Tonight, we have our first group meeting for the course Love Knows No Death. Love Knows No Death is the single best comprehensive resource for understanding the afterlife. It’s a workbook coupled with a series of videos that can take you from being skeptical about the afterlife or sorta believing to knowing beyond any reasonable doubt that the afterlife exists and that none of us truly die. I found it to be so powerful, I wanted to share it with our Helping Parents Heal parents. Since Tywana and I decided to suspend the face-to-face meetings, I launched this little experiment to see how it would go.
We have approximately 1,900 people in our online Facebook group. I didn’t know if 5 people or 50 or 500 would sign up. Given that we’ve only had around 25-50 for an average meeting with great featured speakers, I thought we’d be closer to the 5 than the 50, which was OK by me because I am testing out an entirely new format where instead of me presenting, the group is a discussion group with me just facilitating. How many people can we handle in this type of format? Will people hog the mic? If they do, what will I do? Can people learn to mute an unmute themselves to participate? What will we talk about? I decided not to cap the enrollment or require registration. Let the universe handle it.
All week long I’ve been fielding technical questions on how to get the materials, how to get into the meeting room, etc. I set up the room a week in advance and allowed people to get in and familiarize themselves with the technology before the meeting. The meeting is to begin at 8:00. At 7:45 I jump on to find a few people waiting for me. I walk a couple of people through some technical difficulties, cleaned up an echo/feedback problem one participant is having and we are ready to kick things off at 8:00. I am pleasantly surprised that we have 30 attendees. Our best attended face-to-face meeting (other than the one where Ernie Jackson spoke) had about 8 people. Not that the numbers matter, but it’s great to be able to reach as many people as are willing and needing.
I read a short introduction and introduce the first question. Someone answers. Then, someone suggests that we go around the room and introduce ourselves. Panic begins to well up. At the time, there are 29 people in the room. I haven’t scheduled an ending time for the meeting. I just wanted to let it flow and call it when it was done. I do some mental calculations. 29 people introducing themselves, at a minute per person, that’s half an hour. At two minutes a person, that’s an hour. I’ve been warned about mic hogs.I decide to try this. I ask people to give their name, their child’s name and a short synopsis of where they are on their journey. Amazingly, everyone is so respectful of other people’s time. Some keep it very short, just the facts ma’m. Others, I could tell want to vent more, so I give them some time. I gently cut a couple of people a bit short. But, it goes really well. I am quite impressed with the group.
The group consists of 29 mothers, me and one father who sits by his wife but does not introduce himself (she does the introductions). He observes the meeting. I don’t know what the deal is with men on these things, but it’s not my problem to solve. They just don’t show up. Good for this guy for coming. I know of two fathers who could not make the first meeting.
The discussion is riveting. Everyone is pretty far along when it comes to this afterlife stuff. So, I do hope they’ll find value in the course material. Everyone has already had a reading with a medium, most of them life changing. Most of us have had readings with Suzanne Giesemann- definitely life changing.
The real quality of the meeting is not so much in the course material, but in the conversation it prompts. Knowing that others are on the journey with you, that you are not alone, that the universe hasn’t singularly picked you out for this, is helpful. When Tywana and I were a few months in, seeing parents who were a year in gave me hope. Now that we’re two years in, seeing parents who are four years in gives me hope. On average I think this group is about 2-3 years in. The shortest being only three months. The longest being 13 years. People are open and honest about their feelings both good and bad which gives others permission to share freely.
We even have the honour of having the illustrious Wendy Zammit sit in on the meeting. Wendy is observing us to see how the AREI group can use Zoom technology for their special interest groups. I ask that she not judge us too harshly since this is our kickoff. What Wendy probably doesn’t know is Suzanne Giesemann told me in a reading nearly two years ago that she saw me working with Victor (Wendy’s husband) in the future. (cue the Twilight Zone music).
Around 9, the conversation is waning and I try to wrap up the meeting, but someone (Tracy) suggests we go a little longer. so we go until around 9:30.
I’d say the experiment was a success. I think 30 is the right number of people for this type of meeting. Everyone could speak when they wanted, but there were no big lulls. I wouldn’t want to have many more than 30. So, for future meetings, if they start getting more demand, we might have to cap them. The Zoom technology that we used worked really well. People from Australia to Hawaii to New England were on the call all of us in our various time zones and geographies and it was like we were in the same room. I’m looking forward to the next one and what else we can accomplish with HPH.
