August 2024
Susanne Marie ~ Simple Truth
Whether you are an advanced practitioner, or newly entering the spiritual stream, one can always use the simple (yet profound), essential practice of resting one's attention on presence. As you may know, what we sincerely give our attention to, grows, and this is also true in regards to realizing our true nature.
It is easy to get caught up with flowery or complicated pointers, falsely believing that realization is difficult to attain and meant for the few. But it does take a certain type of dedication and willingness to unstrip oneself of imagination and avoid the tendency to complicate things, which puts awakening into time.
Together we will practice the essential teaching of resting attention on stillness, helping to deepen presence in one's everyday life. .......
Gail Brenner ~ Melting into Being (In-Person Event)
Come and enjoy an afternoon of melting into being with your fellow truth lovers. In our time together, we’ll relax into effortless being, marinating in the luminescent knowing of our true nature. We’ll leave the limitations of our personal stories and attachments to discover liberation—already here—timeless, boundless, and free. At the same time, we bow to our humanness—meeting our conditioned and fear-based patterns with understanding and compassion. With guided meditation, quotes from our beloved masters, and open conversation, we’ll celebrate together, discovering peace and happiness right at the heart of our everyday human lives.
Gail Brenner, Ph.D. is your guide. As a psychologist, author, and teacher, she transmits a love of truth with a fire that burns brightly. She is known for creating the safe space needed for deep inner exploration.
Find out more »Chesaray ~ Somatic Self-Inquiry: Embodied Awakening and Psychological Integration through Movement
Experiential Divinity in our everyday lives requires a holistic approach that embraces the whole self. Let us turn from the temptations of spiritual bypassing and lean into the fire of embodiment.
Somatic Self Inquiry supports people in discovering their true nature by welcoming below-the-mind, bottom-up approaches to integration. When we are reminded of our Divinity deep within, we can be liberated from patterns that hold us back from joy and freedom. Through exploring the richness of the somatic depths and opening to the unknown, we find ourselves "in the world but not of it."
Let us come together in the spirit of Inquiry for a guided movement exploration, meditation, and exchanges with Chesaray......
Find out more »September 2024
Pamela Wilson ~ Dark Love: Being the Love That Doesn’t Come or Go ~ 4 Part Online Retreat
In all of us there is a background substratum: Stillness, dark and often overlooked or unseen, as it is unadorned and we, as awareness, are attracted to the luminous. It is sober and wise and anciently ageless. Honoring and including this dark love nourishes it, so that it is more our felt experience. This allows us to live from the ancient heart of everything, to recognize the heart at the core of everyone and everything. Ultimately, embodied balance is revealed hidden within all the opposites, and streaming soothing transmission results.
Pamela Wilson evokes through dialogue, inquiry and her very presence the qualities of unconditional love and radical acceptance. She is celebrated for her ability to open the heart and create a space in which long-cherished struggles and notions about one’s identity relax.
Find out more »John Prendergast and Lisa Ferguson ~ Engaged Nonduality
This online event is an opportunity to turn toward our world in crisis from an awakened heart. Whatever is touching your heart is welcomed, including climate and ecosystem breakdown, war and conflict, injustice and polarization. How is Being moving through us in response? We will explore through meditation, dyadic inquiry, and group interaction what it means to open to our awakened nature, while also being moved by our deepest knowing to respond to our world in crisis.
John J. Prendergast studied with the European sage Jean Klein for many years as well as with Adyashanti who gave dharma transmission to John in August, 2023. He is a retired Adjunct Professor of Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies as well as a retired psychotherapist. John is the author of several books, including The Deep Heart: Our Portal to Presence. Lisa Ferguson, Ph.D. is the founder of Climate Compassion, and has focused on supporting planetary well-being as a healing arts practitioner, climate justice activist, organizer and contemplative.
Find out more »Jeannie Zandi ~ True Nature
Who are we really? Join Jeannie to explore the idea and experience of true nature.
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 teaching style.
Find out more »Louise Kay ~ Embodied Awareness
If you bring your attention fully present into the now and inquire with a genuine, open curiosity into the truth of this moment, what is discovered is that underlying all experiences lies an invisible, potent presence. This presence is often referred to as stillness, being, consciousness or awareness, and is the eternal, formless essence of who you are. All else appears in and is perceived by this awareness.
The recognition of this truth is followed by a sacred process of integration, which takes place on the level of body and mind over time, while one remains anchored in the formlessness of the unending now.
In her early thirties Louise Kay, who is from the UK, felt a deep call in her heart to visit India, where she experienced a profound spiritual awakening. As she opened more to this non-dual truth, a new form of expression revealed itself from deep in her heart. Her greatest joy is to sit together in presence and gently hold space for the integration of unresolved energies, and allow the unfolding of the divine in all who feel the call.
Find out more »John Prendergast, Lisa Ferguson & Jared Michaels ~ Engaged Nonduality ~ InPerson Daylong
This daylong event is an opportunity to turn toward our world in crisis from an awakened heart. Whatever is touching your heart is welcomed, including climate and ecosystem breakdown, war and conflict, injustice and polarization. How is Being moving through us in response? We will explore through meditation, dyadic inquiry, and group interaction what it means to open to our awakened nature, while also being moved by our deepest knowing to respond to our world in crisis.
John Prendergast studied with the European sage Jean Klein for many years as well as with Adyashanti who gave dharma transmission to John in August, 2023. Lisa Ferguson is the founder of Climate Compassion, and has focused on supporting planetary well-being as a healing arts practitioner, climate justice activist, organizer and contemplative. Jared Michaels is a psychotherapist, a Zen priest, and a longtime student of John Prendergast. For decades, he asked what he could offer humanity that would make a difference. His answer: To invite us to walk a path of personal and systemic transformation.
Find out more »John Prendergast ~ “How Do You Unenlighten Yourself?” ~ Bay Area Daylong Retreat
Our true nature is inherently open, wakeful, and loving; however, it is veiled by our conscious and subconscious identification with conditioning. In this daylong gathering, we will pointedly explore how our core limiting beliefs and their corresponding subtle somatic contractions sustain the sense of being a separate self. The day will include guided and silent meditation, meditative inquiry, a talk, and experiential conversations.
John Prendergast studied with the European sage Jean Klein for many years, as well as with Adyashanti, who gave him dharma transmission in 2023. He is a retired psychotherapist, well known for his pioneering work in integrating non-dual wisdom and psychotherapy.
Find out more »Louise Kay ~ Embodied Awareness (In-Person & Livestream)
You're invited to join Louise Kay, who is from the UK, for a meeting in Truth in Sebastopol, the first of several events Open Circle will be hosting with her in the Bay Area over the next week. During this event Louise will share her Embodied Awareness practice with you; a practice which supports the direct recognition of one's true nature through self-inquiry, as well as the integration of unprocessed energies and emotions held in the body. When employed with consistency, this practice allows one to live in presence in an integrated way and to become a vessel through which higher consciousness can flow more freely, bringing joy to every aspect of life.
In her early thirties Louise felt a strong call to visit India, where she experienced a profound spiritual awakening. In the years that followed she experienced a deepening and integration of her initial spiritual awakening, and, as she opened more to this dimension of being, a new form of expression revealed itself from deep within her heart.
Louise is passionate about supporting people to live a life of presence and unconditional love.
Find out more »