10:00 am
Marlies Myoku Cocheret ~ An Exploration of Total Inclusion
How Available are You to Stay Awake as a Human-Divine in Today's World?
It is up to us to live the awakened life in every moment and every situation. What does it mean to step into living the total intimacy and inclusion with ALL of life ─ including pleasure, pain, peace, body, suffering, happiness, rage, Self-realization and wondrous emptiness?
My own recent experience ─ of a long and extensive surgery to remove my two kidneys and receive a transplanted kidney, as well as the recovery that followed ─ had and still has many layers of challenges. Through it all, Divine Radiance carries me.
How do we unpack the wrapping paper of adversity and discover what is inside? Life/She helps us cultivate Being through offering the most wonderful challenges. When separation is out the window, all aspects of life are intimately welcomed and experienced. Then, we live in total inclusion with what is, which is the dance of our Humanity and our Divine radiance. Come and explore your delicious Self!
Marlies has devoted her life to the Beloved. She brings a potent invitation into the deep Silence that we are. The kindness of her gentle and direct teaching guides us home like a lighthouse. She helps people to see that freedom and peace lie not in escaping from difficulties, but rather in completely welcoming and receiving all that the Mystery presents.
She has been offering satsang and retreat since 2000 when Adyashanti asked her to teach. Marlies is trained as a psychologist in The Netherlands, a Hakomi therapist, and a Tantric educator. For over 25 years she has been ushering seekers into living the Divine in the body. She has a passion and a gift for bringing together the Sensual Body and the Silence of our Being.
She lives in Santa Cruz; California, but works internationally. Marlies is interviewed in the book Awakened Relating. A Guide To Embodying Undivided love in Intimate Relationships by Lynn Marie Lumiere, and in the book Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom by R.M. Robinson
“With Adya, the bottom fell out. I deeply knew I am not this body, mind, thought, psyche, and I am also all these things as well. There was no in and/or out. All is One.”
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
REGISTER
11:00 am
CANCELLED – Rupert Spira ~ The Essence of Non-Duality
The Feb. 24th event has been cancelled due to a family emergency. An email will be sent to all people who pre-registered about how to rollover their tickets for a future event with Rupert, or how to get a refund. Both Rupert himself and Open Circle sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused.
March 17th Rupert Spira event in Berkeley
is open for registration.
“Meditation is what we are, not what we do; the separate self is what we do, not what we are.”
In the last few years Rupert Spira has become one of the most respected and sought-after teachers of non-dual wisdom, known for his crystal clear use of language, laser-like intellect, skillful guided enquiries, and powerfully direct pointing to aware presence—all delivered with warmth, wit and an unmatched and distinctive eloquence.
In his meetings, Rupert explores the perennial, non-dual understanding that lies at the heart of all the great religious and spiritual traditions, such as Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mystical Christianity, Sufism, Zen etc., and which is also the direct, ever-present reality of our own experience. This is a contemporary, experiential approach involving silent meditation, guided meditation and conversation, and requires no affiliation to any particular religious or spiritual tradition. All that is required is an interest in the essential nature of experience, and in the longing for love, peace and happiness around which most of our lives revolve.
After thirty years of intense seeking, Rupert met his primary teacher Francis Lucille, who introduced him to the direct way taught by his own teacher, Jean Klein. Rupert lives in Oxford, England, with his wife Ellen Emmet, a therapist and yoga teacher in the tradition of Kashmir Shaivism. . He is the author of several books, including his latest two, The Nature of Consciousness and Being Aware of Being Aware, and two book/CD box-sets, Transparent Body, Luminous World and The Light of Pure Knowing.
www.non-duality.rupertspira.com
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Please contact LocalEvents@opencirclecenter.org with any further questions.
PARKING: There is some limited street parking in the neighborhood, free and without time limit on weekends. There is also parking a few blocks away at the east parking lot of the Ashby Bart station: www.bart.gov/stations/ashb/map
You may also find paid parking just a few blocks away at Alta Bates Parking Garage: Enter on Colby between Ashby and Webster St.