About our Pocket Project Lab Online Community

This online community is a safe, private and inclusive space. We encourage and support the respectful sharing of each person’s learning process and experiences, and honor individual differences and various perspectives. At the same time, we recognize a shared purpose to learn and grow as participants in this course.

The online community is our “home” and supports the process of deepening our understanding and embodiment of what is taught in the course.

The Pocket Project Lab Team and the senior faculty of the Pocket Project have created sharing agreements that will help us co-create a generative space for lively discussion and heartfelt sharing. By being a member of this site, you agree to adhere to them.

Don’t hesitate to offer suggestions, your experience and questions.

Sharing Agreements

As a member of this community, you agree to the following:

• To adhere to the rules of conduct and other terms as outlined in the community’s Terms of Use.

• To take responsibility for what you share and with whom.

• To engage in respectful exchanges with others, even when feeling personally challenged.

• To adhere to the additional specific norms and etiquette detailed below.

Direct messaging etiquette

Please be sensitive in reaching out to others privately and directly—most of us are strangers to each other. If someone declines a private conversation with you, please honor their request.

Posting comments

We are a large group of skilled people committed to address collective and intergenerational trauma. Together we can share and discuss a huge amount of information and experience. Below are a few general tips about how to start a ‘discussion’ or post other materials while maintaining our group as a place of deepening what we’re learning in the course.

• Try to strike a balance in our online community between sharing your own thoughts and “listening” to others.

• Before hitting the ‘publish’ button, please consider if it serves our mutual process of deepening into understanding of the dynamics of collective and intergenerational trauma. See and feel what we’re co-creating here. We would like to maintain a community environment that is safe and inclusive of many different points of view, as well as supportive of our deepest soul’s needs.

• In cases where you feel doubt about something you’re considering expressing, please take time to reflect about it through journaling, discussion with a trusted friend or colleague, or with your triad. There are some helpful tips about this in the bulleted section below.

• Please consider that the creation and cultivation of the Pocket Project Lab is work in progress, therefore we know that there will be ongoing changes.

 

About connecting and sharing in our community — and in the rest of your life

When you’re considering making comments or starting a discussion, we suggest that you start by first checking in with yourself about what is alive for you right now. Speak from your current internal state as well as about current external events. You can invite others to share about what they hear in your post. Allow some time for the others to offer reflection if they feel moved to.

Allow this sharing to guide what to discuss. This could be a deeper exploration with one person, or exploration of a new topic that emerges through your sharing. If you were given an assignment in the last course session, you can post about this, too.

It is a great art to go to a deeper level together and support each other in developing outer and inner skills of communication. Together we will come to places far beyond our deeply ingrained beliefs and behaviors just by meeting and listening to each other and giving and receiving reflections about what we say and hear.

To avoid becoming triggered and entangled too much in our personalities we want to offer some encouragement to inspire and to experiment with:

• Listen and read from the depth of your heart. Then let it sink in. Look and feel what comes up in you about what you read. No matter if there is agreeing or disagreeing let it go and look again. Also feel, look and know from the perspective of the other person. Not as an idea or reflection but from a deep connection. What does what they say mean from their perspective?

• Be aware of your inner dialogue connected to what is happening. There is a constant flow of inner mental commentary going on in us, which can interfere with what is happening.

• Be aware when you get ‘caught’ in your own inner process, or triggered by what is said or written.

• If you feel an impulse to respond, stay connected to your innermost truth and share from there. Listen and act. Stay connected to what you express. Does it feel like your truth?

• If you find yourself reacting to something, consider that you may be at least partly blind to something, and no longer fully connected to what is happening. In this case, you can share that, if you like. Don’t offer feedback when it is driven by your reaction.

• Allow third persons to remind you to be aware of ping-pong like energies going back and forth.

• Then of course have fun in hitting the ‘publish’ button!

Let’s really keep and reserve this online community as a place for respectful discovery and deepening of course content.

Creating discussion topics

In Pocket Project Lab online community you can create discussion topics.

• If you want to discuss a certain issue please find a good clear title, or headline, to make it obvious what your post is about.

• Finally, you can add your comments. We suggest that the first line of comments you add also be clear so that it’s easy to understand what the post is about.

• The most ‘alive’ issues will receive the most comments. If necessary, please remind others to stay with the intention of the topic. Sometimes the administrator or moderator of the group might chime in.

Before asking questions about how to participate in the Pocket Project Lab online community

Please look at the Pocket Project Lab tutorial regularly and read any updates or instructions for how to use the site there. Some of us are not yet used to online platforms. Please take your time to understand and get used to the guidelines, terms of use, and processes. Make sure you understand procedures clearly. Allow yourself to feel challenged by finding your way around the community.

About technical questions and problems

Please don’t post about technical problems in the online community. Support staff will not be monitoring the online community for these types of questions.  

For any questions you have that are not answered on the online community, please connect to the organizing team at webmaster@pocketprojectlab.org