After Corina’s email against me, and her dismissal of most of the group members, I sent out the following email to ten of the group members whose email addresses I could find. This conciliatory email asked members to rejoin the group and assured them that Corina was no longer a member. Apparently, my email was not effective and no one rejoined as a result as a result of this message. Only the few group members that I knew well enough to have their home phone numbers and were able to contact personally rejoined the group.
I don’t think that people join a philosophy group to deal with conflict and drama. I think that people come to meetup groups because they want something that is fun and to help them relax after work, not to be upset. In the words of one group member, “When elephants fight, only the grass suffers.” Eventually new members will join the group. I doubt that any of the other members that Corina dismissed will return. Because of the lack of success of this message I stopped attempting to locate other group members to contact. I thought it was a good email, but after Corina’s message, I don’t think that anything I could write would be effective.
Dear Members of the PSI Group,
You have probably received an email from Corina regarding the status of the PSI group. In that email, Corina states that the group is dissolving. This is incorrect. The group will continue to meet, but just without Corina.
The reason that Corina has chosen to leave this group is because she feels that I was not being strict enough with the rules of Self Inquiry, as she sees them. Corina may very well start her own Self Inquiry group that follows those stricter rules, but that is not my concern. My choice is to support the changing needs of the group members instead of following an inflexible format that may exclude some people from the process.
In Corina’s letter, she also suggested that I was not transparent in my handling of funds. The truth is that nobody asked me for an accounting of donations. To date, I have collected a total of $43 in donations, and I have paid a total of $144 to Meetup to run this group. I think that I was being completely transparent in that I was collecting this money to help cover the cost of the Meetup dues. In the future, I will not ask for donations at all to avoid any potential claim of impropriety.
Corina also felt that part of her path towards enlightenment was to remove you and all of the other members from this Meetup group. If you would like to be part of this group again, you will need to rejoin. Please sign up for this group at: http://www.meetup.com/Philosophical-Self-Inquiry-Discussion/
Corina was also our point of contact at our meeting space, and now that she has left the group, I am not sure if we can continue to meet there. Please stay tuned for our future meeting times and locations. If at all possible, these will not change from what they have been in the past.