Stop Looking For Your Tribe

A Sacred Talk on the spiritual bypass nobody in the spiritual community will tell you about. The wellness industry runs on one promise. Your people are out there. Find your tribe and you will feel seen. This talk argues the promise is sometimes actively harmful. Spiritual community can be one of the loneliest places on earth. Not because the people are bad. Because many are doing what people in pain do when they find a community that offers a new identity. They swapped the mainstream costume for the spiritual one. The wound is still running, just now with crystals. This talk names the loneliness of the room full of awakened people, what real connection feels like, what you are searching for when you look for tribe, and why the loneliness is doing something. Includes a tender somatic journey for being with yourself without an audience.
Integrative Therapist, Family Constellation Facilitator, and Nervous System Specialist. Sessions in Dublin, Naas, Newbridge and online worldwide.

Transcript

So welcome everyone and thank you. Thank you for listening and thank you for being here. So I want to say something that I suspect will land very differently depending on where you are in your journey. Now, I have sat in a lot of spiritual circles. I have attended workshops, Retreats, Ceremonies, Group healings, Sacred gatherings, Constellation intensives, Breathwork journeys. And I was at least one event that was described as a transmission which I'm still not entirely sure but I understood but which everyone else seemed to find deeply meaningful. So in my own experience, I have been in rooms full of people who were by every available metric on the path, Awake, Healing, Conscious, Doing the work, Using light language, Holding the space, Raising the vibration. And I want to tell you something honest about many of these rooms. They were some of the loneliest places I've ever been. Not all of them, I want to be fair. Some of those spaces were extraordinary. Some of the people in them were the real thing. People who had actually been through something and come out on the other side, Carrying wisdom which was their genuine offering to the space. And some of those encounters changed me also. But a lot of them, A lot of them, Were rooms full of people performing awakening. Not bad people, People in pain. Doing what people in pain do when they find a community that offers a new identity and a new set of rules of how to be acceptable. So they might have swapped their mainstream costume for the spiritual one. They learned the language, They adopted the framework and they found their tribe. And the wound that drove them there, The fundamental sense that they were not okay as they were. They needed for external validation, Dressed in a new vocabulary. That wound was still running, Just now with crystals. So the wellness in the spiritual industry runs on one core promise. It has many different packaging options, But underneath all of them is the same thing. Your people are out there. And when you find them, When you find your tribe, Your community, Your like-minded souls, You will finally feel what you've been looking for, Understood, Seen and not alone. And I understand why this is the promise. Because it is the thing most people want to hear. Because the loneliness is real. The sense of not being understood is real in the world. The exhaustion of navigating a world that operates at a different frequency than you do, That is a genuine and significant experience. But here is what I want to look at carefully. Because I think the promise is not just oversold. I think it is also very harmful. Consider what the promise asks you to do. It asks you to locate your sense of okayness in a group. To find in recognition and validation of like-minded others, The ground that you've not been able to find yourself. Stop the search, The aching, The persistent search. Not by building the thing you're searching for, But by finding someone else who will provide it. And this is the most precise, In the most precise clinical sense, An external regulation strategy for an internal regulation deficit. It is the same structure as any attachment pattern, Organized around the need for external confirmation. The difference between someone who needs a romantic partner to feel okay, And someone who needs a spiritual community to feel okay, Is smaller than the spiritual community would like to admit. The costume is different, But the need is identical. So the spiritual path offers the ego something it cannot easily resist, A better identity. Not a dissolved ego, A better one. One that is more evolved, More conscious, More awake than people who haven't done the work. One that belongs to a group of special people who see what others cannot. One that has a language, Trauma-informed, Polyvagal, Shadow work, Ancestral healing, That signals membership is in a sophisticated community of very aware people here. And I want to be careful here because I use all those frameworks myself, And I really believe in their clinical value. So this is not an argument against the work. This is an observation about what can happen to the work when it gets absorbed into the ego's project of identity construction. The person who does two years of genuine inner work looks exactly the same from the outside, As the person who attends workshops learns the vocabulary and performs the identity, Because both use the same language, Both belong to the same community. Only one of them has actually gone anywhere. And the person who has actually gone somewhere, Who has sat with his own darkness, Who has met what they were avoiding, And who has done the unglamorous and unphotographable work of actually changing, Often finds the spiritual community, With its performance and its hierarchies, And its very specific social dynamics, Harder to be in, Rather than the mainstream world they thought they were living. Because you cannot unsee it. And seeing it makes you the difficult one, Again. Now, I want to describe something specific. Because I think a lot of people have felt it, And I had nowhere to put it. You are in a spiritual space, A circle, A workshop, A retreat, And everyone is doing the thing. The opening circle is happening, The sharing, The opening, The profound vulnerability of strangers. The teacher is beautiful and wise, Like me. The container feels held. The language is exactly the language you've been hungry for. But yet, Something in you is not relaxing. Something in you, In fact, Is more tense than usual. Not because the space is unsafe, But because it is performing safety, Rather than being in it. Because the vulnerability is real enough on the surface, But underneath it, If you let yourself actually feel into the room, There is the same thing that you feel in every other room. The managing of perception, The careful presentation of the acceptable version, The need to be seen as sufficiently healed, Sufficiently advanced, Sufficiently spiritual to belong here. The circle has different rules than the boardroom. The hierarchy is different, But the hierarchy is there. The in-group and out-of-the-group are there. The performance is very much present, If you watch. And you notice this, And you cannot say it, Because saying it makes you the negative one, The resistant one, The one who still has work to do on their trust issues. So you do what you have always done in rooms where you don't quite fit. You manage. You participate at a level that is accepted. You go home feeling more lonely than when you arrived, And you wonder what is wrong with you, And that you cannot simply receive what that other person was receiving in that workshop. So, Nothing is wrong with you. You were reading the room accurately. The room was doing what rooms do. And your nervous system, Refined by years of reading exactly this kind of thing, Was telling you the truth. So, The tribe was not there. Real connection has a specific quality. It is not warm or welcoming or spiritually attuned or using the right language. It is simply this. You do not have to manage anything. The performance can stop. Not because the other person has given you permission, But because something in their presence, In the genuineness of their own not performing, Gives your nervous system information that it is safe for me to arrive. Actually arrive. Not the managed version, But the whole thing. And the quality of genuine presence is extraordinarily rare. It has almost nothing to do with whether someone identifies as spiritual. I have met it in people with no interest in any of the frameworks and I have not found it in people who have been on the path for 20 years and they are still going. So, It has everything to do with whether the person has actually done the thing, Not attended the thing, Not adopted the identity, Not bought the books, But gone into the uncomfortable territory of meeting themselves and returned from it changed, Quieter, Less invested in being seen in a particular way. And those people exist. When you find one, The recognition is nothing like finding your tribe. It is much quieter than that, More specific. It does not require a community. It does not require belonging to the same framework. It requires only that two people have both been to the same place, The same real place inside themselves and returned from it, Honest. So, Let me tell you what I think you are actually looking for when you search for your tribe. You are looking for the felt sense of being genuinely known, Of being received as you actually are. Not the managed version, Not the performance, Not the sufficiently healed or sufficiently broken version, But the real thing. With all its contradictions, Its unresolved edges, Its darkness and its light, Simultaneously present. That experience is real. It's neurologically real. The ventral vagal social engagement system, When it activates fully in genuine safe connection, Produces a felt sense that no amount of solo regulation can replicate. So, You are not wrong to want it and you are not weak for wanting it too. Here is what I want to say very precisely. The quality of being genuinely known beings with being genuinely known to yourself. The person who has not met their own darkness cannot be fully met by another, No matter where they go because they are presenting an edited version of themselves. The person who requires the other to not see certain parts, The parts that do not fit the spiritual identity, The parts that are still pretty and fearful and small and human is not available for genuine connection. They are available for an arrangement in which both parties agree not to look too closely at certain things, Which is very comfortable, Which can feel like belonging but it's not the thing. The work that needs to happen before genuine connection is possible is the work of meeting yourself fully, Not just the parts that are healing well, The parts that are not, The parts that are still running the old pattern, The parts that would rather be seen as spiritual than be honest, The parts that need the tribe because without the tribe there is nothing to confirm that you are okay. Those parts, Especially those, When you have met those parts, Not resolved them, Not healed them, Not transcended them, Just actually seen them and not collapsed. Something changes in how you move through this world. You become slightly less urgent, The search quiets a little, Not because you stop wanting connection because you are no longer dependent on it for your sense of self and from that place, From that less urgent, Actually grounded place genuine connection becomes considerably more possible because you are finally available for it. Now I want to say something about the loneliness itself before you try to resolve it. The loneliness of not finding your tribe, The specific quality of isolation that comes from being in the right rooms with the right people saying the right things and still not feeling it. It is pointing you somewhere and it is worth knowing where before you try to make it stop. Loneliness that persists despite community is usually pointing inwards. Not because your community is insufficient because the source of the loneliness is not the absence of others. It is the absence of a genuine relationship with yourself and no tribe however perfect can cross that distance. They can knock at that door from outside but they cannot come in unless you open it from within. So the loneliness is the body's way of saying the thing that you are searching for is not out there not yet not until you have found it here first. And that is not a comfortable message at all it is not a message that you will see on Instagram it does not require a retreat deposit or a community membership or a year-long mentorship program with somebody it requires sitting with yourself in loneliness without feeling it without immediately reaching for the group the workshop, The community the like-minded people who will finally at this time make it better the spiritual people the people in the world who you never seem to find none of that will help just sitting in it and asking what is actually here not what I want to be here what is actually here and that question held in the body rather than performed for an audience is the beginning of the only path that goes somewhere I want to be clear about what I am not saying I am not saying community is not real I am not saying spiritual practice is not genuine and I am not saying you will never find people with whom genuine resonance is possible I am saying finding happens differently than what you might be thinking and it becomes possible from a different starting point so when you stop searching urgently for your tribe when the internal ground is stable enough that the absence of external confirmation is no longer an emergency something changes in how people arrive in your life they arrive, Occasionally in the most unexpected ways almost never on a retreat nor at a workshop sometimes in a conversation with someone who would never call themselves spiritual they don't carry crystals with them they have just simply been through something real and they are honest about it the recognition is quiet it's never electric and it's never oh finally I found my people it's more like oh this one has been somewhere real I can feel it and there is nothing to perform here and those encounters are enough those moments are enough and the community that forms around shared genuine ground rather than shared identity is very different in quality smaller less dramatic and more real you did not need a tribe you needed a few actual people and you needed to become the kind of person those actual people could find which requires first that you find yourself and everything else is a long way around now I want to ask you to drop the performance including the performance of doing this correctly you don't have to feel anything in particular you don't have to have a profound experience you don't have to open or deepen or expand anywhere if you feel nothing that is completely fine if you feel annoyed that is perfectly fine and if a part of you is already composing how you will describe this experience to someone later that is very human and that's also fine and worth noticing just for the next minute or two let yourself be exactly where you are without the audience without the witness just you find a comfortable position now and either soften your gaze or let your eyes close take a breath and as you exhale just feel the weight of your body not performing being present just actually present in this moment in this body just here just this just notice what is actually here not what would be spiritually appropriate to notice not what your yoga teacher told you, Nothing just be here what is actually here notice what is actually here maybe there is a tiredness a specific tiredness of someone who has been searching for a long time and has not quite found what they were looking for that's ok let it be there maybe there is loneliness also let it be there too maybe there is something quieter a quality underneath the searching that you have not had space to notice just let your attention move there if it wants to into the quieter thing even with all the noise now I want to ask you something very gently what would it feel like to be enough company for yourself not in the sense of I am enough not as an affirmation as an actual body level question what would it feel like what does it feel like even a little right now to be here with yourself and find it enough company for myself just let that question sit in the body for a moment what would it feel like to be enough company for myself just sufficient now you might have been in a lot of rooms, Retreats, Circles classes some of them were genuinely extraordinary some of them were elaborate arrangements that kept you from having to sit with this the simple ordinary non-photographable fact of being alone with yourself and finding it enough this is the practice not the workshop not the circle not the tribe this right here you and this moment and the body that has carried you through all the searching and is still quietly here take a slow breath now let it be ordinary let it be ordinary enough and now without rushing just come back to yourself the tribe was not coming it was never going to come in the form you were looking for because you were here the whole time and that turns out to be enough so sit with this process this integrate this come back to this if you want to thank you very much for joining me today and until next time Namaste