Dao Local Group - Inaugural Meeting

Last night Namaste and I, with Jon's blessing, held the first meeting of Dao Local at Driftwood Cottage. As it was our first opportunity to try out the meeting format, I will describe it in some detail to invite your comments.

We opened the meeting with the lighting of a candle, accompanied by us directing our loving and healing thoughts to someone we knew who needed them. We then, and this we believe should be voluntary only, described the person we had chosen and why they needed our support.

Next, and again we believe this should be voluntary only, we shared something of a positive uplifting nature that had happened to each of us during the week. We were very much taken with Fuchsy's description of Quaker meetings, where people remain in noble silence unless they feel the spirit moves them to speak.

We then had an informal talk on a particular subject. Namaste chose the topic of 'What it means to Live in the Now'. Following an exposition of the theory, this soon developed into an interesting and wide-ranging discussion which touched on how much suffering can arise from our own imaginary hopes and fears regarding the past and the future. We moved on to the subject of Karma and the point was made that, if one leads a good life, Karma can be seen as a protective influence rather than a threat.

We followed the discussion by each selecting a Tao card to stimulate our thoughts and, as is often the case, the cards fitted exactly with the thoughts raised in our discussion.

We finished the meeting with a 15 minute guided meditation on full body awareness, and concluded by dedicating the positive energy created to the benefit of all sentient beings everywhere.

The formal meeting lasted around an hour and a half. When it was over, we chatted in the candlelight and relaxed with hot drinks and biccies. Namaste suggested a few people from her Tai Chi class who she thought might be interested in coming along. I for one found the evening very calming and also informative, as Sophie Dog had managed to inject a few nuggets of canine wisdom into the conversation!

We are interested to know your thoughts and how we can bring our online colleagues into the discussion, perhaps through pre-publicising the discussion topics for your comments to be included.