On Seeking Community

I was in college when Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey came out. Neil deGrasse Tyson walked my friends and I through the vastness of space and something clicked — the sheer scale, the power, and the beauty. It was the most fascinating, engrossing thing I'd ever witnessed.

I grew up intellectually in an open-minded, liberal environment. My public school system was ranked top ten in the country, and I had access to the resources I needed to satisfy my curiosity. I could think of questions, and I was lucky enough to have the latest computers and internet at an early age to answer them. From 2002, I learned how to browse the web and search for my answers.

I later learned to extend that same open-mindedness to religion and spirituality.

Four years later I learned to meditate. The thoughts I got swept up in and thought were me suddenly became another thing that just happens within me. Am I my heart? My breath? What I see? The answers to those questions led me to realize I am more than my thoughts. I am not what any person or thought tells me. In fact, reality says I can be whatever identity I want to be.

A global pandemic and lucky circumstances took me to Los Angeles. I found new friends and a new kind of community — this one moved differently than any I'd known.

I was shortly initiated into manhood and studied a system of philosophy and embodiment based on Carl Jung's work and the hermetic principles. It gave me structure for the spiritual framework that had been forming in me for years. This unique combination of Jungian shadow work and ancient wisdom traditions forms now the foundation of who I am and how I relate to others.

I dropped my apartment and said goodbye to my roommates and friends. I sold most of my things, packed what remained in a car, and drove north — from LA toward southern Oregon and northern California.

My dream was to create intentional, conscious communities and apply my engineering and analytical mindset to understanding and scaling them for others. I would still be working in tech, remotely. I believed I could experiment with living out a more efficient and effective system of harmony within society than the divisive hatred-filled one I was seeing on social media.

Combined with modern technologies only now being adopted for communities like this 3 years later (flow ↗), I think I was a bit early. One path forward in the AI age is a return to in-person communities and the tighter social fabrics we once had — meeting our social needs, optimizing shared resources, and helping immeasurably with raising family.

Underneath it all I saw a unifying philosophy — a fruit salad of the world's religions and wisdom traditions: release identity, let go of hostility rooted in labels and discrimination, and accept others without requiring that they share your own.

I arrived at an ecovillage in the mountains. My stay was two weeks. Work practicalities meant I traveled an hour to town twice daily and could not contribute meaningfully to the local community while internet was not yet there. Starlink had just been created and with divine timing arrived in my box in town the day I was leaving.

I next went car camping across the national forests, continuing to work in Tech with Starlink and just experienced the most stripped-down version of life I've ever had.

There was a dream community I'd had my eye on. I was accepted and hurriedly joined— a community based at the southern tip of the Big Island of Hawaii.

Time there was enlightening and moved at its own pace. I enjoyed learning from those on the land and leaning into my dream of building community. I learned a lot about myself: I carried a flaw of being overly trusting and naive. As I practiced discernment, I sharpened my rules for friend making and keeping community, and learned better to articulate what I need when I join the next one.

My dream for community evolution is strong. The moment for its mainstream adoption is never better than now.