June 2019
Loch Kelly ~ The Way of Effortless Mindfulness
10 am to 12 noon (Pacific Time - San Francisco, CA, USA) Time Zone Converter
Awakening is always already here, whether we recognize it or not. And, there is an unfolding, which can become the next natural stage of human development. If our true nature is already here, does awakening only happen unintentionally, or is there a way to intentionally realize and live from this? It seems clear that our will, the “doer,” our best effort, our attention and our ego can’t awaken.
So what is it that can awaken? It seems it is only awake awareness that can know awake awareness. But where, oh where, is this awake awareness that can know? In The Way of Effortless Mindfulness, I explore the ways that local awake awareness can know spacious awake awareness, and then welcome everything as interconnected love. This unique “method-less method” does not ask the “doer” to do anything. Instead, it begins by asking your already awake awareness to detach, unblend, or “unhook” from its identification with the small separate sense of self. Effortless mindfulness is a unique form of direct realization and inquiry.
In The Secret of the Golden Flower, it is said that the sublime truth is “turning the light of awareness around.” In Tibetan Buddhism, this is called “child awareness returning to mother awareness,” “looking back at your own face” or “flashing on awakened heart-mind.” The key is to be able to feel awareness immediately separate from thinking and return home to open-hearted awareness.
In this live online session, we will explore practical ways of experiencing local awareness unhook from the separate sense of self. Then, instead of getting caught in a pure awareness witness or not-knowing, we learn to shift into the embodied “not-knowing that knows.” This open-hearted awareness is a new operating system, which has the capacity to liberate traumatic karmic patterns and heal shadow parts.
Loch Kelly is author of the newly released guidebook, The Way of Effortless Mindfulness. He is a psychotherapist and awakening teacher affiliated with Adyashanti. He is the founder of the non-profit Open-Hearted Awareness Institute, whose goal is to make compassionate awakening more available to everyone. After a spontaneous awakening early in his life, he went on to explore how to access, abide in, and help others live from open-hearted awareness. In the early 1980’s, Loch was awarded a fellowship while at Columbia University to study forms of non-dual meditation in Sri Lanka, India and Nepal with teachers from a variety of traditions, including legendary Dzogchen and Mahamudra masters, such as Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche.
He has also worked extensively with the homeless, with families of 9/11 victims, and as an Inter-spiritual Chaplain at Union Theological Seminary. Loch has collaborated with neuroscientists at Yale, UPenn and NYU in the study of how awareness training enhances compassion and wellbeing. He is known for his warm sense of humor, and his practical, non-dual pointers, which help people shift into the freedom that has always been their true nature. His previous book, Shift Into Freedom: The Science and Practice of Open-Hearted Awareness, was awarded two “Best Books of the Year Awards.”
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
Find out more »July 2019
Lynn Marie Lumiere ~ The Healing Power of Awareness ~ 3 Day Online Retreat
Online Retreat with Lynn Marie Lumiere
The Healing Power of Awareness:
Transforming our Relationship with our Self and Others
July 12, 13, 14 (Friday, Saturday and Sunday)
10 am to 1:00 pm (Pacific Time - San Francisco, CA, USA)
Time Zone Converter
This retreat will bring together nondual awakening and nondual psychology, which can facilitate a true healing of our relationship with our self and others. Awakening to our deeper nature alone will not necessarily dissolve the self-hatred so many of us carry in our ego-identity as well as the relational wounding that is held in the body-mind and causes problems in our relationships. And, the ego-identity is incapable of transforming this. It is when awareness meets our psychological wounding that it is freed to return to its original nature, allowing its qualities to shine through our humanness in all our relating.
We will weave between awakening to our essential nature and bringing that to our psychological suffering for healing and transformation. The focus will be as follows:
- Day 1: Awakening Awareness: How to awaken awareness and stabilize as that. Discussion about how to releases the grip of ego conditioning.
- Day 2: Self-Love: How to bring awareness to our self-negativity and release it into true self-love.
- Day 3: Relationship to Others: Healing our relational wounding through self-inquiry and the practice of awakened relating.
This retreat will offer guided meditation, dialogue and experiential exploration, including psychological process and spiritual inquiry.
It would be helpful to read Lynn Marie's book Awakened Relating as part of this retreat (not required).
This Retreat consists of:
- Three live and interactive 3-hour meetings with Lynn Marie in Zoom (a total of 9 hours)
- Audio and video recordings of all meetings
Lynn Marie is sharing her presence and clarity, as well as wisdom derived from many years of experience as a nondual psychotherapist, through offering teaching, guided meditation and dialogue. Her work is dedicated to awakening consciousness and meeting life’s challenges as doorways to greater freedom and is informed by over 40 years of dedicated spiritual and psychological exploration as well as almost 30 years of both committed partnership and practicing psychotherapy. Lynn Marie is a contributing author of The Sacred Mirror: Nondual Wisdom and Psychotherapy, and the author of Awakened Relating: A Guide to Embodying Undivided Love in Intimate Relationships. She lives in Grass Valley, CA and offers people from all over the world online spiritual mentoring and nondual therapy.
For more information, please see www.lynnmarielumiere.com
We meet via Zoom, a platform allowing for live video conversations. This means you will have the opportunity to see/hear and be seen/heard by Lynn Marie and participants. You will also have the option to switch your camera off and remain invisible.
To proceed to Registration, please affirm that you have read and agree to these terms:
click here to READ TERMS.
Registration: $50 - $90
PLEASE REGISTER EARLY if you can.
For questions please contact Sara at sara@opencirclecenter.org.
August 2019
Tom Kurzka ~ Rest in Being: The Love of Your Life
You are invited to join Tom as we explore this experience called me and my world. We’ll begin with an introduction followed by a brief guided meditation, then open dialogue. There is no question or concern that is too unworthy to be addressed. Often the most deep rooted problems are our gateway to the Love that we all are. Through this process Tom holds a sweet tender kindness that makes many who work with him feel held and safe. Within this supportive framework our full humanness is embraced and touched. As we radically accept and meet the worst of the worst, a gentle piercing happens as the entirety of our human experience melts in Being’s all-embracing arms, this ever present Love. We see that we are that Love, this sweetness that unconditionally holds our humanness.
In 2000, after a lifelong battle trying to hold onto his false sense of a separate self, Tom’s fight against Reality spontaneously ended, resulting in a shift into unitive consciousness or Being. Shortly thereafter, Tom was asked to share and has since been holding small group meetings at his home in Oregon and also with a group in Virginia. Tom is known for his humility and a profound acceptance of what is. The guidance moving through him has flavors of Advaita Vedanta, Sufism, Buddhism and, most importantly, an ongoing revelation of living in the moment.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
Find out more »Richard Miller ~ Just Say “Yes”
If to say it once, and once only, then still to say: Yes. And say it complete; say it as if the word filled the whole moment with its absolute saying. Later for "but," Later for "if." Now only the single syllable that is the beloved, that is the world. ~ Gregory Orr
The role of the six senses is to divide what is ever indivisible. Awakening reveals our 7th sense that knows only unity: ‘This’ that is always whole, ever present, that knows only love.
Saying, “Yes,” to each moment affirms our life as unitive love in action. “Yes,” acknowledges our ability to embrace radical authenticity and intimacy with ourselves and with every person and situation we encounter.
Join Richard for this Open Circle online inquiry into our unchanging ground of timeless Being, Awareness, and what lies beyond that underlies and pervades all changing states. Richard’s presentation entails guided meditation, a talk, and spirited intimate dialogue.
“Awakening to nondual Being reveals that all seeking is not for intimacy of object to object, but of the Self with Itself, where no separate other exists.” ~ Richard
Richard's teachings are based upon a lifetime of inquiry into the nature of freedom. Following a series of awakenings all sense of separation fell away while working with his spiritual mentor, Jean Klein. Richard experiences this awakening as always fresh and alive, yet forever opening to itself. Author of iRest Meditation: Restorative Practices for Health, Resiliency, and Well-Being, Yoga Nidra: The Meditative Heart of Yoga, and The iRest Program For Healing PTSD, Richard is the founder of the iRest Institute, and co-founder of the International Association of Yoga Therapists and Institute for Spirituality and Psychology. As well as leading spiritual retreats, Richard is researching the effectiveness of the iRest Meditation protocol that he has developed with soldiers, veterans, students, children, the homeless and people experiencing issues such as PTSD, substance abuse, sleep disorders and chronic pain. For information please visit www.iRest.org.
Suggested donation: $15 to $25
Find out more »