Spiritual guidance, mentorship, distance, and inner maturity

This text is intended as a response to a question that was asked in the comments section of my previous article "Awakening Intelligence and Spiritual Freedom". The question was phrased as follows: “Can one follow a shaykh from a distance? Can one take on a shaykh from a distance?"

This question, seemingly simple, actually touches on profound issues: the nature of the spiritual bond, the confusion between guidance and mentoring, the role of distance, projection, autonomy, and above all, the inner maturity required in today's spiritual journey.

It is at these levels—and not in a binary or legal response—that this text intends to respond.

Spiritual guidance—which can also be called spiritual fertilization—can be done remotely. I would even go further: it is often better done remotely.

Masters have often expressed it this way: the physical presence of the “guide” or spiritual counsellor can sometimes create a heavy, impactful veil that can weaken or even destroy the spiritual bond, especially when it is based on impression, projection, or sentimentality.

Mu’ashara—close, daily, prolonged contact—introduces a realism that romantic or sentimental people cannot always bear. It confronts us with real human beings, where many still seek an idealized image. In this sense, mu’ashara can become a ḥijāb.

Al-Mu’ashara as a hijāb.

Mu’ashara can become a veil when the spiritual relationship has not reached a sufficient level of maturity. This ḥijāb does not stem from a moral flaw, but from a discrepancy between the real depth of the bond and the inner capacity to accept the human being as they are. Where spiritual guidance operates through inner fertilization, subtle inspiration, and resonance, mu’ashara exposes one to the materiality of everyday life, to the normal limitations, rough edges, and inconsistencies of human beings.

For a consciousness still dominated by imagination, projection, or sentimentality, this exposure acts as a brutal rupture. The idealized image cracks, not because the master has failed, but because the gaze was not ready to see the human without the filter of the projected sacred. Thus, mu’ashara can veil where distance enlightens, obscure where remoteness allows integration, and break where separation protects spiritual fertilization.

Conversely, today we see spiritual figures—including in Sufi circles—surrounded by hundreds or even thousands of people. Very often, these figures are protected by human structures, guards, and closed circles that create a deliberate distance between them and those who approach them. This distance is intended less to protect a spiritual quality than to preserve an idealized image in the minds of people who have sometimes become extremely vulnerable, hypersensitive, and sentimental.

It is enough for one of them to discover a simply human, ordinary, normal aspect to be shocked, disoriented, sometimes inwardly broken. Not because this aspect is problematic, but because they were not ready to see it.

It is therefore essential to clearly distinguish between roles.

On the one hand, there is spiritual guidance: inner fertilization, inspiration, the awakening of consciousness. This role can be performed perfectly well at a distance—and often more accurately—because it leaves the necessary space for integration, maturation, and personal responsibility.

On the other hand, there is spiritual mentoring, or spiritual companionship. This cannot really be done remotely. It requires positive confrontation, an embodied, social, real relationship. It presupposes that humans meet humans without symbolic screens or excessive sacralization. 

Mentoring is a relationship of intentional friendship, in which the mentor deliberately provokes situations, reactions, and friction—not to dominate, but to reveal. To enable the person being mentored to see their inner state, their imbalances, their inconsistencies, their old wounds, and their traumas, in order to work on them consciously.

It is a work of healing, a confrontational tarbiya, deeply demanding, irreducible to an idealized relationship.

However, to claim that this type of mentoring exists today in a real, structured, and reliable way—especially in traditional Sufi institutions—would, in my experience, be unrealistic. I have visited many centres, sincerely seeking this kind of living companionship. I have sometimes found fragments of it, but rarely a conscious and accepted structure.

In most cases, the spiritual seeker is forced to take almost complete responsibility for themselves, effectively becoming their own primary mentor. 

Spiritual autonomy and intelligence of the times

We live in an age that calls on human beings to become increasingly autonomous in all areas of life—and spirituality is no exception. The scarcity, even extreme scarcity, almost absence today of deep and trustworthy spiritual mentorship is perhaps not an accident of history, but a sign of the times. An invitation.

As divine wisdom teaches us, Allah never gives human beings a responsibility greater than their capacity. Taking this seriously means recognizing that if spiritual mentoring as it once existed has almost disappeared, it may be because human beings are now called upon to take charge of themselves in a different way.

This does not mean abandoning all guidance, but rather transforming its nature. Mentoring can now be replaced by a plurality of presences: therapists, counsellors, guides, conscious relationships, circles for sharing and exchanging spiritual experiences, where each person is inspired by the path of the other without overwhelming hierarchy or idealization.

As for the spiritual guide, they can remain at a distance—physically or through time. The essential thing is not physical proximity, but the reality of the bond of spiritual fertilization: that it is experienced internally, integrated, and that it truly nourishes the maturation of the being.

Necessary clarification: public figures and the illusion of transmission

I cannot conclude this article without clarifying an essential point: the majority of Sufi figures visible today play neither the role of spiritual guide nor that of spiritual mentor. They fulfill neither of these two roles and very rarely participate in a real transformation of the human being.

They are most often idealized public figures, surrounded by projections, expectations, and spiritual fantasies. These figures protect themselves through solid social structures, often inherited from their parents or ancestors. Many come from lineages of shuyūkh, veritable dynasties, where the function is transmitted by inheritance rather than by inner realization.

Their presence is not inspiring. Neither their image, nor their words, nor their social company provide any real guidance. Their mu’ashara is not fruitful. 

At best, these figures act as guardians of tradition—as “conservatory directors” of Sufi music, poetry, ritual forms, and ways of singing, dancing, and celebrating that date back to ancient times. This cultural work is respectable in itself, but it does not constitute living spiritual guidance.

At worst, some slip into a guru-like posture: manipulative, narcissistic, seeking to feel important at the expense of others, exploiting the ignorance, romanticism, and sentimentality of those around them. They thrive on familiar ground: the refusal to grow up.

For it must be said clearly: children love those who infantilize them, as long as they do not wish to become adults. And many spiritual seekers prefer to remain in a state of prolonged childhood—seeking protection, fusion, and dependence—rather than responsibility, autonomy, and inner maturation.

Naming this reality is neither an attack nor a rejection. It is an act of lucidity. And this lucidity is perhaps one of the primary conditions today for a living, adult, and truly transformative spirituality.