June 2020
Stephan Bodian ~ Sharing the Love That We Are
In this time of widespread fear, confusion, and suffering, we’re called upon to dissolve the apparent boundaries that separate us and share in the boundless love at the heart of reality. In these gatherings, we will be practicing a nondual version of the Tibetan practice of tonglen, breathing in the suffering and transmuting it in the boundless heart into peace, love, compassion, and ease of being. This practice benefits not only our brothers and sisters around the world, who are of course not separate from us, but ourselves as well, as it fills our own being with love at a relative level and transforms our individual heart into a vehicle for universal love.
In addition to the extended compassion meditation, we’ll explore the challenges we face in remaining grounded in the heart in these dark and difficult times, where compassion seems to be in such short supply. Ultimately, though we may often lose our connection with it, love is what we are, an essential aspect or quality of the one being we share. I look forward to resting in love and compassion together.
Stephan Bodian has been sharing the direct approach to spiritual awakening for more than 40 years. A former Buddhist monk, a licensed psychotherapist, and a longtime student of Advaita master Jean Klein, Stephan received Dharma transmission from Adyashanti in 2001. Since 2007 he has taught the annual months-long School for Awakening, which will begin again, in online form, in January 2020. His books include Wake Up Now and Beyond Mindfulness.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within 48 hours.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Jeannie Zandi ~ Opening to the New
Join Jeannie and friends to explore the moment to moment leaving of the past and opening to the ground of being, the fertile field of all future possibilities.
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, spontaneous talks and exchange with participants, Jeannie will host a space of clarity and warmth where the richness of relating can be explored safely and your innermost questions 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
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within 48 hours.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Silent Group Meditation (Free, No Guidance)
Join for a morning group meditation – just us, without a teacher. Do your own practice silently in the company of others. There will be no talk or guidance – only a bell to start and finish. Let’s be present, together.
After half an hour of silent sitting, there will be space for a brief hello in the end, if we like.
Please be seated and ready by 8 AM, so that we can begin together. You are welcome to have your camera and microphone on (unless you have a lot of background noise), so that we can feel as if we were in one space.
The zoom link remains the same for all the sessions, so you are welcome to register only once and save the link for future reference.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Facilitated Community Meditation & Sharing ~ Getting Real on the Cushion & Moving from a Place of Unity
Given the recent eruption over racial injustice, this week's facilitated community meditation gathering will be devoted to providing a safe space to share what has been evoked within us, both individually and collectively.
From a place of grounded presence, together we will lean into and explore the collective shadows that are clearly calling out to be met. We will feel into what it is to be a primarily white sangha at this time: what emerges when we sit with this, and how we can move forward from a place of unity to support and welcome communities of color.
This open group will include a brief check-in and a 20 minute, lightly guided meditation, followed by sharing. This is an opportunity to gather together as a Sangha to support each other during these challenging times.
The group will be facilitated by Open Circle’s Kate Foley. Kate is an experienced group facilitator and is moved to offer a welcoming space for us to connect and meditate with one another during these uncertain times.
This is a dana-based offering ─ anything from $0 to whatever you are able and/or moved to donate is welcome. Any donations received this week will be donated to groups supporting an anti-racist agenda
Register to receive the event link.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT ~ Find Calm in The Storm: Ongoing Support Group (3 hours)
This is an ongoing group that you can join anytime.
Stressful times are often our greatest opportunities for deeper healing in the body-mind and deeper awakening to our true nature, which is always calm no matter what is happening in our inner or outer world.
In these ongoing meetings, Lynn Marie offers support for body, mind and spirit through:
Somatic practices for balancing the nervous system and building more resilience and capacity for regulating stress and emotions so you can be more present with your experience.
Psychological processes for releasing the mind’s grip on old memories and the negative beliefs associated with them so you can be more empowered to heal and awaken.
Guided Meditations that point to direct experience of our nondual nature, so you can more deeply realize the peace and calm that is always and already here.
Group Sharing so you can know you are not alone in your experience and receive individual support, if needed.
If you cannot attend the meetings live, you can still register and receive the recordings. The practices are designed for you to do repeatedly on your own, or through listening to the recordings.
Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT is a nondual psychotherapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and author. She offers knowledge and wisdom gained from over 30 years of experience as a therapist as well as with nondual teachings. She is the author of Awakened Relating: A Guide to Embodying Undivided Love in Intimate Relationships and The Awakening West: Evidence of a Spreading Enlightenment.
Suggested donation: $15 to $35
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within 48 hours.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Adam Chacksfield ~ Erotic Embodiment & Intimacy: Bringing Loving Awareness to our Experience
When we dare to open to the erotic dimension of our experience everything comes vibrantly alive for us. We are turned on! There is a delicious pleasurable sensitivity to life. We are touched by so many forms of beauty, and can enjoy the juicy energy inside all our feelings. We find ourselves inspired to engage and create effortlessly, fueled by the same abundant energy that also makes babies.
This gathering will offer a rare safe and loving space for opening to and exploring the truth our own direct experience of sexuality, erotic energy, and intimate relationships. This is an opportunity for us to open to the beautiful gift of erotic embodiment and bring awareness to whatever layers of fear and shame invite our loving attention. This is not a “how to” webinar, but an invitation for us to let the truth of our own erotic experience reveal itself. Every part of our direct experience is valid, innocent, and deserves to be met with love.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within 48 hours.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
July 2020
Facilitated Community Meditation & Sharing ~ Getting Real on the Cushion & Moving from a Place of Unity
Given the recent eruption over racial injustice, this week's facilitated community meditation gathering will be devoted to providing a safe space to share what has been evoked within us, both individually and collectively.
From a place of grounded presence, together we will lean into and explore the collective shadows that are clearly calling out to be met. We will feel into what it is to be a primarily white sangha at this time: what emerges when we sit with this, and how we can move forward from a place of unity to support and welcome communities of color.
This open group will include a brief check-in and a 20 minute, lightly guided meditation, followed by sharing. This is an opportunity to gather together as a Sangha to support each other during these challenging times.
The group will be facilitated by Open Circle’s Kate Foley. Kate is an experienced group facilitator and is moved to offer a welcoming space for us to connect and meditate with one another during these uncertain times.
This is a dana-based offering ─ anything from $0 to whatever you are able and/or moved to donate is welcome. Any donations received this week will be donated to groups supporting an anti-racist agenda
Register to receive the event link.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Ellen Emmet ~ The Awakening Body
This is an opportunity to meet with a group of like-minded friends. We gather around the non-dual teaching with a particular focus on the realm of the body, its tactility and feelings, from the perspective of our shared listening Presence. This approach to the body is a form of ‘somatic inquiry’ that invites us to open to the totality of our felt, tactile and sensorial experience moment by moment, free of any agenda, allowing us to uncover the open Presence which is our essential identity.
Ellen will guide a gentle experiential meditation, followed by a conversation where participants may ask questions or share their experiences.
Ellen’s deepest intuition was confirmed when she met her teacher, Francis Lucille. In his presence, she recognized the eternal, limitless and universal nature of our shared reality. Over many years, her understanding deepened to touch all levels of experience. The process of aligning and stabilizing all aspects of her life to this understanding has continued to unfold since then.
Today, Ellen offers meetings and retreats in The Awakening Body, sharing a direct exploration of reality sourced in the tradition of Kashmir Shivaism and self-inquiry as transmitted through Francis Lucille and his teacher, Jean Klein. In addition, she has a private practice as a psychotherapist and facilitator of Authentic Movement. Her background of Dance Movement Therapy and Transpersonal Psychology is shaped by the non-dual understanding. Ellen lives in Oxford, England with her husband, Rupert Spira.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within 48 hours.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Silent Group Meditation (Free, No Guidance)
Join for a morning group meditation – just us, without a teacher. Do your own practice silently in the company of others. There will be no talk or guidance – only a bell to start and finish. Let’s be present, together.
After half an hour of silent sitting, there will be space for a brief hello in the end, if we like.
Please be seated and ready by 8 AM, so that we can begin together. You are welcome to have your camera and microphone on (unless you have a lot of background noise), so that we can feel as if we were in one space.
The zoom link remains the same for all the sessions, so you are welcome to register only once and save the link for future reference.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Riyaz Motan, MFT ~ Embodied Presence: Listening and Guiding from Wholeness
This event is for healers — psychotherapists, counselors, interns, psychology students, transformational coaches, spiritual counselors, holistic practitioners, body/mind workers and other related healers that are interested the therapeutic applications of nondual wisdom. It is an invitation to explore our healing work as a sacred path of embodied awakening.
In addition to our training and theoretical understanding, many of us also have our own spiritual practices that support and inform us in our work. Riyaz Motan invites us to more deeply embody and integrate our spiritual realization into our work with clients. In attuning to presence, and listening and relating from our deepest ground, we facilitate the embodiment and expression of our essential qualities of being. Compassion, wisdom, clarity, creativity, joy, intuition, and more, all arise spontaneously and effortlessly. This not only transforms our work, it invites us, and our clients, into a deeper discovery of authentic being.
This webinar presents the fundamentals of this nondual approach to healing work; a presence-based approach. Riyaz will be introducing the orientation and some of the basic practices, as well as the main benefits of this way of working that he will be teaching in more depth during his 4-week course, “Embodied Presence: Listening and Guiding from Wholeness” that begins on July 10.
The course will explore the following areas:
~ Listening, speaking, and relating from embodied presence.
~ Being the context, not getting lost in content
~ Learning to rest in, and trust, the unknown.
~ Energetic resonance; listening with your whole being/whole body.
~ Creating ‘experiential portals’; honing in on your clients’ beliefs, feelings, sensations, and the relational field to facilitate spontaneous and deep discovery.
~ Inviting the client to explore their experience from unconditional presence; helping them to drop below the problem-solving mind, to be fully present and open, and to allow for the spontaneous unfolding of their experience.
~ Exploring the foundational role of energetic transmission in the healing relationship.
Riyaz Motan, MFT is a licensed psychotherapist and has been in practice for over 20 years. He has been a long-time clinical supervisor to students and interns, as well as serving as an adjunct professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies. In 2013, Riyaz took over teaching The Art of Listening at CIIS from his mentor, John Prendergast, PhD., who is a seminal figure and pioneer in the nondual approach to psychotherapy.
From early on in his career, Riyaz has been interested in the integration of Eastern wisdom traditions with Western Psychology. His particular passion is on a nondual approach to psychotherapy, and he offers consultation, trainings, groups, and presentations on this integrated approach.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within 48 hours.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter