Olaf

@Natasha Tori Maru hahaha exactly I couldn't have described it better, also he resonates with typical stage orange stuff like all the suits, wealth, cigars and young girls around him, how much stage orange can you get.. secretly he probably hates anyone and anything spiritual because he talks to people as if he is disgusted by them, telling them to start being normal and put on Deo and not to listen to their gremlin ego as he calls it. Belittling everyone except himself.

@Wilhelm44 At this rate I wouldn´t be suprised if some weird stuff came out about them too, I don´t think the guru and student dynamic is healthy at the end of the day. It should probably be more like between you and God instead of some preacher. Basically the preacher makes you dogmatic, believing whatever he or she says, just like a religion or putting the bible before God. I just listen to regular meditations and have my own meditation practices for almost a year now, instead of all these gurus that I used to listen to for years, because I realised how it makes you dogmatic and also my intuition felt something was off about it, which has now been proven right.

@Jordan of the Shire Thank you for elaborating.

@Leo Gura I had to listen twice, because I couldn´t believe what I heard.

@Wilhelm44 because having sex especially the first time with someone shouldn´t be a rape roleplay in my opinion and besides saying a rape roleplay makes it seem like he is not raping her, he is just doing a roleplay, so its `fine`. Not to forget she didn´t say they had any chemistry before, no romance, kissing or anything. Going from no romance to directly rape roleplay is very off, if thats not rape, its something very close to it and Bentinho might have done it in this way to make it look like its in this grey area, if he would ever get accused by it afterwards.

@Wilhelm44 I don't work in the law, to me its rape, but what happens in court I have no clue, I am not an expert in that field.

@Jordan of the Shire I am not too familiar with Qi energy, but it sounds interesting.

@Zen LaCroix yes this is a big problem, they deny sex, because they want to look holy in the public, when they are just a human with needs. The problem comes with putting yourself on a pedestal and others putting you on a pedestal, if you don't remain somewhat human, you will supress and then it comes out in fucked up ways like this.

@Wilhelm44 sure you can argue if they are victims or not, as they joined the inner circle voluntarily, but girls trust other girls. If you hear the story, he had empowering girls (Cory Katuna etc.) around him. Her intuition was already bad about Bentinho, but its the other girls that lure them in, that is the power of social proof, a crowd attracts a crowd and he designed it this way, because on his own he wouldn't be able to get these woman to join the inner circle. Men are leaders and girls are followers, sadly enough most men lead them to hell rather then somewhere nice. So this could happen to any woman in my opinion, not just Jade and therefor I would say they are more victim then voluntarily inflicting pain on themself. Now that woman in general fall for narcissists over other guys is a bigger problem that could be a whole topic on this forum itself.

@Natasha Tori Maru this is what I mean

@Osaid and even if you're enlightened your still human, enlightenment doesn't mean you're perfect. That is just marketing that is being used by gurus. There is no need for all this theater that surrounds a guru, but without it no one would probably listen, if the guru was seen as a normal human instead of a holy figure, people would instantly stop listening to the guru.

@Natasha Tori Maru and that is the last thing Bentinho wants, that is why he creates "the absolute", something beyond enlightenment, to make people feel inferior even if they have had some awakening, so they keep wanting to achieve a state of "the absolute", making you chase forever like a rat in a hamster wheel reaching for the absolute lol.

@Leo Gura yes he is immature and narcissistic at the very least

@Leo Gura I would like to see you make a video about Bentinho one day, I think it would be interesting

@Wilhelm44 I have been following his teachings for a long while, I have seen people come and go and most people aren´t speaking out, because of the NDA signed. For example Allison never spoke out and I even tried to dm her asking whats up with the whole Bentinho situation, but most of the people that left kept silent. Also Jocelyne is kind of moving on in silence around all of this. She commented on this youtube video and when you look at the comment section, you see how she wants this to be removed from the internet as it was a painful period for her. She seems to have moved on. Neither is she taking part of this insta@guru serie. I think that its quite obvious that Bentinho is doing some weird stuff, even if he had an awakening, he is then a zen devil or he is just straight up a psychopath. I have seen too many of his videos that I can tell you there is atleast something very very off with him, listen to one of his videos and listen how he talks with so much arrogance and almost like he looks down on you when he is talking, he belittles people, interupts them, shout at them, makes fun of them and you could say "belittling peoples ego", but even if that was the case, we are still ego, we are still human, that doesn't mean we have to withstand his endless commentary in the name of spirituality. Like your just a stupid student and he is the holier then thou guru. And as many popes, priests etc. who have portrayed themself as holier then thou, have done behind the scenes allot of weird stuff, due to all of this suppression. Now things coming out about Deepak aswell, makes me not trust any of these gurus. You got to rely on your own path and not be too dependent on teachers, as they are flawed, just as every human is flawed. Also makes you rethink the real value of enlightenment teachings, because there are allot of issues with learning and especially teaching nonduality, its a topic that needs to be treated very carefully with the realisation that there are endless ways this can do harm for both students and teachers. Starting with the supression of the human side and only thinking that consciousness matters, what easily leads to supression and then coming out in either the epstein files like Deepak Chopra or being a rapist like Bentinho, well, that is not really a role model if you think about it hahaha.

What I notice more and more is that positivity is more important then almost anything, high energy (aka positive or really optimistic) to me almost comes a bit unnatural. From myself I am not really super optimistic or positive, more "realistic" what in another word is to be a bit of a grumpy guy. Hahaha. I have been surrounded lately with allot of positive people and I see how it works for them really well. I see how its not per say "the techniques" that make something work, lets say your the best singer, you have a very good technique, that doesn't mean you are good at presenting it well. Presentation stands apart from technique and you could say presentation what others might call marketing is a technique on itself, but I would ask you what about the energy? Can you call energy a technique? Its kind of hard to fake being positive, not only cause it comes off as robotic and incongruent when its unnatural, but because your just covering your negativity behind a smile. So what I am learning is to be congruently more optimistic and positive as there is endless of things to complain about, but that is only holding me back from positive momentum. Therefor I feel success is not even action, because if you act from a place that isn't positive you might get some results, but not the best possible results. Surely being too focused on the outcome is also not good, that is desperation, so its all a fine balance. But if you care a little bit, about the result, then I think becoming more positive, what in other words means, becoming less negative, less complaining or any negative talk, reducing that more and more. Surrounding yourself with positive people aswell and you will adopt a more positive mindset what will yield more positive results. Now especially when in your work there is allot of socialising necessary or even when its just making content what is basically a big performance, then your negativitiy will make it hard to grow, to consider being actually a positive force, you will realise that people will be drawn to you like the sun. On the other hand if your extremely toxic, sure, you might get people to join in on your toxicity, but I don't think that is something I want to promote, there is already enough dark stuff that gets promoted, I don't feel it would be any good for the world to promote even more of that. So for a guy who is more realistic then optimistic, I would try out for a month to just be super positive and see how it works out, like don't fake it, as that is incongruent and people pick up on it directly, but genuinely try to be more positive what is simply to be less negative, if anyone does this experiment I would like to hear there results in a month, I think it will help you allot. That was my 2 cents for the day for you guys, much love.

In history people demonised anything strange or weird, for example if you did anything out of the ordinairy, you would be a witch or magician and be hanged on a cross like Jesus or being killed in other ways. We always want to get rid of evil, but never do we want to have an honest look at what evil truely is and we definitely don´t want to see how we could be evil ourself. But evil or darkness is intrinsic to humans, we are all carrying a level of darkness, as we all are trying to survive and most of that happens unconsciously. We are not even aware how most of what we do directly corelates with our need to survive. Even something as simple as motivation, is helping you to stay motivated to keep living, to keep surviving, creating meaning for your life is another way to stay motivated and therefor to survive. Some people even put themself through pain, because it feeds them, they feed of the pain, look at how David Goggins gets all his motivation out of his pain, he is a true survivor, but is that really the goal? To be a survivor is directly correlated to darkness and evil, therefor truely good people cannot exist, I am not saying they don't exist at all, but we are talking probably about 0.000000000000000001% and even in them they still somewhere want to survive and there still are ego games being played in their own mind. So its more like 0% if we look at it very objectively So we are all evil. I had a woman coming up to me and she was a christian, now I am not a christian, but the way she said something to me hit me, she said "We are all sinners as we are born and are going to die, even I am not good, nobody is" I was like, wow, that is the first honest Christian I have heard in my life. She was really telling how she is bad aswell, what actually requires a great deal of reflection and honesty. Now that doesn't mean Christianity is the way or whatever, I was just impressed by her own development. So what is then the goal? The goal to become "enlightened" can't be it, because enlightened teachers carry evil, so to be enlightened is to still be evil by definition. Why are enlightened teachers still evil? Because they still try to survive, unconsciously or consciously so. For me the goal is becoming aware, aware of our own processes, our own devious mechanisms. Not to become perfect, just to become clear, perceptive and honest to atleast yourself. I feel this will bring the world to a higher place over any other teaching, to become aware of what is going on, in the end that is also the goal of meditation, is to be mindful, to be aware and that doesn't just mean abiding in awareness as an escape, but rather it means to be perceptive of your own mind/ego and survival mechanism, because the ego can make a trap out of awareness itself. what is being done by endless spiritual teachers whos goal isnt to become aware of our own processes that are ongoing, but instead to become or teach enlightenment. As we have to understand that till the day we die, this process of the ego will not end and an enlightened teacher could have as much ego if sometimes not even more ego then anyone else. This to me is real spirituality, something that isn't taught anywhere that I know of, because it would go against our survival.

The problem is that we never will be fully conscious as we never will be God unless we die, so the ego will hide and play games till our very death. If we really wanted to bow down to a guru, it should be a dead one, because the ones that are alive aren´t much more different then you. The ego is sneaky and sneaky sneak will find its way to justify any type of selfish behaviour. Now if you atleast know that is what your doing, then you are atleast honest with yourself, but I don´t think Bentinho even realises fully what he is doing, he must belief he is fully enlightened and that everything he says and does is the truth when in fact allot of what he says is distorted by his own ego, that ego is what we all have, but he might say, I don´t have ego, I am that I am, so everything is just coming out of this pure conscious state. He might be a full psycho or both awake and psycho, we will never know, but obviously the teacher is not who I want to become and I believe most of you don't want to become and thats not only for Bentinho, but all the other gurus aswell, the goal is not to become like Sadhguru either, the goal should be something different. What the goal should be exactly I am still figuring out, because its not really a goal probably, more like an ongoing process, but something that doesn't forget that we are still human aswell, because its so easy to forget you have an ego when you are into a spiritual phase and this can lead into many pitfalls allong the way. Even if you don't end up like Bentinho, you might end up equally fucked up in another way.

@Natasha Tori Maru yes and because its an ongoing process the teacher can never have fully arrived as we see in these videos of guru's being portrayed as if they have reached the end "enlightenment". But if they would lose all their money and followers, they would be begging on the floor next to the supermarket, because even tho they are God, they couldn't make money unless it was from their followers in the first place. What sounds more like a human issue then a God issue. So they must act this role of being holier then thou so they don't have to find another way to make a living. I think what your getting to is much more transparancy about it being a process, what actually is an intresting take. I would be curious how such a teaching would look like in practice. And it would be almost more like a christian thing where you are praying to God instead of creating the idea that you are God and therefor you never have to deal with these human things as you are "above" that. Or as Mooiji once answered to someone asking if he could do certain aura readings or energy stuff? He would answer "that is childsplay" again making you feel like its even stupid to ask a question, giving you the fault instead of being accountable and saying that you can't do that.

@Mellowmarsh especially when you are shouting at them about it. You should watch some of his clips where is he literally shouting at anoter student on stage in the name of "reflection and love". Hmmm sure buddy.

@Natasha Tori Maru I think all of these are good, but then also there is the danger, like imagine you say "I am awareness" at some point these people really start to belief they are God, even tho your connected to God, doesn't mean now you can float or do and have powers that God have hehe. Like we can't even make the sun go up or down when we want, how much of God are we really? I am thinking about how to make it less into this idea of your either "awakened and one with God" or your just "human ego" what for me feels too harsh of a distinction, I think that we shouldn't walk around all day long, forgetting that we also have a human ego and only believing we are God, awareness, what could lead to disasterous things as we have seen with these guru's.

@Natasha Tori Maru so how do you think we should structure these teachings when they could easily be misused to get power and status and much more in the world? I think the next generation of teachers should have some form of human side to them, that makes them not be put on a pedestal like the gurus get done. I am intrested and open to hear what others think.

@Wilhelm44 yes and also if your at 18 already being put on a pedestal, your brain isn't fully developed yet till the age of 25, how mature can a teacher be at 18? Not to forget that there is a good possibility that he hasn't matured much since then as basically everything was handed to him at such a young age, followers, fame, money. He didn't needed to mature, because he never had to work for anything. Just like a kid doesn't have to mature, because their parents hand them everything they need.

@dharm4 yes he always had like outbursts that sounded more aggressive then passionate or loving, telling people it was for their higher good or a reflection of their higher self, now its coming out it was more like a way to not focus on his own flaws and be a way to distract the students from noticing anything fishy going on.

@Jodistrict I think they should be held accountable, because now they have a free pass and even tho I am all about becoming more conscious, that also means its an ongoing process and that therefor nobody should be put on a pedestal to the degree that these guru's have been. This is just a power game that makes the student feel inferior as he or she is not perfect and the guru seem to be perfect, while they hide behind the scenes and get their ugly side out in private. Like Bentinho or Deepak Chopra. I belief they have had some awakening experience, but that doesn't mean you will now be holier then thou, in fact, when you choose to be a guru, your choosing power over autenticity, because if you would be authentic and honest, you would tell them how you aren't perfect and are more or less the same as everyone else and not some super human as they sell themself to be.