Why I’m Not Anti-Spiritual — I’m Pro-Structure

I spent three and a half years in and around “conscious communities.”

Eco-villages in Costa Rica. The Bali circuit. The nomadic spiritual infrastructure that promises freedom, depth, and belonging.

I’m not writing this to take them down. I participated. I believed. I understand the pull.

Recently I went back. A month at an eco-village in Costa Rica—a place I’d loved before. And it confirmed something I’d been sensing for a while: it really, really didn’t fit anymore. Not because it had changed. Because I had.

Something felt off. Not emotionally—structurally.

[Writing this from a condo on the beach in Costa Rica...]

The Thesis

I’m not rejecting spirituality, embodiment, or community.

I’m rejecting romanticized formlessness that confuses lack of structure with freedom.

Because here’s what I’ve learned: depth without structure eventually becomes unsafe. Emotionally, relationally, and biologically.

True spirituality must be compatible with order, continuity, responsibility, and creation—including children.

If it isn’t, it’s not spirituality. It’s a very sophisticated way to avoid growing up.

What I Actually Saw

Let me describe what I observed at one community in particular—and others like it. Not as accusation—as observation.

Structural realities:

• Land owned by a single individual

• No collective ownership or governance

• Residents work for internal credits, not sovereign income

• Lack of work permits; reliance on informal systems

• Housing built by individuals but owned by others

• Long-term residents without credit cards, assets, or mobility

• Exit costs that increase over time

The key insight: Community language masks power asymmetry.

“We don’t want ownership” often means “we already don’t have it.”

Spiritual framing replaces accountability—but not power dynamics.

[This isn’t cynicism. I loved many people in these spaces. But love doesn’t require me to ignore what I saw...]

The reframe is simple:

This isn’t utopia or anarchy. It’s a feudal model with incense and good music.

The Romance of Chaos

There’s a particular flavor of spiritual ideology that I kept encountering. It sounds like:

“We’re all one.”
“Structure is control.”
“Ownership is ego.”
“The system is collapsing anyway.”
“We’re beyond money and governance.”

These are pendulums—information entities that replicate through the nervous systems of people who adopt them.

And like all pendulums, they have costs.

The lived reality of romanticized chaos:

• Emotional fragility increases

• Lack of structure forces constant regulation through intimacy, substances, or ideology

• People outsource stability to relationships, ceremonies, or charismatic leaders

• The most “free” environments often require the most emotional labor

Chaos doesn’t liberate energy.

It dissipates it.

Order as a Spiritual Principle

Here’s where I part ways with much of the conscious community world.

I believe order is spiritual.

Look at life itself: ordered energy. Bodies are structured systems. Minds are structured systems. Evolution preserves form, not chaos.

A well-ordered mind is peaceful.
A well-ordered life creates capacity for love.
A well-ordered environment allows nervous systems to relax.

Order isn’t the enemy of spirituality. Order is what allows spirituality to persist.

The mystics knew this. Monasteries are highly structured. Zen temples run on precision. Even the most ecstatic traditions have containers.

The formless needs form to be experienced.

[I think of my own practice. Twenty years of meditation, and what made it deepen wasn’t less structure—it was more. Regular sits. Consistent teachers. Same cushion, same corner, same time...]

Intimacy Needs Containers

This connects directly to my recent piece on relational poverty.

Intimacy without structure increases anxiety.
Undefined containers activate attachment systems.
“Let’s just see what happens” works only short-term.

What creates safety in intimacy:

• Clear orientation

• Honest limits

• Predictable rhythm

• Shared values about life direction

Structure allows desire to soften instead of spike.

Safety precedes surrender. Surrender without safety becomes collapse.

I watched couples in these communities oscillate between ecstatic connection and total dysregulation—because there was no container. Just energy, bouncing off walls that kept moving.

Children Don’t Arrive Through Chaos

This is where it gets personal.

I want children. This is non-negotiable for me.

And children don’t arrive through chaos. They arrive through stability, continuity, and order.

When I imagine creating a family with someone aligned on structure, my body feels grounded, warm, safe. The somatic truth is clear.

When structure is absent, the desire feels fragmented or performative. My system doesn’t trust it.

Children are not an accident of love. They are the byproduct of a well-ordered life.

This isn’t conservative moralizing. It’s biology. It’s nervous system reality. A child needs to know the walls aren’t moving.

The Masculine Question

I want to be careful here, because these waters get polluted fast.

But I observed something in many spiritual spaces: a skew toward formless feminine energy.

Action, building, responsibility, and ambition are subtly devalued. “Doing nothing” is often framed as enlightenment. Presence is prioritized over execution.

I value both.

Spirituality and building.
Presence and execution.
Depth and form.

A mature masculine doesn’t dominate. It structures.

Without that structuring capacity, intimacy and community drift toward dependency. Someone has to hold the frame. And in communities that reject structure, the frame is held covertly—by whoever owns the land, controls the money, or has the most charisma.

The formless feminine needs the structured masculine to have somewhere to land.

[This isn’t about gender. It’s about energy. Some of the most structuring presences I know are women. Some of the most chaotic are men. But the polarity is real...]

Why I’m Leaving

I’m not leaving because these communities are evil, fake, or unintelligent.

I’m leaving because they cap development.

They discourage sovereignty.
They stall adulthood.
They avoid long-term responsibility.

I don’t want to live in a retreat.

Or live in “the opium den” as my coach puts it.

I want to live in a world—and bring depth into it.

The liberation architecture I’ve been writing about isn’t about escaping structure. It’s about conscious participation at every level—personal, relational, collective, cosmic.

You can’t participate consciously in something you’ve withdrawn from entirely.

The Position

So here’s where I stand:

I’m not anti-spiritual. I’m anti-confusion.

I’m anti-chaos masquerading as transcendence.

I’m pro-structure because structure:

• Creates safety

• Enables intimacy

• Allows children

• Supports freedom over time

The pendulums of romanticized formlessness want you to believe that structure is the enemy. That order is ego. That building something stable is somehow less enlightened than floating between ceremonies.

But pendulums always serve their own survival, not yours.

I’m not leaving spirituality behind. I’m bringing it back into contact with reality.

A well-ordered life isn’t less spiritual. It’s the only container in which spirituality can actually bear fruit.

Keep bending light and hacking minds,

• Cian

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P.S. This follows from the Pendulum Series, particularly Liberation Architecture and The Relational Poverty of the Digital Nomad. The thread is the same: conscious participation requires structure, not escape.

P.P.S. If you’ve lived in these communities and recognize what I’m describing, I’d love to hear your experience. What did the formlessness cost you? What structure did you eventually build? Drop a comment or reach out.