The Intentional Community glossary

Learn the meanings of the words you see in Brooklyn WhatsApp groups

Our Next Alchemical Sacrament, read yet another promotional post in a Brooklyn hipster-oriented WhatsApp social group for partially employed 30- and 40-somethings who live like 20-somethings, creating not the slightest glimmer of understanding in my mind about what this event could possibly be about.

Join us for our next ritual of manifestation, dedicated to forging consciousness in romance, creativity, friendships, business opportunities, and all aspects of life.

More words that made familiar sounds but together conjured no meaning. I wondered if I’d had a stroke. You hear stories of people suddenly forgetting what words mean. I scanned the next cluster of text, this one beginning with an emoji. 🌀 Psyche | Vision Odyssey: Embark on a guided alchemical journey with live music, enhanced by the natural release of DMT for a transformative experience. I wondered how DMT releases naturally. It was my understanding that one needed to very unnaturally manipulate a deadly toad to acquire DMT. Dive into Breathwork, EFT, and EMDR practices, unveiling paths to deep manifestation. It was this last word that assured me that I had not had a neurological anomaly. I was reading the nonlanguage that is spoken by people who organize events catered to Intentional Communities.

You may have noticed over the past several years – years that you have spent more deeply immersing yourself into the idea of Brooklyn, going not only to Burning Man but also regional Burns, and opening your committed romantic relationship to your best friend and their lover and their lover’s lovers – that the English language you grew up speaking has changed. Whereas words have historically been used to create clarity, words today in Intentional Communities are used to create a vibe. There is no context in which creating a vibe is more important than the description of an experience organized by someone who uses certain words to lure people into buying a $120 ticket to sit on the floor and listen to gibberish for 90 minutes.  

Most people who live in Williamsburg and the more expensive parts of Greenpoint or Bushwick are content to read these invented words and immediately buy a ticket in the hopes that they will meet yet another lover at one of these events. For those who read these promotional messages and Eventbrite pages and actually want to understand what they mean, the following is a complete Intentional Community glossary.

Abundance (noun): when other people give you things that they purchased because they have a job, and you are attractive [related to the Playa provides]

Abundant (adjective): used to describe the profit margins of somatic breathwork events, which attendees believe will be more than just doing breathing stuff with their eyes closed on the floor of someone’s loft apartment in Bushwick, because the Eventbrite page uses words like breakthrough, ecstasy, and journey and the first tier of $25 tickets is already sold out, and all that’s left are the $65 VIP tickets

Active (adjective): used to preface and accentuate words like listening, eye gazing, relating; this word means nothing in this context other than that whoever is hosting doesn’t have training or any practical skills

Adoration (noun): you will be awkwardly, semi-sexually touched by several unattractive barefoot people wearing Bedouin pants and each other’s body odor

Aerialist (noun): A woman in her late 30s who vaguely works in graphic design by day and by night wears a red unitard embellished with unpredictable flesh-revealing cut-outs while sort of gyrating in a ceiling-mounted fabric sling as part of the ambient vibe of an event for no compensation other than the partial attention of event attendees

Alchemy (noun): (1) there will be various drugs and definitely no alcohol, (2) people will be expected to touch each other, (3) someone will cry therapeutically and other attendees will quietly snap in support

Authentic (adjective): used to mean genuine, now means women will be braless and men will be unshowered. This word can be used to modify literally any verb or noun known to mankind and its use results in a 30% premium on a ticket price if it is the first word in the name of an event, e.g., Authentic Alchemic Manifestation

Awareness (noun): (1) what you pretend to return to when you emerge from pretending to meditate in a group, (2) what you pretend to manifest when you are in the presence of someone else’s feels

Beats (noun): music at the event curated by someone who does not know how to DJ who presses a button on a Pioneer deck that plays from an Apple device a mix made by an actual DJ

Breathwork (noun): you will pay $50 for a they/them person who went to went to an online community college in Oregon and then backpacked around Peru for a year to tell you to hold your breath and exhale slowly and while making a performative noise similar to HBOMAX’s sound logo

Celebration (noun): there will be drugs, beats, and an aerialist, and everyone will hug for a very long time

Childlike (adjective): a condition encouraged by people with no life skills, typically at ceremonies (see below) attended by fully grown adults, (2) an aspirational state of being used by fully grown adults to justify their lack of savings, excess of credit card debt, and multitude of concurrent sex partners

Clear (verb): a lecture that you give to a friend (who thinks they are getting an apology) about your personal values during the intermission of an Intentional Community Event after they find out that you have had sex with their partner

Closed (adjective), as in closed container: people will get kind of naked and touch one another on drugs

Co-create (verb): you will pay $80 for the privilege of bringing every single thing listed as a feature of an event, except for breathwork or reiki [see below] expertise

Collaboration (noun): the exact same definition as co-create, only you will pay $120 because one of the event organizers has their own branded event series that has over 5,000 followers on IG

Communion (noun): people will get kind of naked and touch one another on drugs

Community (noun): a group of people who get kind of naked and touch one another on drugs

Connection (noun): what happens as a result eyeball gazing, getting kind of naked and touching one another on drugs, or clearing; often used in conjunction with authentic, as in authentic connection

Consciousness (noun): something you both avoid and achieve through the use of drugs

Consent (noun): something provided by your best friend’s partner before you authentically connect in a closed alchemical connection ceremony

Container (noun): (1) a space where a community authentically connects following the purchase of a ticket on Eventbrite, (2) Tupperware

Cozy (adjective): used to describe a container in Brooklyn or Oakland that is also used as someone’s living space and is furnished with locally sourced items found on the streets within three blocks of the container

Curate (verb): to market a ticketed event to people who are a 7 or above, poly, and part of the right Burning Man camp

Deep (adjective): used to describe the intensity of connection, communion, collaboration, etc

Dinner (noun): pre-eat before any event that uses this word; food will be limited and will never not be vegan

Donation (noun): something invited but actually required; donations begin at $20 and range up to $150 depending on your body mass index

Dungeon (noun): you and five of your friends will be tied up in this dimly lit, red-hued, confining humid space that smells of silicon

Drop in (verb): something you do with someone you’d like to connect with; always involves uncomfortable levels of transparency regarding sexual proclivities and childhood trauma, often results in some form of sex

Ecstasy (noun): a heightened state of being brought about by drugs or sex with your best friend’s partner, or both

Ecstatic (adjective): doing basically anything like 50% more vigorously to seem less self-conscious and more liberated, eg ecstatic dance, ecstatic connection, ecstatic yoga, ecstatic edamame eating

Ecstation (noun?): someone used this word in a WhatsApp group and it may have been a typo

Elevate (verb): there will be drugs

Embodiment (noun): someone wearing lots of bracelets will offer you a coaching experience

Empower (verb): you will spend 45 minutes with your eyes closed listening to 20 people breath loudly

Eros (noun): the male-identifying person who is co-curating the event will touch you in a slightly creepy way because he is the embodiment of Eros

Erotic (adjective, noun): you will be encouraged by a female-identifying person in a headscarf to touch strangers, probably blindfolded, and the deepest of deep house will be playing on a Sonos speaker

Essence (noun): what you are told to discover during breathwork; at the end of the event one of the organizers will try to sell you essential oils they made in their Bushwick bathroom

Ethical (verb): a word used to justify having sex with your best friend’s partner

Experience (noun): there will be drugs

Experimental (adjective): this event will be a total shitshow, and you will rethink your life in the Uber home

Expression (noun): everyone will performatively cry

Eye gaze (noun): you will be forced to stare for at least three minutes at someone you don’t know and watch their eyeballs broadcast the pain of their recent breakup, and then they will hug you and thank you for changing their life

Facilitator (noun): a tertiary lover of the person hosting the event who has no experience in whatever is going on but is hoping to improve their ranking in the polycule by standing around and appearing present and open

Feels (noun): similar to feelings, but watered down by narcissism; whereas feelings are something you feel inside, feels are something you talk about outside in a circle in a loft that’s very far from the nearest public transportation

Gender expression (noun): do not use gendered pronouns at this event, otherwise you will be told that your energy isn’t aligned with the vibe of the experience

Gnosis (noun): this event is lead gen for a cult

God / Goddess (noun): this event will be attended exclusively by men with manbuns wearing open robes and women who don’t wash their hair

Guided (adjective): someone will speak in tongues while you pretend to meditate and fixate on whether or not you remembered to send a calendar invite for the meeting you think you have tomorrow morning

Harmony (noun): you will be asked to hum

Harness (verb): you will be told to search for something inside of you, and the anxiety of not knowing what you’re being told to search for will create a level of stress that exceeds what you experienced the morning of the SATs

Healing (noun, verb, adjective): take drugs, cry, and listen to people talk about the challenges in their open relationship

Heart-based (adjective): nothing that is said will have any grounding in logic or reality; the event organizer will talk for forty minutes with no self-awareness about their own lived experience and feels; there will be Trader Joe’s hummus along with vegan crackers that will give you cramps displayed on a folding table covered with a hectic red tablecloth with fringes; bring your own water bottle, because there will be like 7 cups

Heightened (adjective): you will be asked to breath rapidly until you feel light-headed

Integration (noun): you will be expected to cry after you do some kind of drug, and then someone without any kind of degree in psychology will pretend to help you process your feels

Intention (noun): the reason for attending an event that you share during the opening circle; the event organizer will crouch down in front of you, look deeply into your eyeballs, and tell you to manifest this thing; you will be unable to do the work of manifesting it, because you will ruminate about your ex during the entire 90-minute event that you attended to heal from your breakup  

Intimacy (noun): you will be touched by people who have not recently showered

Journey (noun): there will be drugs, and someone will play a wooden flute that was purchased in India but made in China

Latihan (noun): probably lead gen for a cult

Liberation (noun): this event will help you justify the fact that you’re 40 and still have roommates and no 401k or dental insurance

Live music (noun): someone who learned how to play the pan flute on YouTube and does not understand social cues will be performing next to the hummus table

Magic (noun): drugs

Magical (adjective): the effect of the drugs

Magician (noun): drug dealer

Manifestation (noun): whatever you wish for while on drugs

Meal (noun): aforementioned hummus and asymmetrical vegan crackers covered in flax seeds that will give you the runs, and maybe some Costco almonds

Medicine (noun): drugs

Modality (noun): the particular style of make-believe used by the event organizer, who lived in Bali for three years before moving to the less expensive part of Bushwick

Movement (noun): you will be told to wriggle around on the floor while making the sounds of the animal that you were in a past life

Natural (adjective): the organizer uses ineffective deodorant

Odyssey (noun): there will be so many drugs

Opening circle (noun): the group icebreaker will not be something innocuous like, “what was your first concert” – it will be invasive, like, “what was your earliest traumatic memory,” and someone will cry and leave immediately, and the intention of the entire group will then be set to manifest care for that person in their absence

Pathways (noun): (1) the various places you will be touched while your eyes are closed; used interchangeably with chakras, (2) drugs

Play (noun): sanctioned touching of strangers

Potent (noun): the organizer’s body odor

Practitioner (noun): someone with one week of training from an integrative institute in Panama founded by someone who was kicked out of a boarding school in Connecticut

Presence (noun): something you will have to pretend to have while eye gazing at an fidgety stranger

Process (noun): the varying states of being high

Process (verb): what you will be told to do after you are no longer high

Queen (noun): a female-identifying person who has done a prodigious amount of drugs and has a precarious number of lovers

Realm (noun): where you go when you get high

Relating (verb): the empathy you pretend to have while listening to someone wearing overalls and a sleeve tat from Bed Stuy talk about dropping out of graphic design school to pursue a career in somatic breathwork and reiki

Reiki (noun): very expensive healing through not-quite-touching touching

Ritual (noun): you will watch people in expensive rags do confusing, culturally appropriative things slowly, solemnly, and probably incorrectly to justify the $120 ticket price

Sacrament (noun): exactly the same as above +$20, and you will be told that you are healed

Sacred (adjective): a white person who takes themselves very serious will repeatedly make incorrect references to a brown person culture

Sensual (adjective): you will be touched by strangers

Shared (adjective): there will lots of small, mismatched carpets on the floor and not enough cups for the homemade kombucha

Somatic (?): you will be told that there is a demon rooted in one of your chakras from your childhood, and getting it out will require breathwork, polyamory, and another $120

Sound bath (noun): someone who definitely did not attend Julliard will rub the inside of pots, someone might sing-howl, and you will pretend to find this not only enjoyable but transformational [see below]

Spiritual (adjective): someone will chant-hum while you spend 20 minutes with your eyes closed, and then you will be asked to express your feels in a circle of people from Bed Stuy

Studio (noun): someone’s living room in Bed Stuy

Tantra (noun): a synonym of polyamory

Transcend (verb): when you get high enough that one of the facilitators should probably call 911

Transformation (noun): the process of going from a gainfully employed person in a normal relationship to being some sort of wellness coach in a polycule

Transformational (adjective): say this word when the event organizer asks you how your experience was; you do not need to know what it means, because no one does

Vibes (noun): an abundance of polyamorous people in kimonos, further reading here

Vision (noun): hallucination

Wisdom (noun): what you achieve after spending 10 months not working in Bali posting about how closed people are in the United States

Wonder (noun): when you rethink your life after leaving an event that you paid $120 to attend hungry, confused, and holding a small vial of essential oil that you were gifted by the event organizer after you gave them another $80

Please use the comments section below to add any terms that you believe are missing from this glossary. Liking this post will be transformational for me.