Finding a Spiritual Community to Grow With

The quest for higher consciousness is often described as a deeply personal journey. Yet throughout history, spiritual traditions have recognized that while awakening is personal, it’s rarely achieved in isolation. A spiritual community, often called a sangha, provides a powerful environment where growth, transformation, and transcendence can flourish. Royal Way founder and master teacher Michael Gottlieb reveals the profound importance of such a community and describes how it acts as a living field of spiritual energy—supporting each individual in realizing his or her highest potential.

The Sangha Reflects Your Beauty and Power

A true spiritual community inspires its people to realize their innate greatness, beauty and potential. Michael Gottlieb taught that every human is capable of transcending self-imposed limitations and reaching their highest potential. The Royal Way community is a place where people are continually encouraged to see beyond their limitations and identify with their highest self. The spiritual community supports them in discovering their strength, their freedom. The work of the sangha is to help empower people, guiding them toward the discovery of their own power, love, and compassion. This has a symbiotic effect that not only benefits everyone in the community, but can spread to the broader world. As Michael put it:

“Each individual changing and growing higher helps the whole world move higher. Each individual dancing and singing and rejoicing helps others to be happier. Each individual helping others in need is helping himself grow.” 

The Community Accelerates and Magnifies Growth

A sangha creates an atmosphere that amplifies spiritual growth. When students gather together with a shared intention, explains Michael Gottlieb, they generate a collective field that is greater than the sum of its individual members. He says that when seekers create a community around a spiritual teacher, “They create a ‘collective energetic’ and ‘incredible dynamism.’” He adds: “The dynamic of having others connected to the same teacher is extremely helpful to every individual connection. This adds a powerful thrust forward for growth and transcendence.” 

This shared field allows participants to have more powerful experiences than they might have alone. The collective energy generated through mutual commitment creates an environment in which insights, healing, and transformation occur naturally, and often with great intensity.

‘Thousands Climb … But Who Stays?’

This collective energy also helps sustain momentum on one’s spiritual path. Many people have powerful spiritual experiences during retreats, workshops, or moments of inspiration. But the real goal is to sustain those insights in everyday life. Michael writes, “Thousands climb, thousands experience highs. Thousands attend weekend workshops and have moving experiences. But who stays?” The challenge is not simply to touch higher consciousness but to embody it consistently. A spiritual community provides the kind of support that helps everyone remain connected to their path, to their powerful experiences. Through regular contact with fellow seekers, those involved in the Royal Way spiritual community elevate each other amid life’s inevitable distractions and challenges.

Importantly, those in Royal Way provide each other with support and encouragement when challenges arise. More importantly, Royal Way helps every member of the community to realize their highest potential on their personal path to God.

The Healing Benefits of the Spiritual Community

The sangha also serves as a powerful source of love and compassion. Members support one another, celebrate each other’s successes, and bring compassion to others in periods of sadness or struggle. Over time, this kind of love and acceptance—a major teaching of Michael’s—helps people develop greater self-love and a deeper capacity to love others.

Bringing Spirituality Into All Facets of Life

The community helps bridge the gap between spiritual insight and everyday life. Some traditions emphasize withdrawal from society, but Michael Gottlieb cautioned against using spiritual environments as places of comfort and escape. He taught that true growth requires bringing spirituality into everyday living. He advocated “bringing the world to the mountain, and then the mountain comes to the world. You do not delude yourselves into thinking, Here is where it’s at. This is the womb without a view. This is where we are going to sit and get nurtured.”  

Participants in Royal Way workshops use the sangha not to hide from the world, but to develop the skills, wisdom, and compassion necessary to more effectively engage with people and situations. Community members encourage one another to apply Royal Way principles in their relationships, work, family life, and service to others. In this way, higher consciousness becomes a lived reality rather than an occasional, isolated experience. The Royal Way community is very much of the world.

Perhaps most importantly, a spiritual community reminds individuals that they are not alone. Fellow seekers can provide reassurance and strength when challenges arise. Shared experiences create bonds of trust and understanding. Movement toward higher consciousness becomes both more attainable and more fulfilling. The sangha becomes a living expression of the very consciousness that seekers aspire toward, and a constant reminder that transformation is possible.