You don't need to be in the discord to attend the vrchat meetups. Anon is not wrong when he says a lot of people in the discord talk there more than they play the game.
Finding the vrchat meetups is just a matter of having the right people added. That will depend on your timezone.
My suggestion is to start on a weekend and meet/add people then. The weekday meetups are smaller and can be boring, especially if you're NA.