Genograms, Gurus, and Grateful Dead: My Quest for a Teacher Who Didn’t Demand My Soul
By Jennifer Finch, M.A., LPC, SEP, NCC
November 7, 2024
Graduate school handed me a genogram. Lenny Kravitz’s cover of American Woman had just hit the airwaves, giving me a cultural timestamp for where I was on my journey. It was a moment that marked a certain era, a soundtrack of grit, rebellion, and, oddly enough, a fitting theme for the questioning and boundary-pushing I was immersed in.
The assignment was to make a family tree with a sprinkle of Freudian analysis. It quickly depicted the twisted, relational, chaotic hand-me-downs from the generations that came before. Alarmingly, it clearly shows history repeats itself. Even if unconsciously. Face slap emoji.
If I’d known this simple exercise would map out my life’s work, not just my family’s neuroses but a sprawling spiritual path, I might have treated it with more reverence. Instead, it felt like a novelty, a peek at intergenerational karma. But that quirky psychological family tree was a quiet, unsuspecting seed. I am confident the seed was planted long before that genogram task was assigned, but it was a pivotal moment when my deep search for psychological understanding turned spiritual. Psychology’s limits quickly became apparent when it came to explaining the dynamics of my family. If it could genuinely account for everything, we’d probably all be institutionalized—or, at the very least, medicated. But here we are: alive, seeking, questioning, and living with as much compassion and love as we can muster. We’re proof that not everything can be boxed in, neatly categorized, medicated, or even comprehensibly understood.
As a kid, I always colored outside the lines. So, this assignment to chart my ancestors was the ultimate cosmic invitation, a provocation even, to seek understanding beyond any diagnostic label, to find answers that no textbook could give me. “Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here?” are questions that stretch beyond the branches of a family tree and, quite frankly, cannot be mapped.
It was the beginning of a spiritual path that would meander through Buddhism, Christian Mystics, Zen, Advaita Vedanta, Tantric, Vajrayana, Tibetan Mahayana, Yogic Kundalini, etc. etc... It all connected to a web of progressing psychological frameworks that held philosophy and vague religion within a boundary of thought. My left brain appreciated that container. Bowen’s Theory, trauma work, Gestalt, Eriksonian stages, Maslow’s Hierarchy, and the depths of Jungian Consciousness all reasoned and rationalized an opening within that was worth it. I also felt an undeniable urge to hoard every discovery about the quantum realm, consciousness, the brain, and even the Darwinian origin story of how we became human. My insatiable and endless curiosity about how our nervous systems evolved to navigate this strange, beautiful world was never-ending. And I was exhausted, burning out faster than a cheap candle. Science kept evolving at warp speed, theories and discoveries piling up like I was supposed to keep up without losing my sanity. All I wanted was a nap. Or to read fiction!
Meanwhile, the religious world was splitting at the seams, with political divides canyoning through once-solid chapels and cults getting their dark underbellies exposed in Netflix documentaries. Every path promised wholeness but seemed more like a crash course in hypocrisy.
Then came the Instagram influencers—young, glowing, claiming to be on mystical quests, dripping in enlightenment filters. Meanwhile, I watched my clients end up in the ER with a diagnosis of hyperemesis and situational psychosis after a weekend ayahuasca “retreat” led by “Mary,” certified last Tuesday as a “spiritual guide” and reborn as a self-proclaimed “witch.” If this says anything, it’s that we’re all out here trying, doing anything (no matter how absurd) to find that elusive “it”—anything, that is, except facing our own souls, as Carl Jung would dare us to do.
I ventured down countless paths. I sat before many gurus. I learned from many teachers, psychological and spiritual. I followed the Grateful Dead. I read Nietzsche. And then abandoned it all upon learning “God is dead.” Only to return to my fool’s journey a day later. Laughing that he was right, “that which does not kill us makes us stronger.” I could hear him whisper in my ear, “Become who you are.” An urging to embrace my individuality, to become a mature, differentiated Self, and to develop myself fully, rather than conforming to social, spiritual, or some other guru or teacher’s expectations. Nietzsche was right in a lot of ways, and I adopted with full conviction that true fulfillment comes from realizing my own potential and living authentically.
Nearly every spiritual path I’d explored up to that illuminating moment when I realized I needed to feel both separate and connected AT THE SAME TIME, had felt like being forced through the sieve of a teacher’s frame of reference. “Lose your separateness, eradicate your ego, dissolve into the oneness,” they chanted. Yet everything in me, everything in my life experience, everything Murray Bowen, and ironically, Nietzsche, had drilled into my bones, whispered, This isn’t for you. This was not my path. Joining the hive mind, losing my individuality in some ethereal groupthink, felt less like enlightenment and more like an existential erasure.
I had my own points of understanding and my own perspectives that often came in direct conflict with the teachers. And I couldn’t reconcile how my experience could be “wrong” simply because it differed. Why couldn’t we both be right? Yet, there was rarely room for two minds; instead, it demanded one mind. Guess who’s?
Murray Bowen, a string of real role models, some fantastic teachers, and my strong bad-ass mom had taught me early on to hold onto my psychological shape, to stand confidently differentiated. To speak my own voice, to feel my own power. And Buddha had taught me to be responsible for my own mind. The straw and camel arrived when I had to tell one cringe guru to literally get out of it.
The fantasy of some ultimate fusion, where we all merge into one uniform way of thinking (the gurus, the teachers, the academic institutions) began to feel grotesque, a mesmerizing illusion that seemed to captivate sycophants yet left me cold—and running in the opposite direction.
So, I put my backpack on and set out in search of a path, a guide, a teacher who doesn’t mansplain their perspective as the one and only truth. I needed a teacher with open arms, someone who offered wisdom but left space for my own experience to shape it, and someone who honored my journey, limitations, and flaws as essential to my path. I needed to hold on to my separateness and my uniqueness.
True guidance doesn’t confine or dictate; it invites discovery, questions, and the winding road of becoming. There is room for YOU to become more of YOU. There is nothing performance-based to reach some higher spiritual level. You don’t need more “likes” or to be verified to get where we are all going. There are no transactional exchanges to receive love or permission to return to wholeness. There is just an uncovering and a revelation of who you already are. Already Whole. Unique. And Separate. While Also Being Deeply Connected to Everything. The One Substance. Separate + Oneness at the Same Time.
A genuine teacher doesn’t demand conformity but encourages a return to oneself, creating space for the quiet wisdom we’ve been seeking all along.
Looking back on my own long, winding journey, I see each step, each dead end, each flash of insight, each moment of hopelessness, each nihilistic vision of pointlessness, each glimpse of pure hope, of raw love, of warm-hearted tenderness, of believing in benevolence, and basic goodness, each moment where I was lost and found in a field dancing with daisies in my hair, and of course, every baffling step absent of insight and obscured awareness doing really dumb things, as all a part of what brought me here. Now, with a deep sense of wholeness and freedom to be fully myself, I can extend my hand to others on their OWN paths, not to steer them but to support them as they find their way. I understand the questions, the detours, the desire to find a teacher or a guide who truly sees you.
Because, in the end, the journey to wholeness isn’t about seeking answers from someone else; it’s about discovering the wisdom that’s been within us all along.
So, how does one find a true spiritual teacher? Seek someone who guides without forcing, who invites curiosity rather than conformity. Look for a teacher who respects your individuality, who doesn’t demand you abandon yourself to fit a mold or squish the Self or eradicate your ego and become nothingness to discover oneness. Instead, I would recommend finding someone who encourages you to deepen your connection to who you already are.
A true spiritual teacher will hold the space for your journey, your questions, and even your doubts. They’ll recognize that the real path isn’t about following in their footsteps but about discovering your own. In the end, a true teacher points you back to yourself, reminding you that the wisdom you seek has always been within you, waiting to be recognized.
Be Here. And Be Now.
Jen
