The high vibe tribes are on the rise right now.

In spiritual circles and social media groups, there’s talk of “raising your vibe,” short for vibration, which is the invisible energy that comes from a person, place, or thing.

In these circles, keeping your vibe high is considered a sure ticket to a better life. It’ll supposedly have you moving toward an ascended way of being, where you rise above the struggle and the pain of the world, headed to the land of good karma.

I think it may be time to break the wave on this high vibe stuff. Without a few adjustments, we’re bound to crash into the shore.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all about living well, helping others, and connecting with the light. In my 20s, I managed a metaphysical store that served people who were exploring spirituality and healing. As a healer and mentor, now with two decades dedicated to helping others, I’ve learned a thing or two about spiritual trends.

I tried to ride the high vibe highway for awhile, but realized I’d need to ditch the idea of ascending past everyone else if I wanted to make a difference in the world. What I learned is that spiritual practice leads us to a healthier place, but not when it involves trying to escape or ignore perceived “lower” vibrations.

In my early years, I took many classes on healing, energy, and meditation. Some teachers I encountered were down-to-earth, while others seemed to be detached from earth. I didn’t know the difference between the two back then. I remember having a real hard time with something that happened in my life, and I went to one of the high vibe teachers to get a healing session.

When I got there, I was visibly upset.

Instead of offering compassion or validating my feelings, this teacher belittled my emotional response and told me I should know better than to put myself in a low vibration where I would experience such strong emotional reactions. I felt hurt, confused, and disappointed. I was a good student and this was the first time I asked a teacher for help and was getting criticized for my emotions.

Needless to say, I never went back to her. Since then, I’ve observed many teachers and people in the healing field using the high vibe approach like she did to separate themselves from their own pain and the pain of others. Their rationale is that if you put yourself in the correct mental state, you won’t need to experience any lower vibrations and you won’t need to feel anything but joy.

What I found is keeping our vibe high isn’t doing what we think it is. It’s not connecting us to our joy—it’s creating a habit of avoidance. This leads to a spiritual superiority complex, where ascending the lower realms to bypass human pain and suffering becomes priority. When we do this, we’re leaving part of our human family out of the picture—and that’s dangerous.

Emotions are normal and natural and should be recognized as part of a healing process, not an indicator that someone is in a lower vibration than others. In fact, anyone who tries to convince someone that emotions are bad could cause potential harm.

Here are three simple things to avoid the dark side of the high vibe tribe:

1. Reconsider the idea of higher and lower when it comes to personal growth. Try viewing other people as if they’re traveling a labyrinth, one that moves in and out, with everyone positioned in a different spot as they travel. No one is higher or lower, they’re simply going in and around versus up and down.

3. Reframe our language to be inclusive. We need our language to be inclusive of all people as part of one human tribe, whether or not they meet our personal criteria for evolution or fall into a category that’s unfamiliar to us.

3. Focus on our own personal work. Be willing to look into our own shadows, to meet with parts of ourselves we don’t like, the places in us that scare us. And begin to accept them.

And for the love of all things sacred, let’s discontinue thinking that we’re better than everyone else because we walk a high vibe path. We’re here on earth to be in our hearts, to help one another move past what separates us.

Let’s make the best possible choices, learn from our mistakes, and lead with compassion. And remember: if we’re all one, we don’t need to try to fly higher than everyone else.

We just need to fly.

~