One of the greatest gifts of my life has been an unbroken connection, since childhood, to my own indigenous wisdom stream. It wasn't something I memorized or inherited as doctrine. It was a way of listening deeply that cultivated an inner compass rooted in intuition, lived experience, and the wisdom of those who came before me.

Over the years, that way of knowing has been enriched by contemplative practice. Together, they have continually invited me to hold my views lightly, remain curious, and ask difficult questions of myself.

What am I not seeing? What assumptions am I bringing to this moment? How might my own conditioning be shaping what I perceive?

Those questions have transformed my life, and I've come to believe they are only part of the practice. Healthy spiritual inquiry invites us to examine ourselves. It also invites us to remain open enough to be changed by what another person's lived experience may be revealing.

The phrase spiritual gaslighting has become more common in recent years. I've been sitting with it carefully, not because I want another label for people or communities, but because I think it names a pattern that any of us can unintentionally participate in.

Spiritual gaslighting can arise when spiritual teachings or language unintentionally narrow inquiry rather than deepen it. The invitation to examine our own mind and heart remains, while genuine curiosity about another person's lived experience, the relationship itself, or what may be emerging collectively, quietly recedes.

Self-inquiry is essential. It has transformed my life. The challenge comes when our commitment to examining ourselves is no longer matched by an equal commitment to understanding what another person's lived experience may be revealing for all of us.

The Second Mindfulness Training reminds us to remain open to others' experiences and insights in order to benefit from the collective wisdom. Those words feel especially alive to me right now.

Wisdom does not emerge only from looking deeply within ourselves. It also emerges from looking deeply together.

The table above names a distinction I keep returning to. And it has required me to turn the mirror toward myself.

As I've sat with these questions, I've become aware of moments when, wanting to reduce someone's suffering or help them find another perspective, I unintentionally redirected the inquiry back onto them before I had fully received what their experience might have been inviting all of us to understand.

Looking back, I can see that I, too, have participated in this pattern. That realization has been humbling. It reminds me that these moments are rarely born from bad intentions. More often, they arise when our desire to help, preserve harmony, protect what we love, or arrive at an answer becomes stronger than our willingness to remain deeply curious.

The invitation is not to choose between self-inquiry and collective inquiry. The invitation is to keep both alive.

Sometimes the invitation is inward. Sometimes it is relational. Sometimes it belongs to a family, a team, an organization, or a community. And sometimes, after deep listening, honest reflection, and genuine efforts to understand, it becomes clear that the next layer of inquiry no longer belongs to the community alone. Some work can only be done from within.

This is not the same as returning the inquiry prematurely. The difference matters. Spiritual gaslighting redirects inquiry back to the individual before the community has truly looked. But there are also moments when a community has looked deeply, sat with difficulty honestly, and done the genuine work of collective discernment, and what emerges is the recognition that the next layer of growth is asking something of a particular person. Not because their experience didn't matter. Not because the community stopped caring. But because genuine inquiry, when followed honestly, sometimes leads there. Returning inquiry to someone is not the same as dismissing their experience. It can be one of the most honest and caring things a community can offer, when it comes after, not instead of, genuine collective inquiry.

Contemplative leadership is, in part, the practice of discerning where the next layer of inquiry belongs, and having the courage and humility to name it, whether that means widening the inquiry or lovingly returning it.

The opposite of spiritual gaslighting is the shared willingness to keep looking deeply together. To let another person's lived experience deepen our own understanding. To remain open to what our own mind and heart are revealing. To trust the wisdom of our bodies. To allow truth to emerge through humility, relationship, compassionate listening, careful observation, and time.

For me, this is where spiritual practice becomes real. It is no longer simply about cultivating insight within ourselves, but about allowing that insight to shape how we listen, how we lead, how we repair, and how we remain open to one another. The deepest teachings are tested not in abstraction, but in the ordinary messiness of relationships, families, organizations, communities, and everyday life.

Because wisdom rarely emerges from one perspective alone. It emerges when we remain open long enough to be transformed by one another.

May our practice always be spacious enough to reveal what none of us could see alone.