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The capacity of the nervous system to Be Here is an essential element for Awakening, Embodiment, and for Freedom.

In our search for Truth the workings of the nervous system often remain hidden and we don’t always fully understand or know experientially what capacity is and what Being Here really means or is.

When unmet, un-experienced tendencies of the Past arise – and we so often believe it or identify ourselves with that – that shows up as thoughts and as feelings, emotions and sensations and it affects and manifests in our physiology.

If there is no awareness of that and no capacity to Be Here our nervous system reacts and moves into fight | flight | freeze or overwhelm and we end up re-enacting or suppressing and so perpetuating the Past.

The capacity of our nervous system to Be Here and experience the arising past is often the missing link between our desire for Truth and Freedom and our ability to independently experience Presence and Self-Inquiry, which is what takes us directly into Awakening, Embodiment and Freedom.

This call is an invitation to Presence and Awakening and to Neelam’s teaching and a practical exploration of the role of the nervous system in Awakening and Freedom

Testimonials from Program Participants

"The depth of Neelam’s tenderness and compassion crosses over all boundaries. Meeting Neelam over the phone has and continues to feel like coming home... She is deeply generous with her Presence and time. The practical exercises she guides us through during the courses have enabled me to experience Presence more, whether I’m sitting formally in meditation or moving through my daily activities. Things that used to trigger me are dropping away and there is more peace and easy in my life. Finding Neelam is a great treasure… so grateful for Neelam and this Sangha."

“What's different about Neelam is that she demystifies the actual practice of being present - she's helped me see what's actually happening when feelings and emotions come up, and how, in a very practical way, to deal with them. Her strong point is "how to actually do this being the present thing." It really helps to take it out of the mind and into the body”

Neelam is a direct disciple of HWL Poonja (affectionately known as Papaji), whose own teacher was Ramana Maharshi. Neelam’s unequivocal commitment to Truth helps us turn inward and release underlying patterns of conditioning which block the recognition of our True Nature. With the utmost tenderness, she invites us into the same recognition of Truth that her teacher, Papaji, transmitted to her, while helping us to address all aspects of daily living, including past conditioning and trauma.

"Awakening is a shift from identifying yourself as this body to knowing yourself as Presence. Freedom means a true independence from the past, where our ability to Be Here and the action in the moment are not guided by our attachment to the arising past. To truly be Free we need to embody our recognition of Presence, and that requires growing of the capacity of our nervous system to Be Here. It is in the meeting of what arises that we find true and lasting freedom."
~Neelam

www.neelam.org

Suggested donation: $15 to $25

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Pamela invites us to uncontain the field of presence, clarity and strength within by noticing the ongoing inner satsang that appears in the heart, body and mind. Bringing warmth and compassion to what is tight or troubled liberates the past from the body, allowing a rooted, clear and free flowing expansion. Life then can live itself, no role play required! All the final teachings in every tradition are the pointings about the transformative power of kindness and love. When given within our own embodiment, it resolves the old, the stuck, the habitual. The defenses cannot defend against kindness and respect. They bow back and relax into strength, support and creativity. All they were waiting for, is for you to function as the sage you are.

Pamela 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 come and bring your questions!

www.pamelasatsang.com

Suggested donation: $15 to $25

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As we awaken to the Presence of our true nature and come to rest as that more and more, we are naturally moved to relate from Presence rather than from our conditioned, ego identity. Yet, this can be challenging in many ways. Our conditioning and relational wounding gets triggered the most in close relationship. This can happen in all meaningful relationships—friends, lovers, bosses, and family. Being awake in relationship is not about being in peace and harmony without ever having conflict. We don’t need to get rid of conflict or our triggers; we need to learn how to meet them from Presence. Then the fierce grace of what relationship brings up is a profound gift that brings healing and more awakened relating rather than the suffering we are so familiar with.

In this webinar, Lynn Marie will share her presence and clarity, as well as wisdom derived from many years of experience as a nondual psychotherapist, through offering teaching, guided meditation and dialogue. Her work is dedicated to awakening consciousness and meeting life’s challenges as doorways to greater freedom and is informed by over 40 years of dedicated spiritual and psychological exploration as well as almost 30 years of both committed partnership and practicing psychotherapy. Lynn Marie is a contributing author of The Sacred Mirror: Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy, and the author of Awakened Relating: A Guide to Embodying Undivided Love in Intimate Relationships. She lives in Grass Valley, CA and offers people from all over the world online spiritual mentoring and nondual therapy. For more information, please see www.lynnmarielumiere.com

Suggested donation: $15 to $25

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Truth is a shimmering jewel. Simultaneously undivided and multi-faceted, it reflects the light of consciousness in unique ways depending on our perspective. We each encounter a vast array of perspectives — in our direct experience and as expressed by the people we meet along the way, including teachers and fellow travelers. Understanding the interplay of perspectives within ourselves and among each other is deeply helpful both in the quest for truth and the living of it.

In this online session, Maja will share playful and profound reflections on the dance of perspectives including:

• new and ancient teaching stories that offer a lighthearted look at our blind spots and overcoming them

• two 10-year lessons learned — one catalyzed by an unexpected exchange with the late nondual teacher H.W.L. Poonja in India, and the other by a disagreement with Adyashanti

• the two perspectives that are vital for any quest for truth

• the simple shift of perspective that helps in most any situation

The session will include quiet time for reflection and contemplative dialogues to share your fresh insights and support your unfolding expression.

About Maja

Maja Apolonia Rodé cultivates a world where consciousness, creativity, and community flower for the benefit of all. In all her expressions — from playing her magical zithers to teaching sacred arts, from contemplative conversations to crowd-pleasing raps, from playful party games to professional presentations — Maja is constantly inspired to find and harvest the sweet fruits of presence, beauty, and truth in herself and the people she is with. She is inspired by the possibility of living our most noble and joyful potentials — individually and collectively.

In 1995, while earning her PhD in Transpersonal Psychology, a nondual shift in perspective focused Maja on a course in life that is slowly but surely devoted in service to All. A lifelong student of human potential, she began actively cultivating potential in others in the early 1990s through hypnotherapy, sport psychology, facilitating creative processes for self exploration, and eventually a 17-year “dharma gardening” adventure: supporting Adyashanti and his students as the first employee and Creative Director of Open Gate Sangha. Now, another life-changing shift has her dancing the first steps of a new as-yet-undefined creative adventure.

The daughter of a technology pioneer, Maja grew up immersed in the true heart of Silicon Valley, which holds a field of creative innovation and world-changing impact. She currently lives in the foothills of the valley with a glorious view of Black Mountain, her first and most deeply rooted teacher of consciousness. In-person one-on-one sessions, classes, and gatherings (when she begins to offer them again) will take place at this inspiring location.

www.MajaApoloniaRode.com

Suggested donation: $15 to $25

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Please join Pamela Wilson and Open Circle host Sara Kasprowicz for: Online Solstice Retreat "The Ancient Heart: Living as Elemental Being" June 12, 14, 19, 21 (Wednesdays & Fridays) 10 am to 12 noon (Pacific Time - San Francisco, CA, USA).

We will dive into our deepest being, which is neither human or divine. Exploring and stabilizing presence, clarity, confidence and strength through respect and listening to the ancientness that lives in the heart of consciousness. Each one of us is cherished by the heart of Vastness, yet our primary relationship is with the louder Mind rather than the relaxed Stillness within. Intimacy with this Intelligent Unmoving Heart fulfills most longings, and roots us as Listening and Space.

Pamela 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

This Retreat consists of 4 live and interactive 2-hour Satsangs with Pamela in Zoom (a total of 8 hours).

Registration sliding scale: $70 to $100

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Join Jeannie and friends to explore relating in the context of awakening and learn about the vital role of embodied sovereignty (being reliant solely on the truth rather than on conditioning) in relational sanity.

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, a spontaneous talk and exchange with participants, Jeannie will host a space of clarity and warmth where the true richness of life can be experienced, and your innermost spiritual questions can be 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.

www.jeanniezandi.com

Suggested donation: $15 to $25

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10 am to 12 noon (Pacific Time - San Francisco, CA, USA) Time Zone Converter

Awakening is always already here, whether we recognize it or not. And, there is an unfolding, which can become the next natural stage of human development. If our true nature is already here, does awakening only happen unintentionally, or is there a way to intentionally realize and live from this? It seems clear that our will, the “doer,” our best effort, our attention and our ego can’t awaken.

So what is it that can awaken? It seems it is only awake awareness that can know awake awareness. But where, oh where, is this awake awareness that can know? In The Way of Effortless Mindfulness, I explore the ways that local awake awareness can know spacious awake awareness, and then welcome everything as interconnected love. This unique “method-less method” does not ask the “doer” to do anything. Instead, it begins by asking your already awake awareness to detach, unblend, or “unhook” from its identification with the small separate sense of self. Effortless mindfulness is a unique form of direct realization and inquiry.

In The Secret of the Golden Flower, it is said that the sublime truth is “turning the light of awareness around.” In Tibetan Buddhism, this is called “child awareness returning to mother awareness,” “looking back at your own face” or “flashing on awakened heart-mind.” The key is to be able to feel awareness immediately separate from thinking and return home to open-hearted awareness.

In this live online session, we will explore practical ways of experiencing local awareness unhook from the separate sense of self. Then, instead of getting caught in a pure awareness witness or not-knowing, we learn to shift into the embodied “not-knowing that knows.” This open-hearted awareness is a new operating system, which has the capacity to liberate traumatic karmic patterns and heal shadow parts.

Loch Kelly is author of the newly released guidebook, The Way of Effortless Mindfulness. He is a psychotherapist and awakening teacher affiliated with Adyashanti. He is the founder of the non-profit Open-Hearted Awareness Institute, whose goal is to make compassionate awakening more available to everyone. After a spontaneous awakening early in his life, he went on to explore how to access, abide in, and help others live from open-hearted awareness. In the early 1980’s, Loch was awarded a fellowship while at Columbia University to study forms of non-dual meditation in Sri Lanka, India and Nepal with teachers from a variety of traditions, including legendary Dzogchen and Mahamudra masters, such as Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche.

He has also worked extensively with the homeless, with families of 9/11 victims, and as an Inter-spiritual Chaplain at Union Theological Seminary. Loch has collaborated with neuroscientists at Yale, UPenn and NYU in the study of how awareness training enhances compassion and wellbeing. He is known for his warm sense of humor, and his practical, non-dual pointers, which help people shift into the freedom that has always been their true nature. His previous book, Shift Into Freedom: The Science and Practice of Open-Hearted Awareness, was awarded two “Best Books of the Year Awards.”

www.lochkelly.org

Suggested donation: $15 to $25

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However the moment we believe it and identify ourselves as “it”, as the sense of I, we experience suffering. We are habitually used to going by the sense of separateness that arises with that identification.
We are also used to relying on the mind, in its limited way, to describe Reality for us and tell us how we are to believe things really are.
By understanding what the illusion of separation is and by addressing and inquiring into the sense of I, we can break the habit of separation. By learning to recognize strategies that are a substitute for Being Here, we strengthen the invitation to Awakening and to Embodied Living.
Areas of focus for this satsang:

• Recognizing the illusion of separation and the impermanence of all experience, and finding comfort in the Unknown.
• Inquiring into the sense of I, and learning to recognize strategies that stop us from Being Here
Neelam is a direct disciple of HWL Poonja (affectionately known as Papaji), whose own teacher was Ramana Maharshi. Neelam’s unequivocal commitment to Truth helps us turn inward and release underlying patterns of conditioning which block the recognition of our True Nature. With the utmost tenderness, she invites us into the same recognition of Truth that her teacher, Papaji, transmitted to her, while helping us to address all aspects of daily living, including past conditioning and trauma.
“Awakening is a shift from identifying yourself as this body to knowing yourself as Presence. Freedom means a true independence from the past, where our ability to Be Here and the action in the moment are not guided by our attachment to the arising past. To truly be Free we need to embody our recognition of Presence, and that requires growing of the capacity of our nervous system to Be Here. It is in the meeting of what arises that we find true and lasting freedom.”

Suggested donation: $15 to $25

REGISTER