Bloody hell, it's got lively here while I was away. I can see where you are coming from R and appreciate your concern, but I too think you're trying to force fit an idealised conceptual view of what should be on to a reality that's doesn't work that way.
I've already posted at length on the probably highly variable nature of enlightenment. It's got to be that way from this viewpoint - I can't think of even one teacher that's ever been universally acknowledged as such. (not even Jesus or the Buddha) Given that how are we ever going to learn anything from teachers if we're intent on refusing to engage until a perfect being comes into our life? Dumping them the moment they don't live up to our highly personalised take on what they should be amounts to much the same.
We're dealing with absolute wisdom and love trying to express through the medium of a human body and mind in this dualistic reality and multiplicity of cultures. There seem to have been a few known (like Jesus and the Buddha) who as a result of many enlightened lifetimes had got this down to a fine art, but that's about it. Lay on top of that our partial and relativistic perception (seeing one side of any situation as Alysia says) and it gets very mixed up indeed.
I don't for a moment condone knowingly misleading people, but the above means that by definition teachers are going to be perceived from differing perspectives.
Actions that appear questionable may not be, and vice versa. But one thing is clear. We have to take responsibility for ourselves and our path. We'll given our limited capability for sure make mistakes along the way, but surely learning is the point? It wouldn't do a great deal of good if it was only about wandering around in starry eyed adoration of always perfect teachers.
In the end it comes down to trust. We have to put our best foot forward and that involves not wholesale acceptance of what any teacher says or does, but equally as above not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We cannot dispense with discretion, but equally we have to be prepared to lighten up and allow considerable space. And always look for the good, because what's positive is as Alysia says often negative through another narrow lens.
This is the human journey. There's plenty that happened in the 60s that was denounced from the pulpit and by the moral majority, but in retrospect much of it (and I'm thinking about sexual morality and human relationships here) while of itself having overshot and/or not been very realistic as a sustainable way of living did a very great good by grounding the consciousness that's badly needed (love for your fellow man, practical realisation of the horrors of war, care for the environment and the like) if humanity is to have any hope of survival. Ditto for the eastern traditions which in years gone by were often denounced as heathen immorality.
I'm left having to believe that it's the way it it is because that's the way it's meant to be. That it's perfection as it is if we can see it correctly. We have to trust in this. In fact are required to trust in this...
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