In the year that I’ve been serving as a moderator in the 2012 Scenario (now renamed GoldenGaia) discussion forum, I’ve learned a great deal about the dynamics of groups. I’d like to share some of my thoughts on this with you.
As the group has grown through the past year and as we’ve shared our hearts and thoughts with one another, we’ve also had many opportunities to both agree and disagree on just about everything we’ve talked about. That’s to be expected. We’re all sovereign individuals and there’s always going to be a wide range of beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and life experiences.
The fact that the forum is maintained as a safe and sacred space has made it a fertile ground for being able to hear all different sides of every question imaginable – and to do this without conflict. In this process, I’ve noticed that this ‘group entity’ is not so very different in my estimation from a singular entity is in some important ways.
I’d like to look at this in a series of articles, breaking this discussion into parts in order to present what I mean by this, and how I see this in terms of personal and group dynamics.
In this first part, I’d like to introduce what I feel is one of the biggest issues facing Lightworkers as a group. The following article will be dealing with the individual or personal side of the issue, and, in the conclusion, I have some musings to share about the ramifications of all this in terms of our group dynamics.
There seems to me to be a large portion of Lightworkers who rely heavily on channeled messages as their primary and oftentimes only source of information and access to truth. This is always the greater portion of our discussion in the forum, and a continual source of confusion and disappointment for, not all, but many of our members.
Not only are there the channelings to deal with, but also all the disinformation that is handed out in our media in great profusion. The question of discernment is ever present in all of this, and many are feeling completely overwhelmed by the effort to sort out what’s true and what’s not.
It’s the ability to discern, or the lack of it, which I want to address. It’s my view that there’s an aspect of this in both our personal and collective that resides in shadow, and it is this that I’d like to discuss and attempt to bring into the light. What follows are my personal observations.
Broken Trust
The Shadow Side of Personal and Group Dynamics
Personal Observations of Group Dynamics
There is in any group gathering both positive and negative expressions of the wheel of experience being shared. One of the biggest frustrations that is continually present is the question of whom to trust, how to discern truth, and how to reliably identify disinformation.
No matter how positive and hopeful messages are, no matter how many wonderful tools are offered, no matter how much encouragement, or how many times there are invitations to embrace perspectives that are positive and empowering, there’s a shadow side of our group consciousness that does push back.
This push-back is based in the thought that either all that is said is true, or it’s all to be discarded, since there’s no way to tell the difference. This broken-trust aspect has affected a large part of our group, and it isn’t going away until it’s addressed, in my opinion.
The more extreme version which I’ve seen of this inability to trust are posts which are criticized, demanding absolute proofs, issuing challenges, and placing blame. But before we go into blame and citing all the promises that haven’t been fulfilled, let’s take a closer look at this.
I want to look at this broken trust, both in a personal and a group way. I want to get to the bottom of it and understand what it is that gets in the way of our ability to know truth and to have access to our own information from Source.
Regardless of how many question-and-answer sessions we have from various sources, they aren’t a substitute for our own knowing. No outside source can ever provide what we’ll need to fill the deep longing we have for certainty, the longing for some way to know for ourselves what’s true.
The natural result of not finding a base for trusting, and trying to identify a source that can be trusted without being centered in, or having access to, the Source for ourselves is that we’re feeling betrayal, confusion, resentment and fear. This is the shadow side doesn’t only exist in those who have the guts to express it. This shadow resides in us all. It’s personal and group trauma from eons of programming and abuse.
Some of us have explored these shadow principles in ourselves more deeply than others, but to deny that we all have them is to continue to leave this part of ourselves in a space without awareness, in the shadow/darkness, and therefore operating under the radar of our consciousness.
This shadow is there, expressing itself in our attitudes, coloring our perceptions. And yet, we so often don’t know this from a conscious place. It is in this unconscious space that we are not giving our attention to that this shadow lives. It’s in this separation that I feel there is a need for integration and healing.
It’s only by bringing awareness to it that brings it out of the shadow and out of separation.
Whether it’s the individual or the group entity, it is the whole entity with all its abilities intact that we need in order to go forward into a New Age. I feel that this broken-trust issue is spiraling back around again and again to be seen for what it is, and to be brought into conscious awareness to be healed and re-integrated.
Unless this breach of trust does heal, I think that it will continue to express itself over and over without resolution. I think that it will wear the mask of whatever detail is currently being talked about, but I do believe the real issue is much deeper and more personal than this.
Whom do we trust? Can we trust these messages coming from Ascended Masters, benevolent ETs, and human intuitives that we’re offered? We listen to them, we discuss them, but can we trust them to be true? What about trusting in our own abilities to have access to Source?
Ultimately, these questions will always circle back to the personal, to the question of whether or not a person has the ability to discern the truth, and whether or not they have trust in their own ability to know.