February 2019
Shakti Caterina Maggi ~ Living Awakening
Our previous week of events with Shakti Caterina Maggi was so successful that we decided to add a couple more last-minute events while Shakti is still in the Bay Area.
- Thursday, Feb. 21st, 7:00-8:45 pm ~ Living Awakening
- Saturday, Feb. 23rd, 11:00 am-5:00 pm ~ Living Awakening Intensive
Shakti is a teacher very well known in Europe and her native Italy, who offers a contemporary and accessible vision of true awakening that is profoundly in tune with Advaita and nondual Tantric traditions. With wisdom, humor, and heartfelt connection, she shares a message of discovering the divinity at the very core of our humanity. Shakti has been sharing this message of non-separation since 2003 with many people around the world, especially in Italy and in Europe, where she holds regular satsangs and retreats.
The day-long intensive will emphasize experiential exercises, as well as mediation and satsang. These special perception exercises are designed to help us see and dissolve our conflictual view of life, and the patterns of holding and resistance that reinforce the sense of separation. This then enables us to live and embody a message of true peace and non-separation between human beings.
“Awakening to your true nature means to wake up to your true essence that lies behind any conflict of daily living. Thoughts and feelings are not an obstacle to this recognition, but the direct expression of how we know or ignore ourselves. Once we find that silence that rests behind manifestation, the ego will come back, out of habit. If we can recognize its presence, not as a disturbance but as an opportunity to integrate the message, our everyday life becomes our true spiritual journey. The Peace of our Being becomes the world we see and live in.”
Thur. Feb. 21st. Evening Satsang ~ Living Awakening
Time: 7:00pm - 8:45pm
Place: Chochmat HaLev, 2215 Prince St., Berkeley, CA
Suggested donation: $15 - $25
No one turned away for lack of funds
Feb. 23rd. Daylong Intensive ~ Living Awakening Intensive
Time: 11:00am - 5:00 pm
Place: Chochmat HaLev, 2215 Prince St., Berkeley, CA
Sliding scale: $65 - $125
No one turned away for lack of funds
Lunch Break (1-2:15 pm):
You are welcome to bring your lunch, although only vegetarian food is allowed on the premises (per the policy of Chochmat HaLev). There are also various other places nearby to go out to eat.
Shakti Caterina Maggi ~ Living Awakening
Our previous week of events with Shakti Caterina Maggi was so successful that we decided to add a couple more last-minute events while Shakti is still in the Bay Area.
- Thursday, Feb. 21st, 7:00-8:45 pm ~ Living Awakening
- Saturday, Feb. 23rd, 11:00 am-5:00 pm ~ Living Awakening Intensive
Shakti is a teacher very well known in Europe and her native Italy, who offers a contemporary and accessible vision of true awakening that is profoundly in tune with Advaita and nondual Tantric traditions. With wisdom, humor, and heartfelt connection, she shares a message of discovering the divinity at the very core of our humanity. Shakti has been sharing this message of non-separation since 2003 with many people around the world, especially in Italy and in Europe, where she holds regular satsangs and retreats.
The day-long intensive will emphasize experiential exercises, as well as mediation and satsang. These special perception exercises are designed to help us see and dissolve our conflictual view of life, and the patterns of holding and resistance that reinforce the sense of separation. This then enables us to live and embody a message of true peace and non-separation between human beings.
“Awakening to your true nature means to wake up to your true essence that lies behind any conflict of daily living. Thoughts and feelings are not an obstacle to this recognition, but the direct expression of how we know or ignore ourselves. Once we find that silence that rests behind manifestation, the ego will come back, out of habit. If we can recognize its presence, not as a disturbance but as an opportunity to integrate the message, our everyday life becomes our true spiritual journey. The Peace of our Being becomes the world we see and live in.”
Thur. Feb. 21st. Evening Satsang ~ Living Awakening
Time: 7:00pm - 8:45pm
Place: Chochmat HaLev, 2215 Prince St., Berkeley, CA
Suggested donation: $15 - $25
No one turned away for lack of funds
Feb. 23rd. Daylong Intensive ~ Living Awakening Intensive
Time: 11:00am - 5:00 pm
Place: Chochmat HaLev, 2215 Prince St., Berkeley, CA
Sliding scale: $65 - $125
No one turned away for lack of funds
Lunch Break (1-2:15 pm):
You are welcome to bring your lunch, although only vegetarian food is allowed on the premises (per the policy of Chochmat HaLev). There are also various other places nearby to go out to eat.
Marlies Myoku Cocheret ~ An Exploration of Total Inclusion
How Available are You to Stay Awake as a Human-Divine in Today's World?
It is up to us to live the awakened life in every moment and every situation. What does it mean to step into living the total intimacy and inclusion with ALL of life ─ including pleasure, pain, peace, body, suffering, happiness, rage, Self-realization and wondrous emptiness?
My own recent experience ─ of a long and extensive surgery to remove my two kidneys and receive a transplanted kidney, as well as the recovery that followed ─ had and still has many layers of challenges. Through it all, Divine Radiance carries me.
How do we unpack the wrapping paper of adversity and discover what is inside? Life/She helps us cultivate Being through offering the most wonderful challenges. When separation is out the window, all aspects of life are intimately welcomed and experienced. Then, we live in total inclusion with what is, which is the dance of our Humanity and our Divine radiance. Come and explore your delicious Self!
Marlies 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. She helps people to see that freedom and peace lie not in escaping from difficulties, but rather in completely welcoming and receiving all that the Mystery presents.
She has been offering satsang and retreat since 2000 when Adyashanti asked her to teach. Marlies is trained as a psychologist in The Netherlands, a Hakomi therapist, and a Tantric educator. For over 25 years she has been ushering seekers into living the Divine in the body. She has a passion and a gift for bringing together the Sensual Body and the Silence of our Being.
She lives in Santa Cruz; California, but works internationally. 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
Find out more »CANCELLED – Rupert Spira ~ The Essence of Non-Duality
The Feb. 24th event has been cancelled due to a family emergency. An email will be sent to all people who pre-registered about how to rollover their tickets for a future event with Rupert, or how to get a refund. Both Rupert himself and Open Circle sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused.
March 17th Rupert Spira event in Berkeley
is open for registration.
“Meditation is what we are, not what we do; the separate self is what we do, not what we are.”
In the last few years Rupert Spira has become one of the most respected and sought-after teachers of non-dual wisdom, known for his crystal clear use of language, laser-like intellect, skillful guided enquiries, and powerfully direct pointing to aware presence—all delivered with warmth, wit and an unmatched and distinctive eloquence.
In his meetings, Rupert explores the perennial, non-dual understanding that lies at the heart of all the great religious and spiritual traditions, such as Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mystical Christianity, Sufism, Zen etc., and which is also the direct, ever-present reality of our own experience. This is a contemporary, experiential approach involving silent meditation, guided meditation and conversation, and requires no affiliation to any particular religious or spiritual tradition. All that is required is an interest in the essential nature of experience, and in the longing for love, peace and happiness around which most of our lives revolve.
After thirty years of intense seeking, Rupert met his primary teacher Francis Lucille, who introduced him to the direct way taught by his own teacher, Jean Klein. Rupert lives in Oxford, England, with his wife Ellen Emmet, a therapist and yoga teacher in the tradition of Kashmir Shaivism. . He is the author of several books, including his latest two, The Nature of Consciousness and Being Aware of Being Aware, and two book/CD box-sets, Transparent Body, Luminous World and The Light of Pure Knowing.
www.non-duality.rupertspira.com
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Please contact LocalEvents@opencirclecenter.org with any further questions.
PARKING: There is some limited street parking in the neighborhood, free and without time limit on weekends. There is also parking a few blocks away at the east parking lot of the Ashby Bart station: www.bart.gov/stations/ashb/map
You may also find paid parking just a few blocks away at Alta Bates Parking Garage: Enter on Colby between Ashby and Webster St.
Richard Miller ~ Living Enlightenment
Throughout the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s, Richard had the good fortune of meeting a series of spiritual teachers, including Laura Cummings, J. Krishnamurti, Adi Da, Dadaji, Adyashanti, Suzanne Segal, and Jean Klein, who helped him directly realize the nondual teachings, as exemplified in the paths of Advaita, Kashmir Yoga, Taoism, and Dzogchen. Richard now shares this realization, and its integration into daily living, through meditative self-inquiry, the presence of being, and what lies beyond all sense of separation and self-awareness.
Richard is the co-founder of the International Association of Yoga Therapists, co-founder and past president of the Institute for Spirituality and Psychology, and founder of the iRest Institute, where he teaches retreats and trainings internationally, and conducts research on the nondual program he’s developed—iRest Meditation—a synthesis of ancient nondual practices of yogic meditation, studying its efficacy on health, healing, well-being, and awakening.
“Living enlightenment entails no less than a fundamental figure-ground reversal within our psyche, where our center of gravity shifts from identification as a separate ego-I to Essential Nature—the Mystery that has given birth to the entire cosmos—that is simultaneously everything, and no-thing.
“Living enlightenment takes us beyond duality and nonduality, where we recognize there is no condition, state, realization, or accomplishment that is ultimately definitive and final. Here, life is a continuous unfolding, with Essential Nature living us—and everything—as Its what, where, when, how, that, and this of each moment.
“Living enlightenment both exposes our absolute helplessness and insecurity when we live identified as a separate ego-I, and reveals our absolute security and stability when we give ourselves over completely to being lived by the intelligence of Essential Nature. Here, we awaken beyond conflict and suffering to living true compassion, kindness, love, joy, and equanimity, and respect for the preciousness of life and the environment, amidst all the changing circumstances and relationships of our lives.”
Suggested Donation $15-$20
Find out more »Shakti Caterina Maggi ~ Living Awakening
Shakti Caterina Maggi has decided to add one final satsang on Wednesday before flying back to her native Italy!
Shakti is a teacher very well known in Europe, who offers a contemporary and accessible vision of true awakening that is profoundly in tune with Advaita and nondual Tantric traditions. With wisdom, humor, and heartfelt connection, she shares a message of discovering the divinity at the very core of our humanity. Shakti has been sharing this message of non-separation since 2003 with many people around the world, especially in Italy and in Europe, where she holds regular satsangs and retreats.
“Awakening to your true nature means to wake up to your true essence that lies behind any conflict of daily living. Thoughts and feelings are not an obstacle to this recognition, but the direct expression of how we know or ignore ourselves. Once we find that silence that rests behind manifestation, the ego will come back, out of habit. If we can recognize its presence, not as a disturbance but as an opportunity to integrate the message, our everyday life becomes our true spiritual journey. The Peace of our Being becomes the world we see and live in.”
Suggested donation: $15 - $25
No one turned away for lack of funds
March 2019
Jeannie Zandi ~ Mercy for Humanness
Unfolding that which you are in daily life requires a forgiving and merciful regard for the frailty and limitations of humanness. Join Jeannie and friends to explore this way of love, softening and making room in our spiritual endeavors for the humility of our human aspect.
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 »Caverly Morgan ~ The Absolute is the Relative: Touching Race, Injustice, and Love
“All being is shared being. To know that is peace. To live that is love.”
~ Caverly
When we engage in the distortion that the relative plane is separate from the absolute – that it is something to transcend or ‘just an illusion’ – we ignore the reality of the illusion. What is the illusion comprised of? How is it known? And by whom?
The relative may appear to arise out of the absolute, as waves appear to arise out of the ocean, but like waves, both relative and absolute are components of a greater whole. They are not separate. When we know ourselves as this whole which subsumes everything, we cease to diminish or dismiss the mystery of being human. We experience viscerally that “the world is my family.”
From this understanding, we recognize that liberation is not a singular experience. There can be no individual ego that experiences enlightenment. We suffer when we forget that. We suffer when we perceive ourselves as separate from the collective – on the level of consciousness (the absolute) as well as with our neighbor (the relative).
When we recognize that the world is arising in us, Awareness, there is nothing to dismiss. How, then, in our situation of privilege on the relative plane, do we dismiss injustice, bias, cruelty in the name of transcendence or ‘spiritual understanding’? How do we participate in systems of oppression while ignoring the effects on our neighbor, as well as the whole?
Do we fall for the story that the awakened life we seek is mine to have rather than ours to be? And what’s love got to do with it?
Caverly Morgan is a meditation teacher, nonprofit leader, and visionary. She is the Founder and Guiding Teacher of Presence Collective, dedicated to igniting personal transformation and collective awakening. She is also the Founder and Guiding Teacher of Peace in Schools — a nonprofit which created the nation's first for-credit mindfulness class in public high schools. Peace in Schools is pioneering new depths in mindfulness education through teaching youth as well as training educators.
Caverly blends the original spirit of Zen with a modern nondual approach. Her practice began in 1995 and has included eight years of training in a silent Zen monastery. She has been teaching contemplative practice since 2001.
Prior to her pioneering efforts with Peace in Schools, Caverly formerly worked for nonprofits serving people with special needs. An artist and educator, she brings insight, passion, warmth and humor to her transformative work with students of all ages and experience levels.
Suggested Donation: $15 - $25
Find out more »Tim Freke ~ Individuals Evolving Into Unividuals
"An astonishing leap forward in the story of humanity is quietly gaining momentum. It is historically unprecedented that so many of us now feel compassion for people we will never meet who are suffering in distant lands. More and more of us care deeply about other species and the natural world. A smaller but ever increasing number are awakening to a profound sense of oneness with everyone and everything."
Pioneering English philosopher and visionary Tim Freke suggests these developments are signs of our evolution from separate individuals into connected ‘unividuals’ who experience a unity that transcends our individuality. During his ‘Evening of Philosophy’ and ‘Experiential Day Seminar’ he will explore this momentous evolutionary jump.
You’ll be introduced to ‘Unividualism’ which unifies science and spirituality to offer a visionary understanding of the evolving cosmos. You’ll experience ‘Unividual Connection Meditations’ to awaken a state of deep communion and all-embracing love. This is your invitation to become part of a new global tribe that can transform our individualistic self-serving society into a unividual culture of kindness.
T!M FREKE is a leading-edge thinker with a contagious enthusiasm for the human adventure, who shares original and life-changing ideas with clarity and humor. He has been exploring spirituality since a spontaneous awakening at age 12. He is the author of 35 books, translated into 15 languages, including a top 10 international bestseller and UK Daily Telegraph ‘Book of the Year’. He presents events internationally, including in the UK, Europe, Japan, South America, Canada and the USA.
Evening of Philosophy ~ Thursday, March 7th, 2019
Time: 7:00 - 9:00 pm
Sliding Scale: $15 - $25
No pre-registration for the Thur. evening event.
Experiential Day Seminar ~ Sunday, March 10th, 2019
Time: 10:30 am - 5:00 pm
NOTE: as of SUNDAY March 10TH, 2 am, clocks in the USA are turned forward 1 hour
"Spring Ahead" - Daylight Savings Time begins.
Change your clocks when you go to bed Satrurday night!
Sliding Scale: $65 - $125
Pre-registration recommended but not required.
Please contact LocalEvents@opencirclecenter.org with any questions
PARKING: There is some limited free street parking in the neighborhood, without time limit on weekday evenings and weekends. There is also parking a few blocks away at the east parking lot of the Ashby Bart station: www.bart.gov/stations/ashb/map
You may also find paid parking just a few blocks away at Alta Bates Parking Garage: Enter on Colby between Ashby and Webster St.
Lunch: There are various places close by to go out for lunch, including the Telegraph Ave. Whole Foods. Or you can bring your own food (but note that the venue only allows vegetarian food on the premises).
Find out more »Tim Freke ~ Individuals Evolving Into Unividuals
An astonishing leap forward in the story of humanity is quietly gaining momentum. It is historically unprecedented that so many of us now feel compassion for people we will never meet who are suffering in distant lands. More and more of us care deeply about other species and the natural world. A smaller but ever increasing number are awakening to a profound sense of oneness with everyone and everything.
Pioneering English philosopher Tim Freke suggests these developments are signs of our evolution from separate individuals into connected ‘unividuals’ who experience a unity that transcends our individuality. During his ‘Evening of Philosophy’ and ‘Experiential Day Seminar’ he will explore this momentous evolutionary jump.
You’ll be introduced to ‘Unividualism’ which unifies science and spirituality to offer a visionary understanding of the evolving cosmos. You’ll experience ‘Unividual Connection Meditations’ to awaken a state of deep communion and all-embracing love. This is your invitation to become part of a new global tribe that can transform our individualistic self-serving society into a unividual culture of kindness.
T!M FREKE is a leading-edge thinker who shares original ideas with clarity and humour. He is the author of 35 books, translated into 15 languages, including a top 10 international bestseller and UK Daily Telegraph ‘Book of the Year’. He presents events internationally, including in the UK, Europe, Japan, South America, Canada and the USA.
Evening of Philosophy ~ March 7th, 2019
Time: 7:00 - 9:00 pm
Sliding Scale: $15 - $25
No pre-registration for the Thur. evening event.
Experiential Day Seminar ~ March 10th, 2019
Time: 10:30 am - 5:00 pm
NOTE: as of SUNDAY March 10TH, 2 am, clocks in the USA are turned forward 1 hour
"Spring Ahead" - Daylight Savings Time begins.
Change your clocks when you go to bed Satrurday night!
Sliding Scale: $65 - $125
There are places close by to go out for lunch.
Note: Per venue policy, only vegetarian food is allowed on premises at Chochmat HaLev
Please contact LocalEvents@opencirclecenter.org with any further questions
PARKING: There is some limited street parking in the neighborhood, free and without time limit on weekday evenings & weekends. There is also parking a few blocks away at the east parking lot of the Ashby Bart station: www.bart.gov/stations/ashb/map
You may also find paid parking just a few blocks away at Alta Bates Parking Garage: Enter on Colby between Ashby and Webster St.