The Mystic Phase and the Community Phase

There was a season when my spiritual life went deep.

In 2020, when the world slowed, I did too. Long meditations. Hours of reading. Journaling that spilled across pages. Conversations beyond the visible world that felt real, layered, and instructive. Solitude became cathedral.

I tried, at first, to share what I was experiencing.

What I learned is something many mystically inclined people discover: interior expansion does not automatically create exterior resonance. Even among spiritually focused people, there is often discomfort when someone describes experiences others cannot relate to. Sometimes it shows up as skepticism. Sometimes as polite distance. Sometimes as subtle comparison.

I do not blame anyone for that. It is human.

When an experience cannot be shared safely, it must be stewarded privately.

So I journaled. I compared my experiences across spiritual texts. I looked for patterns rather than applause. I learned to test what I thought I understood. Eventually I found tools that helped me cross-reference ideas and organize my thinking. Not to replace discernment, but to sharpen it.

That was the mystic phase.

The mystic phase taught me to see.

But seeing has its own danger.

Seeing without serving isolates.

If one stays too long in solitude, it becomes control. In solitude, you choose the input, the pace, the intensity. There is no friction. No personalities to navigate. No opposing viewpoints. No unpredictability.

I love solitude. I always have. Home has always been preferable to the larger world.

But spiritual maturity cannot happen in isolation forever.

Around the time political divisions were sharpening and public discourse was becoming tribal, I made mistakes. I was eager to speak about what I believed I had uncovered — historical patterns, systemic problems, broader perspectives that cut across party lines. I learned quickly that altitude language does not land well in battlefield conditions.

When people are emotionally activated, they are not looking for structural analysis. They are looking for affirmation.

My urgency outpaced my calibration.

That was a necessary lesson.

Shortly after, an opportunity arose that I did not want. A small nonprofit organization needed administrative help. Skills I had not used in nearly two decades were suddenly required. The role was handed to me without the orientation I would have preferred, and it triggered old defenses in me — memories of institutions, power imbalances, and responsibility assumed without consent.

I resisted.

For a long time.

I told myself that involvement in community work would dull my sensitivity. That paperwork and meetings would pull me away from spiritual depth. That working alongside varied personalities would exhaust me.

Some of that fear was ego. Some was trauma. Some was immaturity.

It took me two and a half years to stop resisting and begin serving willingly.

What I discovered surprised me.

The community phase taught me to serve.

Serving meant learning to:

Work with personalities very different from my own. Communicate clearly without dominating. Hold opinions without broadcasting them. Contribute steadily without needing recognition. Do unglamorous work that quietly benefits others.

There are no fireworks in minutes-taking. No mystic ecstasy in balancing budgets. No applause in coordinating volunteers.

And yet.

Service sands down intensity. It exposes blind spots. It humbles ego. It strengthens patience. It builds something tangible.

Seeing without serving isolates.

Serving without seeing exhausts.

Balance lives in the middle.

The mystic phase expands perception.

The community phase integrates it.

When the collective is shifting —

politically, culturally, morally — the temptation is either to withdraw into private revelation or to lose oneself in public outrage. Neither produces stability.

Stability comes from doing both carefully.

It is possible to hold deep interior experience without forcing it on others.

It is possible to participate in community without dissolving into it.

It is possible to witness systemic flaws while still building small local good.

Balance, however, is awkward mid-process.

It feels like dilution at first.

It feels like compromise.

It feels like losing something sacred.

What it actually is — is integration.

I am still learning it.

We all are.

The mystic phase teaches us to see.

The community phase teaches us to serve.

And the space between them is where character is formed.

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