Agenda
- Check in
- Opening Blessing
- Review WWWs
- Weekly event logistics
- Year Plan
- Review Agenda
- We Believe
- What if there's no future for us?
- Evaluations
- Closing Blessing
Next business call
- New Videos
- Strategic Planning
- Outcomes that Shelley digs
Check-in
- Eric … I am ready to go, the car is packed … leaving for Greycliff and Buckleberry as soon as this call is over … I should be quite productive there because I'm not taking the dogs with me
- Ben ... I stayed up until almost midnight last night playing board games and I got up with just enough time to do my rowing machine exercise, and that is why I am shirtless.
- Brandon … I am watching my boys and I need to check on them real quick. I enjoy life more when I get enough sleep.
Opening Blessing
We come together, three friends seeking a righteous path. We use our practice to create our lives. By this we mean we use our practice to focus our energy more on our highest aspirations. May our time together open our eyes to the ever-growing possibilities. --Blessed Be
WW(W)s from last time
Ongoing
- Brandon … Try for a streak of 3 days in a row with bedtime at 9:30 every night, wake up with alarm at 5:30
- Brandon … Meditate regularly (at least 3) with Eric
- <s>Brandon … Coach regularly (at least 3) with Ted</s>
- Ben … Send Brandon/Eric a video message each day about what I did and watch theirs
- Ben … meditate regularly (at least 3) with Eric
- Ben … spend at least 15 minutes a day (at least 3) on my story
- Eric … Send Brandon/Ben a video message each day about what I did and watch theirs
- Eric … Work on Buckleberry or Auberge Paradis at least 15 minutes a day
- Eric … Meditate regularly with Ben
- Eric … Meditate regularly with Brandon
- <s>Eric … Practice viscerally connecting with Gaia at least once a week</s>
Time-specific
- <s>Brandon … talk with Shelley about outcomes we want from SolSeed (in particular who we want to be as individuals and as a family) … by the end of the holiday weekend
- Ben … think about outcomes in terms of who I want to be … by next call
- Ben … update the News section … by next call</s> (Eric did it for me)
- Ben … find photos for the first 6 months of the calendar … by next call
- Eric … find photos for the other 6 months … by next call
- Eric … post the Life is Precious video to YouTube and Facebook … Saturday morning
- <s> Eric … draw the schematics for Buckleberry … by next call</s>
WW(W)s
Ongoing
- Brandon … Try for a streak of 3 days in a row with bedtime at 9:30 every night, wake up with alarm at 5:30
- Brandon … Meditate regularly (at least 3) with Eric
- Brandon … Coach regularly (at least 3) with Ted
- Ben … Send Brandon/Eric a video message each day about what I did and watch theirs
- Ben … meditate regularly (at least 3) with Eric
- Ben … spend at least 15 minutes a day (at least 3) on my story (getting there)
- Eric … Send Brandon/Ben a video message each day about what I did and watch theirs
- Eric … Work on Buckleberry or Auberge Paradis at least 15 minutes a day
- Eric … Meditate regularly with Ben
- Eric … Meditate regularly with Brandon
- Eric … Practice viscerally connecting with Gaia at least once a week
Time-specific
- Ben … Add links to the News section … by next call
- Eric … Design and make a T-Shirt for the Kilt-Run in order to make it into a Yay-Life Tri for me
- Eric … Arrange a swim before the Kilt-Run and a bike ride after it along with a chocolate/strawberry fondue
- Brandon … Check with Shelley about Summer Solstice (June 24 weekend on Orcas island?) and doing a call Tuesday night (the 20th) … by date night
- Brandon … Email Ben about summer solstice … by Tuesday night
Weekly Events Logistics
Service rotation: Eric, Ben, Brandon, Rico, Shelley
- June 10 Service: 8:30 AM PDT / 11:30 EDT … Brandon
- June 11 Business Call: 8:30 AM PDT / 11:30 EDT
Year Plan
September trip
- This is looking unlikely for the Sanders … just after the beginning of school, generally hard with the kids
- Still talking about it though
- Ben will go anyway, but it won't be the same without them
Summer Solstice
Tuesday June 20th, 9:23pm PDT … Wednesday June 21st, 0:23 EDT
- Ben will be at Windward the weekend of the 17th-18th
- Eric has the Kilt Run on the weekend of the 24th-25th, and might be doing something for Canada's 150th birthday the weekend of July 1st-2nd
Ben: We could take a camping/whale-watching trip to Orcas Island
- But it's a very short timeframe for planning it, and I might not feel like camping again right after my 4-night camping trip at Windward
- Eric: It's right next to Victoria, BC … I might be able to meet you there … but would really have needed to plan it farther in advance
Eric can turn the Kilt Run into a YayLifeTri
- The swim and bike ride will be considerably separated in time from the run (but far less than the hundreds of millions of years represented by the events!)
- Family members will like the chocolate and fondue
We can celebrate at the moment of Solstice
- Eric can take Wednesday the 21st off
- Do the rituals for Diversitas and Sophos
Revisions to We Believe and the outcomes we focus on
What if there's no future for us?
- Ben: I’m currently in one of my periods of believing there is no way to save civilization or even have recovery from collapse be possible. So what fruits can we offer to ourselves and others that aren’t dependent on whether we individually and as a culture have a future that is longer than a decade or two? And so Eric’s comment (Can we sell the fruit of not wasting your free time on entertainment?) is an interesting step toward “How can you feel a life with no future is not wasted?” “Where does the meaning come from?”
- Eric: The meaning can be very clearly seen through metaphorium telescopes. Life isn’t just precious because it is going to survive, Life is precious every moment that it is surviving (like mathematical integration). Every moment you are alive is precious for all time. Every moment that any creature has been alive has been precious from the beginning of time and will be precious until the end of time. Because Life is not a difference of kind from non-Life but a difference of degree from non-Life, the universe has been somewhat alive from the beginning (not very) and will be somewhat alive (hopefully a lot) "until the end." Each moment that every creature is alive is held precious by the entire universe.
- Brandon: I hold every moment that every creature is alive to be precious in this moment. Therefore the whole universe, through me, is holding it precious.
- If it's about what's required for your survival strategy, each of our survival strategies for parts of the universe is part of the universe's survival strategy
- Eric: Even the degree of preciousness held by a rock is nonzero.
- Brandon: I don't think this metaphysics is what we're selling up front.
- Eric: I think we should put it out there even though it won't appeal to very many people, but it doesn't have to be the main thing
- Ben: even if we don’t say the bit about no future, we still need the thing to sell about how to feel life is worthy now.
- Brandon: Buddhist practices of mindfulness, universal compassion, connection … the Western Buddhist Teachings/Practices
- Eric: Activism in very general terms, i.e. taking action toward a better future, is also worth selling
- Brandon: You can do this even if you know your efforts will be in vain.
- Eric: Some people say that Buddhism lets you detach from all outcomes to the point where you don't have to be the change you want to see in the world, but that's completely false.
- Brandon: But it isn't about vigorously campaigning against things
- Eric: If you take the principles of mindfulness and presence then of course the “being in this moment” matters even if you don’t ultimately succeed and that you know that you are not going to succeed
- Ben: How can you choose a tactic if not by figuring out what's the most likely to achieve the outcome?
- Eric: Expressions of compassion
- Brandon: the canonical example; the Buddhist priest knows that the gun that is coming up to their head is going to kill them and yet they hold compassion for every creature in the universe including that which is about kill them. The monk does not despair because they are not attached to the outcome but instead to being the compassionate.
- Ben: I will never be able to reach that extreme of nonattachment
- Brandon: Does your despair/suffering integrate positively? If not, why are you unwilling to give it up?
- Ben: Not unwilling but unable. I don't see how you can love a thing without caring whether it lives or dies in the near future.
- Brandon: I often suffer pointlessly/in a non-noble way, and then suffer over the fact that I'm doing it … I have at times not suffered under the same circumstances, and it was better
- Eric: likewise … not suffering is a fruit of mindfulness
Evaluation
- Ben … What I am asking for is really hard, and I need to accept that even though I don’t feel I have much capacity to do things that are really hard right now.
- Brandon … i need these conversations about fruits because I'm weighing my level of investment in SolSeed, and what drives that is the fruits, not the habit
- Eric … I think these hard conversations are fruitier than easier conversations we often have.
Closing Blessing
We used our practice to create our lives, to reshape our beings into what we want to be. May we embrace this most challenging work by finding confidence that we will find the outcomes worthwhile. May we bring Life to ourselves and to others. -- Blessed Be