Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is this:

I really appreciate Andrew Cohen. I really appreciate everything he has done to bring conversations to the table. I really appreciate the magazine he founded and the organization he leads, EnlightenNext. I really appreciate all the students and practitioners I have met, via the magazine, a two-day course I took last October and a women's retreat I attended last November.

While I really appreciate him as a human being and a leader and can appreciate everything he has done (although, I have to admit right here, I'm not a fan of his musicality - I believe the soundtrack of this video was laid down by the band in which he plays the drums - my somatic sensibilities just don't jive with the music, that's all) and continues to do, in the world, with other spiritual teachers and with his organization, I know this from the depths of my being:

I am not one of his students.

I am my own spiritual being on my own quest.

Having said that, for the record, I feel my own liberation from the guru-filled world in which I find myself.

I believe that gurus are very important for the countless multitudes who desire a shepherd to help guide them back to their own paths. I believe that gurus serve a purpose, they shed light in the darkness, they instruct and enlighten and cajole and chastise. I believe that many human beings want and need them.

And yet... I feel that, in this world where history tends to be written as a collection of the biographies of "great" men and women who have lived and led, this guru-filled world in which I live troubles me...

The question my heart screams is:
"When will people stop trying to walk in the footsteps of Jesus the Christ and/or the Gautama Buddha?!!"

To me, Andrew Cohen seems to be saying the same thing... and he seems, also, to have settled into a groove that this world has created and supported since time immemorial... as the head of a flock...

I don't believe this to be a fault of his, necessarily... it just seems to me to be a fault of our Collective (Un)Conscious... What to do? What to do?

When do your students graduate Andrew/Deepak/(plug in the guru of your choice)?
Students: when do YOU decide that YOU have graduated? When do you MOVE ON without a Teacher??