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Thoughts on online community - rva_jeremy - 09-27-2016
Hey guys, in my meditation this morning I had a thought occur to me that I recognized has crystalized over the 16 or so years of using the internet and forums to explore spirituality and, ultimately, myself through the resulting reflection. None of this necessarily applies to anybody else; it's just something I feel would be useful to put into words for my own purposes. I am not responding to any event here; I just was moved to think about this. That said, feedback wouldn't hurt!
I've been using the internet to discuss spiritual matters since David Wilcock first created the Asc2k mailing list (who remembers that blast from the past?!?!). One of the things I noticed is that the more I made spirituality a matter of dialogue, the more it became a matter of debate. Debate inevitably takes us away from sharing and supporting each other, in other words, it often makes for less of a community (not all debate is bad, but wouldn't you agree it arises most usefully in an atmosphere of mutual support and respect?). I think there's a few reasons for this, some to do with my personality features, and others to do with the character of the medium.
On the one hand, these subjects are hard to get right in words. So one attempting to share via language, and especially synchronous communication where the initial writing and feedback writing are sequenced, can be challenging. If you find you can't communicate your thoughts or feelings with sufficient fidelity, it can be quite frustrating. And so I think a lot of times the descent into debate that I've witnessed in communities over and over again comes not so much from people being stubborn or drama-prone but simply frustrated that what they feel is not reflected in the forum. Often what's asked of us when we share with others is not so much getting things factually correct so much as supporting each other's subjective journeys, serving as accurate mirrors and learning when help is truly requested.
On the other hand, and here's the big takeaway for me, getting skilled at using words can bias one in a linguistic direction that elevates argumentation and rhetoric over the matter at hand. This is something I struggled with, and actually is something that has kept me at arms length from this community for much of its existence, I think. I know for me participating in fora like this at times took precedence over the very spiritual practice I was supposed to be writing about in the first place! It was as if the mailing list became the primary way of identifying my spirituality rather than my life and feelings.
For so long I did not want to repeat the behaviors I had honed on Asc2k, where I was able to be an effective, clever, and seemingly even-handed bully for the party line. Once one has power of some kind, you really paint in brighter and darker colors, and it has taken me years to balance that responsibility that I feel I did not properly appreciate. It is tough to know when something you love is in genuine need of protection vs. when protection causes more damage than the threat itself.
So as I'm participating more here, I'm sort of realizing that the problem was never really the medium of mailing lists, fora, etc. but how I used them. This was part of the impetus for doing my Homecoming 2016 presentation on "Social Media as Catalyst". What I'm saying is that, as I tiptoe back into online community again, I feel like I'm getting to reboot the way I use it, leading to me noticing a real difference in my motivations and actions. I'm a lot more comfortable letting people have their own say, a lot more tolerant. But I also think that attitude leads to a much less obsessive kind of participation, where I don't need to weigh in on every topic and I don't need to make the community be a certain way.
That said, I'm not a moderator -- having been asked in the past and declining for the very reasons I stated above -- and so that balancing act is something I've been thinking about lately. Because it is a service to do it well, as Jade and Plenum and Austin and others do. I appreciate so much the light touch they take, and have learned from their example. And I suppose it is culminating in a realization that the character of participation I enjoyed in the past is not the only one available.
If something bothers you about these forums, that is an opportunity to reflect and notice something you might not have noticed otherwise on your journey. I spent a literal decade meditating on the power issues that online spiritual community awoke me to. There's a lot of ways to be here, and all of them are available to you if you open up to them.
OK, stepping off the soapbox.
RE: Thoughts on online community - octavia - 09-27-2016
Hi Jeremy,
Much of what you wrote here resonated with me. At times, when reading this, I felt as though I was reading a kind lecture from my higher self.
Quote:One of the things I noticed is that the more I made spirituality a matter of dialogue, the more it became a matter of debate. Debate inevitably takes us away from sharing and supporting each other, in other words, it often makes for less of a community (not all debate is bad, but wouldn't you agree it arises most usefully in an atmosphere of mutual support and respect?).
Quote:On the other hand, and here's the big takeaway for me, getting skilled at using words can bias one in a linguistic direction that elevates argumentation and rhetoric over the matter at hand.
In my early teenage years, I actually used to enjoy and deliberately seek out debate online. Looking back, this is somewhat mystifying to me seeing as it would invite undesired emotions without fail, causing me to feel unwell. Over time, my attitude effectively flipped. During my brief time at college, I quickly found in my philosophy courses that debate and rhetoric were being employed by my fellow students in such a way that I felt was very non-optimal for the learning and understanding of the texts we read. At times I wondered what the purpose was in explaining one's own position to others under these conditions.
Nevertheless, it is still something that I am working on. Sometimes when I read something online that I find striking, I feel that sense of unwellness coming back, along with the feeling that I am somehow obligated to respond, lest the topic come to pass entirely. But it is of course not necessary. I think if I go back and look at what I have said on these fora, I think I am very lucid of which things I have said which were helpful, and which things were not. In this way, for me, it is entirely a matter of translating what I have learned into my own words and actions.
RE: Thoughts on online community - rva_jeremy - 09-27-2016
Thanks for your kind words, Octavia! Nice to know my experience is not unique.
Quote:In my early teenage years, I actually used to enjoy and deliberately seek out debate online. Looking back, this is somewhat mystifying to me seeing as it would invite undesired emotions without fail, causing me to feel unwell.
This sounds exactly like the early 2000s for me. I used to do this by commenting on political blogs, seeking out the most aggressive arguments and priding myself on shutting them down. And I also did this when I was enforcing rules on Asc2k--rules that I didn't always agree with at all, but had the tools to enforce effectively.
I can't speak for you, but I think looking back it was a way of seeking out two things:
(1) distraction. The immersive features of debate take attention from all the other stuff you're bored or worried about. There's an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia where two of the characters are totally hooked on an online multiplayer game. Their lives are pathetic, but they always feel like they're "thriving" because they're doing well in the game. That's how being good at online debate felt to me. It allowed me exactly the frame that showed me what I wanted to see and hid any reflection I didn't.
(2) working out your personality issues. I used to have real problems with what I perceived as injustice. So having the feeling of swooping in and making things right was addictive, that sense of feedback from feeling your pain and getting the instant gratification of having (virtually) acted on it. And I took this to my online political activism too, even though most of the time only the boots-on-the-ground variety was truly fulfilling in any way. Debate makes the point about the other side's flaws rather than your own.
I think you are absolutely correct when you say it's about translating these lessons into behavior and how we express ourselves. I suppose what I was trying to say is completely obvious to everybody, but it's to use online communication not simply as a tool of projection but also as a tool of reflection. I mean, a lot of the interactions I've had in the past would make me cringe now, because I have the distance to not feel emotionally validated by it but can see it as a naked post. "Somebody being wrong on the internet" is not very frequently a problem requiring a heavy hand.
Thanks again!
RE: Thoughts on online community - YinYang - 09-27-2016
I think everyone that participates here, gives this community and this type of platform a lot of thought. What I realised the other day, was that I didn't follow my own initial advice that I gave when I rejoined after a hiatus from this forum of more than 5 years!
I did see the humour when thinking of that post. So I guess I haven't mastered detachment just yet! :-)
Like everything in life, it's a mixed bag.
RE: Thoughts on online community - BlatzAdict - 09-27-2016
With these thoughts in mind you can take them even further to 6D wisdom.
If debates are a way to self assert something to feel good about being right, then there is a finer balance to be found whether those debates are posited in an aggresively crude or intellectual elitist kind of way. Perhaps aggressive actions would be more 3rd chakra imbalance and an intellectually demeaning or elitist standpoint would be a 5-6th density chakra imbalance.
In thinking about the same lessons I think about Yoda making it into a joke, or Jesus making it into a parable, to incite the greatest love, in the end where we pay our attention is what we decide to feed. In your multidimensional keyboard, you make and pick along these emotions which are then translated into other actions and some actions are those that you like to play. You just happened to want to write a killer solo on debate and you think you've gotten to a new perspective on the note, or angle.
Polarized or polarizing situations always give us the best mirrors of ourselves, or of each other, and it is in facing each other rather than just ourselves that we come to know ourself. I always ask myself if something I'm saying now is responding to the highest love in the moment, or if it's responding to and feeding some selfish petty line of action. Within each present moment, there is the choice.
RE: Thoughts on online community - 4Dsunrise - 09-27-2016
When I first used the internet in 1998 my main motive was to find like-minded groups, ie on SpiritWeb at the time and L/L Research, and make connections with those near and far to start local New Age ET Wanderer groups who can meet and talk and share in person and in real time.
I thought back then that the Internet would the avenue for all kinds of New Age gatherings and soul mate-like connections all over the world and we'd have a network of a couple hundred of such groups -- the beginnings of a SMC.
Call me naive and swept up in the New Age optimism at that time.
I don't know if a 4D internet is to be but if so I would like to see something like this.
Thoughts of a future 4D Internet
http://www.bring4th.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=10915
RE: Thoughts on online community - BlatzAdict - 09-27-2016
(09-27-2016, 02:59 PM)4Dsunrise Wrote: When I first used the internet in 1998 my main motive was to find like-minded groups, ie on SpiritWeb at the time and L/L Research, and make connections with those near and far to start local New Age ET Wanderer groups who can meet and talk and share in person and in real time.
I thought back then that the Internet would the avenue for all kinds of New Age gatherings and soul mate-like connections all over the world and we'd have a network of a couple hundred of such groups -- the beginnings of a Social Memory Complex.
Call me naive and swept up in the New Age optimism at that time.
I don't know if a 4D internet is to be but if so I would like to see something like this.
Thoughts of a future 4D Internet
http://www.bring4th.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=10915
there is a big non Law of One community, i see that they have taken the long way back to the creator, though they come to the same understandings, you will find so so many parallels once you find the greater community of star seeds and wanderers.
there are a lot of new spiritual groups quickly forming on the Facebook end of the inter webs, i try to support Law of One based groups like the one below:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/copitsotic/
Then Glenn Pendleton that runs The Sons of the Law of One facebook group as well as his radio show and his website with his library on it:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/thesonsofthelawofone/
there is also http://www.lovehaswon.org
http://www.ewao.com earth we are one
http://humansarefree.com
http://goldenageofgaia.com
you are not alone! you are loved! you have an important mission!
RE: Thoughts on online community - Ashim - 09-27-2016
Just release prana by some method and use a crystal to connect. 4d is not so difficult, it just takes some amount of focus.
For goodness sakes, Ra gave us, more or less, the guidelines.