Central Lutheran Church - Elk River
Weekly sermons from our Central Lutheran Church preaching team plus quick reflections from Pastor Ryan Braley.
Real talk, ancient wisdom, and honest questions — all designed to help you learn, grow, and find encouragement when you need it most.
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Central Lutheran Church - Elk River
#98 - Kill Your Guru: The Journey from Dependency to Maturity {Reflections}
Growing pains aren't just physical – they're relational too. That moment when you realize someone doesn't need you the way they once did can be simultaneously heartbreaking and beautiful.
Ryan opens up about watching his 21-year-old son Logan transition from complete dependency to emerging independence. Where once Ryan was the source of food, wisdom, and guidance, now their relationship is evolving into something different – not less meaningful, but fundamentally transformed. This natural progression prompts an exploration of the philosophical concept "kill your guru" – not a literal instruction but a metaphor for the necessary evolution that happens when we've absorbed what our teachers have to offer and begin forging our own path.
Drawing from ancient rabbinical traditions where disciples would eventually question and wrestle with their teachers' wisdom, Ryan connects this pattern to his own role as a pastor. The true purpose of spiritual leadership isn't to create dependency but to remind everyone that they have direct access to spiritual truth without intermediaries. Like good therapists who work themselves out of a job, or mentors who equip their protégés to surpass them, the most successful guides are those who create the conditions for their students' independence. As Picasso advised: "Learn the rules as a professional so you can break them like an artist."
Whether you're experiencing this transition as a parent, mentor, or someone outgrowing a long-held dependency, there's both challenge and liberation in this evolution. Join us as we explore how to honor our guides while embracing the responsibility of forging our own way. Ready to discover what happens when hierarchies flatten and relationships transform? This conversation might give you permission to take that next step in your journey.
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what is up everybody? Welcome to our reflections podcast. Hey, this is ryan and I'm in the house today again with olivia. What's up, olivia? We just realized Olivia, we think she's mic'd up. So I said look, you got to be quiet because you're distracting me and you're going to be on the podcast. So I said don't move and don't breathe. Yeah, you guys will get a good sense of what I think is funny. Go ahead and laugh as much as you need to don't breathe, okay.
Speaker 1:So my oldest son, logan, he just he's about to turn, or he just turned 21 and I'm learning something about him. It's like he's 21 and he still will come to me for advice or for thoughts many times after the fact, but it's not like it was when he was like seven years old. You know, when he's seven, he, he relied on me for almost everything and even when he was younger than that, I mean I would make his food or maybe katie would as well, but we would make his food as his parents. We would give him advice, we'd teach him, instruct him. We were like his main source of knowledge and wisdom and insight if we had anything to give. But we were like his mentor, his spiritual guides, his advisors. We were like his gurus, you know.
Speaker 1:And it's interesting because I've noticed, and you're gonna, many of you who are older than I am are going to be like, yeah, duh, that's how it works. But now that I'm 45 and he's 21, he doesn't need me like he once used to need me. And it's hard because I'm like man, I'm his dad. I still want him to need me, but also I've realized, of course this is a great thing. I mean, if he still needed me, like he did when he was seven, then something wouldn't be right. If he was, you know, 21 years old and I'm making him his meals and he's living in the basement and he's not leaving, you know, of course, if he hadn't outgrown me in some of those ways, it would be a problem Like I would have done. I wouldn't have done my job, and so my job as his dad is to pour into him, to be his guide, his mentor, so so much that at some point he no longer needs me. And as a parent, it's heartbreaking, but it reminds me of this old phrase that comes out of the philosophical tradition, and the phrase goes like this. I love it. The phrase is kill your guru and the idea is that at some point in all of our lives we have to kill our guru. Now they don't mean literally like to go murder your guru with a gun or something like that, but at some point in all of our lives we have these people who pour into us, who are mentors, guides, gurus, psychologists, teachers, and the job, if it's done correctly, is they will pour so much into us that at one point, at one day, we might outgrow them. And that's a good thing.
Speaker 1:I think about the rabbis, the rabbis in ancient Judaism. They would gather disciples, little followers, the Talmudim they'd call them. They'd gather them around themselves, but at some point that little disciple would grow up and, after ingesting all the things he was to learn and ingest, he would begin to embody it and he would get older and he would eventually, like the disciples of Jesus did, he'd go out and gather his own disciples and he would sort of proliferate and sort of grow the thing and he would outgrow the rabbi. And at some point too, you could tell, because the rabbi and the disciple would begin to have argument and wrestling, and that was a good thing. They encouraged that you weren't supposed to always just ingest what the rabbi said, and as the you know, without ever questioning it, your job was to eventually, when you reached your maturity, you'd begin to question the rabbi and wrestle harder. And that was how you showed the rabbi that you were involved and engaged and that you were reaching your own level of spiritual maturity. And that was what they were supposed to do.
Speaker 1:And it reminds me of my own job. I'm a pastor, I'm an ordained minister, pastor, and in many ways what I do is I get up on a Sunday morning and there are many times and many, you know many Sunday mornings where folks will look to me as though I'm like the spiritual guide or mentor or guru in the room and like, hey, tell us all the answers and I get it. It's kind of the box that we've inherited and I did go to school for this stuff. But my job really, ultimately, as the pastor, is to remind everybody in the room hey, you don't need my permission to go on your own faith journey, you don't, and you don't need me to sort of talk to God, you don't need me at all. And so my job as the pastor is to remind them that they don't need a pastor, that at some point I hope they outgrow their dependency on me.
Speaker 1:Now, listen, I hope we can still have this, because what happens is me and Logan will still have a relationship together my oldest son, logan. We'll still hang out, we'll see each other, we'll banter, but he won't need me the way he once used to need me and he'll be able to be a part of the more collaborative more, more, you know, be more like a flat sort of structure, not really any kind of hierarchy any longer, and he'll be like like my, like a friend, and you know I'll always be his dad and I am, you know, 20 something years on, that more than he is, and so I might always have some things to offer because I'm just a bit ahead of him on the journey. But the relationship changes and so, same as it is with people here at Central, I hope, we always gather and we share relationship and fellowship and koinonia and we share each other's burdens and we pray for each other. But the dynamic of me being the guru I hope at some point they realize that they don't really need me for that any longer and that they have just as much access to God as I do and that they don't need my permission to do anything.
Speaker 1:Really it's like a psychologist when you go to therapy, a good therapist eventually will work himself or herself out of a job. You don't go to therapy forever If you did. There's something not right about that, whether it's some kind of codependency or I don't know what's going on there. But, like, the job of the therapist is to help you acquire the skills and the mindset and the patterns and habits to be able to do your life on your own without that therapist. It's the job is to work themselves out of a job. And I think about a lot of. You know, I figured I think it was Picasso once said. He said like this. He said hey, learn the rules as a professional so that you can then break them like an artist. And so maybe you're like a creative person and you like.
Speaker 1:When you first start out, you start taking, you start sampling from other people, and that's totally fine. We all do this Authors, pastors, musicians. You start to borrow from other people because you're just beginning, you don't really have like a whole collective of things yet, and so you borrow wisdom or insights or tracks or whatever from other people. But then at some point you begin to outgrow needing to do that and you start to make your own path in your own way, and you have your own vision for what you want to create and you contribute in a brand new and totally different way, and I love that. So, yeah, that's what I want to say.
Speaker 1:I want to say to you today hey, some of you might need to hear this morning or this afternoon or whatever time of day it is when you're hearing this you need to kill your guru, and again, you have to kill them literally, and it doesn't mean you have to stop being their friend or stop going to church or stop taking advice from your you know, your therapist. By no means. It just means that at some point you have to begin to let go of this dependency on that person, and that's part of your own maturity. You begin to question and wrestle and begin to realize, oh, I don't need that permission any longer, I can forge my own way, and you'll know when that time comes, just like Logan does and I could sense it as his.
Speaker 1:Now my job too, as the teacher, as the guru, as the dad, is to help him understand that and, when the timing is right, and to walk him through that, but as you, as a follower, as a disciple, you'll begin to know, you'll have this sense like I'm sort of outgrowing this, Not that you're better than this, not that you don't need it any longer, but, like you, just sort of maybe it's time for you to make your own path in your own way.
Speaker 1:And so today I'm giving you permission to do that and to outgrow some of those things you've been holding onto for so long and to take them off the pedestal and define and forge your own way and begin to collaborate and partner where there used to be hierarchy and to be a sort of a you know again sort of this sort of flatten the structure and to kill your gurus. All right, love you guys, peace. Hey, if you enjoy this show, I'd love to have you share it with some friends. And don't forget, you are always welcome to join us in person at Central in Elk River at 830, which is our liturgical gathering, or at 10 o'clock, our modern gathering, or you can check us out online at clcelkriverorg. Peace.
