January 2025
Pamela Wilson ~ Love Wisdom and Strength ~ Bay Area Daylong Retreat
Gathering together to nourish each other in rooting and spreading our transmission branches wide to benefit all Beings. Please join Pamela and your fellow sages to celebrate the New Year together, hosted by Open Circle Center.
Pamela Wilson 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
The meeting will be from 10:30am to 4:30pm, with a break for lunch.
Bring your own lunch, or drive 5 minutes into town where there are restaurants, as well as the Good Earth Natural Foods Store that has a full hot and salad bar, plus deli.
Pre-registration required, as space is limited.
Registration closes at midnight on Dec. 31st
Sliding Scale: $60 to $120
No one turned away for lack of funds.
For inquiries contact LocalEvents@opencirclecenter.org
Location:
The meeting will be held at a private home in the Fairfax hills, with views of Mount Tam and hiking trails.
Address and directions will be provided upon registration.
If you have symptoms of a viral infection, or have had a recent
Covid exposure or positive test, please stay home out of consideration for others.
Pamela Wilson ~ Love Wisdom and Strength ~ New Year’s Day Bay Area Daylong Retreat
Gathering together to nourish each other in rooting and spreading our transmission branches wide to benefit all Beings. Please join Pamela and your fellow sages to celebrate the New Year together.
Pamela Wilson 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.
Find out more »Stephan Bodian ~ Waking Up Through the Metacrisis: Finding Deeper Ground in Challenging Times
We find ourselves in uniquely challenging and uncertain times: overpopulation, mass extinctions, extreme weather, environmental tipping points, political upheaval, nuclear proliferation, demographic instability and widespread migrations, and the advent of technologies that challenge and distort our understanding of what’s real and true.
Of course, we can always seek refuge in the knowing that our true nature − awakened awareness, consciousness, the absolute − is undisturbed and never dies. But what about all the painful consequences at a very human level of all this difficult and precipitous change? How do we find peace in a deeper ground while acknowledging and welcoming our understandable feelings of fear, outrage, or grief?
Please join me for one or more satsangs in this monthly series (Jan-May) that include resting in our deeper ground while welcoming and working with the feelings that these challenging times evoke.
Stephan Bodian is a teacher in the non-dual wisdom tradition, and a licensed psychotherapist, who brings a deep understanding of the impact of trauma on the process of spiritual realization. Stephan studied for many years with Advaita master Jean Klein and received Dharma transmission from Adyashanti in 2001.
Find out more »Lisa Schumacher ~ Choose Love: Self-Inquiry Meeting
A meeting with Lisa is an encounter in openness and silence, where you are invited just as you are and where you will find clear and loving support for your awakening.
You are invited into a community space that values the transmission of peace and love that is present here. In your search for freedom, you can rest in stopping. You can find stillness in Satsang.
“Satsang” means “in the company of Truth” – it describes a meeting where we gather together to uncover our True Nature.
Lisa offers guidance for your awakening, and would love to hear what you are discovering in yourself. All of your spiritual questions and reports are welcome as we discover together how to meet the intensity of the world with an open and loving heart.
This is an embrace of inclusion and an inquiry into the heart of the truth, as it transmits through your life.
All are welcome.
During our meeting together, Lisa will support you with deep stillness and skillful self-inquiry to open to your true nature, leaving behind the illusion of a separate self. During the webinar, you may rest in silence. This is deeply nourishing. We will begin each meeting sitting in silence.
About Lisa Schumacher
Lisa grew up in Colusa, CA, and attended college at San Luis Obispo in the 1980’s. After she moved to Southern Oregon in the early 90s, a friend invited her to a video satsang with Gangaji. Upon hearing Gangaji say “Be your Natural Self”, Lisa’s heart caught on fire and she fell into a deep bow of surrender. That meeting revealed to her the absolute simplicity of the natural, living truth of Love, inseparable from who one is. Lisa moved to Bolinas in 1999 to be closer to Gangaji and the vibrant community around her.
In 2006, Lisa was asked by Gangaji to meet with people and share her discovery of the Love that is alive in the core of one’s being . She holds meetings in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and North America. She’s also a long-time student of Eli Jaxon-Bear, Gangaji’s husband, and a founding teacher of the “Leela School of Awakening”. Lisa is the author of “The Stone I Love”, a book of poetry inspired by her meeting with Gangaji, available on her website.
In Lisa’s meetings, she invites you to rest in stillness. Your discoveries and questions about awakening, deepening, and the unfolding truth are welcome. The teaching is in the tradition of Gangaji, who is a student of Papaji, who had his awakening at the feet of Ramana Maharshi.
Lisa's website: satsangwithlisa.org
Suggested donation: $15 to $40
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Lisa Schumacher ~ Choose Love: Self-Inquiry Meeting
A meeting with Lisa is an opportunity to step away from your day to day life and devote time for self-inquiry into the heart of Love. There will be a few moments of silence to start the meeting and then Lisa will speak and invite the community to share reports about their realizations and ask questions.
Upon hearing Gangaji in the early 90s say “Be your Natural Self”, Lisa’s heart caught on fire and she fell into a deep bow of surrender. That meeting revealed to her the absolute simplicity of the natural, living truth of Love, inseparable from who one is. In 2006, Lisa was asked by Gangaji to meet with people and share her discovery of the Love that is alive in the core of one’s being.
Find out more »Silent Group Meditation (Free, No Guidance)
Join us for a silent group meditation. Do your own practice quietly in the company of others. Let’s be present, together. .... more details
Mon.: 8:00am – 8:30am (PT) and Wed.: 9:00am – 9:30am (PT)
Ongoing drop-in group – attend as often as you like.
Weekly, with rare exceptions. Verify dates on Full Calendar.
Silent Group Meditation (Free, No Guidance)
Mondays: 8:00am – 8:30am Pacific Time
Wednesdays : 9:00am – 9:30am Pacific Time
Ongoing every week, with rare exceptions. Check Full Calendar to verify dates.
Join for a group meditation – just us, without a teacher. Do your own practice silently in the company of others. There will be no talk or guidance – only a bell to start and finish. Let’s be present, together.
After half an hour of silent sitting, there will be space for a brief hello in the end, if we like.
Please be seated by the time meditation starts, so that we can begin together. You are welcome to have your camera and microphone on (unless you have a lot of background noise), so that we can feel as if we were in one space.
The zoom link remains the same for all the sessions, so you are welcome to register only once and save the link for future reference.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Loch Kelly and Lisa Ferguson ~ Engaged Nonduality
Engaged Nonduality
Responding to the World Outside and
Within from Awake Loving Flow
with Loch Kelly and Lisa Ferguson
Recording will be emailed to participants within a week.
You’re welcome to join even if you can’t attend the live session.
This series of Engaged Nonduality events, hosted by Lisa Ferguson, explores how nondual wisdom may respond to our world in crisis. We live in a time of multiple intersecting crises that threaten the wellbeing of all life, including climate breakdown, unaligned tech and AI, injustice, war and authoritarianism. The recognition of nonduality has much to offer in these times, including a deep knowing of our wholeness and shared Being, as well as opening to the wellspring of our wise and creative response. This series invites guest presenters to explore how nondual teaching may respond to planetary crises through talks, practices and group participation.
Loch Kelly, M.Div., LCSW is the creator of the new nondual meditation app, Mindful Glimpses. He is the founder of the 501c3 nonprofit public charity, Effortless Mindfulness Institute. Loch is an award-winning author, licensed psychotherapist and recognized leader in the field of meditation and awakening. He and has worked in community mental health, established homeless shelters and counseled family members of 9/11 in NYC.
Loch graduated from Columbia University Social Work School and received a fellowship from Union Theological to study meditation in Sri Lanka, India and Nepal. It was there he studied with Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche and many of the great nondual masters of our age.
Loch has collaborated with neuroscientists at Yale, UPenn and NYU in the study of how awareness training can enhance compassion and wellbeing. In 2007 Loch was asked to teach by Adyashanti.
Loch is dedicated to reducing suffering and supporting people to live from open-hearted awareness. He is known for his warm sense of humor and his trust that awakening is the next natural stage of development. He teaches the advanced yet simple nondual pointers and direct methods of Effortless Mindfulness, informed by wisdom traditions, psychology and social justice. Loch lives in upstate New York with his wife Paige and their cats Bodhi and Uly. www.lochkelly.org
Lisa Ferguson, Ph.D. is the founder of Climate Compassion, and has focused on supporting planetary wellbeing as a healing arts practitioner, climate justice activist, organizer and contemplative. She offers psychospiritual support to activists through one-one sessions and small groups, weaving together a focus on awakening, healing and wise action.
Suggested Donation: $15 to $40
(any amount acceptable, no one turned away for lack of funds)
Please register early if you can.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter
Find out more »Loch Kelly and Lisa Ferguson ~ Engaged Nonduality
This series of Engaged Nonduality events, hosted by Lisa Ferguson, explores how nondual wisdom may respond to our world in crisis. The recognition of nonduality has much to offer in these times, including a deep knowing of our wholeness and shared Being, as well as opening to the wellspring of our wise and creative response. This week's guest speaker is Loch Kelly, an award-winning author, licensed psychotherapist and recognized leader in the field of meditation and awakening. Loch has studied with studied with Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche and many of the great nondual masters of our age, as well as collaborated with neuroscientists in the study of how awareness training can enhance compassion and wellbeing. In 2007 Loch was asked to teach by Adyashanti. Lisa Ferguson, Ph.D. is the founder of Climate Compassion, and has focused on supporting planetary wellbeing as a healing arts practitioner, climate justice activist, organizer and contemplative.
Find out more »Georgia Simone ~ Awakened Healing: Become The Space Where Healing Takes Place
Welcome to The Holding Space.
A space where we can gather together and BE exactly as we are
A space where the full spectrum of your human experience is invited
Calm, anxious, open, closed,
ALL is welcome here.
It's in this gentle embrace that everything can start to unravel. It's in this open space that we can begin to unwind the strategies that no longer serve us. This is the space that early mis-attunement failed to foster, the space where love blooms and new life can emerge. This is the space where all that quivers and shakes can come to rest, and where all that contorts can untwist into greater alignment.
Through gentle exploration and somatic awareness you can cultivate a new way of being with your most challenging patterns. No longer a victim of the push and pull of inner disturbance, you can step forward with greater confidence, knowing that whatever comes your way, you embody the resilience and the capacity to meet and integrate it.
You can expect a deeply held space where you’ll be invited to slow down, tune in, and track your present-moment experience. As you awaken and refine a more subtle way of Being and Being With, you can slowly but surely become the space – the container and the field – where healing takes place.
Bio:
The first leg of Georgia Simone’s path exposed her to the teachings of Advaita Vedanta, which provided her with the foundation she needed to disidentify from pain and suffering. However, despite a growing freedom, a significant bypass took place, as her orientation towards transcendence reinforced her deep disconnection from Life. Upon seeing this, her focus became addressing the unresolved trauma that had woven its way into every fibre of her being.
During this period, Georgia was influenced by Inner Relationship Focusing, a presence based approach that works with the Felt Sense and the split-off parts of self. She also trained as a NARM informed practitioner, which addresses developmental trauma from a psychotherapeutic perspective. Her approach is now a seamless blend of mystical insight and psychological understanding.
After many years of wading through this marshland of conditioning, she shares her discoveries with others. She believes that the spiritual path is as much about arriving here fully – as an embodied human being – as it is about dissolving into the infinite source that makes this life possible. How can we die to the absolute, while deeply embracing our relative human experience? This Living Inquiry is her Life’s prayer.
Suggested donation: $15 to $40
No one turned away for lack of funds.
Please register early if you can.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants within a week.
To check your local time, use a tool such as: Time Zone Converter