April 2019
Dorothy Hunt ~ Intimacy with the Infinite: Sensing the divine in human experiencee
2-4 pm, with refreshments until 5 pm
Any perception is a portal to the infinite - be it of breath, space, silence, sound, feeling, sensation, thought, memory, passion, love, terror. When we consciously give our whole being to any moment, we discover there are endless ways to sense the divine in our human life. What we often imagine we might find someday "when..." is right here, right now as opposites play in the vast field of Awareness, flowing and dissolving in experience. Join Dorothy for this afternoon exploration of intimate gateways to the Infinite through our very bodies.
Dorothy Hunt serves as spiritual director of Moon Mountain Sangha, teaching at the request of
Adyashanti. She is the founder of the SF Center for Meditation and Psychotherapy and has practiced psychotherapy since 1967. She is a mother and a grandmother. Dorothy is the author of Ending the Search: From Spiritual Ambition to the Heart of Awareness, Leaves from Moon Mountain, and Only This!
Her website: www.dorothyhunt.org
Suggested donation: $10 to $20, no one turned away for lack of funds.
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.
May 2019
Susanne Marie ~ The Wisdom of No Escape
Sometimes the only way to be free of something is to allow yourself to be fully trapped. Our desire to escape suffering creates it's own bondage. Most of us are initially drawn to spirituality with the understandable desire to feel better and in general to be released from suffering.
But this desire in itself plays into the belief that something needs to be done about how we are feeling. That we need to somehow disappear a feeling by replacing it with bliss or peace, or whatever we imagine freedom to be.
But the truth of reality is that all is One. Which means that what you are feeling and trying to escape is part of totality. By wishing something away, we are setting ourselves up to be at odds with an aspect of ourselves. Truth is inclusive, meaning that what you are feeling and experiencing is included in what you are.
Bio:
Featured in conversation with Adyashanti on Buddha at the Gas Pump as well as recently on Conscious TV, 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.
Susanne, the parent of two young adults, divides her time between Taos, New Mexico, and Northern California, and offers spiritual mentoring as well as Grace Healing Sessions to individuals and groups.
Susanne Marie's website: www.susannemarie.org
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
Find out more »Jeannie Zandi ~ True Work
What is a calling versus a career? How do you find your true work? What are the possibilities of and obstacles to the full expression of your gift? Join Jeannie and friends to explore this rich topic of living your heart out loud.
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.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
Find out more »Mary Reed ~ Wise Power: BEing the Mechanism of Creation
After calling the Himalayas her home for seven years, today “accidental mystic” Mary Reed travels the world startling audiences awake with the Divine love conveyed through her profound mystical experiences.
In the summer of 2000, she was a busy executive at an NGO in Washington, DC, directing global healthcare programs, when, out of the blue, she started having powerful mystical visions that totally upended her life. After years of self-examination, many of them spent living in a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery in northern India, she returned to the west to inspire joyful collective resurrection with her unique view of our awakening world.
Her work is rooted in eighteen years of direct engagement with Divine Masters, whom she does not channel but temporarily becomes, experiencing from within their unique forms — an ability she neither sought nor easily accepted. Mary guides others using only the wisdom gleaned directly from Divine sources, without doctrinal bias or filters. Her unfathomable experiences are both an invitation and road map to visceral remembrance of the healing wisdom that is already within us.
Mary is the author of the award-winning book, Unwitting Mystic and the subject of a feature film currently in development called Love, Mary Reed.
“As humanity maneuvers through this magnificent time of “fracturing” in our collective awareness, most of us have become disoriented as the old foundations of normalcy have broken apart. Depending on the day and where our awareness is focused, we’re either elated or alarmed, empowered or enraged, equanimous or trying to remember how to get there. Even the most awakened leaders, teachers, healers, students and everyday folks must navigate the ever-shifting ground upon which we now stand, at times uncomfortably, together.
“From within — and as — Unitive Consciousness, there are powerful perspectives and tools that can help us use what’s happening to create what comes next (or allow to be created). It brings me great joy to share these perspectives and tools with the Open Circle community.”
Suggested donation: $15-25
No one turned away for lack of funds
Find out more »Mary Reed ~ Wise Power: BEing the Mechanism of Creation
After calling the Himalayas her home for seven years, today “accidental mystic” Mary Reed travels the world startling audiences awake with the Divine love conveyed through her profound mystical experiences.
In the summer of 2000, she was a busy executive at an NGO in Washington, DC, directing global healthcare programs, when, out of the blue, she started having powerful mystical visions that totally upended her life. After years of self-examination, many of them spent living in a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery in northern India, she returned to the west to inspire joyful collective resurrection with her unique view of our awakening world.
Her work is rooted in eighteen years of direct engagement with Divine Masters, whom she does not channel but temporarily becomes, experiencing from within their unique forms — an ability she neither sought nor easily accepted. Mary guides others using only the wisdom gleaned directly from Divine sources, without doctrinal bias or filters. Her unfathomable experiences are both an invitation and road map to visceral remembrance of the healing wisdom that is already within us.
Mary is the author of the award-winning book, Unwitting Mystic and the subject of a feature film currently in development called Love, Mary Reed.
“As humanity maneuvers through this magnificent time of “fracturing” in our collective awareness, most of us have become disoriented as the old foundations of normalcy have broken apart. Depending on the day and where our awareness is focused, we’re either elated or alarmed, empowered or enraged, equanimous or trying to remember how to get there. Even the most awakened leaders, teachers, healers, students and everyday folks must navigate the ever-shifting ground upon which we now stand, at times uncomfortably, together.
“From within — and as — Unitive Consciousness, there are powerful perspectives and tools that can help us use what’s happening to create what comes next (or allow to be created). It brings me great joy to share these perspectives and tools with the Open Circle community.”
Suggested donation: $45-100
No one turned away for lack of funds
Find out more »Neelam ~ Freedom in Every Moment – Growing the Capacity of the Nervous System for Awakening, Embodiment, & Freedom
10 am (Pacific Time - San Francisco, CA, USA) Time Zone Converter
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
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
Find out more »Pamela Wilson ~ Constancy, Strength and Kindness
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!
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
Find out more »Satsang with Pamela Wilson ~ Refreshing Stillness
Fellowship of the Heart hosts this event.
Co-sponsored by Open Circle
Memorial Day, Monday May 27th, 2-4 pm.
71 Windsor Lane, Petaluma- Home of Menahem & Jennifer Anderman
Sangha and Refreshments following. You are invited to bring a savory or sweet snack (vegan/vegetarian) to share. We will provide beverages. Please bring back jacks if you want to sit on the floor. Suggested donation $10-20, no one turned away.
A Walk in the Petaluma hills following refreshments is possible so, if interested, bring walking shoes.
From Pamela: here we are, benevolent rooted space wearing a remarkably sensitive instrument called the body. Most sages report the body mind insists on being included and permeated by presence, so it too, can know and live its naturalness. The body is the five elements, already free with no history, though it has born witness to all. As compassion we will be instantly aware of any suffering and answer its call, as stillness we will be aware of remaining restlessness. To be with what is in the moment, this is our function and is at the heart of all longing. Join with your fellow sages in satsang, sharing what you are noticing is an act of love.
Pamela speaks the Truth of advaita, non-duality - that the universe is one undivided whole. For the last fifteen years she has traveled widely in the United States, Canada and Europe, holding satsang and giving private sessions. She sat with Robert Adams and Neelam. Week-long retreats have been held in Mexico, Costa Rica, France, the United Kingdom, Canada and the USA. She has endeared herself to many through her lighthearted humor and compassion, and deep understanding of what it is to be human. She lives in the Bay Area of Northern California.
Drop-ins welcome. Please plan to arrive before 2pm so we can all settle in together. Doors open at 1:30pm. Our home is the far right house in a grouping of four houses off of Windsor Lane. We are the last grouping on the right from “D” street direction and the first grouping on the left from Western Avenue direction. Parking is available on Windsor Lane. Please do not park in the driveway area.
For Information, contact Menahem @ (707) 690 8395 menahem@world12.net or Jennifer @ (530) 701 8162 or jennifer@world12.net
Pamela's website: www.pamelasatsang.com
Find out more »Will Pye ~ Radical Gratitude: Appreciating Presence…CANCELLED!!!
After what might now be regarded as nondual realizations as a child, Will Pye experienced years of suffering, depression and a desire to not exist. A wish to end suffering mingled with a deep yearning to know Truth fueled intensive spiritual exploration. Much Zen practice, energy healing, shamanic exploration, yoga, Qi Gong, philosophical study and scientific research led to shifts in perception, including, at age 28, insight into the emptiness of self, and unity of inner and outer. At 31, total surrender to death following a brain cancer diagnosis yielded experience of infinite and eternal being and the perfection unfolding.
Since then Will has left behind a successful business to share presence and explore consciousness with groups in workshops, retreats and Meetings in Love, Truth and Laughter around the world.
Influenced by Zen, Christian Mysticism, Sufism, Quantum Mechanics and Neuroscience Will offers practical wisdom, emphasizing direct experience and revelation, whether via meditation, gratitude, plant spirit medicine, dancing, lovemaking, or listening to a tree dancing with the sun.
Working with groups, Will offers and invites innocence, curiosity and play, and holding several paradoxes. Teaching and learning occur, yet there is no teacher nor teaching. Gathering in exploration of consciousness, being, love, and stillness is unspeakably sacred, yet ─ it being what we already are ─ is a bit of a joke: bowing to impersonal presence, surrendering to the group energy field’s movement, yet appreciating the uniqueness of each individuation of consciousness and the particular shape of their unfolding. Simultaneously water, dewdrop and snowflake, we are already perfect and becoming more.
Join us to explore a way of being Will calls Radical Gratitude. Here every breath, pain, thought, identity and contraction are recognized to be God making Love with Itself as we realize the naturally joyful love of Being.
Will can also be found handing out Love Letters to strangers as part of a hopelessly idealistic global movement of love and awakening, an initiative of the Love and Truth Party: exploring what awakened activism might look like as we celebrate oneness. Will is also the author of the critically acclaimed book, Blessed with a Brain Tumor: Realizing it’s all Gift and Learning to Receive, and the forthcoming The Gratitude Prescription: How to Find Peace of Mind and Joy Wherever You Look, (2019 New Harbinger).
www.loveandtruthparty.org
www.willpye.com
Suggested Donation $15-$25
Find out more »Pamela Wilson ~ Warm Heart, Mountain Stillness
Pamela Wilson is a Bay Area treasure who has been sharing satsang for twenty years around the world, honoring the sage within everyone, and the absolute oneness of All That Is. Her own teachers included Lester Levinson (The Sedona Method), Robert Adams and Neelam. She evokes through dialogue, inquiry and her very presence the qualities of unconditional love and radical acceptance. She endears herself to her audiences with her playful and light-hearted humor, combined with compassion and deep understanding of what it is to be human.
Pamela is celebrated for her ability to open the heart, call forth our own inner sage, and create a space in which long-held struggles and notions about one’s identity relax. And she speaks the truth of non-duality, that the universe is one undivided whole. Featured in the book Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom, Pamela is at her best in heart-felt dialogue, so please come and bring your questions!
“Here we are, benevolent rooted space wearing a remarkably sensitive instrument called the body. Most sages report the body-mind insists on being included and permeated by presence, so it too, can know and live its naturalness. The body is the five elements, already free with no history, though it has born witness to all. As compassion we will be instantly aware of any suffering and answer its call; as stillness we will be aware of remaining restlessness. To be with what is in the moment, this is our function and is at the heart of all longing.”