09-27-2016, 10:44 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-27-2016, 10:57 AM by rva_jeremy.)
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.
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.
![[+]](https://www.bring4th.org/forums/images/collapse_collapsed.png)
