Outgrowing a Guru: Advice for When the Teacher Disappears

A reader writes to Gina about the disillusionment of outgrowing a guru — the life coach who once brought comfort now feels hollow, and rumors of corruption make it worse. Gina responds with Lao Tzu, Howard Thurman, and an invitation to step into your own personal sovereignty.

Dear Gina,  

During the pandemic, I discovered a life coach online. They offered helpful guidance when I was afraid of what the future would look like. The coach is very charismatic and accomplished in their field. I read all their posts, watched videos, listened to podcasts, and attended live online training sessions. Eventually, I became a member of their program, which is a monthly subscription in addition to workshop fees.  

I got a lot out of it for the first few years, but now, some of the coach’s advice doesn’t ring true anymore. Like, I don’t see how it applies when everything is in chaos? Then, I found out that this teacher is connected to some corrupt business deals, and that they treat their employees poorly. If the rumors are true, I don’t want to even be connected with them.

It makes me doubt everything about their program, and I’m angry because I invested money that I could have used on other things. I’ve cancelled the membership and unsubscribed to all their emails and social media. But I feel like I’ve been duped. How can I get back to feeling good about my life? 

Signed, 

Guru Got Me Down 

Dear Down One, 

Oh I remember the pandemic days! The world turned upside down. We’ve tried to get back to “normal,” but it’s a new normal. I understand how a charismatic and accomplished expert would offer comfort in such a scary and uncertain time.

The pandemic was a major turning point. So many of the institutions that we counted on collapsed or were compromised, and we learned how uncertain the system is. Grief and fear come with that realization, for sure, but there’s also possibility. If we built that system, or our own life’s structure, couldn’t we create something else?

Outgrowing a Guru

A life coach can be just the person to help us envision what we want to create, map out the steps toward that goal, and help us celebrate accomplishments along the way. They can be so inspiring, too! Often a life coach or spiritual teacher will say exactly what I need to hear at the exact moment I need to hear it. That kind of synchronicity resonates deeply and brings with it a desire to connect to that person and what they have to offer. Try not, in hindsight, to judge yourself for following what helped you make sense of your circumstances.  

Crisis and Transition

In Chinese, the word for crisis is 危机 (weiji) — one character meaning “danger,” the other meaning a “crucial turning point.” Not “opportunity,” as some popular Western mistranslations would have it, but something more precise: a moment where everything hangs in the balance, and what you do next determines the direction.

The coach came to you at an important passage in your life during the pandemic. It’s such good news that you embraced that time of crisis to explore your personal growth and development – and the coach, for a season, helped you do exactly that.

Now, there is a crisis of disillusionment, and you have that same power here too. It may be that the reason their guidance no longer resonates with you is that they are still working from a pre-pandemic model. What we need are new models and visions for the future as we continue to witness the fragility of our systems.

Learning and Graduation

And, perhaps you may have simply outgrown this teacher. Ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu has been credited with saying,

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. When the student is truly ready, the teacher will disappear.”

It’s perhaps unrealistic to expect any one individual to always be our teacher, to think they could grow “ahead of us” in such a way as to stay on pace with our own progress. While we look for guidance from wisdom figures, it’s also a natural cycle of learning and growth to expect that our teachers will one day disappear. Even our most highly-regarded gurus aren’t meant to be a destination – only part of the path.

Take What Resonates, Leave the Rest

There’s an old proverb: Never meet your heroes. I hate to say that it’s part of our human experience, but often our heroes have personality traits or take actions that disappoint us. These rumored business dealings and managerial weaknesses of your coach are important to acknowledge.

But, they don’t necessarily negate the good you’ve taken from this coach’s material, or the ripple effect in the people the coach has influenced. A teaching found across Hebrew Scripture, the New Testament, and Hindu wisdom traditions speaks to the heart of the issue here.

We must be able to separate the chaff from the wheat – take what resonates, and release what doesn’t help you grow into your highest expression of self.

There are a lot of famous, esteemed people who are being revealed to be less than their public image. It’s so heartbreaking and disappointing. It’s the same grief we feel when a beloved family member seems suddenly unrecognizable — the dissonance between who we thought they were and what we’re seeing now.

But the pain also exposes another system to be reassessed: our tendency to place our hopes and aspirations in someone else and to not trust our own inner wisdom and the movements of our souls to guide us. Too often, we look outside ourselves for validation of our life’s path. This reset we’re in is breaking open the pattern of turning our own power over to an expert or authority.

Claiming Your Own Inner Wisdom and Personal Sovereignty

In the midst of your disappointment and feeling duped is an opening. You’ve already done the hardest part — you trusted yourself enough take the first step – to cancel the membership and reclaim the cash that was flowing into the coach’s coffers! That’s not a small thing. That’s the first act of stepping into a deeper sense of personal sovereignty.

Sure, another teacher may find you some time in the future. But right now, you are the student who is “truly ready.” This is a moment where you get to glean the goodness from your experience and point it toward a new phase of life that resonates with you even more meaningfully. This is a time to trust the wisdom you have gained and live more fully into the you that is becoming.

Dancer and choreographer Martha Graham wrote:

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”

You spent years studying someone else’s teachings, and integrating them into your life. Now you get to build on that, making it your own and sharing what you’ve learned through your own unique expression.

What makes you come alive? What do you believe? What do you want to create? Howard Thurman, African-American author, theologian, civil rights leader, and mentor of Martin Luther King Jr., said:

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Showing up in the world in that resonance is exactly what we need right now, especially in this chaotic time. When old structures fall apart, we are witnessing a transformation unfolding in real time. What feels like destruction is also the beginning of creation.

A Time of Transformation

Sometimes it feels really hard to witness all of the corruption, violence, and pain being revealed: the gap between who people seem to be and who they really are. But recognizing that gap is also a chance to stop outsourcing your truth, to be the antidote in your own life: someone who trusts their inner wisdom, shares their own framework, and shows up fully alive. And when more of us can step into being that kind of someone, there are more of us envisioning and building a world where human beings and all of creation thrive – together.  

Love,  

Gina