July 2024
Lisa Schumacher ~ Choose Love
A meeting with Lisa is an opportunity to step away from your day to day life and devote time for self-inquiry into the heart of Love. There will be a few moments of silence to start the meeting and then Lisa will speak and invite the community to share reports about their realizations and ask questions.
Lisa Schumacher: Lisa grew up in Colusa, CA, and attended college at San Luis Obispo in the 1980's. After she moved to Southern Oregon in the early 90s, a friend invited her to a video satsang with Gangaji. Upon hearing Gangaji say "Be your Natural Self", Lisa's heart caught on fire and she fell into a deep bow of surrender. That meeting revealed to her the absolute simplicity of the natural, living truth of Love, inseparable from who one is. Lisa moved to Bolinas in 1999 to be closer to Gangaji and the vibrant community around her. In 2006, Lisa was asked by Gangaji to meet with people and share Satsang. She has held meetings in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and North America. She's also a long-time student of Eli Jaxon-Bear, Gangaji's husband, and a founding teacher of the Eli's "Leela School of Awakening". Lisa is the author of "The Stone I Love", a book of poetry inspired by Gangaji, available on her website and for purchase at the gathering.
In Lisa's meetings, she invites you to sit close and inquire about your awakening, your spiritual questions, and the unfolding truth. The teaching is in the tradition of Gangaji, who is a student of Papaji, who had his awakening at the feet of Ramana Maharshi.
Lisa will also be offering a Daylong Retreat in Fairfax, California on July 20th (click to see details).
Lisa's website: satsangwithlisa.org
Suggested donation for July 16, 10am to 12noon: $15 to $40
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Jeannie Zandi ~ Walk Your Talk
Join Jeannie to explore how it is that we come to live what we love the most, how we bring our living in line with our deepest truth.
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.
Jeannie Zandi 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.
Suggested donation: $15 to $40
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Ishtar ~ Melting into Wholeness: Re-enchanting the Cosmos
When the mind settles into Silence, the heart opens to the great mystery hidden everywhere in plain sight. The formless takes the form of Love, melting the barrier between self and world, reconnecting us to primordial Wholeness. This Wholeness is like a song that is already playing within. Every moment of life ─ sublime or awful ─ can be experienced as a flowing wholeness. Opening to this already present wholeness is the re-enchantment of the cosmos.
In the class, we’ll practice a few simple but powerful ways of melting into wholeness: effortless mantra practice, appreciation, gratitude, and opening directly to the flow of Shakti.
In addition to short talks and group practice, there will be plenty of time for questions and answers.
Watch Ishtar tell a story of unexpectedly discovering Silence and Bliss one sunny day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWj3vPC1jtg
About Ishtar
Ishtar is a meditation teacher, monk, gardener, and head teacher of the School for Awakened Living. At age 13, he experienced a near-death experience, and fell into a Samadhi. The desire to return to Samadhi propelled him on a spiritual path, bringing him to an Ashram at age 18, in the early 2000’s. Since then, he has worked as a guide, teaching effortless meditation, and helping people relax into Wholeness.
For those wanting to learn more about Ishtar’s work, his interviews can be watched on shows such as Buddha at the Gas Pump, Conscious TV, and Next Level Soul.
For more about Ishtar: www.ascension-meditation.com and
www.awakenedlightastrology.com
Suggested donation: $15 to $40
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
August 2024
Jeannie Zandi ~ Relating and Relationship
Join Jeannie to talk about relating through the lens of the awakened heart, and how relating can become an alive and creative dance when seen from presence.
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.
Jeannie Zandi 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.
Suggested donation: $15 to $40
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
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.
About Susanne Marie:
Featured in conversation with Adyashanti on Buddha at the Gas Pump as well as on Conscious TV, Susanne Marie offers teachings in support of freedom and the celebration of our common essence of love and unity with all life. Susanne, the parent of two young adults, offers spiritual mentoring, online and in-person group facilitation, as well as retreats.
Find out more about Susanne Marie: susannemarie.org
Suggested donation: $15 to $40
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
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 through direct experiential knowing is a divine blessing and is followed by a sacred process of integration, which takes place on the level of body and mind. As higher consciousness penetrates the physical body in the surrendered state, unconscious beliefs and conditionings are revealed and released, and unprocessed emotions held in the system rise to the surface to be consciously felt and transmuted. This process of deep healing and maturing takes place over time on the level of form, while one remains anchored in the formlessness of the unending now.
You are invited to join Louise for an exploration of Embodied Awareness comprising a guided meditation and opportunity to ask questions.
About Louise
Louise Kay was born in the north west of The UK. After graduating from university she worked as an English teacher for 15 years, and during this time began to question the deeper meaning of life. This led her to the path of spirituality, where she found a strong resonance with the teachings of non-duality.
In her early thirties Louise felt a deep call in her heart to visit India, where she experienced a profound spiritual awakening. Shortly afterwards Louise began channeling and traveled around the world sharing this gift for several years. During this time she experienced a deepening and integration of her initial spiritual awakening and as she opened more to this non-dual truth a new form of expression revealed itself from deep in her heart.
Louise is passionate about supporting people to live a life of presence and unconditional love. Her greatest joy is to sit together in presence and gently hold space for all emotions, all sensations and all experiences which arise in the moment in order to support the integration of unresolved energies and allow the unfolding of the divine in all who feel the call.
Explorations are usually focused around self-inquiry, the release of limiting beliefs and the integration of unprocessed emotions and energies.
Louise holds group events online and around the world.
More about Louise: www.louisekay.net
Suggested donation: $15 to $40
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
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.
Chesaray is passionate about supporting those to awaken to the lived experience of Unconditional Love and Being. She is the Spiritual Director of Loving Ground, a 501 c3 non-profit. She offers online and in person retreats and courses based on a wide range of psychological, spiritual, holistic healing modalities that support human evolution.
Please find out more about Chesaray’s offerings at www.chesaray.org
Suggested donation: $15 to $40
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
September 2024
Silent Group Meditation (Free, No Guidance)
Join us for a silent group meditation. Do your own practice quietly in the company of others. Let’s be present, together. .... more details
Mon.: 8:00am – 8:30am (PT) and Wed.: 9:00am – 9:30am (PT)
Ongoing drop-in group – attend as often as you like.
Weekly, with rare exceptions. Verify dates on Full Calendar.
Pamela Wilson ~ Dark Love: Being the Love That Doesn’t Come or Go ~ 4 Part Online Retreat
Sept. 2, 5, 9 & 12, 2024
10:00 am – 12:00 pm, Pacific Daylight Time (PDT)
Time Zone Converter
Recording will be emailed to participants after each meeting.
You're welcome to join even if you can't attend all the live sessions.
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. Each one of us is a sage, mystic and warrior, the great promise, the alchemist and the one that allows humanity to rest as ease in grace. Join Pamela and your fellow sages for a four-part retreat.
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. Featured in the book Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom, Pamela is at her best in heart-felt dialogue, so please bring your questions!
More about Pamela: www.pamelasatsang.com
Sliding Scale: $80 to $120
Some Partial Scholarships Available
Please Register Early if you can.
John Prendergast and Lisa Ferguson ~ Engaged Nonduality
Engaged Nonduality:
Attending to A World in Crisis with Awakened Heart
with John Prendergast and Lisa Ferguson
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, Ph.D. is the author of The Deep Heart: Our Portal to Presence (2019 ) and In Touch: How to Tune In to the Inner Guidance of Your Body and Trust Yourself (2015) and is working on a new book entitled Your Deepest Ground: A Guide to Embodied Spirituality (March 2025). He is a retired Adjunct Professor of Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies as well as a retired psychotherapist. He studied with the European sage Jean Klein for many years as well as with Adyashanti who gave dharma transmission to John in August, 2023. John and his wife Christiane offer residential retreats in the United States and Europe.
www.listeningfromsilence.com
YouTube channel
Lisa Ferguson, Ph.D. is the founder of Climate Compassion, and has focused on supporting planetary wellbeing as a healing arts practitioner, climate justice activist, organizer and contemplative. She offers psychospiritual support to activists through one-one sessions and small groups, weaving together a focus on awakening, healing and wise action.
www.climatecompassion.org
Suggested Donation: $25 to $45
(any amount acceptable, no one turned away for lack of funds)
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter