The other day I googled and read something and was fairly troubled. If you place someone on a pedestal, admire their spiritual accomplishments, read and savor their words with patience and respect—and then learn something to the contrary, a blemish, a major character fault—it is upsetting, disconcerting to say the least.

No smoke without fire. If that makes me a nasty bitch, so be it.

And like Caesar’s wife, I expect someone to be purer than driven snow.

You may have once held my respect. Once.

But I’m afraid I don’t give away my discrimination. I will not. Not this or any other lifetime.

There was so much that one had conquered, so much merit that one had earned, why would someone operating on a presumably higher plane throw it all away for mortal ties? Biology? 

But at a stage as advanced, and a path as arduous but known since several centuries to be demanding—have the baser instincts not been burnt out, conquered to a meaningless state long long ago? Isnt this basic?

Is my filter wrong, am I judging too harshly, and who am I to judge?

If this is true and not the handiwork of a posse of deranged women, what else is true, and what is not true?

Why would someone throw away the earning of several lifetimes?

I’m calmer after watching the forest yesterday, the play of light and the cycle of destruction and new life.

The take home?

Better recognition of the pitfalls.

An increased sense of wariness.

A refusal to be “influenced” blindly—if this is ego, so be it.

Let me remember, even the sage Vishwamitra had been waylaid.