Editing Spiritual Teachers for Grammatical Honesty
Cancelling the “First Person Plural Omniscient”
This elegant experiment — and its haunting consequences — arose out of a conversation I had with my partner and a mutual friend (both psychotherapists) after the death of our late friend Michael Stone, a young Buddhism and yoga teacher who died suddenly of a fentanyl overdose, while struggling with mental health challenges.
At that time, we were all contemplating the paradox of how he had been so adept at speaking to and for the spiritual relief that he himself, in hindsight, so desperately needed. How was it, we asked, that he was able to speak in collective terms so compellingly, even as he was so alone.
Our friend remarked that they’d come to understand Michael’s content better was by listening to his podcasts and reading his books and replacing his use of the first-person plural with the first-person singular.
Here’s a brief example, from The Inner Tradition of Yoga.
When we let go of the continual construction of a self or even the need to be a “somebody,” then we are free to be who we are. When we are completely ourselves, we forget about needing to be the center of our perceptual world and thus we can take in others and our environment with greater sensitivity…
