May 2021
Isira ~ Why Enlightenment is not enough: 3 Part Retreat
Three-Part Retreat
May 28, 29 & 30
7:30 – 9:30 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.
The true quest of enlightenment is to expand beyond the self, and the transcendent experience, to live an awakened life by fully integrating the spiritual and the physical worlds for the next level of human evolution and environmental wellbeing.
And in fact, our awakening is not complete without this integration.
Awakening the “self” is not enough
What truly matters is how we integrate the awakening in our daily lives ~ what we do with the awakening; where and how we live with the awakening.
Our awakening must be fully integrated and sustainable in all aspects of our lives.
It’s about living our awakening globally, not just personally.
There are two traps committed spiritual seekers can fall into
The first is to focus only on the transcendent experience; believing that this will take you all the way. And that sitting in pure being is the end game. There is a sense of removal; of not being fully immersed in the world; not facing and moving through and with the shadow; the grit and the ordinariness of life. Isira calls this “spiritual escapism.”
The second is “spiritual self centredness” to focus only on ‘self’ and forgetting that your awakening is intrinsically connected to everything around you - your environment, your relationships, and the cosmos. We do not awaken in isolation.
In this 3 day retreat
In this 3 day retreat Isira will share what it takes to not just be spiritual but to live spiritual ~ to integrate and fully live a sustainable and an awakened life.
You will:
- Discover how to integrate the spiritual and physical worlds with “The Four Pillars.” These are the foundations of holistic enlightenment, an awakened society and an awakened world.
- Understand how to move with, and through, the personal and collective (global) shadow, rather than bypass it.
- Be guided into transformative meditations that you can use again and again.
- Have your deepest questions answered.
This will support you to expand and embrace holistic enlightenment ~ to live awakening - emotionally and psychologically - in your relationships, our community and our environment.
About Isira
Isira (pronounced "I-sai-ra") is a wisdom keeper and spiritual leader of Australian Indigenous heritage who has been ordained by His Holiness Dalai Lama. Embodying wisdom from the teachings from her ancestors, eastern initiations, and the many challenges of her life experience; Isira brings rare clarity and unconditional love, to the challenges we face.
Isira is an author, teacher and speaker bringing the power of consciousness to people around the world. She offers a way to respond, realign ourselves and move forward to a new more empowered life. In the words of many - she is a truly transformative presence.
“I am Universal. I am not of one religion, one lineage, one race or one country. My lineage is consciousness. My religion is love. And the world is my sacred home.” ~ Isira
Watch an hour-long conversation between Isira and Open Circle's Sara.
Sliding Scale: $50 to $80
Some Partial Scholarships Available
Please Register Early if you can.
Georgia Simone ~ Welcome to The Holding Space
A space where we can gather together and BE exactly as we are
A space where the full spectrum of your human experience is invited
Calm, nervous, open, closed,
ALL is welcome here.
It's in this gentle embrace that everything can start to unravel. It's in this open space that we can begin to unwind the strategies that no longer serve us. This is the space that early mis-attunement failed to foster, the space where love blooms and new life can emerge. This is the space where all that quivers and shakes can come to rest, and where all that contorts can untwist into greater alignment.
Through gentle exploration and somatic awareness you can cultivate a new way of being with your most challenging patterns. No longer a victim of the push and pull of inner disturbance, you can step forward with greater confidence, knowing that whatever comes your way, you embody the resilience and the capacity to meet and integrate it.
You can expect a deeply held space where you’ll be invited to slow down, tune in, and track your present-moment experience. As you awaken and refine a more subtle way of Being and Being With, you can slowly but surely become the space – the container and the field – where healing takes place.
Bio:
The first leg of Georgia Simone’s path exposed her to the teachings of Advaita Vedanta, which provided her with the foundation she needed to dis-identify from pain and suffering. However, despite a growing freedom, a significant bypass took place, as her orientation towards transcendence reinforced her deep disconnection from Life. Upon seeing this, her focus became addressing the unresolved trauma that had woven its way into every fibre of her being.
After many years of wading through this marshland of conditioning, she now shares her discoveries with others. She believes that the spiritual path is as much about arriving here fully - as an embodied human being - as it is about dissolving into the infinite source that makes this life possible. How can we die to the absolute, while deeply embracing our relative human experience? This Living inquiry is her Life’s prayer.
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
June 2021
Ellen Emmet ~ The Awakening Body: 3-Day Online Retreat
We start at 9:00 am Pacific Time / 5:00 pm UK time / 6:00 pm Central European Time.
In this three day retreat we will explore our direct experience and let it reveal its essential reality of Awareness. Our particular focus is the body, allowing it to be our mirror and our pathway, our prayer and our altar, and ultimately the shining expression of this shared identity.
There will be time for questions and conversation each day as our inquiry deepens.
There will be a 20-minute break during the 3-hour sessions.
Ganga Ma will be joining us and weaving her sacred chanting into the sessions.
About Ganga Ma: www.soulfulsilence.com
In our daily lives, the body is seldom tasted as it is. We rarely listen to its tactile and energetic language or allow it to simply unfold and blossom in its natural original intelligence.
In fact we have deeply disconnected from this level of experience and even when we turn back towards the body, we come with agendas and ideas that we project upon it, forcing the body into a new mode, only to perpetuate a felt identification with a body, that may seem improved, but in fact remains a mere projections for the separate self that seems to live in its center.
With silence as our main shrine, we will share gradually deepening guided tactile meditations along with simple postures, free movements, breathing, and visualizations. In this contemplation, resistances and chains of bodily contractions, the habits that create the illusion that our identity is limited, located and separate are revealed and free to unfold as they are: feelings and sensations that come and go in Awareness. We come to feel that our true identity is an open field of vibrating openness,limitless and ever-present.
Gently and effortlessly, in deepening waves, the body is slowly realigned with this felt understanding. It flows as a living substence with more and more ease and transparency and reflects and expresses the ever-present freedom and silence that is its invisible source.
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.
Sliding Scale: $50 to $90
Some Partial Scholarships Available
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Ajaya Sommers ~ Core Embodiment Practices® Awaken to the Intimate Embrace of the Heart
Due to early developmental trauma, ancestral trauma and our cultural context at large, there is a prevailing unconscious nervous system habit of using spirituality and particularly the non-dual orientations to hide, bypass or otherwise disassociate from the intelligence of your core human needs and desires. As if your needs and desires are problems to be ashamed of; to fix or get rid of on your way to spiritual realization.
This is not a sustainable, humane or truly integrative path. We long for the tangible felt sense of our wholeness. We long to passionately embody all that is present within our very human, holy and messy majesty of being alive. It is time that we compassionately discover how to allow everything to be lived within the intimate embrace of the Heart.
In this introductory session we will melt below our habit patterns of the default nervous system and connect directly with this core intelligence. Discovering our own intimate, ever fresh, self- healing, oxytocin replenishing, cell-renewing inspired embodiment practice.
Utilizing conscious breath, sound vibration, subtle intrinsic movement, embryological anatomy and provocative inquiry we enter into the inner alchemy that allows a dissolve of any out dated structures that may be obstructing our path. A psycho-spiritual somatic reorganization and higher order of self-regulation arises as our cells surrender into the all-pervasive holding ground of nature that is always present, when we are seated in the Core.
We will re-emerge renewed, resourced and ready to re-engage our senses such that they become thresholds where the divine, the natural world, our culture and the mystery of being human coalesce as the dynamic dance of Life.
Bio
Within a field of unconditionally loving presence, Ajaya facilitates a unique discovery process called, Core Embodiment ®. An integrated system of embodiment practices, principles and perceptual orientations to awaken and align with the power of your human potential. She is a Biodynamic Craniosacral Integration Teacher, NARM Practitioner, Authorized Continuum Teacher, gifted healer, writer and creative catalyst in the field of embodied awakening and trauma resolution for the last 26 years. All of her programs are grounded in science, expanded through devotional practice and made real through direct experience.
“The beauty of any true transformational path is that it will involve pattern interrupting the normal way in which you breathe and thus your unconscious identity. Taking you home to the innocence of your origins and the birthright of your Biological Breath – a systemic breath that unifies your body, mind and heart. You awaken as a whole body, mind, and heart breathing, reclaiming ALL that you are.”
~ Ajaya Sommers
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 a week.
You're welcome to join, even if you can't attend the live session.
Time Zone Converter
Connection in Presence: Community Workshop
During this series of facilitated Community Workshops, we will:
- Meet within the sweet context of what brought us together: our shared Love of Truth
- Offer each other the gift of open-hearted listening and compassionate witnessing
- Inquire into our experience through simple, playful, yet powerful facilitated exercises
- Share our experience and be truly heard by a welcoming, open-hearted community
- Get to know our fellow members of the Open Circle community
The sessions will consist of:
- Meeting in pairs and small groups, as well as sharing in the large group
- Facilitated interactions, as well as free-flowing conversations
- Time for contact information exchange (for those who would like that), and learning more about each other
There may also be an opportunity to present any heart-based initiative you are engaged in - tell us about your work, project, art, hobby, etc. that flows from your heart. Please let Sara know in advance you'd like to present, so a 5-10 minutes slot will be reserved for you: sara@opencirclecenter.org.
This is a teacher-less event, focused primarily on presence-based interactions between members of the community. The facilitator will offer enough structure for the event to run smoothly and safely, leaving plenty of space for what wants to emerge naturally. There will be no lecture and no personal guidance offered ─ simply a welcoming container for the miracle of True Community to happen.
About the facilitator:
Sara Kasprowicz has been living in deepening dedication to Truth since Life called her to India about 8 years ago. Upon joining the team of her first teacher, Sri Saraswathi Ma, a life of spiritually-driven travels began. A few years (and countries) later, she met her second important teacher, Aisha Salem, and spent a few years close to her Being. Sara recently moved back to her hometown Warsaw, Poland, and feels deeply nourished by the embrace of the Motherland.
Sara holds a Master's Degree in Psychology, a postgraduate diploma in Life & Business Coaching, as well as IT and Business education. She is passionate about supporting heart-based entrepreneurs, experienced in online media work, as well as facilitating online and in-person workshops. Since 2018 Sara has been taking care of the online program here at Open Circle Center.
Suggested donation: $10 to $20
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Find out more »Lynn Marie Lumiere, MFT ~ SOMATIC AWAKENING: Body, Mind, Spirit Embodiment
Reflect for a moment…
How much does your wounding, trauma or conditioning interfere with your awakening or its embodiment?
Do you find yourself getting overwhelmed and dysregulated by the stresses of life and forget to focus on what is already free and peaceful within?
Are you ready to let go of the pain and self-negativity and stand in the truth of who you are?
If so, this webinar will offer deep support for embodying awakening body-mind-spirit, so you can rest more deeply in the ocean of peace, love and unity that resides in all of us.
This psycho-spiritual webinar balances both awakening to our pure-love essence and psycho-somatic exploration of the pain, trauma, negative beliefs that obstruct our ability to rest as our essence and create dysregulation in our nervous system.
We will do somatic practices for balancing the nervous system and building more capacity for regulating stress and emotions. Being more regulated is very important to both healing our human wounding and our spiritual awakening. We will also use the Flash Technique to release the charge on traumatic memories and loosen the grip of the negative beliefs that they create.
It is encouraged to attend the live session so you can receive the support of the group as well as Lynn Marie’s support if needed, but you are also welcomed to register and listen to 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 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 a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Georgia Simone ~ Awakened Healing: Become The Space Where Healing Takes Place
Welcome to The Holding Space.
A space where we can gather together and BE exactly as we are
A space where the full spectrum of your human experience is invited
Calm, anxious, open, closed,
ALL is welcome here.
It's in this gentle embrace that everything can start to unravel. It's in this open space that we can begin to unwind the strategies that no longer serve us. This is the space that early mis-attunement failed to foster, the space where love blooms and new life can emerge. This is the space where all that quivers and shakes can come to rest, and where all that contorts can untwist into greater alignment.
Through gentle exploration and somatic awareness you can cultivate a new way of being with your most challenging patterns. No longer a victim of the push and pull of inner disturbance, you can step forward with greater confidence, knowing that whatever comes your way, you embody the resilience and the capacity to meet and integrate it.
You can expect a deeply held space where you’ll be invited to slow down, tune in, and track your present-moment experience. As you awaken and refine a more subtle way of Being and Being With, you can slowly but surely become the space – the container and the field – where healing takes place.
Bio:
The first leg of Georgia Simone’s path exposed her to the teachings of Advaita Vedanta, which provided her with the foundation she needed to dis-identify from pain and suffering. However, despite a growing freedom, a significant bypass took place, as her orientation towards transcendence reinforced her deep disconnection from Life. Upon seeing this, her focus became addressing the unresolved trauma that had woven its way into every fibre of her being.
After many years of wading through this marshland of conditioning, she now shares her discoveries with others. She believes that the spiritual path is as much about arriving here fully - as an embodied human being - as it is about dissolving into the infinite source that makes this life possible. How can we die to the absolute, while deeply embracing our relative human experience? This Living inquiry is her Life’s prayer.
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
Gail Brenner, Ph.D ~ Embodied Awakening in Everyday Life: A 6-Part Intensive
6-Part Online Intensive
June 21, 24, 28 and July 1, 8, 15, 2021
9:00 am – 11:00 am 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.
The Embodied Awakening Intensive offers a deep dive into the practicalities of awakened living. Your everyday human life will be the laboratory as we explore the myth of the separate self and how to live the deepest nondual teachings of infinite oneness.
How do you handle a frustrating encounter with someone? How do you navigate your relationships? What about money, sexuality, work, and life purpose? What do you do with feeling disappointed or hurt or bored? What about needs, desires, and stressful times? We’ll carefully shed the light of awareness on your personal attachments, bringing a loving perspective and clarity to these common life situations.
Together, we’ll create a safe and supportive community of pure intention for peace and freedom.
We’ll use specific practices and experiments in our sessions and between sessions to study the living reality of non-separation. You’ll get the felt direct experience of being in life open, without defenses, and free of the mind’s need to control. This is the foundation you need for openhearted awakened living.
Throughout our six sessions together, you’ll practice staying deeply grounded in your present moment experience. From this grounded awareness, you’ll learn to meet your programmed patterns—the inner critic, long-standing shame, feelings of fear and insecurity—with intelligence and loving acceptance. This is how you begin to shed the feeling of separation so you are free to be fully alive in your life as it is right now.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
Sessions 1 and 2: No self, no problem; aliveness in everyday life;
Sessions 3 and 4: Early trauma and conditioned patterns; waking up in your relationships;
Session 5: Freedom beyond the mind-driven life; awakened action;
Session 6: Emptiness, surrender, devotion, intimacy with Life.
Come prepared to move out of your comfort zone in all areas of your life. You’ll discover the brilliance of embodying love, awareness, and deep connection with all…available in every moment.
“I have found your approach really works for me. It gives me hope, and I actually believe that that I can live, think and feel differently, no matter what the situation.” ~ F.C.
A free information session with Gail is offered on Saturday, June 19 from 9:00 -10:00 am 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.
You are welcome to email Gail directly at gail@gailbrenner.com with questions.
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.
Sliding Scale: $100 to $160
Some Partial Scholarships Available
Please Register Early if you can.
Connection in Presence: Community Workshop
During this series of facilitated Community Workshops, we will:
- Meet within the sweet context of what brought us together: our shared Love of Truth
- Offer each other the gift of open-hearted listening and compassionate witnessing
- Inquire into our experience through simple, playful, yet powerful facilitated exercises
- Share our experience and be truly heard by a welcoming, open-hearted community
- Get to know our fellow members of the Open Circle community
The sessions will consist of:
- Meeting in pairs and small groups, as well as sharing in the large group
- Facilitated interactions, as well as free-flowing conversations
- Time for contact information exchange (for those who would like that), and learning more about each other
There may also be an opportunity to present any heart-based initiative you are engaged in - tell us about your work, project, art, hobby, etc. that flows from your heart. Please let Sara know in advance you'd like to present, so a 5-10 minutes slot will be reserved for you: sara@opencirclecenter.org.
This is a teacher-less event, focused primarily on presence-based interactions between members of the community. The facilitator will offer enough structure for the event to run smoothly and safely, leaving plenty of space for what wants to emerge naturally. There will be no lecture and no personal guidance offered ─ simply a welcoming container for the miracle of True Community to happen.
About the facilitator:
Sara Kasprowicz has been living in deepening dedication to Truth since Life called her to India about 8 years ago. Upon joining the team of her first teacher, Sri Saraswathi Ma, a life of spiritually-driven travels began. A few years (and countries) later, she met her second important teacher, Aisha Salem, and spent a few years close to her Being. Sara recently moved back to her hometown Warsaw, Poland, and feels deeply nourished by the embrace of the Motherland.
Sara holds a Master's Degree in Psychology, a postgraduate diploma in Life & Business Coaching, as well as IT and Business education. She is passionate about supporting heart-based entrepreneurs, experienced in online media work, as well as facilitating online and in-person workshops. Since 2018 Sara has been taking care of the online program here at Open Circle Center.
Suggested donation: $10 to $20
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Find out more »Marlies Myoku Cocheret ~ The Flowering of Freedom
The spontaneous gift of a taste - big or small - of freedom is the beginning of a new life. It seems a wave of new beginnings is happening on our precious planet earth. The earth shakes us. We are the earth. Awakening is happening. Naturally the first taste of freedom wants to be incarnated and expressed.
During this monthly satsang we will explore what it is like to live as freedom in our body being and owning that in our personhood as well as in our divinity. Truly, they are not different. They are one and the same. Simultaneously a process of shedding old identities as we step into owning our blossoming brilliance.
Will you join us?
There will be an opportunity to share, so please bring your experience, presence and questions to share with the group.
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