Marvelous Mitras Meeting Up

[Michael Newman]

Jai Ma Marvelous Mitras,   It is wonderful to see all the emerging creativity from the Mitra Committee.  In his book Gita and Management, Swami Bodhananda writes that “Creativity is an expression of a silent, alert, aware, attentive, open mind, functioning without an ego center - the Me.”  I liked that as it definitely seems to apply to the Mitra group. Looking forward to Swamiji's presentation later today, and then our Mitra meeting -- Vijaya, thanks for organizing it (from Michigan, no less!).  I posted some Vedika Seva postcards and the 2-month course fliers at the university where I work, and am getting better at remembering to carry a few with me wherever I'm going for community bulletin boards at health food stores, etc. It's probably a little late for this year, but the Yoga Journal conference usually takes place in January in SF.  Perhaps looking towards January of 2013 we could look into getting a booth there. And I liked the idea someone else mentioned of creating a year-round calendar of events and conferences which we might consider tabling at. Today I posted this Sunday's sangha on various yahoogroups listservs, including Bay Area Young Adult Sangha (BAYAS), which has 1137 members, the SFVeg listserv (479) and I attempted to post on SFBAVeg (1371), but I think that post is subject to moderator approval.  I also posted the Sangha on craigslist (hope that is okay -- if not, I could always remove that posting, but I think it is a free resource that will serve us, as often people look for classes and events there, and I saw our 2-month course was already posted there so I figured it was okay).   I feel like only those who are "called" will come, but if those who might be called happen to be looking on Craigslist for events, why not?  I just used the verbiage from the website basically, and titled the veggie posts in such a way to make them more applicable to vegetarians (emphasizing the cooking demo and potluck). Speaking of Vegetarian groups, we could become a discount provider for the SF Vegetarian Society at little or no cost to us (probably Vedika would just need to become a member of SFVS, which is relatively inexpensive). There are also several ayurveda-themed groups on meetup.com.  I tried to suggest a meetup for Sunday's sangha to the group, Ayurvedic Community of the Bay Area, but it has gone in for moderator approval and I don't know if the moderator will post it.  I also joined another meetup called Ayurveda Meetup for Vegans and Vegetarians, and interestingly enough, they have a meetup today with Dr. Jay Apte. We might even consider creating a Vedika meetup group to promote the Sanghas.  People often will come to a free event especially if they can see who else has RSVP'd (and thus who they would be able to meet).  Meetup is $12 per month ($144 per year), so I think it is cost effective, and I'm pretty familiar with the platform.  Meetup also has a way to link in with Twitter and Facebook now.  We can of course discuss many other ideas later today. Gotta go, on my way to my favorite local Indian market (low on masur dal among other things!). Blessings, Michael