‘CREATING SANCTUARY’ (in Groups/Forums)

The key to creating and maintaining sanctuary in our online forum is asking questions: Inquiry Method.

When someone shares something the typical response is to want to give advice, suggest, criticize, help, emote, or relate a similar personal experience. These types of responses usually generate resistance from the person we are speaking with, and the saying goes: if advice really worked we would all be enlightened.

The way that we grow and share in Inquiry Method is to listen, really listen to ourselves and others. When someone shares on this forum, the key is to deepen your understanding of what is occurring for the other person, what is occurring within you and to expand awareness of the situation. You can help surface the truth by asking open-ended questions. These kinds of authentic questions come when we become still and listen without agenda to the other person.

Examples of open-ended questions:

• What is that like for you?
• What is it that you really wanted to see happen?
• How did you feel when that happened?
• What’s most important to you?

Be careful not to use leading questions because they are similar to giving advice.

Examples of leading questions:

• Do you see that there’s manipulation going on in this circumstance?
• Do you want to quit your job?
• Do you think you deserve something better?

In Inquiry Method, we want to learn and understand the other person, and in that process we help them learn about and understand themselves better.

This is not a chat group. It is an opportunity for people to talk about themselves and discover more deeply about themselves, and potentially through their vulnerability, help us all.

If someone makes a posting, our job is to ask deepening questions and follow their thread deeper through their responses. We want the person posting to feel deeply heard (again no advice).

If you have something to say about yourself or if you have something to share, the way to do this is begin a new post about you, not about someone else. That is the way it works on this site.

We are building a very particular type of community here: A sanctuary inside the chaos of the internet. Let’s discover and build this sanctuary here and have it be such a safe place to interact and participate that everyone hesitates to leave and looks forward to coming back. This will be a place of healing, caring, and love.