ASK ABDI: WHAT IS YOUR TAKE ON THE WHOLE COMMUNITY / AQUARIAN AGE QUESTION?

QUESTION: Dear Abdi, it's so good to reconnect with your work and material, you have been so important on my path since 2011. I hope you are well and ready for the descend the dark season is offering to us. Here is my question:

I have such a deep longing to live in community in my day-to-day life, to build a solid container for myself and others beyond the limitations of nuclear families and couple settings. With shared care work, embodiment/bodymind practices, and down-to-earth co-living - allowing space for autonomy and attachment.

Three attempts with different groups/people over the past six years have failed painfully for me, mostly because of unconscious trauma patterns playing out, external projection parties, and ego power games.

I am aware of the problematic baggage (New Age) community projects carry and have also been witnessing other community projects fall apart again and again over the years.

Maybe we are not there yet collectively. And I need to tend to more inner work first.

Yet I refuse to settle with our hyper-individuated way of living as my foundation AND I try owning this part in me at the same time and would always allow myself to have retreat time every now and then if I were to live in a community.

But it feels I've outgrown this isolated way of living. 

And I feel the collective pull towards it so much in my bodymind that any other option is painful.

What is your take on the whole community/Aquarian Age question?

Which destructive patterns and hindrances can you identify?

Thank you so much for your time and presence. Love from Germany!

ANSWER: Truly my heart goes out to you both for your yearning for connection as well as the heartbreak from the unconscious behavior of others. I certainly have had the same experience repeatedly myself in different “spiritual” communities. You have correctly pointed to the culprit: the lack of psychological work.

Many of us are pulled towards spiritual work as a way to ease the pain of our emotional wounding. Of course, this is done unconsciously with no malicious intent. But the unavoidable result is a deeper wounding and betrayal of self as you have experienced firsthand. The only remedy is to tend to oneself.

The spiritual path is ultimately an arduous and lonely one. But lonely does not mean alone. It just means that much of what this twisted culture of ours offers will be toxic to the true self. Be it the food, the entertainment (which in fact is brainwashing and numbing), the surface interaction presented as intimacy, or narcissism dressed as spirituality. If this paints a dark picture, it must be remembered that once the true self beckons, trying to fit in will become that much more painful.

You are on the right path. You have correctly identified the hindrances: a culture that fosters disconnection at every turn. Keep doing your inner work while keeping the intention of yearning for community. First and foremost, be in commune fully with yourself first. Turn every stone where you might be a stranger to yourself. This does not mean perfection. For those of us with deep emotional scars, sometimes just the awareness of the depth of pain is all we can achieve. But that awareness is worth its weight in gold.

I personally long ago gave up all New Age notions: 11:11, Aquarian Age, etc. I realized that all “beliefs” were masking pain. Trust what you see not what you hope. Know what you know, know what you don’t know. That is enough to steer the waters of this realm. I have talked and written at length about the destructive patterns of the spiritual path in our culture.

Once you commit to spirit/truth/knowing Self, you are heard and guided. Even though it might seem at times that you are floating without direction.

I know too well the heartbreak that you speak of. Alas, all heartbreak breaks the heart open as long as one stays conscious.