It was a Tuesday morning when I realised the group wasn’t actually a safe space at all.
I’d been in this Facebook community for a few months-one of those popular spiritual spaces with thousands of members, daily affirmations, guided meditations, the whole thing. The energy felt good. Everyone was supportive. Everyone was evolving. Or so I thought.
Then I asked a question that nearly got me exiled.
The Question That Almost Got Me Removed
The group had been buzzing about 2025 numerology all week. According to the prevailing wisdom, 2+0+2+5 = 9, and 9 is a completion number. This meant 2025 was going to be absolutely transformational for everyone. A year of endings and rebirth. Destiny. Divine timing. All that.
Except I’d been thinking about it differently.
So I posted-innocently enough-asking about alternative interpretations. What if we looked at the digits another way? What if the numerology wasn’t actually indicating what everyone was saying? I wasn’t being rude. I was genuinely curious. And I framed it as a question, not a challenge.
The response was immediate. And it was brutal.
Within an hour, I had dozens of comments. Not engaging with my question. Not exploring the alternative perspective. But attacking me. I was “closed-minded.” I was “blocking my own abundance.” I was “not ready for ascension.” I was “low vibration.” One person suggested I was probably just “spiritually blocked by ego.”
The group moderator-a woman who’d been lauded as a spiritual teacher-didn’t shut it down. She joined in. She posted, “This kind of energy is exactly what holds people back from their divine purpose.”
I’d asked a question about numerology, and I’d been diagnosed with a spiritual deficiency.
What I Realised Was Actually Happening
I left the group that day. But it took me a few weeks to understand what I’d witnessed.
It wasn’t really about numerology. The group wasn’t actually interested in exploring spiritual ideas. They were interested in maintaining a specific narrative. And anyone who questioned that narrative-even gently, even with genuine curiosity-was a threat.
The response wasn’t logical disagreement. It was tribal defence. I’d stepped outside the acceptable bounds of thought, and the group had collectively moved to expel me.
This is what I call spiritual groupthink. And it’s far more common than most people realise.
How Spiritual Communities Become Toxic
Here’s the thing about communities built around spiritual ideas: they can be genuinely wonderful. They can be places where people feel seen, where vulnerability is honoured, where real transformation happens.
But they can also become something else entirely. And the mechanism is almost always the same.
It starts with certainty. The group believes something-about numerology, about energy, about what God wants, about what evolution means. And that belief becomes the unquestionable foundation. It’s not “we think this might be true.” It’s “this is the truth.”
Then comes the comfort. Being certain feels good. It feels safe. In a chaotic world, a clear framework for understanding reality is deeply appealing. And if everyone else in the group shares that certainty, it reinforces the feeling. You’re not confused. You’re enlightened.
But certainty requires enforcement. The moment someone questions the narrative-even innocently-they become a threat to the safety net. Because if the framework isn’t true, then everyone’s certainty crumbles. And that’s terrifying.
So the group develops defences. Questioning becomes “ego.” Disagreement becomes “low vibration.” Different perspectives become “spiritual blocks.” And anyone who persists in questioning gets expelled-either formally or through social shaming.
And here’s the insidious part: the expulsion is framed as being for their own good. “We’re protecting our energy.” “We can’t have negative influences in our space.” “It’s not personal, it’s just spiritual law.”
It’s remarkably effective. Because who wants to stay in a place where they’re being told they’re spiritually deficient?
The Charismatic Leader Problem
Most toxic spiritual communities have one thing in common: a charismatic leader or small group of leaders who define the narrative.
In the Facebook group, it was the moderator. She’d positioned herself as someone with special spiritual knowledge. She didn’t just participate in discussions-she interpreted them. She didn’t just share ideas-she validated or invalidated people’s experiences based on her spiritual framework.
And because she had followers (literally-she had thousands), her interpretations became law. When she called me “low vibration,” it wasn’t just one person’s opinion. It was a spiritual authority’s diagnosis.
I’ve seen this pattern everywhere. Spiritual teachers who surround themselves with devoted followers. Coaches who position themselves as gatekeepers of truth. Communities where disagreeing with the leader is treated as spiritual rebellion.
And here’s what’s darkly funny: I’d actually read about this in my own life story. I’d been in spaces where leaders demanded obedience, where questioning was punished, where the system was never wrong and I was always the problem. I’d written about it. I understood it intellectually.
But it still caught me. Because spiritual bypassing and toxic spirituality are seductive. They feel like home-until the moment they don’t.
What Gets Lost in an Echo Chamber
When a spiritual community becomes an echo chamber, something crucial dies: the ability to think for yourself.
You stop asking questions. You start adopting the group’s interpretations wholesale. You learn to perform the right spiritual language. You learn which thoughts are acceptable and which ones mark you as “not evolved.” You become dependent on the group’s validation to feel like you’re on the right path.
You also stop genuinely connecting with other people. Because real connection requires being able to disagree, to have different perspectives, to be messy and complicated. In a toxic spiritual community, you can only connect around the agreed-upon narrative. Anything outside that is threatening.
And perhaps most damaging: you stop trusting your own experience. If the group says your anger is “ego,” you stop trusting your anger-even when it’s a legitimate response to being treated poorly. If the group says your doubt is “spiritual blocks,” you stop trusting your doubt-even when it’s pointing you toward something important.
You become spiritually passive. You’re waiting for the group to tell you what’s true, what’s good, what you should do. You’ve outsourced your own authority.
How to Spot a Toxic Spiritual Space
I want to give you some clear markers, because it can be hard to see these dynamics from the inside.
Red flag 1: Dissent isn’t welcome. People ask questions and get diagnosed rather than engaged with. Different perspectives are treated as spiritual deficiency rather than legitimate alternatives.
Red flag 2: The leader(s) are beyond question. Their interpretations are treated as truth. Their spiritual authority is assumed rather than earned. And challenging them is considered spiritually dangerous.
Red flag 3: There’s an us vs. them mentality. The group is “evolved” or “awake” or “chosen.” Everyone outside is “asleep” or “low vibration” or “not ready.” You’re special for being in the group.
Red flag 4: Certainty is demanded. There’s no room for “I’m not sure” or “I see it differently.” You have to believe the right things to belong.
Red flag 5: Leaving is framed as failure. If someone leaves, they’re “not ready for ascension” or “not spiritual enough” or “blocked by ego.” The group’s narrative is never the problem. The person who left is.
Red flag 6: Vulnerability is weaponised. People share their struggles, and those struggles get interpreted through the group’s spiritual framework in ways that make them feel broken or deficient rather than heard.
If you’re seeing these patterns in a community you’re part of, I want to be gentle but clear: that’s not a spiritually safe space. That’s a control structure wrapped in spiritual language.
Where Genuine Community Actually Exists
Here’s what I’ve learned: real spiritual communities-the ones that actually help people heal and grow-look completely different.
They welcome questions. They’re genuinely curious about different perspectives. They don’t have all the answers because they understand that spirituality is personal and that wisdom comes from many sources.
They don’t need a charismatic leader making pronouncements from on high. They have facilitators or teachers, sure, but those people are transparent about their own uncertainty and limitations. They invite dialogue rather than demand obedience.
They don’t create an in-group vs. out-group. They don’t need to make people outside the community “wrong” to make people inside feel right.
They allow people to change their minds. To evolve. To disagree. To leave. And when someone does leave, there’s genuine care for their journey rather than spiritual judgment.
And here’s the key difference: they’re interested in your actual growth, not your conformity to their narrative.
The Gentle Reality Check
If you’ve been in a toxic spiritual community, you’re not stupid. You’re not spiritually deficient. You were just in a system designed to make you dependent on external validation while convincing you it was spiritual evolution.
And if you’re in one right now and recognising these patterns? That recognition is actually your own inner wisdom saying, “Something isn’t right here.”
The beautiful irony is that real spirituality-the kind that actually liberates rather than constrains-trusts your own knowing. It doesn’t need you to be in lockstep with everyone else. It doesn’t need a charismatic leader to validate your experience. It doesn’t need you to perform certainty you don’t feel.
It just needs you to be honest. To keep asking questions. To think for yourself. To trust your own experience, especially when it conflicts with what you’ve been told.
That’s how you know you’ve found a genuinely safe space: when questioning is welcome. When disagreement doesn’t threaten the foundation. When you’re allowed to evolve-even if that evolution means thinking differently than you did yesterday.
The numerology question that nearly got me kicked out of that group? It taught me something valuable. It reminded me that I’m allowed to think for myself. That my curiosity isn’t a spiritual deficiency. That real wisdom welcomes questions rather than punishing them.
And that’s worth more than all the group affirmations in the world.
