4 Red Flags I've Seen in Spiritual Teachers (After 15 Years on the Path)

I have spent more than 15 years on the spiritual path. I have been to many teachers, attended retreats, followed people online, sat in their meetings and been in some communities. Over that time I have watched some teachers go wrong, and the failures tend to follow a pattern. These are the red flags I have learned to watch for. They are mine, drawn from experience rather than theory.

1. Allowing themselves to become special

This is the first and most important one, and it is subtle.

It is a teacher who allows themselves to be seen as special. Who lets followers project greatness onto them, and instead of actively correcting that, quietly participates in it. The signal is a teacher who positions themselves as not normal, not human, somehow above you.

Here is why this is such a problem. When you go deep into realization, into states of no-self, nonduality, or whatever you want to call them, what you discover is the nature of what you truly are. You are not just the body and mind. You are reality, or source, or the absolute. But this is not personal. It is not that you are reality and the other person is not. The other person is too. Realizing your true nature does not make you special, precisely because it is everyone's true nature. There is no special person, because underneath there is no separate person at all, only source.

I have seen this go wrong with teachers I followed. Several have built up accusations of misconduct over the years. Some of those accusations may not be true. But a common thread is that these teachers allowed themselves to become special in the eyes of their followers, in how they treated themselves and in how they let others place them on a pedestal. Followers will project this onto you. As a teacher, however difficult it is, it is your job to actively correct it.

2. Only the light, never the shadow

The second red flag concerns the teaching itself. It is a teacher who only promotes self-realization, and never any work on conditioning, trauma, shadow, or limiting beliefs.

This is spiritual bypassing. Liberation is liberation from suffering, and that means two things have to happen together. On one hand, self-recognition as source. On the other hand, dealing with your baggage, the material you carry, sometimes for generations. Both matter.

You see the problem clearly in teachers who have a high level of realization but whose conditioning still leaks out in very ordinary, human ways.

This is exactly why it matters for a teacher to see themselves as normal. When they do not, the unexamined conditioning tends to express itself as wanting big cars, or sleeping with many followers, or other very human tendencies running unchecked. A teacher who only points at the divine and never at the human work is inviting people into spiritual bypass, and that does not lead to the end of suffering.

3. Only the shadow, never the light

The third red flag is the exact opposite of the second, and it is just as real.

It is a teacher who only focuses on shadow work and trauma work, and never on self-realization, self-recognition, or your inherent goodness. Endless healing.

Healing is genuinely valuable. It helps you release your own suffering and the suffering you create for others. But without a ground, it can become an endless healing loop, which is exhausting and can be harmful in its own way. I have experienced a spiritual burnout from doing too much shadow work without that ground.

The missing piece is this. A teacher needs to remind you that you are already good enough, already whole, already source, right now. From that wholeness, the parts of you that feel broken can be seen and healed. The healing happens from wholeness, not toward it. Without that, shadow work becomes a bottomless pit. With it, shadow work becomes beautiful.

4. Bypassing morality

The fourth is the most serious, and the most obvious to outsiders, though often invisible to those inside the community.

It is a teacher doing things you would never accept from another person, excused only because they are the teacher. Romantic manipulation, controlling people, sexual abuse, any kind of abuse. Somehow, because of who they are, people convince themselves it is acceptable.

It is not. It is usually just abuse. A teacher should be a shining example of trying to help you suffer less. If a teacher is actively causing suffering, that is deeply wrong, no matter how realized they appear to be.

The trap underneath all of them: the teacher is still human

There is a bonus trap that sits beneath the other four, and it is a hard one for many people to accept. Enlightenment, or these higher states, do not make you less human.

In traditional spirituality, in Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, there is an idea that these higher states create a kind of perfect human. In my own experience of these states, that is simply not true. I can still be unkind.

Am I much kinder than I used to be? Yes. Am I nicer to be around? Yes. But am I still human? Absolutely. I can still complain. I am a normal person.

The one real difference is that I no longer experience a self as the center of experience, and I have recognized that everything is source, that empty fullness realized throughout the body and mind. But seeing your true nature and working on your conditioning does not make you superhuman.

This is at the heart of what goes wrong between teachers and students. The student projects superhumanness onto the teacher. Some teachers handle this gracefully. Many simply accept it, and say yes, I am this superhuman. And if any part of the ego remains and claims that, you end up with an enormous spiritual ego that can spin completely out of control.

So if you are thinking about working with me, please do not imagine I am some superhuman. I am just a normal guy who meditated a lot, really enjoyed the process, navigated the pitfalls, and came out the other side in a good way. I still have a family. I can still be annoyed. I still have conversations with mentors who correct me and help me. I am only human.

To borrow from Sadhguru: the point is not that awakening makes you a superhuman. It is realizing that being human is already super.

The real lesson

The deeper truth behind all four red flags is that no single approach is complete. Just shadow work, just meditation, just surrender, just self-realization, none of these alone is the whole picture. A balanced path holds all of it. See yourself as normal. Do not put yourself on a pedestal, and do not let others put you there either. And if they do, gently correct them. The pedestal is almost always where the trouble begins.

I made a video walking through all of this, including the experiences behind each red flag. You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/TU1elMwdlc0?si=XNX8VkZlGBsq531M

Much love to you wherever you are,

Kees.