Posting Guidelines and Common Sense Rules
+ W.A.I.T. (“Why am I talking?”)

(pasted from https://naascommunity.org/landing (halfway down page)

To better understand the vibe of this community before you request to join, we will share the posting guidelines below. Please join only if you resonate with them.

But first, a few details:

Network Posting Guideline
The principle of reverence

Instead of patronizing you with guidelines about being respectful, I would like to invoke the principle of reverence. Reverence is the awareness that one is addressing sacred beings. It is not the same as solemnity; it includes humor, playfulness, and ease as well.

To maintain reverence means noticing habits of polarization and judgment that arise in the presence of difficult information or difficult emotions. Although this community is conceived as a sanctuary, inevitably it will mirror the divisions and conflicts of the outside world. The answer is not to avoid them or to plow them over with positivity. Rather, I invite us to hold them in a non-ordinary way.

Specifically, that means that we help each other

to express anger without diverting it onto hate

to hold grief without diverting it onto despair

to share compassion without diverting it onto pity

to interpret each other's words generously

to let go of being right and seeming smart

to value each person’s unique window on the world

to be willing to see each other fully, shadow and gold

to be willing to be truly seen ourselves

Challenging material is sure to come up in any community once it progresses past initial politeness. Here, our exploration of a new story will reveal our own unconscious beliefs and habits of separation; that is, the ways in which we still see and act from an old story.

If we can hold reverence through that process in our own community, which will surely mirror the divisions and conflicts of the larger world, then there is a chance for the world to move toward peace as well. To the extent we succeed in holding reverence, we establish a precedent and prefigure a possibility.

It is much easier for me to admit I was wrong, when I’m in an environment where no one is shamed for holding wrong beliefs. It is much easier for me to speak my truth, when others are welcome to speak theirs. It is much easier for me to question my beliefs when humble people surround me. In a community that provides such conditions, each member can grow beyond where they could alone.

A call to inquiry and W.A.I.T. (“Why am I talking?”)

Gigi Coyle, my dear friend and a teacher of the Way of Council, offers a mantra for speaking in circle that I think can be profitably translated into online conversations. The mantra is W.A.I.T. – “Why am I talking?”

... (more at https://naascommunity.org/landing - halfway down page)