December 2024
Susanne Marie ~ The Light Inside the Dark: In Honor of Solstice
In honor of the Winter Solstice we will meet in the unmoving stillness, resting with equanimity, holding what we encounter within with kindness and allowance. By entering darkness, we are invited to know ourselves more intimately, surrendering to that which does not push away what we contain. Only by meeting ourselves with allowance, do we evolve beyond resistance. Solstice is an ideal day to rest, heal, and prepare for the longer days ahead.
Susanne Marie offers integrated teachings in support of freedom, and the celebration of our common essence of love and unity with all life. Her teaching style is heart-centered and practical, with a focus on supporting you in your unique awakening journey.
Find out more »Ishita Sharma ~ Embodiment Lab – Experiments in Embodying Presence
We are not thinking beings who sense; we are sensing beings who think. And re-setting that balance is key to joy, to vibrance, and true liberation!
Join us for Embodiment Lab, an experiential exploration of the body as a doorway to presence and aliveness, returning to the ground of being through our own direct experience.
We will use the fullness of our experience to tune and attune to our bodies, illuminating our deepest healing and freedom. Engaging and transcending our senses, awareness, breath, movement and sound and more, we will use our body's signals to return to sensate presence.
TOGETHER ON OUR CALL WE WILL:
- Explore states of inner coherence in our own experience.
- Engage simple yet profound somatic and energetic practices.
- Experience the healing power of inner and group coherence.
- Have space to share, ask questions and learn from within and together.
- Learn about ways to deepen our access to embodied presence.
All levels of experience are welcom.
BIO
Ishita Sharma serves as a spiritual teacher, healing mirror, embodiment guide, and Core Energetics Practitioner of body-based psychotherapy. Teaching Universal principles of healing and mysticism, she is devoted to supporting healing and awakening in all those committed to living a bright and connected life, sharing their gifts for the good of the Whole.
Growing up in India, asking big questions, Ishita's curiosities about the nature of All Things fueled a series of profound openings. Having her relationship to Self, Life and others re-calibrated, while learning to honor her own body's signals as the ultimate path to God, led her to study various spiritual, neurological, relational, somatic and shamanic modalities, through the Grace of her teachers and the Book of her Life.
Ishita has coached visionaries and leaders from Google, Harvard, MIT, Silicon Valley, Broadway artists, and renowned scientists, coaches, teachers, artists and activists. Clients come to her to grow through their deepest longings and challenges, held and mirrored in their perfect wholeness. She points every one of them back to center.
Ishita’s teachings, like her learnings, support self-study through direct realization. They marry western mind and eastern spirit through the human body and heart to facilitate embodied awakening and authentic connection, the balm for our tumultuous times.
Care for our sacred shared world informs all her endeavors. Ishita now uses her skills to help clients connect with their inner signals so they can find rest in minds, ease in their bodies, joy in their hearts, and embody their True Nature in right relation with Life. She brings 15 years of advanced facilitation, a refined meditation practice, and a fierce devotion to her own healing to serve. She looks forward to meeting and supporting you!
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
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
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.
January 2025
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
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