Authority in Spiritual Life

 I recently came across the following quote in a book called Chan Comes West (2016) by Dharma Drum Mountain disciple and teacher, Simon Child, where he notes:

I have travelled through and beyond skepticism and an aversion to "religiosity", I have found confirmation in my own lifetime of the truth of Chan. I have found arising in me, in a welcome and natural manner, not as something externally imposed upon me, manifestations of what I previously labelled as religiosity. Compassion, gratitude, and repentance arise spontaneously from a clearer mind with less self; they are not some task to be undertaken reluctantly (p.66-67)

As I have been reading this quote, I have asked myself the questions: when does the "authority" of "religiosity" described by Child carry real weight, and when is it brushed off as something "imposed" from "outside"? More to the point---aren't "outside" and "inside" unreal distinctions in Chan? Just exactly where do the notions of "inside" and "outside" arise, if not from the mind itself and its tendency to take certain things as "myself" and leaving the rest as "not myself"?
    Related to this is the phenomenology of receiving authority. Has anybody studied this subject yet? I think it's interesting to consider under what conditions and in what way some choose to take on authority as extensions of themselves, whereas others are very resistant to authority. When do these experiences happen?
   It might be a simple matter of empathy which allows people to identify with authority: I see the other as someone who is somewhat like me in the way I feel, and thus I choose to accept their authority rather than seeing it as something alien or foreign to me, or "imposed upon me". On the other hand, I am sure that many have experienced situations where the encounter with authority left them feeling completely unaccepted or unacceptable as persons. Somehow, the authority triggers a part of ourselves that does not feel adequate, or loved, or lovable, perhaps because the authority figure is not seeing us as individuals.
    Sometimes, I think that the way spiritual authority might work is something like a dialectic tension between the sublimity of something "bigger" and the joy of internalizing a piece of it within ourselves. Too much sublimity will lead a person to feel overwhelmed and even pushed somewhat by the authority into doing unsavory or undesirable things which feel life/self-denying. When a small piece of that authority is acknowledged as living within one's soul and being, then it's no longer experienced as an external power, but more as an internal conscience or an honored space of conflict that resides in the mind, not necessarily even between persons.
   Authority might also be something like a seed implanted in us until we can become our own authorities of sorts. The important point for Child, like others, is that people don't get stuck in the two poles of either accepting authority entirely on faith and obedience (which often leads to disillusionment and over-idealizing others), or rejecting outright as always imposing and "bad".

Sheng Yen, et al (2016). Chan Comes West (2nd ed). New York: Dharma Drum Publications