You Can’t Do It Alone – Finding Spiritual Community of Depth and Meaning
Integral Consciousness – Part 6
The Collective Body of Christ
Have you found a spiritual community of depth and soul resonance in your life?
Or do you find, for the most part, that your spiritual journey has been a solo affair?
In starting last week with the essential personal nature of a holistic integral consciousness, the I coming first before the We and the All, I ran the risk of falling capture to the pervasive individualism that is so prevalent today in Western culture, the modern Christian religion, and the mental structure of consciousness. We will elude that seizure if we are deliberate in our integration of the relational communion beyond our individual self.
Just as our culture has overemphasized our minds, we are also marked by a predominance of individualism. Our society is so replete with it that sometimes we might just forget how isolated and separated our lives have become. So too has much of our contemporary spirituality followed suit.
When you hear the phrase “The Spiritual Journey,” what do you picture? One person alone? Or a group? I imagine it’s the former most likely.
Searching for artwork to go along with these writings is incredibly more difficult when looking for depictions of groups or communities. Aside from worshipping crowds, they are probably 95% comprised of solo individuals. Even many of the “groups” share the same physical space but are alone in their interior and separate practice. As art reflects life, this is often where we find ourselves in our spiritual lives.
And yet we are not unaware. We feel the loneliness and the lack probably more than we care to admit. Deep down, we know we can’t do it alone. Ultimately, I don’t believe that most of us have come to this place by choice. It’s not that we want to be alone (yes, including even us introverts!), but perhaps more that our own spiritual journeys have taken us to a place beyond our previous communities, and it’s challenging to find a spiritual community that is resonant with where we are now.
If you are one of the fortunate souls to be a part of a spiritual community of depth and intimacy in your life that connects with the fulness of who you are, treasure it.
If not, the search goes on. Don’t give up. Even if you’ve taken to being alone in the depths of yourself and your spiritual life—it won’t be fulfilling ultimately. No matter what we’re going through or where we are spiritually, we still need others. Even Jesus gathered together a close-knit group of intimate companions. No one is “above” or “beyond” the need for meaningful community of deep connection and soul resonance.
But where will we discover it? How might we find our way out of the desert of spiritual individualism and into a loving community of depth and meaning?
Don’t Look Back – Look Ahead
For many of us, we needed to go on the journey “beyond” previous communities because we couldn’t bear to stay where we were. It was no longer enough. They no longer served us, and we no longer served them. Maybe the forms no longer fit. Perhaps we’re even still participating in these communities, despite our interior dissonance. Or maybe we were wounded by others, and the community no longer was a safe space for us. We may have even been intentionally excluded because of our changing beliefs.
Whatever the reason, looking back or festering in blame or resentment will not ultimately serve us. Yes, we must find healing and release from our past wounds and losses. And we find new depths to ourselves when we’re able to differentiate and recognize how we are different, how we have changed, and see more clearly the limitations of what was before.
If we’re still healing from a damaging community, we may need to stay in a place of safety and recovery that may be more insulated. Healthy community can help us heal, but if we have lost our previous community, we may not yet be ready to move into the vulnerable space of finding a new depth community. And that is ok.
But when we’re ready, we can turn our eyes in hope to new possibilities, no longer under the power of the past and bound to reactivity. It is the point of venturing ahead, of seeking what will be next. Maybe you can recall other times in your life when you’ve done this.
And on the road ahead, when looking for new community, let me warn you of two common pitfalls that we might meet along the way. Two substitutes for the authentic community we are seeking.
Two Common Substitutes for Depth Community
The first is “community lite.”
This substitute is incredibly common. It appeals to our isolated ego that ultimately does not want to truly share itself with others, so it affords us a little salve of a sense of camaraderie or loose connection—while ultimately requiring very little vulnerability or intimacy.
This is the “community” of a crowd. Of joining a mailing list. Of following the same teacher as others. The “community” of conferences and movements. Supporting the same cause or reading the same books. Taking the same classes.
There is value in all of these things. Camaraderie and fellowship are a step in the right direction, though are often too easily just a commonality of proximity and circumstance. Authentic community will be expressions that foster real depth engagement, shared experience and reflection on a heart-to-heart level, life-to-life connections in spiritual intimacy, and loving engagement held in trust and mutual care.
We settle for “community lite,” perhaps because we are afraid of genuinely giving ourselves to a real communion, that we might lose ourselves or get hurt (or we simply can’t find the deeper expressions). The sad irony of this self-protective reticence is that it actually also holds us back from becoming more ourselves—in seeking to protect ourselves from depth community, we stunt our own growth and ability to come more fully into our personal being.
Or, as Teilhard de Chardin puts it, “We can progress only by uniting . . . causing heightened personality to emerge from the forces of collectivity.”
The second substitute is hiding out in the unity of all.
If we’re able, we can find relief from the prison of individualism by moving into a unifying experience, to connecting into the experience of all things. This is a profound spiritual movement full of meaning and freedom, and an integral part of our intensification of consciousness that we’ll go into more next week. But it should not be confused with or serve as a substitute for personal, intimate community of the We.
“Community” literally means “unity together.” It is relational. The “together” requires another—at least one. It must be shared. It requires others who are with us in the unity.
It is also not just a commonality of shared experience in the separate interior space of multiple individuals, but an actual movement together into the unity. We can experience this in a number of ways, from the mystical WeSpace of interbeing to the felt sense of connection through the passing of bread at a meal.
Whenever we enter in with depth of heart and being, into the shared space that is both immediate and transcendent, with others—there we are moving into community.
The forms may vary and speak to one or another at different times in their lives. In the past, it may have been a commonality of beliefs or a shared liturgy. Maybe still. But the invitation to further connection and intimacy calls continuously in deeper forms and expressions, drawing together those converging on the path of evolving spirituality.
This will include not only looking through the window of transcendence together, but also the mirror of one another in witnessing immediacy and direct presence, touching the immanence of our lives with each other.
Risking the Messiness
Venturing into a community of depth and intimacy beyond both of these substitutes is a risk. And one of the reasons we may find ourselves shying away is because of an underlying fear of vulnerability. Community is often messy. And those other substitutes seem much safer.
We have been hurt before. We have seen the abuses and the neglect. We have been let down. Is it worth it to risk again?
Some types of community seek to avoid this messiness by what I’ve come to call “group siloing.” This is where sharing happens from each individual, out into the group space, but without any response or direct engagement. To avoid “cross-talk,” fixing, or advice-giving, the method also eliminates any real mutual engagement. We are simply taking turns around the circle—not among. Sharing from—but not really with.
All groups need healthy processes and means of trustful engagement, but altogether avoiding interconnected space for the sake of safety is to take the cheese off the pizza, so to speak.
Still other groups avoid the messiness by staying in the mental realm almost exclusively, engaging in the discussion of ideas and concepts, staying “safe” in the abstract.
When we are ready, and as we can, we will be best served by pursuing and seeking real depth community with others. It happens through vulnerability, intimacy, and love.
To love is always to risk. And sometimes we try to mitigate that risk by keeping our love in the universal. Or perhaps more for the stranger. Which are both, of course, beautiful forms of love. But they are incomplete without the interpersonal communion of loving connection between.
To open beyond ourselves, to allow the channel to give and receive across the barrier of self. To discover with others the finding of ourselves in the deeper We. Not losing the “I” but realizing into and beyond what we thought “I” was.
Teilhard again: It is only when opposed to other men [sic] that he can discover his own depth and wholeness. However personal and incommunicable it may be at its root and origin, [this power of] Reflection can only be developed in communion with others.”
Discovering Loving Community
We all need the We. Not only for our own personal sense of wellbeing, but truly for our own capacity and ability to consciously evolve further. The individual spiritual journey can only take us so far. Now is the time for spiritual communities of communion.
I don’t know if the Integral Christian Network community could be that for you. It may be. We are certainly trying to cultivate and nurture a deeper kinship, cocreating a mystical garden of various ecosystems, seeking to participate in symbiosis and mutual flourishing. Perhaps in resonance with what is alive in you, or perhaps not.
If not, I encourage you to keep seeking. To find your community, or maybe even gather it together yourself.
But if you feel that perhaps, this might be a resonant community for you, or if you feel a stirring of hope and possibility, you might enter in more deeply by joining a WeSpace group.
Sometimes I even can’t believe the types of testimonials people give about them. I think, are people really going to believe this? Someone recently asked me what the biggest surprise has been for me with WeSpace, and I said it has been the resonance and impact these groups have had in people’s lives.
I believe that is because of the great gift of community. The power of finding a space encouraging and facilitating the practice and cultivation of depth community and soul intimacy in a heartful and loving way. And then the real life coming from those who show up in beautiful trust and vulnerability, giving and receiving the love that is our uniting together.
We come to this in our WeSpace groups through embodied mystical practice together in the interactive field of the WeSpace, participating in our divine consciousness as a form of evolving Christian community and practice.
If your heart feels it may be open and ready to give such a community a try, click on the button below to join a WeSpace group starting in May.