"Something here doesn't feel right."

Devotion Can Be Real

Let me be clear:

I'm not writing off devotion.

Devotion is a holy act.

It softens the armor.

It opens the heart.

It aligns us with something vast and tender and true.

But real devotion doesn't require delusion.

It doesn't ask us to lie to ourselves.

It doesn't protect egos at the expense of truth.

In fact, the most sacred devotion begins the moment we drop the fantasy.

Can We Handle Spiritual Leadership That's... Human?

What if we stopped pretending that spiritual teachers are beyond reproach?

What if we stopped needing our gurus to be gods?

What if we created spaces where accountability wasn't betrayal-

but the proof that the teachings are actually working?

What if spiritual leadership meant not perfection, but integration?

Not charisma, but clarity?

Not obedience, but discernment practiced in community?

No More Asterisks

When someone asks about your path-Kundalini, Zen, Tantra, Christianity, whatever-you shouldn't have to give them the history *with an asterisk*.

You shouldn't have to say:

• "The practice is beautiful... *but* the founder was problematic."

• "The teachings saved me... *but* we don't talk about the scandals."

You shouldn't have to explain away the abuse

just to validate your own healing.

You can love the practices,

honor your own experience,

and still hold the whole truth.

You don't have to whitewash the shadows to walk in the light.

We Are the Lineage Now

The age of silent complicity is over.

We are the ones tending the fire now.

We are the living lineage.

And we don't need to perpetuate the pattern in order to honor the past.

Let's tell the whole story.

Let's see the pattern.

And let's practice devotion that doesn't require delusion.

Because that's the teaching.

That's the integration.

That's the light that sees everything-and still loves.

Sat nam, and thanks for watching,

Andrea