Our need to ineract with others.

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In order to evolve on the spiritual path we need each other. To truly realize our highest potentials, we need to interact with other people who share our aspiration. This notion that we can't walk the spiritual path alone may evoke memories and emotions that long for connection and support on our journey, but we might also notice that another part of us finds it difficult to swallow. In our modern world, in which independence has become almost a religion, the notion that we need other people for anything seems like heresy. Indeed, if we were to embrace such an idea, wouldn't we be giving away our power, and our freedom? Even if we attend church services or classes or meditation groups, most of us still tend to think of our spiritual path as a private,internal quest in which we are the sole determining factor of our own spiritual destiny - but how independent are we really? In an environment where everyone is focused on our higher evolutionary potentials, it's easy to experience a spiritual "high" or to break through to new ground within ourselves, but what happens when we come home from such an event, and find ourselves again surrounded by people who don't share our higher values and aspirations? For most of us, and certainly I've found this to be true for myself, in the absence of such support we find ourselves quickly losing touch with the new potentials that had seemed so accessible when surrounded by like minded individuals. Although we like to think of ourselves as independent, the reality is that we are social creatures. There will always be those who are the exception to the rule. For most of us however, unless we surround ourselves with others who share our highest spiritual values and aspirations, we will almost inevitably find ourselves fighting against a kind of invisible but powerful "social gravity" pulling us back into the unenlightened, unevolved "world mind" we've been trying to break away from. What has been your experience?