February 2023
Chesaray ~ Awakening to Ground
Grounding is the most important foundation for blossoming on the spiritual path. Without grounding one can feel overwhelmed, exhausted, scattered and unable to enjoy the fruits of spiritual realization. In this class, we will bring ground to the various awakenings and energetic openings that can happen on the path through guided meditation, somatic inquiry, and exchanges.
Chesaray offers retreats, courses, and classes focused on grounding the magic of spiritual realization into daily life. Chesaray is a gifted healer that is filled with down-to-earth wisdom and loving presence. She invites us to slow down and turn towards our direct experience to discover what we are. For over 15 years she has studied and practiced ancient spiritual traditions, somatic psychology, conscious movement, holistic health, and bodywork. Because she faced tremendous difficulties that eventually opened her into the experience of Divine love, she has a gift for meeting people where they're at and supporting their awakening.
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 a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Ellen Emmet ~ The Shrine of Not Knowing: 2-part Online Mini Retreat
Feb. 24 & 25
We start at 9:00 am Pacific Time / 5:00 pm UK time /
6:00 pm Central European Time.
Time Zone Converter
Event will be recorded and emailed
to participants after each meeting.
You're welcome to join even if you can't attend all the live sessions.
We gather, invited to leave our convictions and spiritual beliefs at the door of our shared space.
Together we welcome our direct experience and let it gradually reveal its palpable yet un-nameable, source and reality.
We will not engage with the singularity of our psychology and history. However, in the immediacy of our inquiry, layers of resistance that keep us trapped in the cage of thinking will surface in the form of raw feelings, sensations, and emotions.
Each one of us is invited to fully allow, taste and face these landscapes of exile and separation, which in daily life come in the form of anxiety, addiction, hopelessness, boredom, emptiness, resistance and even despair.
Nothing needs to change and the agendas for change are surrendered as they surface.
In this sacred process something is touched and shared, the openness is made palpable, the One source of all experience begins to flow through, and we partake in the mystery of our humanity and divinity.
There will be guided meditation and conversation.
About Ellen:
Ellen’s deepest intuition was confirmed when she met her teacher in the non-dual tradition, Francis Lucille. Hearing his words, she recognised the eternal, limitless and universal nature of our shared reality. Over the years, this understanding has continued to unfold and to touch all levels of experience.
At the very same time, Ellen has never ceased to delve into the depths of her human experience, seen and unseen, thirsting for a wholeness and connectedness which appeared to be lost or obscured. This unstoppable quest brought her to therapy, Jungian workshops (and later Jungian analysis), Dream Work, Authentic Movement and creative writing.
More and more, she senses that each of our lives is a journey of revelation and integration, including its darker crossings, through which the face of truth can shine uniquely and anew, wedding us to our direct experience and connecting us to the great family of creation.
To find out more about Ellen and her offering, visit www.ellenemmet.com
Sliding Scale: $60 to $90
Some Partial Scholarships Available
Please register early if you can.
Jeannie Zandi ~ Love
Join Jeannie and friends to explore presence and discover that that’s most primarily what you are.
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 $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 a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
March 2023
Stephan Bodian ~ Meditation without a Meditator: From Deliberate Awareness to Nondual Presence ~ 2-Part Online Retreat
March 4 & 5, 2023
9:00 am – 12:00 pm, Pacific Time
Time Zone Converter
Event will be recorded and emailed
to participants after each meeting.
You're welcome to join even if you can't attend all the live sessions.
Many seekers who shift from progressive approaches like deliberate mindfulness to a more direct approach continue to search for the right meditative strategy, the sweet spot that allows them to let go of their efforting and drop into their natural state of nondual presence. But paradoxically it’s this very strategizing that needs to drop away as presence reveals itself to be the nature of reality, the deeper ground beyond a separate self, not something that you can strategize into being. You can’t do it—you can only join the nondual presence that’s always already taking place.
So how exactly can you position your awareness to fall into nondual presence? In this two-day mini-retreat you’ll learn how to take the backward step to illuminate the deeper ground of Being as your true nature or true Self beyond all division. Once that deeper identity has been revealed, you no longer have to search for what is already so blatantly obvious. You merely need to be it.
The retreat will feature self-inquiry, direct pointers to the nature of reality, and a series of guided meditations that lead you through the stages of awakening to nondual presence. In nondual presence life unfolds effortlessly, without an illusory someone in charge of the unfolding, as an expression of the exquisite intelligence at the heart of the Mystery. Absolute and relative dimensions of Being—universal and individual, trans/impersonal and personal, one and many—dissolve into a single, vibrant, multidimensional, perfectly imperfect current of love and manifestation. Just This!
Bio
Stephan Bodian is a teacher in the nondual wisdom tradition of Zen, Dzogchen, and Advaita Vedanta. He's been offering the School for Awakening, an annual multi-month intensive program in spiritual unfolding and awakened living, since 2007. As a licensed psychotherapist, he brings a deep understanding of the impact of trauma and early conditioning on the process of spiritual realization and offers individual counseling and a five-session mentoring intensive in psychospiritual integration. Stephan studied for many years with Advaita master Jean Klein and received Dharma transmission from Adyashanti in 2001. His books include Wake Up Now and Beyond Mindfulness.
More about Stephan Bodian: www.stephanbodian.org
Sliding Scale: $60 to $90
Some Partial Scholarships Available
Please Register Early if you can.
Pamela Wilson ~ Nourishing Stillness, Nourishing Ourselves ~ 4 Part Online Retreat
March 8, 10, 15 & 17, 2023
10:00 am – 12:00 pm, Pacific Time
Time Zone Converter
Event will be recorded and emailed
to participants after each meeting.
You're welcome to join even if you can't attend all the live sessions.
Self Care for the Divine in form! Join Pamela and Friends for an inquiry into opening to being nourished in every way, within, without… Allowing the constancy of gentle support and nourishing strength to renew and refresh our beingness and all others.
Like a kink in a garden hose, "I can'ts", ideas and habits can separate us from the all pervading loving sustenance of Life.
As Life, we are uncontained, receptive and at ease with receiving and giving….from our breath, sunlight, evening stars, friends, creativity. Life can appear to wear us down, but in the deep rest of the rooted return to substratum we rise, refreshed, with less history.
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
Please note Daylight Savings Time starts in the US before the 3rd retreat meeting,
which may influence your local start time if you're tuning in from abroad.
Sliding Scale: $80 to $120
Some Partial Scholarships Available
Please Register Early if you can.
Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT ~ EMBODIED AWAKENING: Healing Your Body-Mind
This event will explore how we heal our body-mind through the experience of embodied awakening. When we bring awake awareness to our physical, emotional, and mental issues, and allow them to rest in that presence, a healing takes place in a way that is not possible otherwise.
A direct experience of this will be facilitated through guided meditation and shared presence. Lynn Marie will also offer her therapeutic experience and skills as needed.
It is best to attend this event live in order to benefit more personally. However, you are welcome to register and attend through the recording.
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 both as a therapist and with nondual spiritual 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.
Sliding Scale: $25 to $45
Some Partial Scholarships Available
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 & Julian ~ The Alchemy of Connection: Exploring the Transformative Power of Dyads
In this two hour event we will open with a mediation, explore a dyad, and have time for exchanges with Chesaray and Julian. Dyads are an exceptional way to deepen in the felt sense of presence, relationally heal, and explore one's growing edge.
Our personality is a collection of conditioning we received largely from our relating with other human beings and that conditioning informs our experience. Working with others in a dyad is a direct way to see the conditioning, meet it with heart, and let it go. Done with care, sincerity, and presence, the space between two people, can become a vehicle for healing and awakening.
The power of co-inquiry can bring aliveness into our everyday relating, develop our capacity to co-regulate, and shift how we view ourselves.
For more information about other Dyad offerings visit www.chesaray.org/co-led-retreats
Chesaray offers courses, sessions, and retreats based in non-duality, embodied awakening, and the healing arts. Chesaray's search for “What is Real?” began as early as she can remember. Life has always been her greatest teacher. Experiences as a teen drove her into an unavoidable contemplation of grief, God, and death. Her university studies in Philosophy of Mind and Buddhism led her to study abroad in India, where she set her heart on embodying freedom. She was gifted with a non-dual awakening at 22 with Jon Bernie that lifted a tremendous amount of unconscious suffering from her shoulders, and has since experienced the fire of that opening guiding her life. Exploration of the psyche, soul, and soma has led her into ongoing training and practice in meditation, conscious movement, bodywork, psycho-therapeutic modalities and a devotion to learning from life experience. She descended into a dark night of the Soul for many years and she is left with an abiding experience of the heart of Being and a gift of healing Grace.
Julian's strength of presence deepens and amplifies people's direct connection with their True Nature. He carries a gentleness, delicacy and precision for integrating all aspects of our humanity in the process of awakening. His intuitive capacity supports people in finding the root of what challenges them most and encourages a steady awakening to reality. Julian has a background in practicing with multiple spiritual masters, as well as training in men’s work, group work, energetic bodywork, and post traumatic growth somatic therapy. He brings a holistic approach to helping people heal, rest into their True Nature and embody who they really are.
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 a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Marlies Myoku Cocheret ~ Women’s Satsang ‘Woman Flowering’ (for Women Only)
Dear Woman,
You are wide-open and eternally free space filled with potentiality and love. That is it! Very simple. Your beautiful female body rests and is held within that silent-space. Your body is strong, lush and precious - like a flower. Beauty! We need to care for that beauty so that the light that we are shines brightly. It takes silence, deep listening and tender hands to open the petals of your flower one by one.
During this satsang, we enter sacred space together. We begin in silence and are nourished by our precious nature, our home ground, which I call the Great Her. This is our foundation .... our soil, the source of our vitality. Through meditation, sharing, and gentle movement, we allow ourselves to be fully touched by the all of you - your physicality, psychology, felt sense, emotions, thinking and being. Then, in surrender we enter the mystery. We are taken by deliciousness, power and aliveness. There is an utter welcoming of all of you - your humanity and your divinity. The perfect soil for Woman Flowering!
Come and join this adventure!
Special Note from Marlies:
'For my women events, I work best with cisgender women. Working with transgender women is outside my area of expertise. I have a colleague who is well experienced in this field that I am happy to refer transgender women to.' - Marlies
To read more about Marlies' 'Way of Woman' events, please click HERE.
Marlies Myoku Cocheret de la Morinière 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. Marlies has been offering satsang and retreat since 2000 when Adyashanti asked her to teach. She lives in Santa Cruz, California and works internationally as a psychologist, Hakomi therapist and Tantric Educator.
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
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 ~ Meeting Gnarly States
Join Jeannie and friends to navigate the terrain of meeting challenging human states and how to stay present.
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 $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 a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
April 2023
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.