Past Events › Sonoma

2-4 pm, with refreshments until 5 pm

Realization allows us to know ourselves as a force of love and the embodiment of that realization results in living love in our daily lives. Join Jeannie for an exploration of realization, love and the joys and challenges of living that knowing.

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. 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.

Location: 8476 Sonoma Ave, Sebastopol, CA.
Park in driveway or on Sonoma Ave. Walk down short driveway to house with carport.
The satsang starts with a short meditation, then comments by the speaker, followed by questions, answers, and discussion. Please arrive 10-15 minutes early for the best seat.

$20, no one turned away for lack of funds.

Satsang 2-4 pm; refreshments until 5

In our daily lives, the body is seldom tasted as it truly is. We rarely listen to its language or allow it to simply blossom with its natural, organic 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, only to perpetuate a network of tension and density that we identify with as 'myself'.

Ellen’s approach to the body is a form of ‘somatic inquiry’ that invites us to open to the totality of our felt, tactile and sensorial experience moment by moment, free of any agenda. With the help of guided meditation, visualizations and dialog, we will discover our place in and as this open, available, listening presence which is our essential identity. Simultaneously the body will uncover its organic and natural resonance and identity with this presence which is its source and substance. Gently and effortlessly, it will flow with more and more ease, intensity and transparency.

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. As a child, Ellen loved to move and dance. She knew, without words, the joy and limitless transparency that the body dissolved into when it was free and alive. Thus, the experience we call the body has always been central to all of Ellen’s experiences, both in ignoring and in recognizing our true nature.

Ellen offers meetings and retreats, sharing a direct exploration of reality sourced in the traditions of Kashmir Shivaism and Advaitic self-inquiry. In addition, she has a private practice as a psychotherapist, and facilitator of Authentic Movement. She has Master Degrees in Dance Movement Therapy from NYU, and Transpersonal Psychology from JFK, and has a certificate in Laban Movement. She lives in Oxford, England with her husband, Rupert Spira.

www.ellenemmet.com

Suggested Donation: $10- $20, no one turned away.

Location: 8476 Sonoma Ave, Sebastopol, CA. Park on Sonoma Ave.

Walk down short driveway to house with carport. Please arrive 10-15 minutes early for the best seat.

As of SUNDAY early morning March 8TH, Daylight Savings Time begins. Clocks are turned forward 1 hour - "Spring Ahead".
Our event times are shown as Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) starting Sunday March 8th am

Satsang 2-4 pm; refreshments until 5

Bringing our non-dual essence into the duality of life means to access to the power of our true Heart, that is where Consciousness abides. The meeting will guide participants to discover how is possible to transform through meditation our approach to the world towards compassion and authentic love.

Shakti Caterina Maggi has been sharing a message of awakening to our true nature as One Consciousness since 2003.  She worked as a financial reporter in Milan, where she met her teacher Bodhi Avasa.  Her approach to Self-Realization is contemporary and accessible, in tune with Advaita and the non-dual Tantric traditions.  She reveals the real possibility of seeing what we truly are, and embodying it in our everyday lives with clarity, wisdom and humor.

She was recently asked to contribute to the anthology On the Mystery of Being:  Contemporary Insights into the Convergence of Science and Spirituality edited by Zaya and Maurizion Benazzo, the founders of the Science and Nonduality Conference (SAND).  She teaches in Europe, Canada, and the US, offering satsang, seminars and retreats.

www.shakticaterinamaggi.com

Suggested Donation: $10- $20, no one turned away.

Location: 8476 Sonoma Ave, Sebastopol, CA. Park on Sonoma Ave.

Walk down short driveway to house with carport. Please arrive 10-15 minutes early for the best seat.

Per Thich Nhat Hanh’s definition, sangha is a community of friends practicing the dharma together to bring about and maintain awareness. The theme for this free meeting, The Quiet Within, is the ground of our being, a place of emptiness, peace and strength. We can access it anytime, anywhere, in meditation and mindfulness in daily life.

The meeting will start with mediation, a few opening remarks, a one-word check-in, then time for everyone, to share your experience with going within. These are extraordinary times, with most of us sheltering at home. They call for an extraordinary response from us, beyond the usual consumer business. Going within is to detach from usual mind states, to rest in the source of our being.

To join the meeting, click here.

If you are having trouble with the link, enter the following URL into your web browser:
https://zoom.us/j/697631154

This free meeting will include meditation, and conversation in small groups.

The theme is "The Absolute". In the journey of nondual awareness, the absolute is a place of peace, emptiness, and home. Adyashanti has described it as “a kind of emptiness in the center of our being”. For Hameed Ali it’s “the absence of any basis for self or personality...a spontaneity...to be an instrument of the absolute, allowing the absolute to behold and experience its own creation, its own display of its hidden treasures”. Sri Aurobindo said the absolute or "nirvana" is “a condition above and without thought, unstained by any mental or vital movement; there was no ego, no real world – only when one looked through the immobile senses, something perceived or born upon its sheer silence a world of empty forms, materialized shadows without true substance.”

If we’re quiet enough, we can access it, through a breath, or the mind. It’s a vacation from the ups & downs of consciousness, to a place of wholeness, ground and emptiness.

To join the meeting, click here.

If you are having trouble with the link, enter the following URL into your web browser:
https://zoom.us/j/97498774773

Satsang 2-4 pm
Refreshments until 5

Celebrating our Interconnection: Join Susanne Marie and friends as we create a circle with the intention to open to what is everybody's birthright: the light, love, and depth of your own Being.

The satsang starts with a short meditation, then comments by Susanne Marie, followed by Q&A and discussion.

Susanne Marie offers teachings in support of freedom, sacred mutuality, and the celebration of our common essence of love and unity with all life. Her work is transformational and empowering, as she points to the remembering of That which we have always been, allowing truth to become ever more conscious of itself through a human life. In a relaxed, empathetic and personable manner, and with deep personal insight, humor, and grace, she helps others deconstruct their beliefs of what living a life of freedom looks like.

The parent of two young adults, Susanne offers spiritual mentoring, online and in-person group facilitation, as well as retreats.

Suggested Donation: $10- $20, no one turned away.

Location: 8476 Sonoma Ave, Sebastopol, CA. Park on Sonoma Ave.
Walk down the short driveway to the house with a carport.
Please arrive 10-15 minutes early. Limited seating outside, so please consider bringing a chair.

From susannemarie.org

"I became a seeker at the early age of seven. I felt like I was engaged in a losing battle with the conditioned trance of the adult world, rendering the felt sense of unity I had throughout my childhood for the most part, unconscious. I sought for that lost part in various ways over the course of my young adult life, leading to the study of yoga, meditation, and consciousness. Finding a direction that helped make sense of my life was a relief to my system. My goal was a return to wholeness.

Over time, I was led to a few remarkable teachers and teachings, as well as a variety of difficult life lessons which eventually cast me onto an empty shore where I could not sustain beliefs – even in what spirituality could give me. For a long time, accrued conditioning, both my own as well as collective, fell away as I unraveled back to essential nature.

Many realizations have occurred over the years, and I can now say that we humans are both more simple and more complex than I could have imagined. For seeking to end is a relief. Remembering intrinsic wholeness is a grace and helps make life meaningful. The revelation of the emptiness of true nature, while we move and live simultaneously as a human being, is a miracle and mystery – one for which I am grateful and which leads to my sharing."