The Shadow Of Departure
Spitting nails and deserving better
Some free time opened up this afternoon. I decided to use this to complete the diary entry I’ve been working on, my answer to the question raised in the comments of a previous post.
So here I am, cozy in my armchair, laptop on one knee, tea at my side. More than thirty minutes have passed, however, and I have not written a word. Instead, I’ve been thinking about Mrs. Mitchell.
Mrs. Mitchell was my Grade Seven teacher. She was nice enough, though goodness did we give her a run through our time together. So much so that every four or five weeks would see her standing at the front of the room, lips thinned and throat flushed scarlet, fisted hands shaking at her sides. “I am so angry,” she would tell us, “I could spit nails.”
This describes how I’m feeling right now.
Before sitting down to write, I checked my email. In addition to the usual donation requests, newsletter updates, and delivery notifications, I saw a few more people had subscribed to these Van Winkle Diaries over the past three days.
There were a bunch familiar names in this number: friends, peers, and acquaintances from my days in the Circle. Recognizing this, a subtle sense of gathering, of coming together flickered alive in me. A smile animated my features. My chest tingled with gentle warmth.
Then a sharp, stinging pain. A throbbing jaw, a tensed belly. Then fisted hands shaking in my lap and rage so white-hot I could spit nails. Because within that delightful sense of coming together, lay the shadow, the visceral memory of our coming apart.
Walter did not treat departed students well. Especially when those leaving had offered criticism of himself, his most characteristic response - after deafening silence - was one of attack. In forums both public and private, he would undermine any critique by attacking his former students’ capacity, commitment, and character.
In twenty years, I saw this happen many times. Over two decades in which I never once - never once - heard him compliment a departed follower, I witnessed this three-pronged attack strategy over and over and over again. A 2,300 word email distributed by Walter on February 6, 2020 is painfully representative of this tendency.
This was the first of two letters Walter shared in an attempt to explain why the Circle was dissolving. Prior to this, the only formal communication we had received regarding this development was a November 25, 2019 email from the new, Walter-appointed Board of Directors. This announced a “decision has been made to dissolve Dharma Ocean and to begin suspending operations immediately. Several factors have contributed to this decision, including financial challenges.”
Walter’s first community address after this declaration opens with a couple non-apologies, then reaffirms his longstanding hypothesis that most of the problems leading to dissolution originated with “only two angry folks”. While the flaws in this theory are many, I’m not going to address them here. If you’re interested, they are given some attention in an earlier Van Winkle entry.
With his general hypothesis stated once again, Walter then narrows the focus of the present email. He writes, “But this still leaves a critical question unanswered: why have so many otherwise well-intentioned students been swept along (by these two)? I have had this question myself. As I have thought about this question over the past year and a half, I would mention three principal factors.”
These “three principal factors” are the three forms of attack typically unleashed on departed students.
One of these questions the person’s capacity. The path is hard, we are told, and some people just cannot handle it. Here Walter expresses this tried and true formulation as follows: “The first and most critical factor is the very challenging...nature of our lineage...I have been told by some tantrikas that this turned out to be more difficult and demanding than they expected and that, in the end, it was something they no longer wanted...”
Another of Walter’s responses to student departure raises doubts about the person’s commitment to meditation and spirituality. His February 6 version of this reads: “In terms of the second factor, in recent years, there has developed a growing divide between those for whom the practice of meditation and the transmission of the lineage was the most important thing; and others, who were more interested in creating an ideal community...The attempt on the part of some to replace the priority from transmission of the lineage to creating an ideal community completely missed the most important thing. Eventually, these two very different visions...came into direct conflict.”
Finally, Walter will take aim at a former student’s character, casting them as psychologically underdeveloped and possessing glaring father-issues: “The third is a dynamic in the spiritual life noticed by Trungpa Rinpoche...This describes a moment in the journey when we begin to see holes in our previously idealized version of the teacher, the teachings, and the lineage. This can lead to shock, disappointment, and embarrassment. However…instead of simply owning that we ourselves created that ideal version and that we were hijacked by our own expectations, we begin to blame the teacher, the teachings, and the lineage for not living up to those expectations.”
These three strategies of attack undermine and isolate departed students. They undermine by asserting any problems identified by ex-followers - matters that may have led them to leave a community they once cherished - originate in their own deficiencies of capacity, commitment, and character.
They isolate by severing former students from those they are leaving behind. Walter’s attacks quickly create an in-group (those with the requisite qualities to successfully engage the journey) and out-group (those without). This happens so forcefully that departing students - instead of receiving thanks and gratitude, instead of having their unique brilliance acknowledged and celebrated, instead of having their perceptions heard and acted upon - tend to receive nothing but the clang of a door slammed shut as they depart the community they both loved and gave so much.
This all came rushing back to me a couple hours ago. Expecting to complete an in-process diary piece, then warmed by the sense of old friends gathering, I suddenly found myself immersed in stinging darkness. This was the shadow of departure enfolded within that delightful sensation of coming together. It was a shadow of attack and dismissal, distortion and isolation. It was a shadow that left me feeling just as Mrs. Mitchell had all those years ago: so angry I could spit nails.
Because we - every one of us - deserved better.