I’ll be blunt: I love spiritual community, and I’m also a little tired of the performance of peace.

I’m 54, a librarian in Omaha, five years sober. I found my way into a few circles after the worst run of my life, and they saved me more than I can say. But after a while I started noticing how quickly “stay present” became a way to avoid saying what hurt. How “everything is happening for a reason” could land like a slap when you’re in the middle of a mess.

For me, the real work wasn’t always candlelight. It was sitting with the ugly stuff. I think Jung had it right when he kept pushing people toward shadow work instead of just polishing the pretty self. You don’t heal by pretending the basement isn’t there. You heal by admitting it’s in there, and then deciding what to do with it.

This is where I start to get suspicious of groups that make discomfort feel like failure. If your body is screaming, your grief is raw, or your anger has a name, you shouldn’t have to wrap it in incense and call it alignment. Sometimes healing looks like a fight. Sometimes it looks like a bad night. Sometimes it looks like pulling a tarot card and staring at The Tower until you stop flinching. That card doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means something old is coming down so something else can stand up.

I don’t want to trash spirituality. I just want the room to be honest enough to hold both the glow and the mess.