Finding Mystical Community
My Story of Evolution with Spiritual Community
Practicing Community – Part One
We left the church on Easter Sunday. Standing on the stone steps out front, the tradition was for the congregation to release dozens of colored balloons after the service. Floating up into the sky, they reflected the sun in pastel hues, slowly spreading out across the bright blue expanse. Up from the grave and risen to life. Now free. Dressed in their finest, the high heels clicked and the dress shoes scuffed against the sidewalks as people headed back to their cars. And I knew I wouldn’t be coming back.
It wasn’t that there weren’t a lot of wonderful people in that church. Indeed, that is what had kept us there longer than was good for us. The long-standing structures of patriarchy, harmful theology, and institutional rigidity were regularly wounding these good people and were choking out the life that would try to spring up in unsanctioned ways.
I was longing for more.
Church doors of St. Edwards Church, Stow-on-the-Wold England (photographer unknown)
Growing Up in the Church
I have a deep appreciation and love for the traditional church where I grew up. It was full of good people who sought to love one another. It had its issues like any church for sure, but people were trying to do their best based on what they knew and where they were at in their faith journey. It placed a lot of emphasis on its youth program, which gave me a spiritual community of other people my age. There were people who cared about us—adults investing their time and energy in connecting us to God. It opened me to a higher purpose and something to live for beyond just myself.
The church introduced me to Jesus and early experiences of being loved by God, the inseparability of that love, and what it felt like to know God was with me. It invited me to a life of devotion and meaning, even if many of the earlier expressions of that were misguided or quite limited.
I remember seeing a lot of what I deemed “complacency” around me though. In the judgmental way of a teenager, I saw folks going through the motions and living that “Sunday spirituality” with little effect on how they lived the rest of their lives. I thought I wanted to be a pastor who would tell it to them straight and shake them out of their contentment, calling forth a faith that was less like an occasionally worn garment and more a fiery heart of passion and dedication.
I didn’t have the language for it at the time, but I was desiring the mystical divine heart. Identifying its lacking around me was a bit of projection, but also an early recognition of the limitations that exist when the collective consciousness settles into a static state. I could feel it, barely consciously, that more was possible than what could be found here.
I remember reading and searching for some sort of magical key, an esoteric hidden gem written somewhere in the mystics that would unlock the door that would somehow explain everything and bring clarity to it all. That would inflame my heart and charge my life. Something that would open me up to more than what I was able to experience—and more than I could be at the time.
I didn’t have the language yet, but I was groping for an evolution of consciousness. And how to find that not just for myself, but with others.
Religious Trauma and Spiritual Abuse
My own experiences through the years with organized religion were, comparatively, pretty benign. I suffered dogmatic indoctrination and manipulation through fear, as well as other psychological and spiritual constrictions—but they were mostly all coming from a place of sincerity and from people who were where they were.
Others have faced much worse abuse and damage at the hands of institutional religion and unhealthy spiritual communities. The path to recovery and healing from deep wounding of this nature is different for everyone, and some may have a very long journey to being able to trust any kind of “organized” religion or spiritual community ever again.
It can be easy and natural to blame and condemn the whole system. Many failings and severe shortcomings are built into the structure and power dynamics of many if not most spiritual institutions—Christian and otherwise. Especially when there are denials and coverups rather than justice and restitution.
Many are done with organized religion for these reasons and others. While for a number of others, traditional forms of church still provide beneficial and nurturing spiritual community. There are lots of good churches with good people still striving after God in the best ways they know how. I believe we should want these to be as healthy as possible for where they are—as they so often serve to help get us started on the journey, to nurture and care for those who are hurting, and to serve the life of the spirit when things are working as they should.
But many of the big barges of institutional church are taking on water fast. Massive shifts and changes are underway in the landscape of organized religion and how we gather for spiritual growth and nurturing.
The need is as great as it ever was, if not more, for communities of depth and authenticity, with spiritual significance and pathways of connection to the divine in various and empowering ways. This is mystical community. Community that fosters immediacy of Ultimate Reality within, through, among, and beyond us.
Yet, like many others, my path necessarily led me out of community and into the desert. Away from church and spiritual community, wounded and disillusioned.
Photo by Ivars Krutainis on Unsplash
Into the Desert
If I’m honest with myself, I think a big part of why I was always so drawn to community is because I hadn’t learned how to stand in life on my own. Not that we are ever truly independent—we depend on far more than the myth of the “self-made-man” lets on.
But I had been turning to community as a form of co-dependence. As an ego-need to associate myself with a broader collective in order to feel safe, to feel more substantive, to make more of a difference because it wasn’t just me.
Community can often be just a larger body for a wounded ego to hide within or a bigger space an inflated ego can fill.
I’ll talk more about healthy individuation and mutuality next week, but my own personal spiritual journey brought me out of over-reliance and projection onto outer forms. All of the external structures that were carrying my spiritual ego along needed to be removed from me. I needed them to be stripped away and left with only the formlessness. This was a crucial part of my spiritual journey that led to a spiritual awakening that brought me into a new experience of my “higher self.” Of the divine spirit consciousness present in me in a new way.
This isn’t the only way for it to happen. I believe in the context of healthier communities we can be of great assistance and help each other in awakening—to come into these sorts of transformation through collective capacity, shared wisdom and experience, healthy mirroring, and more. That’s a big reason why I’m writing this series!
But sometimes the journey requires seasons of solitude. Of going off into the desert alone like Jesus did. And that’s ok. The healthiest communities will not bind you but set you free to follow divine leading (not try to take that position). They will trust you and believe in your inner knowing. They will not use guilt or manipulation to keep you “in the fold.”
And they will welcome you back when it is time to return—or bless you as you evolve onward into a new form or healthier place in resonance with how you’ve evolved.
Gathering Mystical Community
I had come into the evolution of consciousness that I had desired for so long. Not that I hadn’t been growing and evolving before, but this was something significantly transforming. The new energy and reality that I was experiencing in my body and perceiving in the world around me took some getting used to.
It wasn’t long before I heard the voice within, “You can go no further alone.”
The call to return to community had been given. But where would I find it?
For now I found myself longing for mystical community. For a community that could participate together in the shared interiors of spiritual experience, not for the titillation or aggrandizement of “mystical experience,” but because this was the pathway into and playground of this new realm of consciousness.
Not just a community of “form” but a communion of “substance.” An active engagement with the non-physical realities that aren’t just contained within my own interiors, but permeate the collective field. That we can not only experience together, but actually doing so collectively enhances and increases our personal mystical capacities and consciousness.
I found a name for this—people in the integral community were calling it the “we space.” I resonated with some of the ways people were engaging it, but also felt there was missing a more direct, mystical engagement with the spiritual realities of this shared interiority. The kind I was experiencing with Paul and that our first WeSpace group began to come into. That integrated the contemplative with the dynamic energy of the better forms of the charismatic spirit. That was embodied and holistic. That was drawing upon the ultimate foundation of love undergirding everything and flowing in our midst.
This is how we found mystical community together.
And then we began to gather together others who were also seeking community in this way.
The word “community” literally means unity together.
Do we believe the spiritual teachings that we are one? That we unified in the great field of love. That we are not separate beings who exist solely in our individuality. That we can come into this oneness as a key part of our spiritual journey.
This was a core prayer of Jesus for his disciples—that they may be one just as Jesus was one with God. Not just in the grand, universal cosmic oneness and general experience of connection to all things. But so too in the personal, in the com-unity of a “We.” Like an intimate father and son. Like a deep kinship among spiritual companions.
We can come into this unity together.
And this mystical community can be both the pathway and the larger embodying of the divine presence in our midst and in the world.
This type of community won’t just happen on its own. It is something that we will need to learn to practice. We’ll explore this more next week and in the following articles of this series. Each will conclude with a “practice of community” to encourage us to not just think about or feel these things, but to actively step into practicing community with intentionality and dedication.
Practice of Community
Write out or have a conversation with someone describing your journey with spiritual community in your life.
Reflection Questions
How have you evolved through the years and how has that affected your experience with the church, spiritual communities, or lack thereof?
What do you desire or long for more of in your community? How might you be a part of bringing that about?
Have you experienced “unity together” with others? When and how?
I hope you might come along on this journey of discovering and practicing mystical community—through this series of articles, the practices offered at the end, and also into collective spaces together where you can practice community in person with us. That’s what our WeSpace groups are all about.
If you’re not already, sign up for our mailing list to follow along through the whole series.
And if you’d like to practice in a mystical community with others actively, we invite you to join a WeSpace group starting this September. You can sign up to be notified when enrollment opens in August.