June 2019
Loch Kelly ~ The Way of Effortless Mindfulness
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.”
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
Find out more »Loch Kelly ~ The Way of Effortless Mindfulness
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.
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.
Find out more »Michael Damian ~ From Awareness to Dynamic Wisdom
2-4 pm, with refreshments until 5 pm
From Awareness to Dynamic Wisdom: How do we find true peace, love and happiness? Michael has met many seekers who complain that despite recognizing awareness they do not feel particularly happy or empowered. In Michael's approach, recognizing awareness is only the first step, which ends outward seeking and brings equanimity. It's then a process of using the light of awareness to fully open the heart, clarify the mind and come to dynamic wisdom. This breakthrough is usually described as Satori or Gnosis. This brings responsive, dynamic wisdom and true spiritual empowerment.
Michael Damian, Ph.D. is a spiritual teacher, psychologist and author of The Art of Freedom: A Guide to Awakening. Michael is a guide to authentic transformation and awakening for many around the world. His approach arises from a powerful spiritual awakening in 2006, and is based largely on A Course in Miracles and his main teacher Barry Long. He has a therapy office in Mill Valley.
Batgap Interview 11/11/13:
http://batgap.com/michael-damian/
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.
Suggested donation: $10 to $20, no one turned away for lack of funds.
July 2019
Neelam ~ How to Break the Illusion of Separation
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
Find out more »Ajaya Sommers ~ Awaken to the Intimate Embrace of the Heart
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, 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.
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. It is 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 evening, 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 outdated 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.
“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.”
Please arrive at least a few minutes early
Suggested Donation: $15-$25 per person
Dorothy Hunt ~ Meditation in Action
“Meditation is not simply the art of sitting quietly on a cushion; it is the art of seeing deeply, being fully present and alive. It is the practice of stopping and noticing who or what is here Now: breathing, looking, eating, drinking, talking, touching, thinking, feeling, sensing. What is the single dimension of our being that is intimate, ever-present, and timelessly awake? Meditation in action is about unifying body and mind in the present moment, and living more and more consciously from the deepest truths we may have realized. If we are living our spirituality and not simply thinking about it, we are invited to BE the light of compassionate presence, authenticity, and love in our ordinary daily lives.”
Invited to teach by Adyashanti in 2004, Dorothy Hunt is the spiritual director of Moon Mountain Sangha, and the founder of the San Francisco Center for Meditation and Psychotherapy. She has been a licensed psychotherapist since 1967. Dorothy is the author of Ending the Search: From Spiritual Ambition to the Heart of Awareness, Leaves from Moon Mountain, Only This! She is a contributing author to several books on nondual awareness and psychotherapy as well as a featured spiritual teacher in Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom.
For more information, please visit www.dorothyhunt.org
No one turned away for lack of funds
Find out more »Dorothy Hunt ~ Meditation in Action
“Meditation is not simply the art of sitting quietly on a cushion; it is the art of seeing deeply, being fully present and alive. Meditation in action is about unifying body and mind in the present moment, and living more and more consciously from the deepest truths we may have realized. If we are living our spirituality and not simply thinking about it, we are invited to BE the light of compassionate presence, authenticity, and love in our ordinary daily lives.”
Invited to teach by Adyashanti in 2004, Dorothy Hunt is the spiritual director of Moon Mountain Sangha, and the founder of the San Francisco Center for Meditation and Psychotherapy. Dorothy is the author of Ending the Search: From Spiritual Ambition to the Heart of Awareness, Leaves from Moon Mountain, Only This! She is a contributing author to several books on nondual awareness and psychotherapy as well as a featured spiritual teacher in Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom.
Find out more »Lynn Marie Lumiere ~ The Healing Power of Awareness ~ 3 Day Online Retreat
Online Retreat with Lynn Marie Lumiere
The Healing Power of Awareness:
Transforming our Relationship with our Self and Others
July 12, 13, 14 (Friday, Saturday and Sunday)
10 am to 1:00 pm (Pacific Time - San Francisco, CA, USA)
Time Zone Converter
This retreat will bring together nondual awakening and nondual psychology, which can facilitate a true healing of our relationship with our self and others. Awakening to our deeper nature alone will not necessarily dissolve the self-hatred so many of us carry in our ego-identity as well as the relational wounding that is held in the body-mind and causes problems in our relationships. And, the ego-identity is incapable of transforming this. It is when awareness meets our psychological wounding that it is freed to return to its original nature, allowing its qualities to shine through our humanness in all our relating.
We will weave between awakening to our essential nature and bringing that to our psychological suffering for healing and transformation. The focus will be as follows:
- Day 1: Awakening Awareness: How to awaken awareness and stabilize as that. Discussion about how to releases the grip of ego conditioning.
- Day 2: Self-Love: How to bring awareness to our self-negativity and release it into true self-love.
- Day 3: Relationship to Others: Healing our relational wounding through self-inquiry and the practice of awakened relating.
This retreat will offer guided meditation, dialogue and experiential exploration, including psychological process and spiritual inquiry.
It would be helpful to read Lynn Marie's book Awakened Relating as part of this retreat (not required).
This Retreat consists of:
- Three live and interactive 3-hour meetings with Lynn Marie in Zoom (a total of 9 hours)
- Audio and video recordings of all meetings
Sliding scale: $50 - $90
Find out more »Finders Course ~ 4 Month Online Course
Why Seek When You Can Find?
Get the remarkable wellbeing and other profound psychological benefits that have been historically associated with states such as enlightenment, persistent mystical states, and nonduality, but without taking years or having to follow religious or spiritual dogma.
What is the Finders Course?
The Finders Course is the first universally effective, step-by-step course that helps people transition to Ongoing and Persistent Non-Symbolic Experience rapidly, safely and reliably.
The course is 100% secular, and built on data from the world’s largest scientific research project in this area, which included over 1,200 participants on 6 continents. Our research showed that using the Finders Course, over 70% of people reached Persistent Non-Symbolic Experience in 4 months or less. And another 19% of people who took the program had temporary experiences of it.
Through the Finders Course, we provide the most effective methods and practices for creating permanent positive shifts in peace of mind, mental balance, life satisfaction and happiness. From ancient practices to cutting-edge science, our programs help you to assemble a personalized program to reach your goals. In our course you’ll find a community of like-minded adventurers on the same journey.
The Course Format
- Weekly video modules introducing a variety of proven practices, including:
- Daily meditation (using 26 different methods)
- Intention
- Gratitude
- Mindfulness
- One-on-one practice/exploration sessions
- Online weekly support group meetings
- Mentoring
- Facebook group
- Book (The Finders by Dr. Jeffrey A. Martin)
Please note that the course does require a significant degree of commitment, which has been found to be crucial to its effectiveness. One must be prepared to commit a minimum of one hour a day, plus an hour or two a week for group meetings, over a four month period.
Right now the Finders Course is available through Open Circle at a special discounted price of $1,995, for the course beginning August 3rd, a 20% discount off the normal price of $2,495.00. If you have financial concerns, please email us at the address below.
Free Introduction
On Saturday July 20th at 10:00am Pacific Time, we will be offering a special, free online introductory session to discuss the course, and to answer any questions you may have.
To join the free introductory session at 10:00am on Saturday July 20th, click https://zoom.us/j/3814331950 (no pre-registration is required)
For more information on the course, please visit https://finderscourse.com/.
To register for the course at this special price, go to: https://smileu.finderscourse.com/offers/6JddwnJv
Enter “Open Circle” when asked who referred you to the course.
For any questions, please contact Kelley Duilio at kelley.duilio@gmail.com
Find out more »
Finders Course ~ 4 Month Online Course
Why Seek When You Can Find?
Get the remarkable wellbeing and other profound psychological benefits that have been historically associated with states such as enlightenment, persistent mystical states, and nonduality, but without taking years or having to follow religious or spiritual dogma.
The Finders Course is the first universally effective, step-by-step course that helps people transition to Ongoing and Persistent Non-Symbolic Experience rapidly, safely and reliably.
Through the Finders Course, we provide the most effective methods and practices for creating permanent positive shifts in peace of mind, mental balance, life satisfaction and happiness. From ancient practices to cutting-edge science, our programs help you to assemble a personalized program to reach your goals. In our course you’ll find a community of like-minded adventurers on the same journey.
On Saturday July 20th at 10:00am Pacific Time, we will be offering a special, free online introductory session to discuss the course, and to answer any questions you may have.