October 2022
Stephan Bodian ~ Heart Wisdom in Challenging Times
“All you need to do is find out your source and take up your headquarters there.”
~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
This is a simple and elegant prescription for an awakened life from one of the great sages of the nondual tradition. But of course it’s trickier and more elusive than it might sound at first read. How do we realize our source, our natural state of inherent wakefulness? And once we do, how do we establish our headquarters there?
This is part of a two-part series of online meetings, in which you will be guided to ground yourself in your deepest inner knowing, the source of all genuine wisdom and compassion, and respond to life’s inevitable challenges from this awakened perspective. Sat sang (“being together in truth”) features guided meditations, pointers and teachings, and ample time for dialogue and discussion. I invite you to join me and look forward to seeing you there.
The other date in this two-part series is Nov. 12th (click for info & registration).
See Register button below for Oct. 8th.
You are welcome to attend either one, or both meetings of this series.
Stephan Bodian is a teacher in the nondual wisdom tradition of Zen, Dzogchen, and Advaita and the founder and director of the annual School for Awakening, an intensive six-month program of exploration and study. Trained as a Buddhist monk for a decade, he studied Advaita for many years with Jean Klein and received Dharma transmission from Adyashanti in 2001. His books include Wake Up Now; Beyond Mindfulness; Meditation for Dummies; and Buddhism for Dummies (with Jon Landaw).
More about Stephan Bodian: www.stephanbodian.org
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
Meg Archambault ~ The Heart of Soul Work: Exploring Your Own Essence Expression (For Women Only)
Women are longing to find their Soul’s Work and fulfill their ‘Cosmic Calling.’ Contributing from their heart their very own Essence Expression.
The challenge is, the paths of the past are outdated for this Time Frame. Structure is falling away. There is no “one right way.” Guides and Mentors may share what has worked for them, but the vibration of NOW requires a finely tuned listening ear to follow One’s Own Path. One’s Own Way.
In this 2-hour SoulWork Session, get to know Your Unique Way. Explore your relationship with your Dharma. Step back from ideals of others. Feed yourself a generous dose of Loving What Is and dive fully into embracing Your Way. Your see, it is our resistance to our own naturalness that keeps us stuck in a dead-end maze. Starting and stopping. Second guessing. Going nowhere.
When we welcome our eccentricities (challenges and faults) as our unique configuration, we release pressure and begin to realize Flow. Less struggle. More ease.
This is the work we will do on October 9th. Through stories, dialogue, and guided meditation, Meg will generate a field of loving-kindness and hold a space for you to gently explore:
- Your relationship with your Soul’s Work
- Your patterns and tendencies to push, pull, and struggle
- Your unique configuration and possible ways forward
This is not a fix for the resistance that shows up when facing your Soul’s Work, but rather a deep dive to embrace the root of that resistance and Love It Fully. Back into its natural state of Grace. Allowing you to remember more of Who You Are and Why You Came here at this time.
Please join Meg for this deep dive into the heart of Soul Work.
Meg Archambault is a gifted SoulWorker, generating a field of reverence and unconditional love for the women who sit with her. She combines a heart-centered and fully-embodied Presence with an absolute love for and respect for Whatever Is Arising in the moment.
This gives client’s bodies and nervous systems space to relax and truly feel what is happening in them and around them. Through this Alchemical-Love, outdated habitual patterns of survival begin to unwind and reveal the True Nature of what has been hidden all along: the natural, unadorned, and supremely simple Essence.
This is what women long for in their bones. Being at home in their bodies. Remembering who they are and why they are here at this very important time.
Meg is a natural born facilitator of this very personal and private process. She is most at home, herself, when working with women in this Way.
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 ~ Almost Halloween Gathering
You are invited to join Marlies and friends for the ‘‘Almost Halloween’ gathering.
"Growing up, Halloween was an important time of year for me. I felt its true meaning. As the light fades and the multicolored leaves spin and dance in the air before falling to the ground, we come face to face with things that were hidden by the bright light of summer. The fires of worldly engagement lowers. The ghosts and spirits come out. The beauty of silence and death is revealed. Scary, but it's also magical and wonderful."
We enter the time of the year where the veil between our world and the so-called other world is very thin. Can you feel it in the air and inside your bones? It's an opportunity to open your heart wide and melt into the intimacy with all that is. We will celebrate the seen and unseen, the known and unknown.
We are in the midst of autumn, letting go of all that we no longer need, just as the trees let go of their leaves. The sap is going inward. What sprang into form dissolves back into the soil. Then, the truth stands out in stark simplicity.
We are part of nature and nature supports us as all of life goes through this autumnal process.
Together we enter silence, join in Dharma talk and conversation. Please bring all of you, your experience, beautiful presence and questions, and let's dissolve into the unveiled field.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants after the meeting.
Marlies Myoku Cocheret 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 ~ Embodiment
Please note daylight saving time in Europe has ended in time for this event, while it hasn't yet in the US.
For this reason, we will be starting at 10:00 am Pacific time / 6:00 pm CET (Europe) / 5:00 pm UK.
What is meant by “embodiment” and how does it happen? Join Jeannie to explore a path to embodying realization in every corner of your life.
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
November 2022
Gail Brenner, Ph.D ~ Deep Trauma Healing: Tending the Ground for Awakened Living ~ 3-Part Online Retreat
3-Part Online Retreat
Nov. 3, 4 & 5, 2022
9:00 am – 12:00 noon, Pacific Time, each day
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.
Please note daylight saving time in Europe has ended in time for this event, while it hasn't yet in the US.
For this reason, we will be starting at 9:00 am Pacific time / 5:00 pm CET (Europe) / 4:00 pm UK.
Addressing trauma and how we hold it is essential to seeing through the illusion of the separate self. Join this powerful 3-session retreat as we create a safe and supportive healing community to do this deeper work that unfolds on the path of awakening.
Unexamined trauma is at the root of conditioned patterns and keeps you feeling stuck, limited, and unable to be free. You long for freedom and maybe have had a taste of your true nature, but somehow these patterns keep getting played out automatically in your mind, emotions, relationships, and choices in life. You feel caught in the painful sense of separation…from yourself and the sacredness of all of Life.
You are welcome just as you are with your fears, doubts, shame, and questions. Through practices, inquiries, and experiments during and between our sessions, we’ll learn to untangle these patterns and find our way home to the ever present, relaxed, open space of inner aliveness. There will be plenty of time for Q&A with Gail.
- Session 1: We’ll cultivate a sense of safety for those hidden, cut off parts of ourselves to come out into the light of loving awareness. This is what heals shame and separation.
- Session 2: We’ll bring skillful means to how we experience conditioned patterns—in our bodies, nervous systems, emotions, and beliefs.
- Session 3: We’ll explore devotion, surrender, and the practicalities of awakened living.
And we’ll discover, over and over, the ground of being, your spacious true home that has never been touched by these experiences.
Stress and worry…people pleasing…persistent relationship struggles…proving yourself through accomplishments…the inner critic…these longstanding patterns are profound invitations into liberation from the sense of separation. Together, we discover being fully alive in our humanness as we expand into overflowing gratitude, vibrant joy, and deep connection with all of Life.
Gail is offering a free information session on Tuesday, November 1 from 9-10am Pacific. You’ll learn more about the course, and there will be time for Q&A. Please click here for details and to join the session: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwvd-CqqjItHtYEl60yYWV22isVjMsv7Ec0 )
If you have any questions or would like to know more about this course, please email Gail directly at gail@gailbrenner.com.
“I am now experiencing longer moments of pure awareness and joy. No longer a slave to external circumstances and inner chatter. Loving life the way it is.” ~Susan R.
"Your work is a bridge between practical daily life and Supreme Reality.” ~Henrique N.
"You radiate such warmth, kindness, beauty and wisdom. I had been stuck for so long and by listening to your sage advice, am finally starting to see and feel the light. Thank you for being a beacon in tumultuous times. Your light helps us to shine our own.” ~Julie Desmarais
For more testimonials, please click here. https://gailbrenner.com/people-are-saying/
Gail Brenner, Ph.D. is your guide on this journey. She is a clinical psychologist and lover of truth with a fire that burns brightly. She brings to this work years of experience with individuals and groups and is known for creating the sense of safety and trust needed for this deeper exploration. She is the author of three books, including the award-winning, The End of Self-Help
Sliding Scale: $80 to $140
Some Partial Scholarships Available
Please Register Early if you can.
Jeannie Zandi ~ Impersonal Love
Please note daylight saving time in the US ends the morning of this event.
Join Jeannie to explore the theme of the impersonal love that comes with awakening and how it is different from our general concept of love.
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
Stephan Bodian ~ Heart Wisdom in Challenging Times II
“All you need to do is find out your source and take up your headquarters there.”
~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
This is a simple and elegant prescription for an awakened life from one of the great sages of the nondual tradition. But of course it’s trickier and more elusive than it might sound at first read. How do we realize our source, our natural state of inherent wakefulness? And once we do, how do we establish our headquarters there?
This is part of a two-part series of online meetings, in which you will be guided to ground yourself in your deepest inner knowing, the source of all genuine wisdom and compassion, and respond to life’s inevitable challenges from this awakened perspective. Sat sang (“being together in truth”) features guided meditations, pointers and teachings, and ample time for dialogue and discussion. I invite you to join me and look forward to seeing you there.
The other date in this two-part series is Oct. 8th (click for info & registration).
See Register button below for Nov. 12th.
You are welcome to attend either one, or both meetings of this series.
Stephan Bodian is a teacher in the nondual wisdom tradition of Zen, Dzogchen, and Advaita and the founder and director of the annual School for Awakening, an intensive six-month program of exploration and study. Trained as a Buddhist monk for a decade, he studied Advaita for many years with Jean Klein and received Dharma transmission from Adyashanti in 2001. His books include Wake Up Now; Beyond Mindfulness; Meditation for Dummies; and Buddhism for Dummies (with Jon Landaw).
More about Stephan Bodian: www.stephanbodian.org
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
John J. Prendergast, Ph.D ~ “Embodying Spirit” ~ 4-Part Course
4-Part Online Course
Nov. 13, 20, 27 & Dec. 4, 2022
10:00 am – 12:00 noon Pacific Time, each day
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.
In this 4-part series we will take a fresh look at what the process of embodying spirit entails. In the first meeting we will explore the importance of spiritual embodiment, what the body is, the process by which the body becomes infused with the light of awareness, the role of conditioning, and the practice of welcoming the body from Presence. The three following meetings we will apply these insights to the most common areas of subtle somatic contraction as we embody spirit: the heart area (self love and acceptance), the solar plexus (control), and the base of the spine (survival). There will be guided meditations, talks, group meditative inquiries, and experiential conversations.
John J. Prendergast, Ph.D., is the author of The Deep Heart and In Touch, a retired Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology at CIIS, and a retired psychotherapist. He studied for many years with the European sage, Jean Klein, as well as with Adyashanti, and offers online and in-person retreats.
www.listeningfromsilence.com
YouTube channel
Sliding Scale: $80 to $140
Some Partial Scholarships Available
Please Register Early if you can.
Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT ~ SOMATIC AWAKENING: Body-Mind-Spirit Embodiment
Online Monthly Group Meetings
Although our true nature is not affected by all that we experience in life, our human body and mind are impacted by experiences that result in emotional wounding and trauma. Any experience, especially early in life, that is outside our window of tolerance, can overwhelm our nervous system and create chronic stress patterns in the body/mind. These stuck patterns can affect our spiritual awakening process by making it more difficult to relax, trust, be in the moment, and allow everything to be as it is—all of which are necessary for awakening and embodiment.
This ongoing monthly group will offer deep support for body-mind-spirit healing and awakening so you can rest more deeply in the great peace, love and unity that resides in all of us.
The webinars will offer:
- Guided meditations for embodied awakening
- Somatic practices for regulating the nervous system
- Flash Technique for releasing the charge on traumatic memories and negative beliefs
- Group sharing and processing
It is encouraged to attend the live session so you can receive the support of the group as well as Lynn Marie’s therapeutic support if needed. You can also register and attend by listening to the recording on your own time.
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.
Suggested donation for each meeting: $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 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
Nov. 25 & 26
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.