Get Help When It's Hard

Sooner or later, every spiritual innovator faces real difficulty: burnout that sneaks up on you, conflict within your community, team members who leave unexpectedly, or old personal wounds that get reactivated by the very work you’re doing. These challenges don’t mean you’re doing something wrong; they’re part of the terrain. Spiritual work touches deep places in ourselves and others, and that means it often brings up more than we expect. 

Jesse Israel is the founder of The Big Quiet, a mass meditation experience. Moments of stress would often lead Israel to turn inward–so he made it a practice to consciously push himself to talk to at least one trusted person: his sister, a friend, or a mentor. At first he was worried about not having enough support, but he found that people he respected were very willing to be a mentor, if he reached out to ask. Elizabeth Slade, who leads the Unitarians in the United Kingdom did the same. She’d found leadership to be a lonely place, and so she and a friend started hosting a monthly potluck with other community leaders. Each person would have time to be listened to deeply, and everyone helped with the washing up. Even though it lasted only a year, it was a valuable space for mutual support.

It’s essential to have support like this: a therapist, a coach, a peer group, or spiritual director who can help you process what’s unfolding. The most dangerous thing is to try and do it all alone.