This is a powerful time for spiritual and conscious communities – a lot of people are seeking meaning, purpose and spaces for authentic connection and sharing. It is a beautiful and hopeful sign that so many people feel drawn to these conscious spaces of gathering, a sign that something is really shifting and emerging. Today’s communities are different from the ones of the past, but because of traumatic experiences around community in the past, we are often reluctant to trust new initiatives.
The past template of community was one copied from patriarchy. To adhere to the community – whether this community was our family, village, society, spiritual or philosophical community – it often meant sacrificing part of our authentic selves to adhere to dogmatic thinking or rules and be accepted by other members. Even the first spiritual communities, claiming to free people of the shackles and limitations of society, copied the strongly hierarchical structures and functioned in a very dogmatic way. Things are finally changing, though. Today, the meaning of community is expanding rapidly and no longer requires everyone to adhere to the same dogma – it can even be a place that celebrates and stimulates freedom. Community is a group of people who look in the same direction, even if the individuals that are part of it are on different spiritual or professional paths, if they come from different backgrounds, they agree to unite around a common beating heart that they have in common. Community can be very diverse, heterogenous, is ideally nonhierarchical, the people that are part of it bring their own energy to the community and are encouraged to express themselves freely.
Communities and gatherings are spaces of inspiration, spaces where we are held during moments of transformation and containers that accelerate our personal journey and process because of the support and love we receive – and give – to them and because of the mirrors that allow us to look at ourselves more closely.
Today’s communities are works in progress because humanity is a work in progress. But these beautiful, lively, sometimes messy initiatives are important. Community projects are vital because they nourish hope, they help new visions for a more vibrant and equal future emerge, they are a testament to the inextinguishable fire of the human spirit, despite the turbulences, difficulties, and adversities of our world (personal and global). Community is a commitment to making our world (a little bit) more beautiful, more compassionate, more loving.
Being part of a community is an exercise in compassion, acceptance, and non-judgment. It prepares us for a worldview in which we no longer see borders, in which difference is no longer seen as a threat but a gift of abundance and diversity. Community trains our mind, consciousness and nervous system in such a way that we are not triggered by the “other” but can start to understand and relate to the global community as our human tribe. The future will be together, or it will not be at all. Life on this planet has been orchestrated in such a perfect way that all of us hold a piece of the puzzle to a thriving future, which means it is not only desirable, but necessary to open our hearts and minds to other cultures and traditions. Together we rise. - Anaïs
