News Bytes, May 2002 Group Meeting Notes by James N. Thames

Seth Groups are groups of independent thinkers who occasionally meet together to discuss the Seth/Jane Roberts materials.  Groups change.  They form, they disburse, they regroup and reform; they swell and they shrink.  Independent thinkers properly have a habit of  focusing on the journey of their individual lives.  Sometimes that includes going to meetings; sometimes it doesn't.  Everyone understands that the group thing has to come in second.  And that's okay, because the primary purpose is to study the ideas coming from Jane and Rob's work.  Grouping is fun, if it can be done; it enhances study of the material, no doubt about that.

My great interest in the history of Seth Groups in Austin keeps me coming around to visit Eileen.  Her experiences as administrative support for Dr. Maude Cardwell in the Austin Seth Center days of the 1980's are numerous and fascinating to me.  Maude left Eileen her photo albums, and I join Eileen in wanting to see them shared with the world wide Seth Reader community.  So we still have our little group project, and that continues.  And a group of two is still a group.

For more information on forming Seth Groups, see Jim Schütte's article "How to Start a Seth Group (And Keep it Going)," as published in the Volume 2 - Spring 2000 edition of Brass Ring Bookstore's Perspectives newsletter/catalog.

In 1983, I happen to read Jane's novel The Education of Oversoul Seven.  I've always loved reading science fiction and fantisy novels, and I really liked the concepts that I found in this one.  But when I read the additional notes about Jane's "speaking for Seth" and The Austin Seth Center, my reaction was "Uh, oh.  I better stay away from this one."  Back then, I was still in the business of fearing the unknown.

So I wasn't ready yet.  If I had been, however, I would have met Eileen a lot sooner.  And in fact, I did — in one of the quantum universe's alternate probable Earths which coexist with this one.

In this world, it was necessary for me to go through my own bit of "progressive revelation" before I would be ready.  I was ready ten years later.  After 42 years, I had finally met my biological father.  He introduced a small book to me called the Kabalon which had been written in the early 1900's by three unnamed Masonic "Initiates."  Then I read The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot and Be Here Now by Ram Dass.  Finally, I was ready to read Seth Speaks and The Nature of Personal Reality.  It all fit together.  I was excited about the Seth material and I wanted to discuss it with somebody.

The Internet was the hot new thing in the early 1990's and I took to it like a duck to water because of my previous Navy experience with computers and communications systems in the 1970's and 1980's.  Through the newsgroups, I discovered a mailing list administered by Ken Parker named Sethworks.  One of my first web site projects, The Sethworks Mooseum remains dedicated to those years I spent on that list.

I also got a subscription to Seth Network International's Reality Change Magazine and started networking with other Seth Readers via regular postal correspondence.  But meeting people online or in letters is not exactly the same as meeting them in person.  So it was that I came to ask fellow Sethworks listee Billie Petty of Dallas, Texas if she knew of any Seth Groups in Austin.  Billie gave me Eileen Glover's  phone number.

That was in 1994.  Eileen had other things going on in her life, but she knew Yvonne Buonamici was coordinating monthly meetings at the Austin Recreation Center downtown.  With the number from Eileen, I contacted Yvonne and attended those meetings through 1995.  Then things changed and those meetings started to fade out.  At one of the last meetings at the Austin Rec Center, Yvonne couldn't attend.  I dutifully showed up anyway, and that was the day I met Harold Hyten.  Harold was also looking for a Seth Study group.  He was the only other one who showed for that meeting, but we had a nice chat nevertheless.

Then, in 1996, things started to happen.  Seth Network International (SNI) came to Austin with it's Consciously Creating Change series of workshop lectures.  This was a vortex of converging probabilities for me.  There I met Kackie Daniel, another Sethworks mailing list member (and also fellow Austinite) for the first time.  When I met Lynda Dahl and Stan Ulkowski, the president and vice president of SNI, I wound up volunteering to take over the SNI website maintenance out of concern that it needed updates more frequently.

Yvonne came to the conference too; as did Eileen and her daughters Sherry and Mary.  Yvonne expressed an interest in doing Seth Group meetings again; this time at her house.  I agreed.  Simultaneously, Kackie was meeting Gwendolyn Stallings who was a member of The Awakening Tribe.  The Tribe interested Kackie because it centered around some live channeling.  As in my own choice of encounters face to face in preference to email, Kackie knew that being in the presence of some live channeling would be a much more vivid experience than just reading about it.

Kackie wanted to go to a Tribe meeting, but didn't want to go solo.  Since she had come to know me over a year's time on Sethworks, and had finally met me in person, she asked me if I would be interested in going to a Tribe meeting with her.  She explained that she wouldn't feel so much in the company of  strangers that way.  This happened November of 1996.  I was interested in seeing some live channeling, myself

Although I was already doing Seth Group meetings at Yvonne's place on Wednesday nights, all the Tribe meetings were on the weekend and only about twice a month.  Everything fit.  In the following year, I met more of Kackie's family, including her husband Steve and their daughters Gina and Leah.  I still hang out with the Daniel family and still go to Jan and Kay's house for the The Awakening Tribe meetings.   Dear friends all.  As is Yvonne, who also occasionally attends the Tribe meetings.

By the year 2000, Yvonne had to drop the Wednesday night meetings to attend to some family business out of state.  Synchronistically, I discovered that Eileen had been attending Seth Group meeting at Harold Hyten's home.  This is when I first met Sara Pasch, whose Reality Change article and images also appear among these web pages.  Later, the meetings shifted out to Eileen's house which is located about 30 or 40 minutes out of Austin on the north shore of Lake Travis.  It was a bit further than some wished to travel.  But so far, alternatives are still in the process of becoming.

Now, if you actually read all of the above, I hereby dub you as a member of the Austin Seth Group as well.  Whereever you are.  You can email me here.

...James:)