Wellness and Spirituality Examiner

Conscious Community: Join the Online Evolution

People want community, peace, prosperity, to live a good life. They want to find themselves. They want help finding themselves. I've noticed a few online communities that really try to embrace that kind of evolution - that want to help people talk about it.

Gaia follows the template of popular favorites like Facebook and MySpace, though with a more enlightened focus. Your homepage can be customized with love quotes, tarot cards, and meditation exercises. Perhaps my favorite aspect are the numerous articles with topics ranging from fitness to spirituality to conscious media (“Snacks for the Healthy Couch Potato”?! Gotta love that). The editors really try to keep the community involved, posing thought-provoking questions that cascade into answers and discussions throughout the site. Being involved really can get you thinking about life as you know it.

Integral Naked is focused entirely on the idea of the evolution of consciousness, based largely on the ideas of philosopher Ken Wilber. His idea for this site is to interview the people who are on riding the edge of modern thinking – philosophers, environmentalists, CEOs, mystics, teachers, poets, musicians. Anyone with big ideas and a concern for humanity could appear on the site or are already lurking in the archives. Ken himself does most of the interviewing, so there is always a healthy dose of his ideas around integral living – a vast and deep topic in itself. Which is ok to the folks at Integral – they’re willing to keep going down the rabbit hole. The stores of audio and video available come at a monthly price ($20), though you get a free initial month to try it out.

New on the scene is Shift in Action, sponsored by the Institute of Noetic Science. It follows a model that combines the two. Your monthly fee ($10) gives you audio access to many of the leading thinkers in consciousness, regular teleseminars, and a forum to talk about them. The focus seems to be on the ability to create a community where the ideas of the teachers they bring to the site can be discussed, dissected, advocated. And, it’s a place to talk about yourself, have a blog, build your own community around your favorite ideas and people.

All of them seem fairly complementary, attracting different people and writers and thinkers that you might love to have in a room together. Apparently, if you become involved with all three, you can.

Just in case you were looking for something to take up a little more of your time. And, if you know of any more consciousness focused online communities, I'd love to hear about it.

Have fun!

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