Hello everyone (Natalia, Mustaf, Amir, Allison, Sarah, James, Stacey, Stephen, Marcia, Gordon, Michael, Rebecca, Becky, Mollie, Coleen)!, First, let's take care of some business: ----------------------------------------------- If you would like to continue receiving email from this list please reply to this message. If you reply, please answer the following question: If an email discussion starts up, would you like to recieve mail from it? (if you answer no you will only recieve news/update type emails- you will always be able to sign up later if you like- and possibly the discussions will be archived on our web page) (if enough people are interested in this I will start up a listproc or some other way of having email discussions) ----------------------------- now for other things: about the summer: I don't think I will request a meeting room for summer (unless you would like to meet in the hub). Let's plan on meeting weekly 4:30-5:30 {longer if we feel like it} on Wednesdays in Sylvan Theater when it is sunny and in the social work library or the forestry building when it rains. Please check if this will work out for you and let me know if it won't. I think we will be trying out different meeting arrangements/styles/frequencies, so check the web page or email being@u to find out about meetings when you haven't been attending. Also, please note that Gordon and I have linked our some of our writing to the being journal page (see weber.u.washington.edu/~being). If you have some writing that we could link to the being page, let me know. I would also like to suggest that we present ourselves as a network, in addition to a group. I would like to propose that those who are interested in this put their email addresses, topics/experiences of interest on the being web page, so that we (and newcomers also) can make arrangements to have 2 or more person meetings when we feel like it. here, for example would be my entry: --------------------------- Colin Leath: cleath@u, I am not so interested in talking at the moment, but I am interested in going on walks and relaxing in nice places, like sylvan theatre for example. {include a phone # if you feel like it} --------------------------- we could password this page or try other ways of distributing this info if that would make people feel better. If you want to have an entry like this put on our web page, email it to being@u. I was originally thinking we could do away with weekly meetings and only have meetings when a member wanted to present an idea to the group, or just felt like having a meeting, and also enable people to meet with eachother on their own. But after thinking about it, I realized I would miss the weekly meetings. It is good to have routine and see the same people often. It creates an intimacy of experience. What do you think about all this? well, that is it! I hope you have a good end-of-quarter and summer, if you're leaving. see you! Colin oh, and all of you are invited to dinner at my house the first Saturday of June. For directions and instructions visit: weber.u.washington.edu/~cleath/dinner.htm ************************************************************************** don't worry about reading the rest, but it is here if you are interested (it is the part I wrote first): It is good to be writing you again. The quarter is almost over, and it is time to figure out what to do next. Wonderfully, we have been able to find out what it is like to have meetings with the same four people regularly attending. However, Gordon noted that our last meeting was "nice." I don't want nice, I want mind-blowing, intensely powerful experience. Or at least "really cool" experience. So I would like to open this list for a discussion of how this group can be used to create "really cool" (maybe loving is a better word) experience. I will briefly discuss what I think is conducive to really cool experience, and then propose a course of action for _being_ to follow in the next few quarters. some ideas about what makes really cool interpersonal experience: 1) wanting to be with the other person/people a) I find that this means, in most cases, spending a significant time alone. This also means that I have spent a satisfying amount of time working on my own projects, thinking, reading, writing, so I have something I really want to talk to you guys about. b) this also means having something I really want to talk about/do with the other person. 2) The other person/people want to be there too. This is pretty much guranteed at being meetings, because people who don't want to come don't. Unfortunately quite a few people who would like to come, can't. 3) the right environment (a nice place to be) free from undesired tensions/distractions (desired tensions are great). 4) The feeling that the other person is "with" you. This can mean that the person is good at listening, or in cases when we're not talking, like when we stay silent and contemplate the sounds of the rain and the colors around us, that the person is sharing the experience. 5) the feeling that I am doing something useful and good for the other person/people. (love) -- discussion of the more-than-two-person group size: >From my past experience, groups of more than two people are often the setting for really cool experience. Consider plays, lectures, sermons, singing, campfires, or events one does with masses of other people, like watch fireworks. Also, powerful experience in the presence of other people can occur when meeting new people, or simply when seeing another person walking down the street. And family experiences. The coolest experience I have had with group discussion involved presenting to a group an idea that I had thought about for quite some time, and seeing where they went with it. It is also nice to attend group discussions about ideas I have been thinking about/books I have been reading to see what different perspectives people have. I used to be pretty excited about just getting a group of people together, because I knew they would not have come together had I done nothing. However, I think that in general, group experiences with relative strangers means less than 1person-1person experience. While one can experience powerful feelings when wandering around alone among crowds, these are not the feelings I seek as often as others.