September 2018
Maja Apolonia Rodé ~ The Alchemy of Consciousness and Creativity
Thursday Evenings, starting Sept. 20, 2018 @ 7:30pm-9:00pm
These intimate evenings are limited to 12 people.
Advanced registration is required.
Join Maja and like-hearted company for a multidimensional satsang experience. Gathering in a sacred circle, we will co-create a unique and potent field for the emergence of truth, beauty, and the realization of our sincerest intentions. The evening will weave together a gentle yet alchemical mix of silent meditation, mystical music/chanting/poetry, visual elements, and conversations in consciousness. Bring your heartfelt inquiries and intentions — to be held in our sanctuary of consciousness and caring — where answers arise from within, creative possibilities emerge, and physical, mental, and emotional bodies find their natural balance, harmony, and healing.
Due to the nature of this gathering, please register only if you plan to arrive on time and stay until the end. Doors will open at 7:15. Thank you.
Reflections from Past Concert Attendees
“My heart opens wide. Maja has given me such a gift with her music.”
“There was a playfulness and joy coupled with the holding of an incredibly sacred space
that was quite unique indeed”
“I was so happy afterward, it felt like I was sparkling all the way home.”
“I wish all my loves could be here to share this wonderful evening.”
Watch some of Maja's music and poetry on her Facebook page.
About Maja
Maja Apolonia Rodé shares an inspiring array of creative expressions with one common purpose: to support the realization and flowering of your true nature. From ethereal chants to irreverent raps, mystical rituals to playful games, sacred arts instruction to contemplative consulting, Maja’s work invites you into the depths of presence where your consciousness and true creative potentials naturally blossom.
Maja worked closely with spiritual teacher Adyashanti for almost two decades as the Creative Director of Open Gate Sangha, where she supported the flowering of his dharma, and offered her music and poetry at countless events and silent retreats. Maja has performed at numerous retreat centers, conferences, and private events including: Esalen, the Science and Nonduality conferences, the Nondual Wisdom and Psychology conferences, Sofia University, and Rumi’s Caravan. She has appeared in concert with Steven Walters, Eric “Rumi” Schneider, John Astin, and Amitabhan, and holds a PhD in Transpersonal Psychology.
Pre-registration: $25
Registration for other Thursdays will be available soon.
Find out more »Pamela Wilson ~ September Online Retreat
The Art of Being: From Living as Doing to a Full Return to Being
Three week Retreat
September 22, 25, 29, & October 2, 2018
Join Pamela Wilson and friends for a series of four online retreat days as we explore and stabilize from doing to embodied Being.
“Naturally, Awareness will have its attention on movement and doing. Its nature is practical and efficient in support of Life flourishing. However, the fixation on doing can become solidified, replacing fluid spacious Being.
Remembrance is a kinesthetic noticing, where the body is instantly receptive to simple invitations of Truth that allow it to unwind and root, living what it loves. The mind will be reassured that nothing will be lost, as doing melts back into Being. Being, Life itSelf, is a master of efficient creativity and resolution. Its way is to work with, and meet what is, reminding it of essential ease and a more timeless view. Thus pressure relaxes.
Letting Life live the Life resolves so many of the “I cant's” and “I wont's” ─ returning our day-to-day experience from human moving and striving to Being at its best, attending to what needs tending. In the absence of push or pressure, Being flows with itself in all situations clearly and kindly. Our Longing is for a full return to Being, amidst harmony and chaos, Standing Still and Rooted at the Heart of the great passionate Swirl of Life.”
Pamela Wilson has been sharing satsang for twenty years around the world, honoring the sage within everyone, and the absolute oneness of All That Is. She evokes through dialogue, inquiry and her very presence the qualities of unconditional love and radical acceptance. She endears herself to her audiences with her playful and light-hearted humor, combined with compassion and deep understanding of what it is to be human. Pamela is celebrated for her ability to open the heart, call forth our own inner sage, and create a space in which long-held struggles and notions about one’s identity relax. www.pamelasatsang.com
Over a series of 4 sessions join Pamela and like-minded community in this deep exploration of embodied living as Being.
~~
This online retreat format is an exciting container that allows for deeper work with the consistency and
support of a teacher and community — without the normal cost and logistics that an on location retreat entails.
It also provides the unique opportunity to be opening and exploring deeply while still living your daily life.
This Three Week Online Retreat will consist of:
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Four 2 hour Satsang Meetings
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Small group supportive meetings with fellow participants
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Recordings of all four Satsang gatherings sent within 48hrs of each session
September 22, 25, 29, & October 2, 2018
Times:
10am-12pm Pacific
6pm - 8pm England
7pm- 9pm Europe
Small Group Offerings
TBD
Registration:
$100 - $150
scholarships available
For questions contact
onlineretreat@opencirclecenter.org
Amoda Maa ~ Living the Truth of Awakening
Amoda’s invitation is for you to discover the openness of your true nature, to be fully awake, and then to live from this openness in every interaction of your everyday life, to be fully human. Her teachings take you deep into this discovery, offering you an intimate conversation that includes the totality of the human experience within the unbounded space of unconditioned awareness.
Amoda Maa is a contemporary spiritual teacher, author, and speaker. After years of spiritual seeking, meditation, and immersion in psycho-spiritual practices, an experience of the dark night of the soul led her to a profound inner awakening. Then, after a long period of integration, she began speaking from silence in small gatherings in the United Kingdom. She offers meetings and retreats, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and events such as SAND, Omega Institute, and Kripalu Center, attracting spiritual seekers and people looking for peace and fulfillment in an increasingly chaotic world. Her teachings are free of religion and tradition, and she brings to them a deep understanding of the human journey, born out of her own experience.
She is the author of Radical Awakening (originally released as How to Find God in Everything) and Change Your Life, Change Your World. Both books were written shortly after her awakening and before she began to speak in public. Her new book Embodied Enlightenment — written 15 years after her awakening — is based on the many conversations at the cutting edge of spiritual inquiry in her meetings with people from all around the world, and addresses many of the questions relevant to today’s seeker. It has been acclaimed as “a beautiful and precious gift to an emerging new humanity.”
Amoda lives with her husband and beloved, Kavi, in California.
“There’s a new conversation happening. There’s a growing collective desire to evolve beyond ego, because ego’s power no longer works in our lives and in our world. More and more people today yearn to awaken. But this isn’t the pursuit of enlightenment as a transcendent state; it’s not spirituality as a hobby or a luxury or an accolade. It’s a new frequency of awakening that embraces the grit and dirt of the human experience. It’s about bringing spirituality right into the places where it hurts, where the rubber hits the road: such as relationships, and work, and pain and loss. My invitation is to say a radical YES to the totality of this moment ... this is the heart of You meeting the heart of reality!”
To learn more, visit www.amodamaa.com
Suggested donation: $15-25
No one turned away for lack of funds
Tom Kurzka ~ Rest in Being: The Love of Your Life
Live Worldwide Web Event
6:00-8:00 pm (Pacific Time - San Francisco, CA, USA) Time Zone Converter
You are invited to join Tom as we explore this experience called me and my world. We’ll begin with an introduction followed by a brief guided meditation, then open dialogue. There is no question or concern that is too unworthy to be addressed. Often the most deep rooted problems are our gateway to the Love that we all are. Through this process Tom holds a sweet tender kindness that makes many who work with him feel held and safe. Within this supportive framework our full humanness is embraced and touched. As we radically accept and meet the worst of the worst, a gentle piercing happens as the entirety of our human experience melts in Being’s all-embracing arms, this ever present Love. We see that we are that Love, this sweetness that unconditionally holds our humanness.
In 2000, after a lifelong battle trying to hold onto his false sense of a separate self, Tom’s fight against Reality spontaneously ended, resulting in a shift into unitive consciousness or Being. Shortly thereafter, Tom was asked to share and has since been holding small group meetings at his home in Oregon and also with a group in Virginia. Tom is known for his humility and a profound acceptance of what is. The guidance moving through him has flavors of Advaita Vedanta, Sufism, Buddhism and, most importantly, an ongoing revelation of living in the moment.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
Find out more »Adam Chacksfield ~ Falling Open Together
Inviting us to receive the ultimate gift, Adam shares the direct experience of the heart, mind, and life falling open. In this effortless opening, the suffering involved in resisting feelings and believing thoughts spontaneously releases. Our natural abundance of joy, peace, wisdom, and love becomes apparent and available. Heart-centered, gentle, and direct, Adam offers a path straight into the truth of who you are.
"Adam is a great messenger of truth. He has a very unique transmission that does wonderful things for my spirit—spa treatment.” — Pamela Wilson, featured in Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom by Rita Marie Robinson
“Adam delivers the essence of nondual awareness in an uncompromising form. He is whole-heartedly committed to creating new possibilities that are grounded in awareness and practical at the same time. I highly recommend him.” — Peter Fenner, Ph.D., author of Radiant Mind
Adam Chacksfield, Ph.D. is founder of the Center for Nondual Awareness and creator of “Falling Open”, a four-month online course transforming how participants experience their lives.
Suggested Donation: $15-$25
Find out more »October 2018
Jeannie Zandi ~ The Ground of Being
Join Jeannie and friends for an exploration into the potent depth of what’s often overlooked in the moment: being. Jeannie’s gift for inviting people to join her in resting and rooted presence evokes a deep meeting with oneself and reality. Within that, Jeannie’s humor and iconoclasm serve to bring people into an understanding that is beyond the intellectual. Through silent and guided meditation, a spontaneous talk and exchange with participants, Jeannie will host a space of clarity and warmth where the true richness of life can be experienced, and your innermost spiritual questions can be met fully. Come join us!
Jeannie is the director of Living as Love, a nonprofit organization dedicated to seeding a culture of the Heart on the planet, inspiring, teaching and supporting people to live from their essence as Love. A year before the birth of her daughter, Jeannie was plunged into a dark night of the soul that culminated in a radical shift of consciousness. She is known for her fearless clarity, tender mercy toward humanness, and a juicy, poetic and often humorous style that draws from Advaita Vedanta, Sufism, Christian mysticism and the ongoing revelation of fully engaged living. Residing in Colorado, she travels widely in the US, bringing a down-to-earth embodied teaching of living as love.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
Find out more »Brian & Alexandra ~
From Brian & Alexandra.....
"What we have discovered in our 25 years of deepening is that the structure of any relationship can be a vehicle to go beyond that structure and recognize what joining in love means in each moment. There are no difficulties, no "wrong doings”, no heartbreaks that won't fall away in true love.
Relationship, if given to truth, is a path of awakening to what lies beyond all concepts and definitions. The only real relationship is with your Self, and that brings gratitude which includes everyone.
Everything unlike love must get exposed, and felt, in the light of loving awareness, and seen through. There’s no way around that fact in our experience. Whatever a relationship may seem to be, as we become willing to relate without a past, everything is forgiven and healed. All definitions of our relationships are way too small, and are bound to be disillusioned. But love is real and knows how to use all our relationships for continuous awakening.
A COURSE IN MIRACLES, and the silent tradition of Ramana Maharshi have been instrumental in our learning to forgive and communicate with authenticity."
Note from Cory Bright....
"I have seen more A Course in Miracles groups than you can ever imagine. Each one has had it's own flavor to the group and teacher.. and after 40 years of exploring these groups as well as other nondual oriented teachers. Brian and Alexandra are truly unique as there is a sense of abidance and being that arises as they speak. You will be embraced in the light of Love and Open Awareness. They are not only speaking" about".. they are "arising and abiding as". I highly recommend you check them out.. they are very open and not necessarily stuck on any genre, and embrace many nondual ways as well ..especially Ramana Maharshi. Trust me, you will be glad to be in their presence.. As Love Cory Bright"....
Jon Bernie ~ The Unbelievable Happiness of What Is
Jon Bernie, author of Ordinary Freedom and his latest, The Unbelievable Happiness of What Is, is a contemporary spiritual teacher who offers a compassionate, heart-centered approach to awakening. From his early years growing up as an artist and concert violinist, Jon always had a keen, questioning mind. This led him to discover a self-inquiry process that led to a life-changing spiritual awakening at the age of 16. Despite thinking he was on his way to medical school, he ended up becoming a Zen monk. He has four decades of practice and study in the Zen, Theravada Buddhist and Advaita traditions, and was formally asked to teach by Adyashanti in 2002.
Jon’s teaching focuses on returning the attention to the already enlightened state that lies at the core of our human existence. He is also an experienced healer and teacher of somatic embodiment, trained in the Alexander Technique, Zero Balancing, Self Acceptance Training and the Qigong system of Dr. Yu Penxi. Jon works closely with individuals to facilitate awakening and deep emotional healing, and leads classes, intensives and retreats in the San Francisco Bay Area and nationally. He also does intensive, one-on-one work with individuals both in person and by phone or video chat.
“Trying to find happiness is not possible. Why? Because we cannot find what we fundamentally are. So how do we discover and, in a sense, become one with what we fundamentally are? By learning to feel directly “what is” — that is, what’s being experienced in the mind, body and heart — free of judgment, comparison and analysis. Learning to feel directly could also be described as “being one with what is”. This quality of acceptance or compassion is the essence of our shared Heart of Oneness and simultaneously leads to, and already is, the profound vastness of our true and everlasting Happiness.”
Shakti Caterina Maggi ~ Awakening in Daily Life
Please join us for this special series of events with Italian teacher Shakti Caterina Maggi.
Evenings: Wed. Oct. 17th & Thurs. Oct. 18th, 7:00-8:45 pm
Daylong Intensive: Saturday Oct. 21st, 11:00 am- 5:00 pm
Shakti is a teacher very well known in Europe and her native Italy, who offers a contemporary and accessible vision of true awakening that is profoundly in tune with Advaita and nondual Tantric traditions.
The spiritual journey inevitably leads to the confrontation between our "spiritual life" and our "material life", discovering how and where we truly embody the truth of our heart. Realizing the emptiness of our true nature is just the starting point of an integration process that can take several years and involve all aspects of our lives, and leads us to several moments of crisis in which old egoic patterns of behavior that are still based on the separative mind emerge to be dissolved by the light of Awareness.
Shakti has spent many years deepening this integration process. With wisdom, humor, and heartfelt connection, she shares a message of discovering our divinity at the very core of our humanity. Shakti has been sharing this message of non-separation since 2003 with many people around the world, especially in Italy and in Europe, where she holds satsangs and retreats.
The day-long intensive ─ which will include mediation, satsang and perception exercises ─ will help us see and dissolve our conflictual view of life, and enable us to live and embody a message of true peace and non-separation between human beings.
"Peace is not a destination, but a starting point. Find that Peace that rests behind anything and anybody and bring it into your world. Every human being looks for Peace in their inner or outer reality. In this call for clarity, what we are looking for is what our true nature actually is.
“We are used to imagining that the dissolving of inner and outer conflicts comes as the result of some action, whereas it is only when we move from Peace that those actions will bring the end of any conflict. Moving and living from Peace is recognizing what we are, and integrating it in our everyday life.
“Awakening to your true nature means to wake up to your true essence that lies behind any conflict of daily living. Thoughts and feelings are not an obstacle to this recognition, but the direct expression of how we know or ignore ourselves. Once we find that silence that rests behind manifestation, the ego will come back, out of habit. If we can recognize its presence, not as a disturbance but as an opportunity to integrate the message, our everyday life becomes our true spiritual journey. The Peace of our Being becomes the world we see and live in.”
Evening: suggested donation $15 - $25
No one turned away for lack of funds
Oct. 21st Daylong: Sliding scale: $65 - $125
Pre-registration is encouraged and suggested at info@shakticaterinamaggi.com
Partial scholarships available
Shakti Caterina Maggi ~ Awakening in Daily Life
Shakti is a teacher very well known in Europe and her native Italy, who offers a contemporary and accessible vision of true awakening that is profoundly in tune with Advaita and nondual Tantric traditions.
The spiritual journey inevitably leads to the confrontation between our "spiritual life" and our "material life", discovering how and where we truly embody the truth of our heart. Realizing the emptiness of our true nature is just the starting point of an integration process that can take several years and involve all aspects of our lives, and leads us to several moments of crisis in which old egoic patterns of behavior that are still based on the separative mind emerge to be dissolved by the light of Awareness.
Shakti has spent many years deepening this integration process. With wisdom, humor, and heartfelt connection, she shares a message of discovering our divinity at the very core of our humanity. Shakti has been sharing this message of non-separation since 2003 with many people around the world, especially in Italy and in Europe, where she holds satsangs and retreats.
"Peace is not a destination, but a starting point. Find that Peace that rests behind anything and anybody and bring it into your world. Every human being looks for Peace in their inner or outer reality. In this call for clarity, what we are looking for is what our true nature actually is.
“We are used to imagining that the dissolving of inner and outer conflicts comes as the result of some action, whereas it is only when we move from Peace that those actions will bring the end of any conflict. Moving and living from Peace is recognizing what we are, and integrating it in our everyday life.
“Awakening to your true nature means to wake up to your true essence that lies behind any conflict of daily living. Thoughts and feelings are not an obstacle to this recognition, but the direct expression of how we know or ignore ourselves. Once we find that silence that rests behind manifestation, the ego will come back, out of habit. If we can recognize its presence, not as a disturbance but as an opportunity to integrate the message, our everyday life becomes our true spiritual journey. The Peace of our Being becomes the world we see and live in.”
Suggested donation: $45 - $105
No one turned away for lack of funds
Pre-registration is encouraged and suggested (though not required):
Email your name to Tomas at tommy@sonic.net
Payment will be made at the door