Welcome New Members

Wow, it's quiet, haven't heard a word about the last meeting, the food wasn't that bad was it? (actually it was really good). Anyway i will break the ice. Last week's meeting was pretty cool, good vegetarian/vegan food along with a cool mix of interesting people.
The meditation session kicking off the meeting helped to focus on, well i don't know. I'm still trying to figure it all out. In the end i would have to say that we had some really interesting conversations, in a beautiful home btw, and look forward to discuss next months topic.
I do remember someone, sitting near Justin with his girlfriend, talking about some sort of philosophy that has to do with spiraling colors of something or another. anyway if you read this dude, please post a link to that if you get a chance.

And oh, before i go allow me to introduce myself. I'm Tom, moved out here from Jersey a little over a year ago. Got turned on to Evolver by running across it googling Pinchbeck's novel - 2012. I met Daniel Pinchbeck back in NYC at his book reading for 'Breaking Open the Head'. At the time of the reading i was pretty advanced in my own work with psychedelics and consciousness exploration. Daniel and I had a good talk together that night.
Anyways, here i am now, in Portland, the town i fell in love with when i did the west coast Phish tour back in the late 90's.
It's an awesome place to be, a very healthy, holistic, spiritual community of people. like night and day compared to the east coast, though i do miss a good pizza.
Peace be with you,
Tom Micale.

tom - thanks for kickin' it in !
Tom, I was born in Jersey but don't tell. I got shipped to the Bronx three weeks old, so I consider myself a new yorker. ;)

Anyway - I forgot his name, but he was talking about "Spiral Dynamics." I'm sure if you google it you'll get the whole dillio.

The meeting was okay, I left early. My take was that it went off topic a lot. It sort of zig zagged a bit more than I like to zigzag. However, it's only the second meeting and Justin is DA BOMB for getting this up and running and Jessica is also DA BOMB for offering her place.

I think you might want to join Justin on the planning committee thingie. or someone should. (As for me, I have been leading groups for 8 years and I'm on hiatus for herding cats, but I know that Justin is open to a lot of suggestions.)

The number one thing is that we all need to step up to express what we want as an outcome from this group. it seems people are sitting back waiting for the leader to guide us - but we forget we are all leaders and need to understand what we actually WANT from this experience.

Perhaps this would be a good discussion to have at the group. A 15 minute pow wow on what we want to accomplish?? Is it only socializing? it is just to hear ourselves talk? Contributing? Philosophizing? I mean it seems that these woo-woo groups like to talk talk talk = but very little gets done. (oooo, I'm going to get cross fire for that comment, but I think it's true.)

What do the other groups around the country do? Is it only to meet once a month? how are they structured?

The mediation was great. It was a way for us to be present and I think there is a lot of DOING in SITTING..."Don't just do something sit there." Is one of my favorite meditation jokes/sayings.

Other than that I have my reservations about groups like this - and at the same time I really love them. I wish I understood the actual DIRECTION - or even the smaller goals we are trying to hit. Something to put my finger on.

I'm riling up the troops and stirring the pot in this email for a reason. And I thank you for gettin it started!

See you soon.

zz

Wow, looks like there's some activity here! I really like these ideas and I definitely welcome everyone's input. After all, this group is only going to be what we make of it.

To that end, I've had many people come up to me and tell what they want to see happen. But I can't synthesize everyone's ideas and then manifest that at our next meeting. If you really do have a vision for this group and you want to see it thrive come to our planning meeting! Just shoot me an email. I promise it won't be as boring as it sounds. It looks like it will be sometime next week, but nothing is official.

Our next theme is food, and this has huge potential. Other evolver groups are inviting in other groups to work with, like local CSA's, raw foodists, local foodists... the food scene in Portland is HUGE and we should have no trouble having fun with some of those groups.

OK all, done for now...

-justin-

I'm not a ritualist, vegetarian, fetishist, or at all spiritual. Tried them all and they show me nothing. I like good food and good fun, and I think sex is the funniest thing that people do. I'm probably too old for this group, but I'll give it a try.

=Eric