October 2022
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
Stephan Bodian ~ Heart Wisdom in Challenging Times
“All you need to do is find out your source and take up your headquarters there.”
~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
This is a simple and elegant prescription for an awakened life from one of the great sages of the nondual tradition. But of course it’s trickier and more elusive than it might sound at first read. How do we realize our source, our natural state of inherent wakefulness? And once we do, how do we establish our headquarters there?
This is part of a two-part series of online meetings, in which you will be guided to ground yourself in your deepest inner knowing, the source of all genuine wisdom and compassion, and respond to life’s inevitable challenges from this awakened perspective. Sat sang (“being together in truth”) features guided meditations, pointers and teachings, and ample time for dialogue and discussion. I invite you to join me and look forward to seeing you there.
The other date in this two-part series is Nov. 12th (click for info & registration).
See Register button below for Oct. 8th.
You are welcome to attend either one, or both meetings of this series.
Stephan Bodian is a teacher in the nondual wisdom tradition of Zen, Dzogchen, and Advaita and the founder and director of the annual School for Awakening, an intensive six-month program of exploration and study. Trained as a Buddhist monk for a decade, he studied Advaita for many years with Jean Klein and received Dharma transmission from Adyashanti in 2001. His books include Wake Up Now; Beyond Mindfulness; Meditation for Dummies; and Buddhism for Dummies (with Jon Landaw).
More about Stephan Bodian: www.stephanbodian.org
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
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
Meg Archambault ~ The Heart of Soul Work: Exploring Your Own Essence Expression (For Women Only)
Women are longing to find their Soul’s Work and fulfill their ‘Cosmic Calling.’ Contributing from their heart their very own Essence Expression.
The challenge is, the paths of the past are outdated for this Time Frame. Structure is falling away. There is no “one right way.” Guides and Mentors may share what has worked for them, but the vibration of NOW requires a finely tuned listening ear to follow One’s Own Path. One’s Own Way.
In this 2-hour SoulWork Session, get to know Your Unique Way. Explore your relationship with your Dharma. Step back from ideals of others. Feed yourself a generous dose of Loving What Is and dive fully into embracing Your Way. Your see, it is our resistance to our own naturalness that keeps us stuck in a dead-end maze. Starting and stopping. Second guessing. Going nowhere.
When we welcome our eccentricities (challenges and faults) as our unique configuration, we release pressure and begin to realize Flow. Less struggle. More ease.
This is the work we will do on October 9th. Through stories, dialogue, and guided meditation, Meg will generate a field of loving-kindness and hold a space for you to gently explore:
- Your relationship with your Soul’s Work
- Your patterns and tendencies to push, pull, and struggle
- Your unique configuration and possible ways forward
This is not a fix for the resistance that shows up when facing your Soul’s Work, but rather a deep dive to embrace the root of that resistance and Love It Fully. Back into its natural state of Grace. Allowing you to remember more of Who You Are and Why You Came here at this time.
Please join Meg for this deep dive into the heart of Soul Work.
Meg Archambault is a gifted SoulWorker, generating a field of reverence and unconditional love for the women who sit with her. She combines a heart-centered and fully-embodied Presence with an absolute love for and respect for Whatever Is Arising in the moment.
This gives client’s bodies and nervous systems space to relax and truly feel what is happening in them and around them. Through this Alchemical-Love, outdated habitual patterns of survival begin to unwind and reveal the True Nature of what has been hidden all along: the natural, unadorned, and supremely simple Essence.
This is what women long for in their bones. Being at home in their bodies. Remembering who they are and why they are here at this very important time.
Meg is a natural born facilitator of this very personal and private process. She is most at home, herself, when working with women in this Way.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
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
Rupert Spira ~ The Essence of Non-Duality
“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 inquiries, 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. He is the author of several books, including his latest, You are the Happiness You Seek.
www.non-duality.rupertspira.com
$60 - Supported: for those who would like to attend but are unable to do so for financial reasons
$90 - Standard: for those with sufficient financial resources to attend at a fair price
$120 - Sponsor: for those with adequate financial resources and a desire to support attendance for others.
If you are not able to contribute the "Supported" amount contact us at localevents@opencirclecenter.org.
Pre-registration is strongly suggested as seating is limited and this event may sell out. Please print your receipt from Rupert's website and bring it to registration at check in.
Covid Protocols & Cancellation Policy for In-Person Attendance
Lunch Break: There are places close by to go out for lunch, or you may bring your own lunch, though there is no refrigerator access. There's a nice small yard with lawn, and limited indoor space for eating at the premises.
NOTE: The venue is a kosher-style facility, so no pork or shellfish, and no meat mixed with dairy on premises.
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.
Marlies Myoku Cocheret ~ Almost Halloween Gathering
You are invited to join Marlies and friends for the ‘‘Almost Halloween’ gathering.
"Growing up, Halloween was an important time of year for me. I felt its true meaning. As the light fades and the multicolored leaves spin and dance in the air before falling to the ground, we come face to face with things that were hidden by the bright light of summer. The fires of worldly engagement lowers. The ghosts and spirits come out. The beauty of silence and death is revealed. Scary, but it's also magical and wonderful."
We enter the time of the year where the veil between our world and the so-called other world is very thin. Can you feel it in the air and inside your bones? It's an opportunity to open your heart wide and melt into the intimacy with all that is. We will celebrate the seen and unseen, the known and unknown.
We are in the midst of autumn, letting go of all that we no longer need, just as the trees let go of their leaves. The sap is going inward. What sprang into form dissolves back into the soil. Then, the truth stands out in stark simplicity.
We are part of nature and nature supports us as all of life goes through this autumnal process.
Together we enter silence, join in Dharma talk and conversation. Please bring all of you, your experience, beautiful presence and questions, and let's dissolve into the unveiled field.
The event will be recorded and emailed to participants after the meeting.
Marlies Myoku Cocheret 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. Marlies has been offering satsang and retreat since 2000 when Adyashanti asked her to teach. She lives in Santa Cruz, California and works internationally as a psychologist, Hakomi therapist and Tantric Educator.
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
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
Jeannie Zandi ~ Embodiment
Please note daylight saving time in Europe has ended in time for this event, while it hasn't yet in the US.
For this reason, we will be starting at 10:00 am Pacific time / 6:00 pm CET (Europe) / 5:00 pm UK.
What is meant by “embodiment” and how does it happen? Join Jeannie to explore a path to embodying realization in every corner of your life.
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, spontaneous talks and exchange with participants, Jeannie will host a space of clarity and warmth where the richness of relating can be explored safely and your innermost questions met fully.
Jeannie Zandi 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.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
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
John Prendergast ~ The Love of Truth
The love of truth ─ a blend of love and wisdom ─ is at the core of our impulse to deeply investigate and discover who we really are. This unveiled truth is neither a personal belief nor a collective dogma. Rather, it is the light of Awareness, our very Being.
This daylong meeting will include a talk, experiential conversations, guided and silent meditations, and dyadic inquiries.
John J. Prendergast, Ph.D., studied for many years with the European sage Jean Klein and with Adyashanti. He is a retired psychotherapist and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology at CIIS, and the author of The Deep Heart and In Touch,
Suggested Donation: $75
No one turned away for lack of funds.
To register:
Email Rob at robmschwartz@yahoo.com
Location:
The meeting will be held indoors in an almost-completed new private home in the Fairfax hills, intended for eventual use for retreats, with views of Mount Tam and hiking trails.
Address and directions will be provided upon registration.
Please bring your own lunch, or feel free to go into town to one of the restaurants or to Good Earth Natural Foods.
Find out more »November 2022
Gail Brenner, Ph.D ~ Deep Trauma Healing: Tending the Ground for Awakened Living ~ 3-Part Online Retreat
3-Part Online Retreat
Nov. 3, 4 & 5, 2022
9:00 am – 12:00 noon, Pacific Time, each day
Time Zone Converter
Event will be recorded and emailed
to participants after each meeting.
You're welcome to join even if you can't attend all the live sessions.
Please note daylight saving time in Europe has ended in time for this event, while it hasn't yet in the US.
For this reason, we will be starting at 9:00 am Pacific time / 5:00 pm CET (Europe) / 4:00 pm UK.
Addressing trauma and how we hold it is essential to seeing through the illusion of the separate self. Join this powerful 3-session retreat as we create a safe and supportive healing community to do this deeper work that unfolds on the path of awakening.
Unexamined trauma is at the root of conditioned patterns and keeps you feeling stuck, limited, and unable to be free. You long for freedom and maybe have had a taste of your true nature, but somehow these patterns keep getting played out automatically in your mind, emotions, relationships, and choices in life. You feel caught in the painful sense of separation…from yourself and the sacredness of all of Life.
You are welcome just as you are with your fears, doubts, shame, and questions. Through practices, inquiries, and experiments during and between our sessions, we’ll learn to untangle these patterns and find our way home to the ever present, relaxed, open space of inner aliveness. There will be plenty of time for Q&A with Gail.
- Session 1: We’ll cultivate a sense of safety for those hidden, cut off parts of ourselves to come out into the light of loving awareness. This is what heals shame and separation.
- Session 2: We’ll bring skillful means to how we experience conditioned patterns—in our bodies, nervous systems, emotions, and beliefs.
- Session 3: We’ll explore devotion, surrender, and the practicalities of awakened living.
And we’ll discover, over and over, the ground of being, your spacious true home that has never been touched by these experiences.
Stress and worry…people pleasing…persistent relationship struggles…proving yourself through accomplishments…the inner critic…these longstanding patterns are profound invitations into liberation from the sense of separation. Together, we discover being fully alive in our humanness as we expand into overflowing gratitude, vibrant joy, and deep connection with all of Life.
Gail is offering a free information session on Tuesday, November 1 from 9-10am Pacific. You’ll learn more about the course, and there will be time for Q&A. Please click here for details and to join the session: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwvd-CqqjItHtYEl60yYWV22isVjMsv7Ec0 )
If you have any questions or would like to know more about this course, please email Gail directly at gail@gailbrenner.com.
“I am now experiencing longer moments of pure awareness and joy. No longer a slave to external circumstances and inner chatter. Loving life the way it is.” ~Susan R.
"Your work is a bridge between practical daily life and Supreme Reality.” ~Henrique N.
"You radiate such warmth, kindness, beauty and wisdom. I had been stuck for so long and by listening to your sage advice, am finally starting to see and feel the light. Thank you for being a beacon in tumultuous times. Your light helps us to shine our own.” ~Julie Desmarais
For more testimonials, please click here. https://gailbrenner.com/people-are-saying/
Gail Brenner, Ph.D. is your guide on this journey. She is a clinical psychologist and lover of truth with a fire that burns brightly. She brings to this work years of experience with individuals and groups and is known for creating the sense of safety and trust needed for this deeper exploration. She is the author of three books, including the award-winning, The End of Self-Help
Sliding Scale: $80 to $140
Some Partial Scholarships Available
Please Register Early if you can.
Gail Brenner, Ph.D ~ Deep Trauma Healing: Tending the Ground for Awakened Living ~ 3-Part Online Retreat
Addressing trauma and how we hold it is essential to seeing through the illusion of the separate self. Join this powerful three-session retreat as we create a safe and supportive healing community to do this deeper work that unfolds on the path of awakening. You are welcome just as you are with your fears, doubts, shame, and questions. Through practices, inquiries, and experiments during and between our sessions, we’ll learn to untangle these patterns and find our way home to the ever present, relaxed, open space of inner aliveness. Gail Brenner, is a clinical psychologist and lover of truth with a fire that burns brightly. She brings to this work years of experience with individuals and groups and is known for creating the sense of safety and trust needed for this deeper exploration. She is the author of three books, including the award-winning, The End of Self-Help.
Find out more »Jeannie Zandi ~ Impersonal Love
Please note daylight saving time in the US ends the morning of this event.
Join Jeannie to explore the theme of the impersonal love that comes with awakening and how it is different from our general concept of love.
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, spontaneous talks and exchange with participants, Jeannie will host a space of clarity and warmth where the richness of relating can be explored safely and your innermost questions met fully.
Jeannie Zandi 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.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
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