Lori Lothian – It’s mid April, 2015, and I’m standing at the threshold of my home as spiritual teacher Igor Kufayev and his wife Emma pack their luggage and two children into a friend’s car for a week long trip to one of the islands near Vancouver. I can’t help but think they are escaping my house for a dose of outer peace (cause as you know, enlightened teachers have all the inner peace they need).

Their two weeks as my houseguests has been difficult this time round: Igor is in town to hold teaching events and to grow the local following I helped him start up a year before. The first visit to my home was a “summer of love” that lasted forty epic days. We affectionately dubbed my house “The Ashram.”

This second visit ten months later was to be “Ashram 2” but just like any sequel to a blockbuster film, the second round is never as satisfying.

This visit, I’m in the middle of my householder gig in crazy-ass chaos mode. My husband has been desperately unemployed for months and on the verge on financial wipe-out. The father of my children, my ex, has just come out of an eight week cerebral malaria coma. My teen daughter has come unravelled because of it, with failing grades, missed classes and a harrowing 3 A.M. ambulance to the hospital for alcohol overdose, replete with her ear-splitting, invective-rich shouting — all while the “holy family” as I liked to playfully call the Kufayev’s are trying to sleep in the guest room below.

Add to this tempest that I am in the middle of an intensive video training course so I can launch an online writing-coach business. And that very morning I’ve walked into my open car door, gashed my head, bled all over the place and am dizzy and nauseous. I am clearly concussed.

Still holding the band-aid in place on my throbbing head as the holy family races out the door to catch a ferry, I am confronted by my guru’s wife. Emma, who I consider my soul sister friend, says something to me like, “Why are you doing this online business B.S. What happened to you? Igor told you that you’re supposed to be a teacher.”

Her tone is a mix of pity, disappointment and her look is pure exasperation.

And in that very moment I don’t know a lot of things. I don’t know if this woman is really my friend or simply the devotee mouthpiece for her guru husband. I don’t know if I will have a scar from the gash near my eye. I don’t know if I will finish the video training course this week and I don’t know if Igor is really my teacher after all. Continue reading →