Leaving Eden: why does it hurt so much to leave spiritual community?
maybe the exit pain was another important lesson
I attended a two hour talk by my teacher and a senior monastery leader. Everyone else was captivated. I was not. Afterwards, I said, “I didn’t learn anything from this talk.” My teacher replied, “Well, yeah, you’ve been here for years, you already know all of this.”
At that moment, a seed germinated. After so many years, what am I still doing here?
It took me another year of painful doubts and hurt feelings to finally leave.
In the last two posts (dharma house: from monastery to co-housing, Post-Tragic Community: Not Everyone Belongs), I explored what a spiritual community feels like and how I formed them. I’ll be borrowing from models in those posts so I recommend checking them out if you haven’t already.
Previously, I talked about filtering well, attracting the right people, and building shared coherence are essential for a good foundation.
Nonetheless, even with these, ruptures still occur.
This post explores a lesser discussed but essential part of community life: Knowing it’s time to leave yet why is it so hard to leave? Not in the obvious cases where agreements are violated but because the container no longer feels nourishing or our visions have moved in different directions.
Designing exits from the community are often more difficult than filtering or admission. They can feel like death, both for the person leaving and for those still behind. Unlike filtering, which can be framed as “this just isn’t the right fit,” an off-ramp means something once good is no longer.
In an ideal world, every exit would be graceful. People would sense their time’s end, thank the group, and walk away with mutual love and blessing. Most times that is exactly what happens.
But, not always.
Why leaving hurts
To understand the off-ramps challenge, we need to examine:
the systemic level issue of collapsing spirituality into wellness culture,
the attachment system bonding of community,
the spiritual grounding in the unconditional
Spirituality as a collective, scarce resource
Exiting spiritual communities is painful because modern culture lacks clear pathways for "graduates" of deep inner work. This most valued aspect, our relationship to the Sacred, was once clearly recognized but is now muddled and indistinguishable from wellness, self-improvement, and therapy culture. So many people seek wisdom from influencer bros who have read many books. Or turn towards a twenty something therapist who has no life experience.
In traditional societies, initiates had clear roles. You left the monastery and became a temple priest or an elder-in-training. In Japan, many of the monks are there training so they can take over their family’s local temple. The culture valued and had roles for those who underwent extensive training.
Why don’t we recognize this value? Modern humans are so unhealthy: physically, emotionally, mentally, relationally, spiritually. In this dysregulated state, how can anyone recognize a healthy person when their own system is so loudly in pain or numbness.
I think of friends who sacrificed financial security to help build meditation centers or intentional communities. They worked as underpaid kitchen staff, construction crews, or administrators—gladly contributing their labor to something meaningful. But when they left, they often had no savings, no traditional career path, and skills that mainstream culture doesn't value.
Whereas, consider other intensive training programs. Military service leads to veterans' benefits and career pathways. Medical residency leads to practice opportunities. Startups factor in sweat equity with vested stocks.
The comparison to military service is instructive. We ask soldiers to dedicate years to serving something larger than themselves. In return, we provide structure, resources, and pathways back to civilian life. We recognize that this transition is challenging and requires support.
On the other hand, spiritual communities often assume people will either stay forever or figure out reintegration on their own.
When there's nowhere obvious to go, leaving doesn't feel like graduation. It feels like exile from Eden.
How can we view these departures as off-ramps and graduations rather than exiles and exits?
Community as my everything home
There’s also the personal layer of our nervous system attachment.
In our fragmented world, a spiritual community often becomes a person's primary source of belonging. Unlike traditional societies with extended family, lifelong friends, and established belonging, many of us arrive at spiritual communities hoping to fill the needs of home, friendship, and meaning.
The nervous system makes no distinction between temporary and permanent belonging. It bonds and attaches. Even when it’s time to go, your body’s attachment system screams to stay. Leaving feels like exile or death. It pings the memory of the first separation from the mother’s womb and the first break of human consciousness from Source.
I often saw that even when it became clear I was meant to leave, parts of my psyche screamed to stay. How many times have I been in the same situation around leaving a relationship or an incompatible career?
After leaving the monastery, I developed this metaphor:
Visiting the monastery as a guest felt like going on a date in a foreign country: exciting, idealized, uncertain.
Becoming a resident was like entering a committed relationship. The honeymoon fades, and real challenges emerge.
Becoming a senior student or teacher was similar to marriage and having kids. You had to sacrifice your needs to raise “children” together, rely on each other, and share deep responsibilities.
And leaving:
As a guest? A bittersweet travel romance and leave wondering, what if?
As a resident? Like ending a serious relationship you thought might last forever.
As a teacher or director? Losing a child together. There’s still love yet it’s so painful that moving forward feels impossible.
The deeper someone's role in the community, the more difficult it is to leave. Leaving means losing the version of yourself that existed in that context.
Retreat highs & nervous system bonding
I’ve seen smaller examples: a weekend retreat, a psychedelic journey, or a venture into the woods. The nervous system relaxes into empowerment, belonging, and truth. Suddenly it feels like, “Oh, this is my true family. This is the real me.” People scramble to maintain that feeling.
A year ago, I attended Relateful Camp, a weekend immersion of connection and relational practices. On the last day, several people mourned its ending, desperate to preserve its magic. One person made passionate pleas to rally and continue the momentum.
But I felt clearly: this isn’t our home. It’s not meant to be continued in that way. It was a beautiful container, showing us what’s possible. But the real integration, the hard work, is learning to establish this magic in yourself and in your own homes with your real family and friends.
I was grateful I had done that work and was returning to a community I deeply missed.
The post-tragic view: cultivating unconditional belonging
It was a painful process when I started shedding my roles at the monastery and sensed my involvement was changing.
I couldn’t imagine life outside the monastery, yet I knew I couldn’t participate in the same way anymore. I spent a year building my own cabin on adjacent land, hoping to maintain the connection but allow for my growing difference. Initially, I couldn’t imagine a life outside of the community.
These days around here with the dharma house, I have felt the fear of being abandoned and that the housing structure is losing coherence. In those dark moments, I ask, “why even try? Others aren’t committed and it’s bound to fail. Everyone’s first priority will always be their partner and kids. How can a community form in such a sick society?”
The post-tragic perspective is crucial.
If we stay stuck in a pre-tragic mindset—believing communities, relationships, or homes must last forever—we will suffer. We’ll cling, idealize, and resist change.
The post-tragic doesn’t reject the need for belonging. It widens the sense of belonging. It accepts the tragedy as not just inescapable but an essential nutrient that heightens appreciation, beauty, and love. It recognizes that everything is impermanent. Things form and dissolve. Relationships end. Our lives have an endpoint. The flower falls.
But this doesn’t mean we’re destined for hopelessness. It doesn’t make the beauty and meaning and love untrue.
The post-tragic asks a deeper question: Where does true belonging start?
It begins in direct relationship to the Source—whether God, Dao, Mystery, or Reality. Without this, as Ernest Becker wrote, we deny death and build civilizations to shield us from facing tragedy, discomfort, and the mystery of not knowing.
In Buddhism, we point to the same truth by reciting the 5 Remembrances:
I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape having ill health.
I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.
From a tragic point of view, this could feel hopeless and defeating. The tragic person still is resisting these truths as if they are not suppose to happen. But, from a post-tragic stance, if we accept these as true then how would I live differently? How would life be like instead? How would I relate to my work, community, and relationships?
Second, once we are grounded in a connection to Source, we console the scared parts of ourselves that fear abandonment and struggle with tragedy. We could call this secure attachment or basic goodness. Whereas the Transcendent aspect is connection to universal, unconditional Source, there is still our Ensoulment: how can this soul live in this body, in this world with all its humanness?
The ability to sit with our nervous system through grief, joy, loneliness, and change, without abandoning or numbing ourselves. How can I be empowered yet receptive to this life?
Only then does the third layer (home, family, community) fall into its place. It does not serve as the permanent ground for my life, but as an extension of a deeper belonging. As portals and expressions of Source enacting and expressing in this life.
This isn’t about bypassing the need for outer connection. It’s about building inner belonging in parallel to our soul’s journey through this life and impermanent, ever rich conditions.
Tea ceremony & fleeting beauty
A few days ago, a landmate performed a tea ceremony for us in the forest. As the tea opened my heart and I admired the scene with the sun cascading down and the lush green forest, I felt heartbreak of beauty and tragedy.
I don’t know how long this will last. A tragic part of me still has so much past grief and fear that limits the beauty and magic of this life and community. How much have I held myself back in my relationships, work, and art because I couldn’t bear to feel the same wounded rupture of leaving the monastery again or losing my sense of home? The earliest rupture of leaving Source to enter this world of chaos and magic.
Yet, this post-tragic view, along with healing work, helped me embrace the beauty and love alongside the pain and grief. To be able to see how the pain and impermanence makes the beauty even sweeter. I could feel the great tenderness, beauty, and sweet breaking in my heart.
How can I be a vessel that surrenders to life and enacts these beautiful spaces knowing their fragile, temporary nature?
Looking forward
In my final posts, I’ll discuss leadership, community design practical solutions, and the past, current, and future visions I have for spiritual community.
Thanks for the journey.
If you want to learn more please visit peterxpark.com or DM me on Twitter.
Also, we still have spots for our week-long Anti-Fragile Heart retreat September 4 - 10, 2025 where we’ll be exploring many of these themes in deep relational practices.
I was thinking about this post this morning. It feels so important to reiterate: you changed so many people's lives, and this world, for the better through your work at MAPLE. Thank you for changing my life and being my friend.