Teaching Forgiveness In Second Life: Part I, The Prodrome

Cut & pasted with love from my blog over at Live Journal:

So today was my first experience teaching a class in Second Life at the Mystic Academy. (Click links for web info, in world the SLURL is: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Spirit%20City/215/59/31/)

Although I've taught classes, facilitated workshops and groups in real life for over a decade now, I was a little nervous as to how the class would go. The room I'd chosen to teach in is the lounge, which is the most immediately accessible area of the Academy and it's the location most people have set as a landmark. I had chosen the room intentionally to make the class easy to find, but I was also concerned this might make the class more prone to disruption from people wandering in aimlessly or malcontents coming only to stir up trouble - just because they can. (Aptly named "griefers" in Second Life.)

I also wasn't sure how the delivery of the content of the class would go. Sure, I had just taught a workshop with my fellow practitioner partner, Ron a few weeks ago to a small group of people, but there we had a warm and cozy room with a fireplace, snacks and a big easel with paper and marking pens for one of the key exercises. The group also got to stand up and interact with each other for another one of our key "story telling" exercises. We had the opportunity to engage in direct eye contact, exchange hugs and always, back of all things, was the feeling that we were among friends in a safe space where confidentiality would be honored.

How in the world to translate these feelings and create that same space of safety in this virtual environment?

The night before the class as I paced about in my Second Life home within a home (my beloved treehouse) pondering the eternal question, "What to wear? What to wear?" I was also busy pouring over the notecards I had been given when I first got the nod from Dragon, Founder of MA to join as a guide. I pestered other guides (and bless you Elborath, Jane, Arianna, StarRose, Baji, Arawn, Rian, Dansz and anyone else I may have missed from this list) for tips on how to eject or ban griefers, how to create my tipjar, how to advertise the class...blahblahblah ad nauseum.

In the midnight hour I doubted whether any of the message I wanted to share would even be welcomed in this community because although it's definitely spiritual, on the outside looking in it didn't appear as though my New Thought background had previously been represented as part of Mystic Academy's offerings, which seemed to have more of a New Age feel to it. But everyone I had met at MA so far had been friendly, encouraging and supportive. What was all this tsuris about?

Ah pesky, pesky thoughts of doubt! How easy it can be to let them set up shop when they are the least useful and the least welcome!

In the middle of all this I had the idea to write notecards to pass out to individuals at the start of class to give them something to read and give them a feel for what I teach to see whether or not it might resonate with them. This is what the notecard said:

Welcome to the first in a series of four classes on Self-Forgiveness for the month of May 2008.

My name is Ex Noel and I'll be your guide in this experience. I wanted to write a little bit about the focus of this class so you have a grasp of where I'm coming from with forgiveness, which is a vast topic with roots in almost every major religion and spiritual belief system.

What I'd like you to do, just for the next hour perhaps, is suspend any belief you may have that forgiveness is about someone else doing something to you that you have to forgive THEM for. Just for now what we'll be focusing on here is taking responsibility for our own actions and considering the times we have let ourselves down.

So while I know many of us have stories about how others hurt or disappointed us in some way, just for now let's let all of that go and focus on what we can do to heal our own hearts and love ourselves more fully.

In the opening of the class I will be doing a short non-denominational prayer, speaking a bit using voice chat while my partner, Spuds Barbosa will be scanning the text chat for me. We are here in the same physical space IRL while the class is being held so know your comments are being heard and will be addressed in the question & answer & discussion portion of the class.

I teach workshops, classes and facilitate groups IRL and the most important part of any group I feel is that we create a safe space for one another. Along those lines I ask that we all be courteous, respectful and gentle with one another. We are all real people with real hearts here, please think before you speak.

Also, please speak from your own experience - use "I" statements. This is not the time to analyze or give advice.

I am looking forward to what comes out of our experience & what Spirit will pull from us collectively as this time together.

Love & Blessings,
Ex

So... how did the class go?

Stay tuned. Part II coming soon!