Trust and online communities

As I wrote yesterday, it took more than 6 months to gather a group of friends to share in total trust their consciousness and spiritual experiences first on a private what’sapp group and now on the synchronicity discord server.

Some of these people I knew in person, others joined introduced by someone else, others were online friends (ie. I did not know them much). Yet, some magic happened, we shared deep thoughts and learnings we would not be able to share with many people as we would sound “weird” or to some people “crazy”. A small group of about 40 people formed over the 6 months and started to really know and trust each other. The group on WhatsApp grew to 200 people but really it was these 40 that contributed the most.

As we moved to discord (and lost some people that only look at WhatsApp notifications or don’t want another app, a powerful motivation filter even though I regretted losing them) we basically opened the gates as discord is designed to host many people and the conversations get spread out by topics around channel so it is also more content. There is now close to 300 members of synchronicity, most of the just arrived.

I feel that anyone that wants to learn about consciousness and spirituality should be able to join synchronicity. Yet, most think-tanks or even spiritual practices are hidden, secret and often accept few people. It is difficult to join most of them. Some practices are just completely closed to newcomers or it takes years to get there.

I woke-up this morning with the question of trust.

How do we restore and keep trust for powerful shares and conversations while more newcomers join that we do not know if we can trust? There has to be a solution.

A few “old” members of the community expressed their reserves to share in the same way, some stopped sharing.

Yet, it is the very randomness or “synchronicity” of the original mix that made us all discover each other, good people who all have something special to share. More new members means more new good people and good conversations, I like to trust…

Vulnerability and risks.

When we share these experiences, we become very vulnerable. We could talk about our demons, our dark side, bad habits we are struggling with (I still have some!) and sometimes deep trauma.

Plants and substances

The plants in the Amazon forest are often strictly forbidden to use in most developed countries (while the indigenous I work with made alcohol and TV forbidden and restrict the use of mobile phones…) so it is not easy to share about them, even if we only take them where it is legal. People tend to categorize everything they don’t know as a drug while they consume sometimes large quantities of alcohol and sugar with no consciousness that they are also very bad substances.

Your boss and friends might judge you

Your boss could join the community. I fully understand you do not want him or her to know your weak sides or you might not want to share your weirdness or spiritual practices with your professional environment.

Public versus private

A journalist might join. Despite the fact that we ask that anything shared in synchronicity stays there, the rule could be broken. I understand how the information there could make juicy papers even with no attribution with a name and damage someone’s reputation.

We killed the witches and think mysticism is dangerous

Our modern societies are built on conditioning coming from generations and generations. We killed the witches in Europe, killed the indigenous masters discarding their knowledge as dangerous or not interesting. We judge without making the effort of knowing. I keep going from one world to another and it’s fascinating how the values are different in each. I wear feathers in the forest and hide them here. I can’t explain why I wear feathers in the forest to most people who will call me out with cultural appropriation or animal rights (with some good reasons). I received many spiritual objects in my trips to the Amazon that I keep as treasures and “work” with them.

Bad people

As we opened the gates “bad people” might show up. Who is a bad person? It is different for everyone. Someone that betrays you or misbehaves? I am learning to see the universe as just one single system where we all interact. There are no bad people, just some with less consciousness than others. I have seen people go to indigenous or meditation retreats and completely change their behaviors in very little time, it is beautiful to see and I would love synchronicity to be a place where everyone is welcome, anyone that wants to work on himself or herself to evolve and be a better person. In many ways I think of myself as a bad person in the past and changed many of my behaviors and relationships to others. You could see even business as a bad thing as the competition at the core of it makes us all disrespect others. When a manager fires someone he considers that person “bad” or “not good enough” yet it’s only a question of change and evolution. It’s so complicated. I feel there are no bad people.

The space

In the many ceremonies and practices I have done, “holding space” is a key element. Providing a space where everyone can make progress or heal. I have seen people scream, cry and having “weird” behaviors. Yet, this is what we see daily in our societies too. We just hide or exclude those that have strange or inappropriate behaviors. I have seen indigenous leaders deal with absolutely any type of behaviors, even with some people trying to harm deliberately a group of people seeking healings and self development. I have always been so impressed by how the indigenous leaders dealt with them, often letting them do what they had to do (any form of violence to others excluded of course) until they figure it out by themselves. In many ways at the beginning of my work in the forest I also “misbehaved” (okay it wasn’t that bad but still) and I learned. Sometimes I learned just with the silence of the indigenous just observing what I did and waiting for me to realize I should not do this. Calm, deep respect and silence are difficult practices we don’t learn much in the modern world.

Ego and money are other topics I will discuss in the future. They don’t work well with conscious work yet we need ego to make things happen and we need money to live in today’s world. We are discussing to offer donations to spiritual leaders coming to speak in synchronicity as they need the money for themselves, their people or to help their work improving the planet. Do we switch to a paid model? How about those who cannot pay? The standard pay for this doesn’t seem to work well. Many solutions.

Anonymity

Discord has pseudos because it was built for gamers and now widely used by crypto people also mostly anonymous in these forums. It doesn’t work well to establish trust but also allows some to express themselves and say things they would not otherwise. It doesn't help establish trust for sure.

Solutions

I just created a private channel I called “elders”. In this channel with the help of other “elders of the community” we added those we feel we trust. How do we trust them? They contributed a lot. They showed up with their real name. They became vulnerable and opened their hearts. They contributed with what they know or learn. They used video in the weekly calls making their presence closer to “in-person”. So it’s great those who were sharing trusting this group can do it again but now it exclude all the newcomers. It feels that the newcomers will somehow have to “earn” that trust by contributing and opening up when they’re ready. I don’t want to build a closed community but I want to encourage deep powerful shares so “levels” seem necessary. All the spiritual communities I have seen have these “levels” too where people can access different knowledge at different stages based on how much work and sharing they have done. It took me years to gain the trust of the indigenous groups I work with.

I don’t have all the solutions. I learn as I walk. I find synchronicity an amazing group and an incredible experiment. I love that it’s more open now and I trust that with the help of everyone we will keep it a beautiful place for self development.