✨ Session with Daniel Raphael – December 6, 2024 (Part 1)

📌 General Information

• Date: Friday, December 6, 2024
• Edited by: Juan, Jacques and Marthe
• Present: Daniel Raphael, Sherille Raphael, Kona Mahu, Marthe Muller, Juan Ramirez, Steffen Patrick, Bea Ngai, Jacques Reverseau
• Observer: Maren, Richard Voss
• Transmitter/Receiver: Daniel Raphael
• Facilitator: Kona Mahu

🧘 Session Opening

Kona: Jacques will lead our minute of silence, then, Marthe will pray.

Jacques: My dear friends, another Friday which is moving so fast. I’ve just done the recording of all the work we have done since 2004, it’s just amazing!

Jacques: Now please center ourselves, take some deep breaths to relax your body, relax your mind, relax all yourselves. See yourself standing in a beam of light coming from above, going down to the core of this earth. Connect to your soul. Connect all our souls together in a big circuit of light altogether. Connect also to our celestial brothers and sisters who want to join us today, all the Melchizedek teams joyfully joining us on this Friday’s team, and all others who are joining. Stay silent now in this connection.

🙏 Prayer by Marthe

[Prayer content not fully transcribed in the document]

📝 Design Team Recruitment Process

Daniel: Okay, now I want you to make a list of community groups you could approach to find potential design team members. These could be church groups, neighborhood associations, teachers’ association, etc. There’s no limits. You are looking for an audience in your local community who will eventually sign up to become members of your design team. Okay, so are the instructions clear? You’re going to make a list of groups that you’re going to go to and speak to. Is that clear?

Group: Yes, it’s clear.

Daniel: So, please proceed. You have 5 minutes. When you have finished, just look up. And if everybody’s done, we’ll close the time.

[After 5 minutes]

Daniel: Okay. Now, I need a recorder.

Kona: I’m happy to record.

🏢 Community Group Ideas

Steffen: Yeah, but downtown associations, the community resources associations, the United Way. Some of the community resource associations, and there’s probably several of them. Looking at their bulletin I noticed that there were a lot of different associations that had pinned up their flyers and their cards and things like that. So, you know, that’s a good place, wherever they have services, United Way. There’s something over here called Kitsap Harvest, and it provides access to locally grown food, and so on and so forth. So, a food bank.

Bea: Okay. So actually, I didn’t come up with United Way and all those, although those are really great resources. I was kind of thinking in terms of building a picking like categories of skill sets which would be helpful in a design team. So, people with different backgrounds academically, people with different backgrounds religiously, culturally. Students versus, like, you know, adults, parents. So, one resource, I thought, you know, since it’s a community thing, where I live there is (I live in the town of Oakville), so, there is automatically, as you know, like a community which lists a lot of community resources right on that website.

Daniel: We’re looking for something uniquely different than similarities to what Steffen mentioned. How about one that I thought of? That’s very important, which is neighbourhood associations.

Marthe: Resident Associations or Homeowners.

Daniel: The homeowners associations. They’re usually specific to a subdivision or something like that. But there are neighbourhood associations which are outside of that. It is people who probably know you.

🖨️ Creating the Recruitment Flyer

Daniel: Now I want you to design a flyer, you know, whatever, 8 and a half by 11, or A4, or whatever you want to do, and it can be a half sheet, full sheet, but on the top you’re going to have the explanation of what your meeting is about. And at the bottom half, you’re going to have a sign-up and contact area. Let’s get the bottom part done first: What’s their name? What’s their address? What’s their telephone number, email so that you can contact them.

Kona: Okay, so this is a secular design team invitation.

Daniel: Yes, but not everybody’s on the same spiritual page as we are. A number of people don’t know the difference between spiritual and religious. The vast majority of American society is about 55-60% say that they’re spiritual, not religious. So that will eventually become a factor for developing another team where people want to work with a celestial teacher as a consultant.

Daniel: Of course, that means that team will need a TR, because operating a Co-Creative Design Team without a TR and without a celestial doesn’t work. So yes, basically, we’re going to attract people who have concerns for civil and civic problems, political problems, etc. The design team will not limit itself to any one particular area. Maybe one team has a whole bunch of people who are politically minded, and they say, you know, we need a decent process for campaigning. How do we get competent people to run for office? How do we change the selection process, and so on. We are interested in attracting people who are willing to be of service without high rewards beforehand.

📅 First Meeting Planning

Daniel: ? Are we doing this right now, or is this our assignment for the rest of the meeting?

Daniel: You should have a piece of paper in front of you that the top, if you draw a line on it, and the top half says, explanation of the gathering, bottom half is identifier. That’s the process so far. So, you have set a date, you know, before you begin all of this, that you have set a date where you want to meet at the clubhouse in your local community, which is rent-free or nominal fee for the clubhouse community center, and where you will meet.

Daniel: This paper could be a flyer. You can stick it on a bulletin board. You can hand it to people and so on. They can copy it if they want to, and share with others. In this meeting, you would, you know, different, I’ve found it. The team that I used this whole process with, gosh, it’s been 17 years, kids, so, if I’m a little shy on my memory, some of these things have slipped in the cracks of my cerebellum. Some of them say, well, I’m going to serve coffee, tea, wine, and beer. Great, that’s up to you, and whatever the community is, and so, and you’d have filtered water, too, of course.

Daniel: up to you, and whatever the community is, and so, and you’d have filtered water, too, of course, or you could have nothing, just a come and share and meet your neighbours and interesting people who are interested in similar topics… You would want to have a, you know, in group dynamics, team dynamics, you always want to have a bonding time where new people gather together, and they mill around drinking coffee or whatever they’re going to drink, and walk around talking to people.

Daniel: So, you know, for some groups, whether it’s Lion’s or Kiwanis, or whoever, they always have a leadership program, and leaders are always looking for new helpful venues, topics to present to their audiences. And this is what you do, and they will go back to their clubhouse or wherever they meet, and they’ll share with their friends what you’re doing. And so, this is how the word spreads, and just like Rick Voss heard about our team, what we’re doing and what we’re up to, and he asked to be able to listen in. And so here he is today listening in.

🤝 Team Building Process

Daniel: So, at this meeting, there will be people, and you will solicit them, if they’re interested, to hand in the bottom half of their flyer. Okay, and this will be your contact list, your personal contact list. You’ll contact them and tell them that they are invited to the first meeting of your Local Community Design Team. You could call it the Prairie Home Companion, you know. Who wrote that? Anyhow, you’d want to have a name for it that people would like.

Daniel: It means it’s kind of like a pre-approved trust level. I have something in common with them. I can talk to this person about those things, and from that you can discover more. This is one of the things I just love about meeting people, is to talk about commonalities and where they’ve been, what they’ve done and where they want to go. Everybody’s looking for purpose and meaning. This gives people a really strong purpose and a very strong meaning for their life and living. People are always looking for that, and don’t be afraid to sell that. Tell them about it.

Daniel: Because one of the greatest tragedies of these new generations, these alphabet generations, is that they have a lack of purpose and meaning. They feel lost. And people are always looking for where home is, where do I belong? And so, you will help some of these people along to do that, and that’s your role at this orientation meeting. You’ve had the “mill around” time, where people bond and find each other, and then you would present to them the opportunity to discover among themselves a topic that they would like to work on.

👥 Facilitator Role

Daniel: anyone. You, as a facilitator, you need to figure out what role you want to play. If you don’t have a professional facilitator, mediator, psychotherapist who is used to group therapy and team situations, then you’re probably pretty much going to have to take on the role of facilitator yourself. And you would want to do that in the beginning because you are the gatekeeper. You set the boundaries and you reinforce the boundaries. Does any of this sound familiar to what Machiventa was talking about several weeks ago? I think so. This is where that kind of expertise, that kind of interpersonal relationship skills really come to be dominant and important.

Daniel: You can say, “Hey, the three of you there, this is not working for the rest of us. How about joining us back again and share what you were talking about? It might be very important for all of us.” Or they might be talking about, you know, the ball game that they went to last week. Who knows? But you, as the facilitator, want to have a good hand on the social dynamics that are going on in the design team. And when you are visible at the table, and hopefully, it’s an oval table or a round table, okay, so that you have total exposure to people this whole time. No masculine domination of, “I’m

Daniel: So, we can bring situations here that we can discuss and help each other work through these different situations. I have to say, this is kind of funny, because you guys have known I’ve expressed that we have a challenging situation with my apartment complex. And I’ve been thinking about doing the flyer. And I’ve been thinking about creating a design team in my building to help solve these problems. So, I’m getting this, apparently this nudge from Sondjah and Ahsha that, “Yes, you should be doing this. And here are your instructions. So please get busy.” I’m like, okay, guys. I had to hear it from Daniel before I got the clue. Okay, fine.”

📝 Meeting Documentation

Daniel: And you would want to have someone, probably not yourself, to be the recorder, though that individual who records the highlights of what you’re doing and the process that’s going on. This is not a verbatim record. This would be, “So and so mentioned an improvement that we could be making for the team,” or “Someone said we need to have a regular time out for “nature breaks,” as Kona calls them “bio break”, which is wonderful. So, that’s your first design team meeting. It’s an important one. Make people feel welcome that they’re there for a reason. They have an intelligence that you

Daniel: one. Make people feel welcome that they’re there for a reason. They have an intelligence that you want to harvest, and they’re there for a reason. And you might, you know, this is a free-flowing thing, you might ask everybody, each one individually, “What do you hope to accomplish here? What attracted you to come here? Is it solving problems, overcoming problems, or creating opportunities? Would you like to be proactive rather than reactive?” And so on.