April 2019
John Prendergast ~ Taking Refuge in Not Knowing
A Rustic Weekend Retreat with John Prendergast
Saturday April 27th and Sunday April 28th
10:00am to 5:00pm, Fairfax, Marin County
Join us for a weekend retreat on beautiful private property in Fairfax for a two-day deep dive into true nature. Through dialogues, meditation, and dyadic inquiry we will explore what it means to experientially take refuge in not knowing, and to allow attention to fall into the heart and the ground.
We will also enjoy the 50 acres of ridgetop land, with glorious views of Mount Tam and the surrounding area, with many trails for walking and savoring the spring wildflowers. Weather permitting, meetings will be held outdoors in a shaded oak grove. Otherwise, we will meet inside.
John is a spiritual teacher, psychotherapist and retired adjunct professor of psychology at CIIS, known for his pioneering work in integrating nondual wisdom and psychotherapy. A long-time student of both Jean Klein and Adyashanti, he was asked to share the dharma by Dorothy Hunt. John brings a depth of experience, insight, warmth, and compassion to his teaching work, and is especially skillful in guided meditative inquiries and one-on-one dialogues. He is the author of In Touch (Sounds True, 2015) and a forthcoming new book called The Deep Heart: Our Portal to Presence (Sounds True, Nov. 2019). He offers quarterly daylong intensives in the Bay Area, and residential retreats and seminars around the U.S.
"Once we get over the initial shock, it is a huge relief to see and feel that we are not who, where, or when we have taken our self to be. The truth is that we don’t know and can’t know any of this – at least not with our ordinary strategic, goal-oriented mind. We discover that we can rest in not knowing. This is not the same as being ignorant. We are not ignoring anything. In fact, we are facing an important truth – the limits of the conditioned mind. There is a great deal in life that we don’t know, can’t know, and perhaps most importantly, don’t need to know. This insight frees attention to move from its temporary residence in the forehead to the depths of the heart area. Acknowledging that we don’t know, opens us to a different type of knowing."
Meals
A light organic vegetarian lunch, and tea and cookies at tea time, will be provided free of charge, or you may bring your own food, or head out for lunch at Good Earth Natural Foods or a number of local restaurants.
Accommodation
It is expected that most attendees will commute; however, limited shared dormitory-style accommodation is available if you want to spend the night.
Registration
Pre-registration is required, as attendance is limited to 30 people.
For more information or to register, email robmschwartz@yahoo.com.
Directions and logistical details will be provided upon registration.
Suggested donation: $150
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Find out more »
May 2019
Mary Reed ~ Wise Power: BEing the Mechanism of Creation
After calling the Himalayas her home for seven years, today “accidental mystic” Mary Reed travels the world startling audiences awake with the Divine love conveyed through her profound mystical experiences.
In the summer of 2000, she was a busy executive at an NGO in Washington, DC, directing global healthcare programs, when, out of the blue, she started having powerful mystical visions that totally upended her life. After years of self-examination, many of them spent living in a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery in northern India, she returned to the west to inspire joyful collective resurrection with her unique view of our awakening world.
Her work is rooted in eighteen years of direct engagement with Divine Masters, whom she does not channel but temporarily becomes, experiencing from within their unique forms — an ability she neither sought nor easily accepted. Mary guides others using only the wisdom gleaned directly from Divine sources, without doctrinal bias or filters. Her unfathomable experiences are both an invitation and road map to visceral remembrance of the healing wisdom that is already within us.
Mary is the author of the award-winning book, Unwitting Mystic and the subject of a feature film currently in development called Love, Mary Reed.
“As humanity maneuvers through this magnificent time of “fracturing” in our collective awareness, most of us have become disoriented as the old foundations of normalcy have broken apart. Depending on the day and where our awareness is focused, we’re either elated or alarmed, empowered or enraged, equanimous or trying to remember how to get there. Even the most awakened leaders, teachers, healers, students and everyday folks must navigate the ever-shifting ground upon which we now stand, at times uncomfortably, together.
“From within — and as — Unitive Consciousness, there are powerful perspectives and tools that can help us use what’s happening to create what comes next (or allow to be created). It brings me great joy to share these perspectives and tools with the Open Circle community.”
Suggested donation: $15-25
No one turned away for lack of funds
Find out more »Pamela Wilson ~ Warm Heart, Mountain Stillness
Pamela Wilson is a Bay Area treasure who has been sharing satsang for twenty years around the world, honoring the sage within everyone, and the absolute oneness of All That Is. Her own teachers included Lester Levinson (The Sedona Method), Robert Adams and Neelam. 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. And she speaks the truth of non-duality, that the universe is one undivided whole. Featured in the book Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom, Pamela is at her best in heart-felt dialogue, so please come and bring your questions!
“Here we are, benevolent rooted space wearing a remarkably sensitive instrument called the body. Most sages report the body-mind insists on being included and permeated by presence, so it too, can know and live its naturalness. The body is the five elements, already free with no history, though it has born witness to all. As compassion we will be instantly aware of any suffering and answer its call; as stillness we will be aware of remaining restlessness. To be with what is in the moment, this is our function and is at the heart of all longing.”
June 2019
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.”
Larry Robinson ~ This Precious Jade Teacup Is Already Broken: Participating Joyfully in the Suffering of the World
Larry Robinson is something of a modern-day Renaissance man. Moving easily from the meditation hall to the halls of power, Larry is a Zen practitioner, a published poet, a potter, a retired eco-psychologist, and a former Green Party city councilman and mayor of Sebastopol, known for starting off city council meetings with poetry. He is also the founder and producer of the critically acclaimed Rumi’s Caravan, a performance troupe dedicated to restoring the soul of the world through reviving the oral tradition of ecstatic poetry. Larry has been practicing meditation for 50 years, primarily in the Zen and vipassana traditions, and is a member of the Occidental Laguna Sangha in Sebastopol, a Zen gathering in the lineage of Suzuki Roshi. He also serves on the boards of the Center for Climate Protection and Meridian University.
“We are living through a time of societal and ecological collapse. Many of us are overwhelmed with feelings of grief and helplessness in the face of such enormous loss and suffering. It requires great courage to keep our hearts open at such a time. The Buddhist practices of Brahmaviharas ─ compassion, loving kindness, sympathetic joy and equanimity ─ offer a pathway to avoiding the twin perils of despair and naive hope while still being fully engaged in the world.”
July 2019
Dorothy Hunt ~ Meditation in Action
“Meditation is not simply the art of sitting quietly on a cushion; it is the art of seeing deeply, being fully present and alive. It is the practice of stopping and noticing who or what is here Now: breathing, looking, eating, drinking, talking, touching, thinking, feeling, sensing. What is the single dimension of our being that is intimate, ever-present, and timelessly awake? Meditation in action is about unifying body and mind in the present moment, and living more and more consciously from the deepest truths we may have realized. If we are living our spirituality and not simply thinking about it, we are invited to BE the light of compassionate presence, authenticity, and love in our ordinary daily lives.”
Invited to teach by Adyashanti in 2004, Dorothy Hunt is the spiritual director of Moon Mountain Sangha, and the founder of the San Francisco Center for Meditation and Psychotherapy. She has been a licensed psychotherapist since 1967. Dorothy is the author of Ending the Search: From Spiritual Ambition to the Heart of Awareness, Leaves from Moon Mountain, Only This! She is a contributing author to several books on nondual awareness and psychotherapy as well as a featured spiritual teacher in Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom.
For more information, please visit www.dorothyhunt.org
No one turned away for lack of funds
Find out more »Pamela Wilson ~ The Intelligence of the Heart
Pamela Wilson is a Bay Area treasure who has been sharing satsang for twenty years around the world, honoring the sage within everyone, and the absolute oneness of All That Is. Her own teachers included Lester Levinson (The Sedona Method), Robert Adams and Neelam. 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. And she speaks the truth of non-duality, that the universe is one undivided whole. Featured in the book Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom, Pamela is at her best in heart-felt dialogue, so please come and bring your questions!
“Here we are, benevolent rooted space wearing a remarkably sensitive instrument called the body. Most sages report the body-mind insists on being included and permeated by presence, so it too, can know and live its naturalness. The body is the five elements, already free with no history, though it has born witness to all. As compassion we will be instantly aware of any suffering and answer its call; as stillness we will be aware of remaining restlessness. To be with what is in the moment, this is our function and is at the heart of all longing.”
August 2019
Adam Chacksfield ~ Falling Open Together
Described by Pamela Wilson as “a great messenger of truth a unique transmission that does wonderful things for my spirit,” Adam invites us to share the direct experience of the heart, mind, and life falling open. In this effortless opening, the suffering involved in resisting feelings and believing our thoughts spontaneously releases. This allows our natural abundance of joy, peace, wisdom and love to become apparent and available. Heart-centered but direct, Adam offers a path straight into the truth of who you are. Adam Chacksfield is the founder of the Center for Nondual Awareness and creator of Falling Open, a four-month online course transforming how participants experience their lives.
“We are invited to receive the ultimate gift, for which there is no substitute , worth infinitely more than all our dreams and fantasies. We accept this gift by simply falling open. When the heart and mind fall open, we find ourselves intimately present and completely available to what is here. Our struggle with reality dissolves into harmony.”
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
Find out more »Gail Brenner ~ Suffering is Optional
You’ve had a taste of your true nature as nondual awareness, yet you still find yourself recycling conditioned thought patterns, and getting stuck in the emotions that underlie them. You get triggered and feel scared, sad, angry, or resentful. You’re sometimes overcome by behaviors that seem beyond your control.
This evening will be a safe and supportive intimate group gathering where we untangle the ways we feel separate and discover over and over the infinite peace of our true nature. Gail Brenner, Ph.D. is an eternal student of happiness who blends her experience as a psychologist with a loving presence that invites people into harmony with all of life. She is gifted at meeting our humanness with nondual understanding in ways that are practical and loving. Gail has worked with clients and groups for over 20 years, bringing laser-like clarity to the confusion of common problems, such as reactive emotions, compulsive behaviors, feelings of personal inadequacy, and relationship struggles. She is the author of three books, including The End of Self-Help and her latest, Suffering is Optional.
“Here's some very good news: freedom from unhappiness is possible, and nothing needs to change. You don't need to change your thoughts, process your feelings, learn to relax, or become a better person. The invitation is simply to see things clearly. See clearly through to the essence of what makes you unhappy, and you'll realize that, at the core of your being, there's no conflict, resistance, or separation. You now know peace deeper than you could ever imagine. Shine a laser on every experience that makes you suffer, and you'll always find your true nature, pure being that just is."
Suggested Donation: $15-$25 per person
Find out more »September 2019
Mukti ~ Discover Your True Self
What is the most essential you that is present regardless of thought or emotion? Who or what has been present for all of your life experience? How does this spirit of constancy touch your life? Mukti will offer a mediation and then speak on these compelling topics followed by the opportunity for questions and answers pointing directly to the true nature of Self.
Mukti, whose name is translated as "liberation," is a teacher in the lineage of Adyashanti, her husband. Prior to 1996, when she began studying the nondual, Zen-flavored teachings of Adyashanti, Mukti studied the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda for over 20 years. In her own teachings, Mukti points audiences back to their natural state of wholeness or undivided consciousness. Licensed in acupuncture and certified to teach hatha yoga, Mukti has a love of the whole, in form as well as the formless.
No one turned away for lack of funds