A.H. Almaas
Adam Chacksfield
Ajaya Sommers
Amoda Maa
Andrea Colombu
Ariel Giarretto
Asoulafire
Atul Kumar Mehra
Brooke Thomas
Bruce Damer
C.C. White
Camille Maurine
Carole Griggs
Caverly Morgan
Celeste Hirschman
Charles Eisenstein
Chetan Prakash
Chris Fields
Chuck Hillig
Claudio Tudisco
Coleman Dobson
Craig Holliday
Daniel Siegel
Danielle Harel
David Buckland
David Ellzey
David Thomas
Deborah Johnson
Deepak Chopra
Dholrhythms Dance Co.
Dina Tyler
DJ Dragonfly
Dominique Lando
Donald Hoffman
Dorothy Hunt
Ellen Emmet
Federico Faggin
Francis Bennett
Francis Lucille
Frank Heile
Fritjof Capra
Gabriele Hilberg
Gail Brenner
Geshe Dangsong Namgyal
Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
Ian Whicher
Igor Kufayev
Isa Gucciardi
Jac O'Keeffe
James Fadiman
Jason Turner
Jean Houston
Jean-Philippe Challandes
Jeannie Zandi
Jenny Simon
John Astin
John Prendergast
Jonas Ketterle
Jorge Aranda
Joseph Tafur
Juan Acosta-Urquidi
Judith Blackstone
Julie Brown Yau
Jörn Kroll
Kabir Helminski
Karen Johnson
Katherine Bailes
Kent Hoffman
Kent Welsh
Kimberly Braun
Kiran Trace
Kristen Eykel
Kristin Kirk
Laura Pustarfi
Linda Tucker
Lorin Roche
Lynn Fraser
Lynn Marie Lumiere
Marea Claassen
Marjorie Woollacott
Mark Gober
Mark Wolynn
Marlies Cocheret
Mary McGovern
Maya Luna
Michael Taft
Michaela Boehm
Mikey Siegel
Mirabai Starr
Miranda Macpherson
Nadeshwari Joythimayananda
Nandi Hetenyi
Nick Day
Nicola Amadora
Olivier Mortara
Oscar Segurado
Pamela Wilson
Paul Mills
Paul Stamets
Penny Fenner
Peter Levine
Peter Russell
Richard Rudis
Rick Archer
Rita Venturini
Rob Reich
Robert Dittler
Robert Sapolsky
Robert Thurman
Rollin McCraty
Rupert Spira
Ryan Bush
Sally Kempton
Samantha Sweetwater
Scott Kiloby
Sean Webb
Shakti Caterina Maggi
Silvia Nakkach
Sir Roger Penrose
Siva Kumar
Sky Nelson-Isaacs
Stephen LaBerge
Steve James
Stuart Hameroff
Suzy Adra
Syamala Hari
Terry Patten
Thomas Hübl
Tiffany Barsotti
Tina Rasmussen
Todd Boston
Vanessa Scotto
Vera de Chalambert
Vivienne Verdon-Roe
Wendie Colter
William Keepin
Will Pye
Zhenevere Sophia Dao
Zoran Josipovic
Robert John Malone
Sonya Bibilos
Dorote Lucci
Eric Lyleson
James Michael Seehof
Martin Ball
James Ross Godbe
Orlando Villarraga
There is no right or wrong way to experience the awakened state. Each person has his or her own unique path to walk. Self-honesty is what guides our way on. Honesty coupled with continued introspection has led a small group of awakened people to recognize and subsequentially abandon the nondual state. When one dives deeper than both the dual and non-dual viewpoints a new depth of understanding opens. When non-duality is abandoned as an identifiable reference point there is freedom from the force field of polarities. Both separation and unity are viewpoints; the dual and nondual are both lenses of perception. With this recognition, finally, liberation comes into view. Remembering and forgetting Reality ceases. Preference for being in the nondual state over the dual disappears. Identifications with the unified field, with consciousness, the Absolute and Truth disappear.In this workshop we will explore the territory from the dual viewpoint to the non-dual exploring when each lens helps and when it hinders our evolution. And then, dive with total abandon prior to all reference points. Encouraging self-honesty we will explore where beliefs may be limiting our spiritual maturation. Beliefs maintain attachment to the dualistic viewpoint and can also maintain attachment to the nondual. Freedom shows when there is no attachment to any lens of perception. Effective functioning in the world requires the availability of both lenses of perception; each comes into play as determined by life not by habit, beliefs, values or enlightenment. Freedom lies prior to both the dual and nondual viewpoints, prior to consciousness itself.
Intimacy starts with our connection to ourselves, via our feeling body. Our bodily genius holds the secrets of intimate perception and deep connection. As we become more sensitive to the signals of our body we become more aware of others and true connections can begin. From here there are endless means of artfully deepening and enlivening these connections through communication, touch, and gaze. In this interactive class we will engage in a series of practices to sensitize and open both body and heart, resulting in greater feeling capacity and sensitivity towards yourself and others. From there we will explore ways to deepen into intimacy and dive into the mysteries of erotic friction by engaging with the full spectrum of energetic offerings and touch, from the sublime light to the mysterious dark.
Our dream experiences seem so real to our sleeping minds that it is usually only after we awaken that we recognize our dreams as the mental experiences they are. Happily, there is an important exception: sometimes while dreaming, we become conscious that we are dreaming. This remarkable state of consciousness is referred to as “lucid dreaming” and is learnable and rewarding. Scientific research has proven the objective reality of lucid dreams, and has led to the development of new methods of inducing them. I will provide a brief overview of lucid dreaming, touching on techniques and technology for achieving lucid dreaming; a model of dreaming and waking consciousness; scientific research on mind-body relationships during REM sleep; and several applications of lucid dreaming — exploring consciousness, enhancing creativity, personal development and self-integration, dream yoga, and transcendent experience.Of the many applications and implications of lucid dreaming, the one of greatest, deepest relevance to SaND-folk is its potential to stimulate spiritual awakening. Implicit in lucid dreaming is the knowledge that one is dreaming, which is to say, that one is not awake. Yet this is the paradox: as the beginning of wisdom is “to know that one knows nothing,” so too, the beginning of awakening is to know that one is not awake. If we suppose we already are awake, as we do in both the dreams we call “false awakenings” and also those we do not call dreams at all, but presumptively term “waking life,” how can we even frame the possibility of waking up? We already (believe) we are. Yet as both ancient Eastern spiritual teachings and recent Western psychological science agree, much of ordinary life is lived in such an automatic unconscious manner, that to say that most of us somnambulate through life seems little exaggeration. In the words of Bahauddin Naqshband (d. 1388) “Here we are all of us in a dream caravan. A caravan, but a dream. A dream, but a caravan. And we know which are the dreams. Therein lies the hope.”
It didn’t start with you, but it can end with you. Unconsciously, we relive our mother’s anxiety. We repeat our father’s disappointments. We replicate the failed relationships of our parents and grandparents. Just as we inherit our eye color and blood type, we also inherit the residue from traumatic events that have taken place in our family. Illness, depression, anxiety, unhappy relationships, and financial challenges can all be forms of this unconscious inheritance. In this workshop, Mark Wolynn, author of the award-winning It Didn't Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle (Penguin, 2017), will offer effective ways to break inherited patterns so we can live healthier, happier, more fulfilled lives.
Like a primordial sound, the voice connects us with our true energetic and emotional nature. It becomes a link with our spiritual life by revealing deeper aspects of the self and the spirit world. With the gentle guidance of Silvia Nakkach - renowned internationally as a master musician with a voice that transports the listeners into the heart of devotion – you will experience freeing your voice as a contemplative journey, through a soundscape of shamanic chants, divine melodies, vocal purification, and deep listening practices that reveal the nuances of a voice that feels opened like never before; In this vocal meditation-like states, there is only breath, attention, and the ecstatic magic of tone. Enhancing the sensibility of the subtle in the mind and the body, what we call singing becomes a doorway into inner silence where we are one with pure vibration. The heart is open, the voice is open, the hands are open, the eyes are softly closed—and we experience a kind of spiritual autonomy equal to unconditional love. Connecting the dots between sound healing, science, spirituality, and the wisdom tradition of Nada Yoga, this is a rare occasion to experience the healing potential of the voice with an innovative approach developed by a vocal artist who is also a longtime Buddhist practitioner. Recommended reading: Silvia Nakkach, Free Your Voice (Sound True).
Eros is fading from our lives: our sensitivity, our relationship to each other, to the earth, to birth and death, our embodied longing: these qualities are diminishing in the wake of tremendous alienating forces—and yet eros is the foundation of being itself. Eros includes but also transcends the sexual; it is the call to be; to exist; to become; to emerge; to depend; to transform; to unveil; to fulfill; to cultivate uncompromisingly authentic relations; to need; and to sacrifice. The Erotic Basis of Being program consists of practices and exercises that employ original embodied Daoist movement arts seen through a “Western” mythopoetic and archetypal lens. Master Zhenzan Dao leads students through an exhilarating repertoire of sensitivity and enlivening training—both physical and psychospiritual—based on many of the MogaDao disciplines. This enlivening, which is both individual and communal, is then brought into the extraordinarily creative work space of the SACRA:Immanence Theater company exercises. SACRA is not conventional theater; there are no “roles” to play, only selves to be revealed. Language and body are seamlessly interpenetrated in the experiments. SACRA is a penetrating journey into the authentic, the living experience of the irrepressible life force as it searches, through self-transcendence and group inter-dependence, for the sacred. Although all manner of movement modalities are employed in this work, this is an all-bodies workshop and no particular experience or training history is necessary.
What if it were possible to access the worlds of your imagination, and bring them to life as never before? Jean Houston, Ph.D., is legendary for exploring the outer limits of human possibilities. Now, she combines her years as a philosopher, author, international consultant for the United Nations, and pioneer in personal and social change with the immense discoveries of the mind’s relationship to quantum physics.We know that when we bring local consciousness to a higher resonance in the Quantum field, we access capacities that until now seem more mythic than real. In this powerful workshop, you’ll discover how your mind can unite with the all-encompassing Matrix of consciousness that transcends all space-time categories.Dr. Houston introduces participants into the field that is then created as an enhanced quantum self. In this state, you’ll learn how your imagination can operate at a higher order of discovery and manifestation. You’ll no longer be caught in habits and expectations of the past, but step into an “imaginal” sphere where intention and imagination can be transformed into a new reality.Each of us is defined by an identity that is influenced by our life experiences, culture, and relationships. What if we were born with a blueprint that is larger and more meaningful than our current understanding? Through revolutionary concepts, personal processes and engaging humor, discover the pathways into the fullest expression of yourself and the ability to bring it to life; learn how to harness the quantum self that you are.
In this workshop we will explore the power of the feminine when it is expressed politically and socially. There are many examples of political systems that are governed by the priorities of the Feminine, including the Newar of Nepal, the Hopi of North America, and the Akan of West Africa, to name just a few. Matriarchies are true gender-egalitarian societies that are in no way a mirror image of male dominated societies where power hierarchies are created to hold resources in the hands of a few at the expense of the many. Rather, resources are shared, the nurturing of children is prioritized and the welfare of the group as a whole is emphasized. Rule by consensus, power sharing between cultural groups and fair distribution of goods between men and women, young and old is the norm in cultures which have been organized by women since time immemorial.In this workshop, Drs. Thurman and Gucciardi, who regularly teach the Embracing the Sacred Feminine retreats together, will discuss how we can focus the spiritual aspect of the feminine into the current political climate. They will demonstrate how this focus can be a powerful, transformative force and offer a vision of a new political order that is based on the priorities of feminine forms of power. The surprise, is, in fact, that a political order based on the priorities of the feminine is not new at all. Almost all indigenous cultures were originally matriarchal, and the rise of patriarchal forms of power is actually very new. By returning to the priorities of these earth-based cultures, we can infuse our current culture with the creativity, generativity and possibility that are the hallmarks of feminine power.
The great Spanish mystic, Teresa of Avila, had a vision of the soul as a sacred sphere made up of seven moradas, the spiritual chambers of our “interior castle,” in which each one represents a station on our journey to union with the Divine. While this is not a linear path, Teresa’s instructions for the cultivation of contemplative practice (the “prayer of quiet”) serve to help the seeker navigate the common features of the inner wilderness, leading to peace and connectedness with the Beloved.In this gathering, we weave readings from Teresa’s writings with deep dialog, writing exercises and contemplative practice, paying special attention to how the development of a contemplative life enables us to be of service in a wounded world.
The treatment of trauma is fraught with many pitfalls and “tight corners.” Generally overlooked, however, is an innate relationship between trauma, archetypes and spirituality. Understanding and applying these intimate relationships can suggest therapeutic strategies that help to support and resource trauma clients and support the genuine transformation of traumatic experience.
The “awe-full” qualities of horror and terror may share essential structural, psycho-physiological and phenomenological roots with those underlying transformative states such as flow, awe, presence, timelessness and ecstasy. Our organisms are designed with primitive-instinctual-proclivities that move us to extraordinary feats of focused attention and action when we perceive that our lives are threatened. The bridging and “owning” of these survival capacities of readiness, “slow motion” perception, and intense, focused, alertness with more “ordinary” states of consciousness promotes the experience of “timelessness” and presence sometimes referred to, in meditation systems, as “the eternal now.”
In addition, the effect of trauma involves a profound compression of activation. The ability to access, and integrate the rhythmic movements of this “bound energy” determines whether it will be destructive or potentially vitalizing.
In the Yoga’s of the East, awakening of the “Kundalini” has long been utilized as a vehicle for spiritual transformation. In trauma, a similar mobilization of (survival) activation is evoked, but with such intensity and rapidity that it is overwhelming. If we can gradually access, titrate and integrate this “energy” into our nervous system and psychic structures then the instinctual survival response imbedded within trauma can also catalyze authentic spiritual- transformation. Most individuals, however, are frightened by these involuntary bodily reactions and brace against them, causing even more fear to develop.
Traditionally, therapies have attempted to change perceptions of the world by means of reason and insight, with conditioning and behavior modification, and with medication. However, perceptions remain fundamentally unchanged until the internal experience of the body changes. In this workshop, we will look at some simple ways to help clients open to and even embrace their spontaneous bodily reactions facilitating not only movement out of traumatic states but access to spiritual dimensions that support the “deep-self”. The class will involve didactic material, live demonstration, experiential practice exercises, video material and some time for case discussions.
This in-depth workshop based on Dr. Dan Siegel’s new book provides practical instruction for mastering the Wheel of Awareness, a life-changing tool for cultivating more focus, presence, and peace in one’s day-to-day life. With a look at the science that underlies meditation’s effectiveness, this workshop will teach attendees how to harness the power of the principle “Where attention goes, neural firing flows, and neural connection grows.” Siegel reveals how developing a Wheel of Awareness practice to focus attention, open awareness, and cultivate kind intention can literally help you grow a healthier brain and reduce fear, anxiety, and stress in your life.Whether you have no experience with a reflective practice or are an experienced practitioner, Aware: The Science and Practice of Presence will help you to become more focused and present, as well as more energized and emotionally resilient in the face of stress and the everyday challenges life throws your way.
“Creativity can be seen as a state of natural flow, one that spontaneously and effortlessly gives birth not only to manifest form, but to all experiences of body, energy, and mind. This state of flow, which has its roots in openness, occurs only in the absence of hope and fear. It is at once naturally joyful, peaceful, compassionate, expansive, and powerful.”“When you know how to tap fully into this open, creative flow, its beneficial qualities can extend to any area of your life. You can paint more masterful paintings. Your music can have more depth of connection. Your writing can be more genuine and moving. You will be able to solve problems at work, resolve conflicts with loved ones, or even shift your thought patterns with more natural spontaneity. “- Tenzin Wangyal RinpocheThe Great Perfection of Creativity, Shambhala Sun Magazine, November 2012Join us for this opportunity to free yourself from creative obstacles, nurture your capacity for joyful self-expression, and make positive changes in your life.This retreat is for anyone who seeks to usher a vision into reality — whether through creative problem solving, personal growth, or bringing creative artistry to a whole new level.The Tibetan spiritual traditions tell us that unleashing our dynamic creative energy is a matter of recognizing and tapping into the wellspring of creativity that already exists in us. Tenzin Rinpoche will instruct and guide simple meditation practices of body, speech and mind that can help you to:- recognize and clear physical, energetic, and mental obstacles blocking your creative flow- connect with and trust in your innate creative potential- discover the inner strength and confidence that can allow your creativity to naturally blossom
Hayes Foyer
Conference Registration Opens
Reception music by Suellen Primost
Silver Creek Dining Room
Dinner
Hayes Ballroom
PL1. The Mystery of Being Human
Hayes Ballroom
Opening
This performance theater piece, with audience co-creation, establishes the atmosphere of human mutual dependency, what Zhen Dao calls the "eros bond" of the ecology of need, vulnerability, honesty, and emotional bravery that makes all of life, and certainly learning, possible. A choreography and choir are created literally on-the-spot, and the themes of this work that are foundational, and the ones that emerge inside its beauty, are—even in this short space of time—the themes that make our lives ultimately significant, which is to say profoundly human and spiritualized. THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES is, in short, a theatrical sanctum of invocation to our profoundest suggestibility.
The treatment of trauma is fraught with many pitfalls and “tight corners.” Generally overlooked, however, is an innate relationship between trauma, archetypes and spirituality. Understanding and applying these intimate relationships can suggest therapeutic strategies and support the genuine transformation of traumatic experience.
The “awe-full” qualities of horror and terror may share essential structural, psycho-physiological and phenomenological roots with those underlying transformative states such as flow, awe, presence, timelessness and ecstasy. Our organisms are designed with primitive-instinctual-proclivities that move us to extraordinary feats of focused attention and action when we perceive that our lives are threatened. The bridging and “owning” of these survival capacities of readiness, “slow motion” perception, and intense, focused, alertness with more “ordinary” states of consciousness promotes the experience of “timelessness” and presence sometimes referred to, in meditation systems, as “the eternal now.”
In addition, the effect of trauma involves a profound compression of activation. The ability to access, and integrate the rhythmic movements of this “bound energy” determines whether it will be destructive or potentially vitalizing.
In the Yoga’s of the East, awakening of the “Kundalini” has long been utilized as a vehicle for spiritual transformation. In trauma, a similar mobilization of (survival) activation is evoked, but with such intensity and rapidity that it is overwhelming. If we can gradually access, titrate and integrate this “energy” into our nervous system and psychic structures then the instinctual survival response imbedded within trauma can also catalyze authentic spiritual- transformation.
To be human we have the opportunity to grow all the way to enlightenment. But to think of the human stage as simply for enlightenment shortchanges the potential of humanity. It is through the human that the spiritual nature underlying the universe actualizes its potential in a way that it knows. I will address not only the potential for nonduality and enlightenment, but the inherent value in being human and having a true authentic human life. Recognizing that being human we are the locus through which the ultimate nature actualizes its potentialities we see that we are not only indispensable for spiritual realization, but that we can know and experience the infinite potentiality of Being, which is magical and endless. Our human life can be a magnificent adventure, a wormhole through which the secrets of being arise and express themselves. Realization or awakening is simply the beginning of living such true and complete human life.
Merging technology with shamanic and multilayer sources of light, sound, and the voice, the audience is invited to take a musical journey to the land of tone magic.
San Jose
Experiential: Embodying Infinite Love: Waking Up through Movement & Visualization, Vivienne Verdon-Roe
The form of qigong I teach was created in 1989 by a Chinese man who was recognized as a genius at a young age. He studied with 19 Grandmasters, became a doctor of Chinese and Western medicine, and was steeped in Daoism, Buddhism, Confusionism and Quantum Physics.
All types of illness have been documented as being healed using these practices, including my own 20-year struggle with Lyme disease.
And the practices have a profound effect on our ego identity. Having experiences of opening to the timeless infinite source of all existence gradually (or not so gradually) awakens us out of the illusory separate self. The limiting patterns of belief about self and world dissolve on the energetic level. Empty of old programming, our essence is revealed—a deep inner joy and peace, independent of outer circumstances. The experience is being infinite Love embodied.
In this session, we will have the opportunity to experience this transformation together as I guide us through moving meditations. The standing practices can be modified or done sitting or lying down, while still following the visualizations.
Beginners and experienced practitioners most welcome. Your unlimited potential is awaiting activation!
The form of qigong I teach was created in 1989 by a Chinese man who was recognized as a genius at a young age. He studied with 19 Grandmasters, became a doctor of Chinese and Western medicine, and was steeped in Daoism, Buddhism, Confusionism and Quantum Physics. All types of illness have been documented as being healed using these practices, including my own 20-year struggle with Lyme disease.And the practices have a profound effect on our ego identity. Having experiences of opening to the timeless infinite source of all existence gradually (or not so gradually) awakens us out of the illusory separate self. The limiting patterns of belief about self and world dissolve on the energetic level. Empty of old programming, our essence is revealed—a deep inner joy and peace, independent of outer circumstances. The experience is being infinite Love embodied. In this session, we will have the opportunity to experience this transformation together as I guide us through moving meditations. The standing practices can be modified or done sitting or lying down, while still following the visualizations. Beginners and experienced practitioners most welcome. Your unlimited potential is awaiting activation!
Hayes Ballroom
PL2. Celebrating The Human
Geshe Tenzin leads the audience on a meditation experience to unveil the obstacles that block creativity and host them in a way that they dissolve and make space for a space of love and clarity.
Hayes Ballroom
Humans: Are we Just Another Primate? Are we Just a Bunch of Neurons? Robert Sapolsky
Regardless of the dazzling complexity of humans, at the end of the day, we are a type of mammal, primate, ape, operating on the same basic types of neurons found throughout the animal kingdom. Are we just another primate? Are we just the sum of our neurons? In this lecture, Sapolsky considers the unlikely realms where humans are merely on a continuum with other species….until you look closely.
Most people roll their eyes if someone tells them that they have the attributes of a genius. The fact is that few have accessed the vast universe of imagination, creativity, problem solving and confidence that these complex times require.
In her international teaching for the past 60 years, Jean Houston, Ph.D., now shares what she has learned from working emerging cultures the world over. She introduces you to what she calls the “Quantum Blueprint” that she believes everyone carries, but seldom accesses. In this fascinating presentation, she’ll take you on a wild ride into your own original mind and help you to unpack the infinite possibilities in this exciting new field of consciousness.
You’ll be pleasantly surprised as you discover higher states of functioning and insights that may have been lost to you by years of conditioning and limiting messages. You will think, feel, and perceive as if you were standing on a star field of possibilities. Once there, you’ll see how entangled you are with all life and how your activation can impact the networks to which you belong.
If you thought genius belonged to others, get ready. You’ll find within yourself the courage, passion, diligence, joy, creativity, spiritual depth, and unimagined capacities that have always awaited your awareness of them. You will leave empowered by your own unique genius, believing in your gifts and inspired to bring them to life.
Interlude
Our human-ness will become more and more threatened by AI (artificial intelligence), the augmentation of biological intelligence by machine intelligence, and those who believe that the human entity is nothing more than information that can stored in a memory device. As the world is increasingly governed by AI and as humans inhabit virtual realities more than the realm of nature and interpersonal relationships, we may lose our most human attributes, becoming desensitized, depersonalized, without empathy, bereft of intimacy. The great sacred traditions basically agree that the greatest possibility of human conscious life is to upload our consciousness to an energetic body. The goal of preserving our sensory memories belies a complete misunderstanding of what the human being and individual consciousness essentially is. Society is unprepared emotionally, intellectually, economically, and spiritually for the challenge. Without an adequate articulated metaphysics we may not be able to defend our very human-ness from slipping gradually into a non- or post-human world.
Edenvale
C1. Integrated Coversations
Edenvale
Conversation with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
Guadalupe
Experiential: More Life, Please: Prayer, Participation and Living Non-Dually in this World, Samantha Sweetwater
To live is to participate. To love is to connect. To pray is to offer the depths of our wanting in an intimate dialogue with the responsive fabric of an intelligent universe of which we are a part.
There is a prayer at the center your life.
Every single being, no matter how large or small, has a prayer at the center of its existence. That prayer is a prayer for more life.
“More life, please,” sings the mourning dove. “More life, please,” roars the lion. “More life please,” gurgles the tiny stream as it tumbles downhill, called by the sea."
You are no different. Implicit in the fact of your incarnation is the prayer of wanting more life. The path of prayer is an art of living fully while surrendering. It is a way of showing up and letting go, at the same time.
During this hourlong workshop, learn and practice a powerful a universal methodology for prayer that you can easily integrate into your daily life. Explore the simple grammar of, "thank you," "help me," and "I want," and why these specific grammatical tools are the most fundamental and effective levers you can use to offer up your deepest desires in a dialogue with the greater-than-human universe.
Come play with these gateways to self-awareness, manifestation and unimaginable happiness.
"The only thing that will change is your whole life." ~Barrett Eagle Bear
Hayes Ballroom
Panel: Appreciating The Human, A.H. Almaas; Kabir Helminski; Robert Sapolsky
Many teachings do not appreciate that the human being is important for realization and liberation. That there is no awakening without humans. But some do, which is a different kind of appreciation than the scientific exploration of the mystery of being human. We want to discuss what is it to be a human being, both biologically and spiritually, in order for us to value who and what we are, and our necessity for the worlds we experience and know. A dialogue and discussion, mediated by Zaya Benazzo.
Madrone
C6. Becoming Wholly Human
Madrone
Embodying the In-Between: Healing the Soul Wound and Becoming Wholly Human, Nandi Hetenyi
We are made of the earth and divine, life force energy itself. We live in-between what is completely solid and dense and what is light and energy and formless. Human is this embodiment of the in-between; this great, alchemical mystery of consciousness and life force and animal. Soul.
Our soul is this life force energy expressing itself as us at this time. It is our soul that is here, in this life, having this journey. This soul is our embodied consciousness that arises in the center of our hearts. This is the core essence of who we are.
Most, if not all, of us experience a wounding our soul in this lifetime from other humans who are also confused about who they are, disconnected from their true nature. This is the soul wound. This soul wound is often emotional in nature and becomes the ground that births shame from our unmetabolized pain.
This unmetabolized pain makes us dislike our own humanity and separates us from our own divine nature and life force energy. It is through this soul wounding we forget who we are and how to find the way back to the center of our own divinity.
In our culture, pain is often pathologized, numbed, ignored, looked down upon, repressed or otherwise made wrong, perpetuating and deepening the effects of our soul wounding. Separation is encouraged to fuel our economy.
Healing the soul wound is a path towards embodying the in-between. It is healing our relationship with source through healing our unmetabolized pain and reconnecting us with something greater than ourselves. This is healing our human hearts and restoring our divine nature.
Drawing from Vajrayana Buddhism, shamanism and psychoanalytic concepts, this presentation will discuss spiritual approaches to healing the soul wound, the wisdom of emotions and the sacred nature of being human
Monterey Room
C2. Portals to Creativity & Awakening
The mystery and power of the creative process can perhaps be best understood through the lens of the birthing process. The creative portal that opens during the birthing process is the same portal that opens when the creative impulse moves through the artist or scientist who is seeking inspiration. The portal is very clearly delineated and articulated in birthing in a way that is not always so easy to perceive in other types of creative processes. In this talk, we will explore the nature of the creative portal in the birthing process and learn what it shows us about the creative portals that open in other artistic and scientific endeavors. We will learn how the creative portal supports and directs inspiration and how we can align ourselves with it in order to better manifest what we envision. We will also discover what the creative portal asks of us and what kinds of practices we may have to engage in to be able to best serve its requirements. We will explore what happens when we are not in alignment with the portal and how this affects our ability to receive and direct inspiration and intention into that which we wish to manifest. Through experiential work, we will learn how to identify the creative portals in our lives and how to awaken them. Through this exploration, we can learn how to align our lives as human beings with the universal forces of creativity and generativity. By becoming a student of the creative portal, we can learn how to ground these processes in our everyday lives so that we can participate most fully with the mystery of the forces that inspire and guide our lives. This talk is based on the Tracking Spirit in the Birth Environment retreat that Isa has taught for over 10 years.
Morgan Hill
C4. Awakened Relating
Morgan Hill
Leaving No Stone Unturned on the Spiritual Path: The Art of Making Peace with Your Past, Gail Brenner
Are you still plagued by your past—even though you know it’s an illusion? Do you still get stuck—even though you’ve tasted the bliss of your true nature? Many of us on a spiritual path find this confusing. How can we know the truth yet still feel like the pain of the past lives on in our minds and bodies?
In our everyday lives, we feel resentful, blame our parents, and feel hopeless that we will ever find the abiding peace and happiness we just know is possible. Even with our deepest desire to live as the timeless unfolding of life, we find ourselves stuck in patterns rooted in our past such as addictions, chronic anxiety and depression, and difficulties in relationships. We struggle with fear and feelings of lack and inadequacy.
Holding onto stories from the past and repeating them in our minds keeps the sense of the personal, broken self in place—and veils the infinite aliveness of our true nature. Understanding this human suffering is the gateway to being free of it.
In this presentation, we’ll explore how consciousness contracts into believing that you are the one who is separate and wounded. We’ll study how conditioned patterns develop early on in life and learn how to identify when conditioning takes hold. Together we’ll discover that you can relate to your present moment experience in a fresh way that untangles you from the old stories and softens the emotions that underlie them.
The truth of who you are is already free of the past. And it’s right here, right now, to be known and experienced. Now available to explore beyond the old, familiar ways of being, you’re primed to discover what’s always been here…reality: silent, still, and radically free.
On the Patio
Emergent Connections
San Jose
Experiential: The Deep Insights of Arousal , Danielle Harel; Celeste Hirschman
Presence is foundational to engaging fully the moment-to-moment of lived experience. Bringing arousal into your presence practice can move you beyond engagement into enjoyment and insight. You will find deeper levels of awareness both of yourself and others and uncover hidden information that can inform decision-making in your life. Additionally, understanding what arouses you psychologically deepens insights into your wounds and potential creative pathways to healing. Aroused embodiment also offers you a lived experience of safety and strength, and enhances your ability to detect and move away from unsafe experiences. Finally, it gives you a pathway to embodied empathy and deeper insight and connection into your partners and loved ones. Embodied arousal and an understanding of our own sexual psyche can be a guide to a life truly worth living.
In this workshop, Danielle Harel, Ph.D., and Celeste Hirschman, M.A., Co-Founders of the Somatica® Method of Sex and Relationship Coaching will take you on a journey to discovering your erotic psyche and deepening embodied arousal. Through these practices, you will learn more about who you are, how you want to live in the world, regain trust in your inner wisdom, and reconnect with your internal motivation to follow through.
San Juan Bautista
C5. Embodied Reality
Mark Gober is the author of An End to Upside Down Thinking: Dispelling the Myth That the Brain Produces Consciousness, and the Implications for Everyday Life. He will be discussing the findings that have led him to the conclusion that changed his worldview 180-degrees: consciousness is the basis of all reality rather than matter. He explores independent areas of evidence, including quantum physics, psychedelics, savants, remote viewing, telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, communications with the deceased, and children who remember previous lives. The implications are immense for science, technology, and medicine as well as happiness, life/death, relationships, and even world peace. The shift to a consciousness-centric picture of reality is regarded by some as the next “Copernican-scale revolution.” Mark’s thesis has been endorsed by well-known thinkers such as Jack Canfield, Dr. Eben Alexander, Dr. Dean Radin, Dr. Ervin Laszlo, Goldie Hawn, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, Dr. Larry Dossey, and others
San Martin
C3. Substratum of Being
San Martin
Discovering the True Guru Inside and Out: Beyond the Illusion of the Perfect Teacher, Sally Kempton
We live in an age when spiritual authority feels suspect—and for good reason. Yet we also intuit our own need for models, mentors, and even human embodiments of truth. So what does a human guru actually do for us?
The tantric traditions distinguish between the human teacher and the guru principle itself. The guru principle is a cosmic function, baked into reality. It is the power we often call ‘grace’ or ‘revelation,’ which awakens our intuitive connection to truth. A human teacher may carry the guru principle, but can never own it or block our access to it. us to our real nature and A human teacher can carry the guru principle. But the true guru is a a cosmic function: the power of grace that awakens us to our real nature and to the truth of our interconnectedness.
In short, no human being is your ‘real’ guru. The real guru is the universal principle of cosmic revelation, the subtle power that kindles our own ability to see into the heart of reality. hidden truths of reality unfold within your consciousness. But there’s a paradox. Though the guru principle lives in each of us—it often needs to be kindled by a transmission from another human. This paradox is the heart of the delicate relationship between practioners and our teachers.
This presentation reveals how the guru-principle actually functions, and offers principles that can help you discern the true experience of the guru from the myths.
"Recent advances in the field of mind/body medicine suggest the importance of including intuition when treating clients, based on theory and empirical research from traumatology, psychoneuroimmunology, spiritual psychology, and nursing theory, among others. [Marks-Tarlow, 2012; Hassani-Abdi, 2016; Johansson-Palmqvist-Ronnenberg, 2017].
This presentation aligns with the conference theme of ""The Mystery of Being Human,"" and the topic of Trauma, in relation to uncovering the hidden mysteries of the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual/energetic impacts of trauma on the human experience. Current research and case studies will be presented and discussed.
Medical Intuition is defined as a system of expanded perception gained through the development of the human sense of intuition. It focuses on a holistic approach to health and wellness with the use of visualization skills and intuitive scanning to obtain information from the body's physical systems and biofield. It is also designed to address the energetic influence of thoughts, beliefs and emotions, and how they affect the health and well-being of the client.
As the body of literature on intuition grows, the healthcare field can be broadened to include the practical use of Medical Intuition to assist in alleviating the long-term effects of trauma, including PTSD and early life experiences. It is designed to reveal the origins and details of trauma events, including age and life circumstances, unconscious decisions and potential future effects that may correspond to a client's present state of illness, imbalance or disease. This method is learnable and applicable to any clinical setting.
Medical Intuition offers a new vision for personalized healthcare, including insights for long-term wellness. Clients often report profound perceptions of ""finding the missing pieces,"" and a path to increased compliance and recovery in their healing journey."
San Juan Bautista
Embodied Nondual Life : Nondual Archetypal Integral Consciousness, Kent Welsh
Embodied Nondual Life is life’s flow as the conscious flowering of heart’s undivided intimacy with divine emptiness.
Nondual Archetypal Intregral Consciousness: These words each point us towards deeper realms of reality and each illustrate core flavors of the embodiment of divine emptiness; of the lived unique form body of each of us as the unity and uniqueness of Undivided Being.
In this meeting we will explore together these four realms and their emergent potential and illumination of an Embodied Nondual Life.
We will discuss anything people wish to discuss, relevant to Buddha at the Gas Pump, either regarding its effect on me, or points that often come up in interviews. For instance, people often ask:
_what effect interviewing so many awakened people has had on me,
_how I might have changed over the nine years I've been doing this,
_what I have learned,
_does incorporating or harmonizing so many different perspectives enrich or confuse me?,
_do I ever get tired of doing this?
Ideas that often come up in interviews include:
_whether the end of seeking is the end of spiritual development,
_whether or not there are levels and stages of enlightenment,
_whether different awakened teachers experience and represent different aspects of Reality,
_whether one can be an enlightened atheist,
_blind spots that students might have in relationship to teachers,
_the importance of integrating awakening to the Absolute in relative life,
_the individuality as an instrument of the Divine
Morgan Hill
Awakened Relating: Embodying our Infinite Nature in Finite Human Relationships for Healing and Transformation, Lynn Marie Lumiere
As human beings we struggle to find lasting harmony in relationships. Despite our frustration, the drive for intimacy and love propels us to seek this. Ultimately, our search leads to the discovery that the root cause of all relationship struggles is the commonly held belief that we are separate from love and from each other. This belief, along with the negative experiences and insecurities that arises from it, can cause endless problems in our intimate relating.
Living in imagined separation and duality has resulted in relational wounding for most of us. Therefore, in addition to the pain of imagined separation, we may be struggling with attachment and developmental trauma that limits our capacity to be in harmonious relating.
It is only possible to fully heal and transform our relational patterns and wounding in the infinite wisdom, love and compassion of our infinite nature. Our finite human nature is not capable of this. So, our struggle to find deep connection and harmony in relationship is always pointing us back to our infinite nature, if we are willing to see.
True intimacy cannot be found while believing we are separate selves in duality. This is found through connecting with our true, nondual nature and being that, together. We may get glimpses of our nondual nature in dualistic relating, but the ongoing deeper intimacy that we all long for eludes us until we recognize and begin to rest as our true identity.
This presentation will include direct pointing to our infinite nature and practical guidance about how to embody that in real human relationship issues such conflict resolution, communication issues, sexuality and lack of self-love.
Silent awareness is mostly drawn to light, sound, color, beauty, movement, patterns and contrast. In the wilderness, we can feel if a huge unseen presence is gazing at us. Or feel the notable absence of people - that hush that can soothe or hasten you home.
At the ocean, seeing is invited to widen and expand past habitual focus - though It is rare to notice silent space itself, between, behind and within it all. The vastness of an African savannah or the evening sky invites us into that which holds everything.
Our gaze is drawn primarily to form rather than to the essence at the heart of everything. And we tend to naturally overlook that which does not move in favor of the ever-changing display of ordinary life. What if it is the unmoving that notices and delights in movement? What if it is silence that adores music?
How lucky we are to have and be an omnidirectional awareness wearing a body that amplifies perception. A curiosity that can formlessly explore the infinity of life, the seen and unseen. And then reflect upon, share and celebrate!
This short lecture will give a quick overview of what happens physiologically and emotionally as we age, or engage in long-term relationships. It will provide valuable information for those hoping to understand what can bring more aliveness into their sexuality, as well as for practitioners working with couples or clients with low sexual desire.
San Juan Bautista
Strong Back, Open Heart A Path of Embodiment of the Divine Masculine and Feminine, Craig Holliday
Conventional Reality sees separation as fundamentally inherent, our self as distinct from all other aspects of existence and from the source and origin of existence itself.
In Nondual Consciousness there is no absolute separation. Existence and nonexistence are undivided. Nondual is beyond and inclusive of unity and uniqueness.
In this pioneering age of the Awakening of Nondual Consciousness, it is important to discriminate and to include the core aspects of its embodied life expression. That is, to remove the bathwater, but to include all the facets of the baby’s essence.
After meeting with over 10,000 individuals in the intimate setting of personal nondual psychotherapy sessions and in small groups, it has become dramatically apparent that there is a need for the realization of both the strength and clarity of our masculine nature and the balance of our heart-centered compassionate feminine qualities for a healthy integration in the human psyche.
It is through both these qualities of our True Nature that we are able to live in a way which is not confused by the play of life, and simultaneously, willing to compassionately embrace our humanity and evolving edge. We must be willing to let go of an "either or" approach and instead adopt a "both and" approach to our spiritual lives. This all begins by first acknowledging that the masculine and feminine aspects of God are available to us all and that they are the very building blocks of our own Divine Nature.
What does this look like in a practical everyday reality? It is the willingness to face everything, with a strong back, an unwavering clear mind rooted in reality and the strength to handle the storms of life’s confusion with an absolute love and compassion.
My classical guitar repertoire consists of many well known pieces ranging from Spanish classical, Bach, F. Sor, romantic movie themes, and modern pieces composed by unknown classical guitar players. I only pick the most beautiful ones.
Hayes Ballroom
PL3. Being Human
Our dream experiences seem so real to our sleeping minds that it is usually only after we awaken that we recognize our dreams as the mental experiences they are. Happily, there is an important exception: sometimes while dreaming, we become conscious that we are dreaming. This remarkable state of consciousness is referred to as “lucid dreaming” and is learnable and rewarding. Scientific research has proven the objective reality of lucid dreams, and has led to the development of new methods of inducing them. I will provide a brief overview of lucid dreaming, touching on techniques and technology for achieving lucid dreaming; a model of dreaming and waking consciousness; scientific research on mind-body relationships during REM sleep; and several applications of lucid dreaming — exploring consciousness, enhancing creativity, personal development and self-integration, dream yoga, and transcendent experience.
Of the many applications and implications of lucid dreaming, the one of greatest, deepest relevance to SAND-folk is its potential to stimulate spiritual awakening. Implicit in lucid dreaming is the knowledge that one is dreaming, which is to say, that one is not awake. Yet this is the paradox: as the beginning of wisdom is “to know that one knows nothing,” so too, the beginning of awakening is to know that one is not awake. If we suppose we already are awake, as we do in both the dreams we call “false awakenings” and also those we do not call dreams at all, but presumptively term “waking life,” how can we even frame the possibility of waking up? We already (believe) we are. Yet as both ancient Eastern spiritual teachings and recent Western psychological science agree, much of ordinary life is lived in such an automatic unconscious manner, that to say that most of us somnambulate through life seems little exaggeration. In the words of Bahauddin Naqshband (d. 1388) “Here we are all of us in a dream caravan. A caravan, but a dream. A dream, but a caravan. And we know which are the dreams. Therein lies the hope.”
Hayes Ballroom
Reclaiming Emotion: How Spiritual Consumerism and Scientific Materialism are Damaging our Faith in the Cycles of Life, Zhen Dao
Emotion moves us, changes us, visits us and seems to come from “nowhere” and sometimes to disturb what we thought was our “equanimity,” our calm, our sense of control over our lives. In the 21stcentury, our lives seem more out of control than ever; we feel that we are not so much living as being lived by forces outside of ourselves. We feel programmed from without, distracted constantly against our inmost instincts, and prey to massive forces—sociopolitical, consumerist, technological—that we cannot control. Therefore we have begun to suspect emotion, and to treat it as something that we must control; we feel that emotion is “bad” for us, something that is deterring us from our right and prescribed course, from our rewards. To Zhen Dao this represents nothing less than a tragic loss of faith in being itself. For emotions—like Daoist conceptions of 5 Element Theory—have patterns which fulfill themselves through faith. Zhen Dao will talk about the spiritual purpose of emotion, in particular the so-called “negative emotions,” for no wind, no weather, no authentic tempest in the human soul can be wrong. Rather, it must be seen (and felt) all the way through to its magnificence, that is to say its value and significance for a whole life—and for all of being that touches and depends on that life.
Shakyamuni the Buddha took the mystery out of being human by understanding, experiencing, and manifesting it to its fullest extent. He declared that the human life form is created by the humans themselves by developing their wisdom and love/compassion. He saw it as a major achievemtn of animal life, and showed how it serves as a platform to develop that wisdom and love/compassion to its consummate perfection. Wisdom is the complete knowledge of reality, distinguishing the real from the false, starting with critical discernment and summiting into full experience. That experience was found to yield a bliss of total relief from fear and pain, a bliss that fulfils and satisfies beyond all expectation and conception. Love is the natural and spontaneous overflow of that bliss toward others in its experience of their beauty and natural possession of the very same bliss as their very selves. Compassion is the articulation of that bliss in art, driven by its all-embracing recognition that others’ misknowing of their own nature holds them apart from knowing their own natural bliss, and powerfully effective reflecting the suffering beings’ reality of freedom from that separateness.
The “mystery”—the hiddenness—then is the bliss-born beings’ ignorance’s ability to obscure their own reality from their actual experience. The Buddha’s enlightenment encompassed all that, it was no less an enlightenment than the Western one that has unfolded since the 17th century from the materialist disruption of the monotheistic thought control that had crippled European consciousness for over a millennium. To that rational scientific enlightenment coming to understand the material world, the Buddha’s enlightenment added a complete understanding of the mental and spiritual worlds. These two enlightenments are now in the process of meeting and slowly merging. Tonight we will celebrate together that merging, expressing our joy that it is happening at an accelerating pace, overcoming various resistances.
Edenvale
C7. Dreaming, Awakening & Wellbeing
Guadalupe
Experiential
Yoga offered by Nadeshwari is inclusive and exclusive, vibrates freely between the immanent and the transcendent, does not stop at the asanas and does not divide the spiritual world from the material world. In the practice that She transmits a continuous encounter is created between the experience of the physical body aimed at experiencing fluidity, vigor or stasis and the energetic approach to the spiritual path.
The Sacred Shapes sequence is a dynamic method that uses a language of symbols to experience the universal’s energies; Sacred forms moves the dormant and forgotten creative energy of our second Chakra (belly, genital organs, relationships, sensuality ...), makes it savor to our body and gives it to the surrounding environment thus restoring a balance between what we feel and what we want to express in the world.
We will experience a union of soft sacred forms, with lines and angles of the Barathanatyam temple dance that form particular energetic filters in the body so that there is conscious purification and directing of energy. The movements are simple and affordable for everyone, just as nature teaches us.
This Yoga does not derive from a single lineage but flows directly from the source - it is Love. It integrates the creativity and the cyclicity of the female quality (Shakti) with the presence and the linearity of the masculine (Shiva). To this end, several approaches are used: Jnana Yoga (explaining the basis of how the nervous system works at the Ayurvedic and physiological level according to the emerging sciences), Hatha Yoga (you enter the body through movements such as asanas or circular and fluid sequences ), moments of listening, Mantra, Nada Yoga (Yoga of sound) and Pranayama (breath control).
In these difficult times, we are faced with the dark side of humanity that acts more like animal than what our real potential can be which is a facet of the divine. What does it take to recognize our true human qualities and express them in the world?Being human is not something we should take for granted. Just because we are born Homo Sapiens does not mean we understand what being human is. We are each responsible for discovering what it is to be a true human being. When we explore our nature and find what is the real authentic presence of human beingness, we begin the process of transformation like a butterfly one form of life to quite another creature. Then it is possible to take the next step of expressing this Divine realization in the world while being free from its constraints. We can become conduits for pure awareness and consciousness to support this sacred right in one another. This can make it possible for people of the world to take the next step in the evolution of the true human being.
Madrone
C12. Essential Wholeness
Madrone
Essential Wholeness - Integral Psychotherapy, Spiritual Awakening and the Enneagram, Eric Lyleson
Essential Wholeness uses the relative truths of neuroscience and evolutionary biology to understand what allows people, all living systems, to evolve and thrive. It recognizes how these processes are inseparable from the absolute truth of Being. From this nondual foundation we can explore how the vast array of human capacities that inform psychotherapeutic and spiritual methods can be organized into a practical integrated model of knowing what to do, with whom and when.
The Enneagram provides us with a practical fractal-like representation of these relative and absolute truths with enough complexity to be inclusive and enough simplicity to be usable. It show us how the suffering that brings us to psychotherapy and spirituality occurs when we fear, judge or ignore these realities, while overly identifying with one-ninth of our essential wholeness causing repetitive vicious cycles of thinking, feeling and behaving.
The symbol describes cycles of change starting from one level of homeostasis (phase 9) around the circle to a higher level of homeostasis with each cycle transcending and including the previous level. It also describes how the essence of being in response to life demands, differentiates into one of nine, what Almaas refers to as “essential qualities.” For example, when maintaining homeostasis we draw on the quality of peace; or when addressing our inadequacies (phase 4) we draw upon forgiveness.
The suffering caused by ego fixations amplifies the more we lose trust in life and being, and overuse the capacities and the essential quality associated with one of the nine phases. Type Nine for example, becomes too identified with maintaining homeostasis and the essential quality of Peace.
Psychotherapy in this model helps people rest in the emptiness of their true nature, loosening them from their ego identity so their ecology of resources can emerge in response to life’s challenges and opportunities.
Monterey Room
C10. Conscious Agent
Monterey Room
Impossible Truths: Exploring Research at the Boundary where Science and Mystical Experience Meet, Marjorie Woollacott
At the beginning of her professional career, neuroscientist and researcher, Dr. Marjorie Woollacott had no doubt that the brain was solely a physical entity and was controlled by chemical reactions and electrical impulses. She was sure that the loss of brain activity meant the end of existence. The first time she meditated, however, she had a glimpse of another possibility an undeniable experience of unlikely and uncharted energy. Since this time Dr. Woollacott has been actively exploring research on the nature of consciousness. Through her integration of data from objective science and subjective spirituality, Woollacott breaks open the issue of human consciousness and investigates the existence of the non-physical and infinitely powerful human mind.
In this talk Dr. Woollacott shares her own research and key studies from other laboratories supporting a non-dual reality, in which consciousness is primary. She will discuss studies on the mystical experiences of meditators, near-death experiences, and end-of-life experiences, including terminal lucidity and end-of-life telepathic communication.
She will explore questions such as What catalyzes transformation in the life of materialist scientists and others? When a person has Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, which has destroyed the brain, is it possible to return to perfect lucidity and communicate with their loved ones, shortly before death? When a family member living far from us who is dying appears to us telepathically at the moment of their death, is it just our own imagination or can this be verified? The answers to these questions suggest that consciousness does not require a functioning brain and validate the presence of clear awareness at times when the brain is compromised or an individual is pronounced clinically dead.
Morgan Hill
C8. Wholeness Amidst Fragmentation
Morgan Hill
Illuminating the Intersection between Biology, Emotion, and Spirituality, Joseph Tafur
Drawing from his firsthand experience at a traditional healing center near Iquitos, in the Peruvian Amazon, Dr. Tafur will review a few case studies in which clients showed marked improvement in symptoms related to PTSD, depression, migraine headaches, and Crohn's disease after treatment with traditional Amazonian plant medicine and ayahuasca shamanism. Linking physiology common to these cases and drawing upon modern medical research, this presentation will demonstrate that emotional trauma often underlies each of these conditions. Such emotional trauma is stored in the emotional body, which Dr. Tafur defines medically as the psychoneuroendocrine immunologic network (the PNEI network) well-described in mind-body research. At the biochemical level, emotional trauma is also associated with maladaptive epigenetic imprinting and related dysfunction. As implicated by the presented cases, Dr. Tafur suggests that deep emotional healing leads to physiologic shifts in the emotional body (PNEI network) and subsequent improvements in epigenetic function. In the case of ayahuasca shamanism, a spiritual context facilitates this deep emotional healing and allows for subsequent biological shifts. This also appears to be the case in other forms of psychedelic assisted therapies and has broader implications for our understanding of all forms of spiritual healing. Such understanding can help us to once again appreciate the medical utility of self-love, forgiveness, compassion and gratitude in modern healthcare.
San Jose
Experiential
Recognizing that many of us, even those with positive experiences and attitudes towards sex, find that sexual desire and responses decline some as we age. Culture, religion, the media, sexism, peer pressure, porn and dozens of other influences give us distorted messages of what sexual intimacy is supposed to look like, especially to those over 50. Jumping off from the earlier lecture on the science of the aging body, this program will experientially explore how you can connect more deeply with your most authentic relationship to sexuality, as well as how to awaken you and your partner’s body. We’ll mix lecture, experiential exercises, opportunities to reflect, and guidance on how to enhance your love life once at home. Please bring paper and pen, and an open mind and heart.
San Juan Bautista
C11. Embracing Challenge, Illuminating Mystery
San Juan Bautista
Embracing The Challenge Of Being Fully Present And Spiritually Real, Penny Fenner
Spiritual teachings tell us we are no one and there is nowhere to go. Everyday life demands we show up, pay our bills and be decent human beings. Learning to know and truly embrace all of who we are demands fierce compassion, truth telling from the inside out and the courage to be and love our authentic self.
In this presentation Penny will share with you how it is possible to have it all, with courage and humility. Rather than an instant moment of awakening full presence takes time, strength and kindness to learn to graciously accept, and respond skillfully to, what is, moment to moment.
Connected presence rarely if ever happens through one or even several moments of waking up but is an ongoing process of revealing, dismantling, readjusting, softening and strengthening. It is by showing up and meeting all aspects of ourselves including our tricky emotional states that we can become spiritual warriors who can embrace and engage fully with life, just as it is.
San Martin
C9. Fully Human, Fully Divine
If you really ARE pure Consciousness; limitless, infinite and sublime, how is it possible to ALSO live an ordinary and mundane human life when you're "down in the marketplace?" Can you live "IN" the Dream world with absolute integrity and authenticity, and yet, also experience not really being "OF" that same world, too? Can you actually walk the proverbial razor's edge between being "god" and being "human" by learning, instead, to simply "BE?" Discover practical ways of embracing the perennial paradox of living as a "ONE-ness" that, quite mysteriously, also likes to pretend that it's a "TWO-ness."
Interlude
We see a variety of sexual states and behavior, and a growing interest in interdisciplinary studies aimed at investigating aspects of human sexuality and gender issues. Why is marriage increasingly unstable? Why do many experience conflicting needs to express their creative and intellectual abilities and to be good parents and spouses? Why are some attracted to the opposite sex while others are attracted to their own sex or both sexes? This talk will present a comprehensive overview of human sexuality as described by the Danish spiritual writer Martinus (1890-1981). His analyses show the sexual principle to be the wheel of creation, a principle that underlies all creation and experience, human sexuality being only one detail of this principle (The Book of Life, vol. 3, section 827). Martinus describes how sexuality is driven by two poles in our consciousness: the masculine pole and the feminine pole, the relative size of which determines our sexual nature. Human sexuality evolves continuously through reincarnation and the changing constellation of these poles. A completely one-poled state results in a primitive moral standard. A completely two-poled state, in which the male and female poles are equal and balanced in our consciousness, results in the very highest moral standard and is the organic structure for neighborly love. According to Martinus’s analyses, today’s humanity will evolve into a third and truly human sex that is neither male nor female but a harmonious union of the two principles within the one being, a being that will experience a sense of non-duality and oneness with all life. Martinus’s framework for understanding sexual evolution can give us a better insight into our own identity and help us navigate through the changing sexual landscape.
San Juan Bautista
This Unfathomable Mystery: Exploring the Inconceivable Nature of Experience, John Astin
In this presentation, you’ll be invited to explore through a series of guided inquiries, meditations and dialogue, a very simple yet profound question: What is experience actually made of? Together, we will peer around the edges of what we think our experiences are and discover the myriad ways that each moment radically transcends our ideas about what it is. This investigation reveals that it is not merely those times of great inspiration, beauty or intimacy that lie beyond the reach of our concepts and descriptions, but every experience we have ever encountered. And this discovery that experiences are ultimately indefinable turns out to hold the key to our greatest freedom for every moment, even those we conventionally label as “problems," are in fact a swirling dance of the most miraculous, inconceivable energy, intelligence, lusciousness and depth. I invite you to enter into and enjoy this inquiry.
Hayes Ballroom
The Human Being in Spiritual Traditions, A.H. Almaas; Robert Thurman
How do the different spiritual traditions view being human? How do they differ in their appreciation of the human individual and the place of the human in the total scheme of reality? A dialogue in depth that may help us see our value for the universe.
21st Century science is on the verge of recreating the processes that may have brought life into being on the young Earth some four billion years ago. If experimental proof is achieved, these processes would be shown to be the fundamental “boot codes” of the living world. Cycled together they would then constitute an “engine of creation” that continuously generates all of biology, human culture, technology and even conscious experience. The emerging understanding of this conceptual engine bears surprising parallels to the Dao and other spiritual systems. Ironically this highly reductionist work on our deepest ancestry may give us the great gift of unifying the dual magisteria of science and spirit. But if we all live by and within this engine what does this say about how and where consciousness operates and what does this tell us about our own free will and future? Dr. Damer will guide the SAND audience on an illustrated journey from life’s beginning to some possible answers to these big questions. He will conclude by suggesting a way to use the power of this engine to further evolve what it is to be human and how we might collectively realize a truly great destiny.
For this presentation Martin will share insights and teachings from his highly popular 2009 book, "Being Human: An Entheological Guide to God, Evolution, and the Fractal, Energetic Nature of Reality," wherein he lays out his nondual worldview that was the result of deeply transformative personal work with the powerful entheogenic tools of 5-MeO-DMT and Ayahuasca. "Being Human" takes a radical and nondual look at the nature of the self, the ego, God, and reality as a whole, providing methods and techniques for how individuals can both uncover and rest within their infinite unitary nature, grounding the insights and energetic experiences of psychedelics into everyday awareness and identity that is free from the limiting constructs of ego, which is addressed as a collection of energetic patterns that function unconsciously to create the image and character of the assumed individuated self. This shot, but profound book, can be summed up with the statement: "Guess What: You are God. Now get over it!" and covers such topics as "You," "God and Evolution," "Life as and Individual," "How to Begin," "Entheogenic Practice," "Interfacing with the Divine," and "Responsibility." Given the theme of the SAND conference for 2018, it seems like a great place to share the insights and methods detailed in "Being Human," and discuss clearly and in a non-mystified manner how entheogens are excellent tools for nondual realization and transformation. More recently, all of these ideas have been greatly expanded upon in Martin's newest book, "Entheogenic Liberation: Unraveling the Enigma of Nonduality with 5-MeO-DMT Energetic Therapy," some of which could also be addressed in this talk, depending on time.
Edenvale
Panel: Enhancing Human Wellbeing through Nondual Awareness, Deepak Chopra; Judith Blackstone; Zoran Josipovic; Paul Mills; Tiffany Barsotti
The current times seem to be defined by the great promise of technology for human enhancement. Yet the source of capacity to optimize our experience and wellbeing is already present within all of us as the innermost essence of nondual awareness. This panel will present contemporary methods for realizing nondual awareness and the scientific research on its effects on wellbeing.
Speaker. Judith Blackstone, PhD, has been a Realization Process teacher and a psychotherapist in private practice for four decades. She is author of Belonging Here, The Enlightenment Process, The Intimate Life, The Empathic Ground and the upcoming Trauma and the Unbound Body.
Speaker. Tiffany Barsotti, M.Th., C.Ht., MCPLT, is a spiritual, medical intuition counselor and teacher in private practice at HEAL and THRIVE in Encinitas, California. With her spiritual and intuitive guidance, she serves as an integrative practitioner working alongside physicians and other allied health professionals.
Speaker. Zoran Josipovic, PhD, is a research associate at New York University Langone Medical Center, and adjunct assistant professor for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology, New York University. With his wife, Judith Blackstone, he founded the Nonduality Institute, where he is the principal science investigator.
Speaker & Session Chair. Paul J. Mills, PhD, is a Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health, and Director of the Center of Excellence for Research and Training in Integrative Health at the University of California, San Diego. He is currently serving as Director of Research for the Chopra Foundation. He has expertise in Integrative Medicine and psychoneuroimmune processes in wellness and disease, publishing extensively on these topics.
Discussant. Deepak Chopra, MD, is a world-renowned pioneer in mind-body medicine and personal transformation, and Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He has authored more than 80 books, published in more than 43 languages, including 22 New York Times best sellers.
Madrone
The Mystery of Meaningful Action: An Equation for Synchronicity, Sky Nelson-Isaacs
Previous work has proposed a process called "meaningful history selection" which defines "meaningful outcomes" and predicts meaningful coincidence, or Jung's "synchronicity," using the image of a branching apple tree. Recent progress will be presented which provides an equation to calculate the statistics of synchronicity, based upon fundamental physics. A synchronicity is an event which is meaningfully related to future outcomes and becomes statistically more likely based upon the current actions we take. The connection between our current actions and the future outcomes is based on the notion of qualitative experience, or qualia. When a conscious being anticipates a future qualitative experience, future branches of the tree of possibilities are preferentially selected which contain that qualitative experience. A synchronicity (or at least a particular type of synchronicity) is a causally improbable event that become more probable because of its causal relationship with a future anticipated qualitative experience, and one can calculate this change in probability using the equation presented. This research is supported by the Federico and Elvia Faggin Foundation.
San Juan Bautista
One Human Heart Awakening - the Science and Spirituality of Humanity Evolving, Will Pye
Exploring the intersection of individual awakening with humanity evolving through response to the many challenges we face into collective flourishing.
Utilizing the lens of one holographic reality, One Unitive Consciousness we will play with the possibility and experience of realizing One Human Being, One Heart Awakening. Through this we will see and enjoy how the integration and embodiment of Truth in each of us is essential to the co-creation of a flourishing humanity globally.
We will enjoy the 'Unitive Breath One Grateful Heart' meditation to give the direct experience of the ideas outlined in the presentation.
Discover the power of our full surrender to being lived by Love. Explore and experience the beautiful qualities of being a 'New Earth Ninja', awake, empowered and inspired to serve the whole.
Guadalupe
Archetype And Flesh: The Mythopoetics of the Body in Mogadao Qigong, Zhen Dao
There is often a perceived divide between archetype and flesh—soul and body—as if archetypes, or the forces that make up our personal and collective mythology, are merely “hosted” by the body. This perception persists even after apparent renaissances in mind
body awareness since the middle of the 20th century. MogaDao Qigong, founded by Zhen Dao, is an original tradition of qigong that ensouls the body. “Ensouling the body” means that in MogaDao Qigong a practitioner does not just work with the body’s organs as vessels of functionality, but as talismanic forces of primordial harmony. In MogaDao Qigong, the body is a locus of original power, a totem that is liberated into its primordiality through the formal and graceful movements of MogaDao Qigong. No experience is necessary. All bodies and all health conditions are welcome.
San Jose
Love Wonder Terror Joy: Journeying with The Radiance Sutras, Lorin Roche; Camille Maurine
Immerse yourself in the vibrant world of The Radiance Sutras, a contemporary version of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, a classic yoga text describing 112 doorways to ecstasy. The text invites us to be at home in our bodies and the universe by accepting every intense or subtle experience, every sensual delight, every ordinary moment, as a gateway to the divine. Each Sutra or meditation practice is a deep dive into aliveness, into the underlying reality of what life is. The meditations work by activating the senses and extending their range further into the inner and the outer world. The basic dynamics of life—breathing, falling asleep, waking up, walking, loving—are all used as paths of alignment and enlightenment. Balance is here at every step; the unshakable serenity of the depths is used as a foundation so that we can tolerate the electrifying vastness of the universe. We are invited to cross the threshold, to walk by the guardian of the gate, to face our terrors, and make our way into the immense and timeless mystery that is always calling.
In the spirit of wonder and play, Lorin and Camille will guide a journey through simple sensory and movement meditations inspired by the Sutras. You will also have the opportunity to explore savoring the sound of the original Sanskrit, which has a luscious, evocative sensuality.
Being Human: what does it mean in the context of Self-realization, which — when properly understood — is aimed at living our innermost potential? After all, the process of Self-realization is to go beyond, to transcend the boundaries of human consciousness — to realize the essence of who we are beyond our most dearly held notions. The way we hold on so dearly to what we call “individuality,” is in itself a telling sign that this may be nothing other than psychosis in varying degrees of intensity. To go beyond this identity requires courage and a different kind of knowledge — opening the possibility for experiencing every shade of what it means to be human, whilst transcending these shades in the light of Awareness which illumines it all.
Though many are going through various stages of awakening and expansion of Consciousness, there is still only a vague understanding of this phenomenon. The dynamics of this process are colored by our psychophysiological conditioning — most of our cognitive responses are automated, because our perception is determined by previous experiences, which in turn plant the seeds for future ones. When seen from this perspective, the ancient line, “Know thyself,” gains an extra dimension. And knowledge of the Self is inseparable from the instrumentality of knowing — the body. The attitude toward that notion marks a point of departure in many spiritual traditions, whose teachings are united by the same goal.
This presentation is an invitation to re-evaluate the human experience — to explore the very meaning and hidden potential of “Human Being.” Is it just a concept? A field of pure transcendence or a conglomerate of neurophysiological responses? Is “individuality” really nothing other than psychosis? What if transcending human experience — without understanding what it represents — is actually bypassing the very purpose of being alive?
Humans have engaged in the process of making myth since the beginning of their existence. Mythos, the search for meaning in life, is the companion to logos, the how it works. We create a set of subjective facts that when woven together create a story that others hear and possibly believe. It gives us peace, understanding and meaning until the science of the day catches up. Listen as we explore the thread of mythic expression from classical times to contemporary culture.
These days, there are many ways for people to learn about consciousness and awakening, but mostly only if they’re already interested in these topics. After all, there is very little cultural awareness about consciousness and awakening, so the great majority of people never realize that there is anything to wake up from, or how to go about waking up. Fortunately, art books and exhibitions provide opportunities to reach people who may not already be interested in consciousness or spirituality, and to build cultural awareness about awakening.
In this proposed presentation, I would take viewers through an exhibition of my 3-D multiple-exposure photographs called, From Wandering to Illumination, inspired by the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece, which were effective for thousands of years at introducing people to experiences of awakening.
The exhibition will progress from black-and-white photographs of bare trees in winter, representing the state of “Wandering” or the ordinary consciousness of our monkey mind/grasping mind, to color photographs of trees in summer, representing the state of Illumination or Awakening. Meanwhile, the accompanying text weaves together the story of Demeter’s search for her daughter Persephone, and our global effort to reclaim our soul.
Just as Persephone was taken away to the underworld, and Demeter wandered the Earth looking for her daughter everywhere, we face a similar loss of soul today on both the personal and collective levels. Our world in general is very much lost in a state of Wandering, with all the mass shootings, corporate greed running amok, infatuation with strongmen, etc.
Fortunately, if we realize that we’re Wandering, we can get back on track. It’s time for us to drop the veil that has kept the Mysteries hidden behind the doors of monasteries, and obscured in esoteric symbolism.
It’s time for us to wake up.
We explore the idea that perceptual experiences do not approximate properties of an “objective” world, but provide a simplified, species-specific, user interface to the world. Donald Hoffman introduced it as the Interface Theory of Perception. Hoffman also introduced his Conscious Realism thesis: the objective world consists of a social network of ‘conscious agents’ and their experiences. Thus consciousness creates all objects and properties of the physical world, reversing the traditional mind-body problem.
Using evolutionary game theory, we support interface theory with a theorem saying that perceptual strategies reporting the truth will, under natural selection, be driven to extinction by those tuned instead to fitness.
A mathematically precise definition of “conscious agents” is proposed, leading to a non-dualistic, dynamical theory of conscious process in which both observer and observed have the same structure, with many possible interfaces.
In support of conscious realism, we then discuss two theorems showing that a conscious agent can see geometric and probabilistic structures that are not necessarily in the world but properties of the conscious agent itself and different agents may see the world as having different (even incompatible!) structures. We will also discuss a way in which interfaces represent a dramatic compression of information which is functional to the agent.
This suggests that space-time is a description of location and dynamics on the perceptual interface of human conscious agents; that the “objects” of Physics are akin to icons on that interface; and that “phenomena” appear as the interactions those icons seem - to us - to be having.
What motivates a species to evolve its particular interface? Federico Faggin has proposed a mechanism for the evolution of interfaces: that it is the desire for comprehension, or self-knowing, that drives this evolution. What is required next is a theory of the process of self-knowing.
Morgan Hill
Enacting Wholeness Amidst Fragmentation: A New Republic of the Heart, Terry Patten
Wholeness is the nature of reality; and yet human civilization seems to be shaken by a crisis of fragmentation. We are living amidst a multidimensional, radical revolution, one fraught with dangers but also offering nearly inconceivable opportunities. How, in practical, personal terms, can wholeness reassert itself through us? We can each become an active agent of love, and of the transformation of human civilization which is necessary to continued human survival. While today's world crises appear virtually insoluble, they also create openings for rapid evolution, as have past periods of acute challenge.
We will stay present to two inseparable aspects of reality our dynamic but fractured and threatened world, and its underlying unity and wholeness. Only by honoring both simultaneously can we enact sustainable changes in ourselves, our communities, our body politic, and our planetary life-support system. The mission of the awakened practitioner and that of the activist are not-two. Each of us is called to express our best and most beneficent capacities, not just personally but mutually.
Terry Patten's major new book, A New Republic of the Heart provides a comprehensive understanding and inspiring vision for the inner work that can lead to the whole-system change necessary to heal the most intractable problems of our time: environmental, economic, political, cultural, and spiritual.
We will consider how to have "conversations that matter" and how to co-create communities of practice, enterprises, and forms of dialogue can enact wholeness more broadly.
We thus discover that a "new republic of the heart" is already coming into being, invisibly and quietly, as more and more of us organically respond to our evolutionary imperative. Wholeness is not abstract. It has agency, and in response to fragmentation, through you and me, it is beginning to reassert itself.
Madrone
The Mystery of Being Sexual: A Frank Conversation about Sexuality in the Awakening Process, Kiran Trace
If you're going through the awakening process, you know that it can be delicate to talk about what happens when a whole tsunami of energy hits the second chakra.
In this presentation, we will crack open the door to awakened sex and explore what to do when:
- our blocked energy is being pounded on by Kundalini
-our previous conditions about sex are now are reorienting and if feels so disorienting
- the old spiritual identities want to avoid all this dirty, nasty, human love
-the old patterns of relationship don’t hold or honor this new freedom
When simplified into its basic function, business is a system and structure of expression and exchange. The key is how we use this basic system and structure. Do we let ego control business? Or do we allow awakened consciousness to utilize the systems and structures with wisdom, truth, and love for the benefit of all beings?
Business in its fundamental function can empower us to share critical ideas; to create new services and products; to foster evolution in our communities. Business can be the vehicle through which we realize our divinely guided missions and purposes. Business can be the container for sacred creative collaboration. It can also be one of the places where we expand our experience of living awakened awareness.
When we reclaim the sacred in business, we activate the true potential of each individual and our community, thus creating new potential for collaboration. This can be true in any field or industry, for profit or non-profit, technology, spirituality, science, personal development, medicine, arts, and more.
It starts with you as an individual. When you bring your intention for truth, wisdom, and love to your work, you invite conscious engagement from others around you. The more aligned you are with your true calling and movement, the more you are empowered to use business in a sacred way.
I invite you into the paradigm of reclaiming the sacred in business. I invite you to allow the brilliance of your conscious awareness to be fully present every day you are at work. I invite you to fully express all the gifts and skills you are here to share. This presentation will support you to liberate old limiting ideas of self and business; embody your awakened consciousness more at work; and create new relationships, pathways, and possibilities through sacred business.
Break
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.
Hayes Ballroom
From Human to Meta Human: The Next Leap in Evolution of Species , Deepak Chopra
Self-awareness is a primary human trait, but one we have wrestled with for centuries. Other species are thought to have a marginal capacity to be aware, but only humans are defined by awareness. This constituted a major evolutionary shift in prehistory. We became a consciousness-based species with unlimited potential.
Our origins story began in self-awareness and then unfolded to the point where we inhabit a human universe, not simply colored by our perspective but actually reified—given material existence—by us. Once it is understood that the universe is the play of consciousness in different modes, the next evolutionary leap becomes possible.
Evolving from human to Metahuman can be defined as going beyond the products of consciousness to the source, where existence is consciousness. The scientific search for an irreducible something that forms the ground state of creation has inevitably led here.
To expand on the theme, the following topics will be covered:
* Breaking the habit of personal identity, becoming aware that what constitutes being a person is a malleable process.
* The primacy of experience as a validation of reality.
* Escaping the illusion of virtual reality.
* Adopting a view of consciousness as the creative "stuff" of the universe.
* Accepting the dimensionless and timeless as normal facts of everyday life.
Silver Creek Dining Room
Dinner
Fear and Hope
One of the contemporary struggles in our culture is the contraction of the psyche brought forth through feelings of fear and the expansion found in the seeking of hope and meaning. My workshop will explore this topic through an introductory discussion followed by exploration in small groups and dyads. Participants will gain insight into their personal challenges while gaining compassion towards the struggles of others. We are moving into an age of mass participation in societal and cultural change that requires the activation and inclusion of a greater number of individuals. To this end, a personal practice clearing insecurities “not ready yet ness” and feeling ones self as part of a greater whole both both physically and spiritually is needed. There will be format flexibility depending on the number of participants. Time frame: 30 minutes to two hours depending on event needs.
Lower Level Lobby
Poster Session
Come enjoy Soul Kirtan! C.C. White's unique, soul-flavored chant experiences effortlessly enrapture audiences and bring them to their feet!
We will practice yoga by tuning into our physical, emotional, and subtle bodies respectively, while trying to tune into the connection between all three and noticing any differences that arise in the moments. I will verbally guide you through the nuances of such inquiry as you flow mindfully on your mat.
Hayes Ballroom
PL5. The Thread of Connection
Hayes Ballroom
How We Are All Connected: Coherence and The Global Field Environment, Rollin McCraty
The Global Coherence Initiative is exploring the interactions between humanity and the earth’s magnetic fields. The magnetic field produced by the heart can be detected by the nervous systems of other people and a new system for measuring group coherence will be introduced at the conference. New research will be presented showing how people are far more interconnected with each other and the earth’s magnetic field environment than previously imagined.
We in the interdisciplinary field of Interpersonal Neurobiology describe the mind as an emergent, self-organizing, embodied and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information. This definition reveals how this aspect of mind is both within and between us, and helps us clarify how a healthy mind is one that moves these inner and relational movements of energy and information flow toward integration; integration optimizes self-organization. Integration is the linkage of differentiated parts, such as connecting the left and right sides of the brain, or embracing and honoring differences and cultivating compassionate communication. By exploring our mental lives, we can move toward a healthy flow of integration, which creates harmony in our lives. When not moving toward integration, complex systems like our lives move toward either chaos or rigidity, rather than the flexible harmonious flow of integrative wellbeing.
One way to promote integration is with the Wheel of Awareness. In this practice, the center hub of our metaphoric wheel represents the “knowing” of being conscious while the elements on the rim stand for the “known.” Known elements on the external rim include:
• What we see, hear, smell, taste and touch
• What we sense from our inner bodily sensations
• What we experience with our mental activities, such as feelings, thoughts or memories
• Our sense of relational connections—with other people and with the planet
The power of doing the Wheel of Awareness practice is to integrate consciousness by differentiating hub from rim, and systematically linking these various elements intentionally with the movement of a spoke of attention. This integration of consciousness allows us to free the mind to learn to move recurrent thoughts and moods of the rim toward an open space of knowing – the hub. Practicing the Wheel of Awareness can liberate the mind from ingrained patterns of cognition and emotion and help you emerge with a more expansive sense of awareness.
Hayes Ballroom
Mushrooms, Mycelium & The Mycology of Consciousness: An Immersion Lecture , Paul Stamets
Join this engaging speaker, author, mycologist, medical researcher and entrepreneur, for an immersion lecture on mushrooms that will deepen your understanding and respect for the organisms that exists under every footstep you take on this path of life.
His presentation will cover a range of mushroom species and new research showing how mushrooms can help the health of people and planet. Habitats have immune systems, just like people, and mushrooms are cellular bridges between the two. Our close evolutionary relationship to fungi can be the basis for novel pairings in the microbiome that lead to greater sustainability and immune enhancement.
Behind all our endeavors lies the desire to be happy—to feel content, relaxed, and at ease. No one wants to be in pain or to suffer unnecessarily. This is our true bottom line. Why then, given the many benefits and comforts of contemporary culture, are we so seldom at peace?
Throughout history, there have been those who’ve discovered a timeless truth about human consciousness: The mind in its natural unperturbed state is already at ease. We don’t need to do anything, or go anywhere to find the inner peace and joy we seek. The beauty of this approach is that nothing needs to be changed or eliminated. It is simply relaxing back into our natural state of effortless being.
Join Peter Russell for an exploration of the nature of human consciousness and the essence of spiritual awakening, how our thoughts can veil the peace within, the distinction between ego and the true self, and how to free meditation from effort and trying.
Edenvale
C13. Integrated Conversations
When we knowingly take our stand as the limitless field of Awareness we may recognize that all experiences arise spontaneously within it and share their deepest reality with it.
In this workshop, we will give special attention to the body. For most of us, even after an awakening to our true nature of Awareness, we continue to experience the body as a habitual and intricate network of density and tension which perpetuates and reflects the belief in being a fragment that needs to defend, assert and protect itself… These habits are layered, deep rooted and active under the surface of our contemplation. Thus, the body’s original and harmonious nature, its lively flowing expression, and deep silent vibration remain compromised by the impossible task of maintaining itself as an anchor and cage for the separate one…
Together we will explore and discover.
Screen reader support enabled.
Psychic skills offer access to extraordinary insights into the phenomenal world, yet this ability can prove to be a stumbling block on the path to abiding in Absolute Reality. This presentation will explore the nature of the psychic realm, where it fits into the spiritual spectrum, and how to avoid the common pitfalls and potential to get stuck there.
Of those who are given this 'gift' many find it hard to let go of it and its trappings. Yet, the spiritual path necessitates a surrendering into ordinariness. Not letting it go or putting it in its proper perspective can have two common effects: it can distract and prevent one from abiding in the Truth, and it may also make it hard to have a fully embodied and functional phenomenal life (relative reality).
Cultural values placed on psychic abilities range from seeing it as a gift, a curse and indicative of mental health issues. Access to the non-physical worlds offers another layer of perceivable information that may be refined and ethereal but is still part of the cause and effect construct of the illusion (maya). When it is given too much authority or interpreted as truth, the Truth cannot be seen.
On my own journey, a spontaneous third eye opening initiated an abrupt orientation toward spirituality and ultimately Truth. I am amazed at how often people have asked me about my journey and when I answer, they get so caught up in the 3rd eye opening that they never get to the awakening. While subtle skills of perception can be useful when working with a student to pinpoint where they are stuck, for the most part information from non-physical realms is ignored. This talk redefines the role of psychic abilities and non-physical realms within spirituality.
Madrone
C18. Next Frontiers
If we call the content of all our conscious experience as information, we may say that matter is accessible to senses and that information is not. This inaccessibility is implied when we say that our experiences are all subjective. A quantum particle (QP) is not directly accessible to senses and needs to be 'observed' in a suitably designed measurement experiment. Even in such an experiment, what we actually observe is the ‘classical’ measuring device. The position and other 'observable' properties of a QP are only inferred from the devices’ readings. Quantum mechanics tells us that QPs are packets of de Broglie's phase waves, each of which is supposed to have a speed greater than that of light. Clearly, the phase wave is a mathematical abstraction, an idea in physicists' minds and unphysical. It cannot be observed like light or heard like sound. But at the same time, the phase wave’s wavelength can be measured in a suitably designed experiment. So, we may say that the de Broglie's phase wave is ‘objective information’! Although electromagnetic waves different from light such as X-rays cannot also be directly perceived but are detected only by their effects on matter, such effects can be predicted deterministically. De Broglie waves on the other hand, are the reason for the nondeterministic behavior of quantum matter. Since the measuring device, and in general, ‘classical’ matter is supposed to be made of numerous QPs, all matter is made of ‘objective information’ according to quantum mechanics. We will analyze the idea of ‘objective information’ in this presentation.
Monterey Room
C14. The Nature of Healing
Monterey Room
Deepen your Understanding of the Spiritual Nature of Healing Developmental Trauma, Julie Brown Yau
Developmental trauma deeply affects and limits how we connect with ourselves and the world around us; it has been called a silent epidemic. Fortunately, there is now a wide and rich array of integrative interdisciplinary practices available from which to learn, explore and heal. As the seriousness of the impact of early trauma is more widely acknowledged, the silence of this terrible epidemic is being broken. More people are realizing the effects of trauma in their lives and finding their way through the rigors of trauma’s consequences to joyous wellbeing, and spiritual expansion.
Trauma obscures our authentic self—our essential nature, yet trauma can also be a portal to opening to a deeper spiritual reality. The obscurations tend to occur in early life to maintain attachment and love with our caregivers. It is a sacrifice of loss on the altar of survival, where there can be varying degrees of numbing, splitting and dissociation. The adaptations, defenses, & distortions that emerge in the face of trauma, configure to create a false sense of self, which compensates for the loss. It is the false self that we identified with and come to believe we are. If we continue to operate out of those places, we limit our life, vital life force and capacity for connection in every dimension of being. The authentic/essential self is never destroyed, but it is concealed by the web of defenses and survival strategies. To access our essential nature, the systemic dysregulation and the physiological dysregulation that occurs in response to trauma needs to be addressed, and integration needs to occur.
This presentation brings a somatic and scientific approach to healing developmental trauma. How can we transform our lives as we facilitate the integration of consciousness and release identity distortions? As we embrace the unfamiliar and unknown we can connect with our natural drive toward inner harmony and wellbeing.
Morgan Hill
C16. Enlightenment for the 21st Century
Morgan Hill
Advaita for the 21st Century: A Phenomenology of The Mystery of the Human Experience, Robert Dittler
Let us dwell in our creation of science, mystery, and the human experience. We think we know from science how many aspects of our experience have come to be and are. Yet, a scientist would admit that there is no absolute scientific explanation for anything. We may conclude that the mystery of Life is but a fantasy of our own creation.
We do not know how to cure the common cold nor why or how we maintain a blood pressure. What perhaps may be the mystery of the human experience is our inability to overcome our natural propensity for violence, genocide, and other egregious ways of being while at the same time evidence compassion, empathy, and good will toward our fellow human beings.
We are not all that different from our ancestors in the cave. We fight for territory, for what we believe is right or The Truth. We talk about peace and brotherhood, yet act contrary much of the time whether we admit it or not.
We waver between trust and distrust, confidence and a lack thereof. Hence, we find ourselves in the world of duality creating controlling issues or evidencing arrogance or experiencing feelings of alienation. Yet, we somehow know such practices are self-defeating as we become ever more aware of nondual interdependence.
We are our own aggregate mystery. And it all happens in our heads this illusion we call the human experience.
Let us join together and fathom the way out of our self-created conundrum. Join-in an eye-opening experience of mystery, wonderment, and awe.
Morgan Hill
Advaita for the 21st Century: A Phenomenology of The Mystery of the Human Experience
Let us dwell in our creation of science, mystery, and the human experience. We think we know from science how many aspects of our experience have come to be and are. Yet, a scientist would admit that there is no absolute scientific explanation for anything. We may conclude that the mystery of Life is but a fantasy of our own creation.We do not know how to cure the common cold nor why or how we maintain a blood pressure. What perhaps may be the mystery of the human experience is our inability to overcome our natural propensity for violence, genocide, and other egregious ways of being while at the same time evidence compassion, empathy, and good will toward our fellow human beings.We are not all that different from our ancestors in the cave. We fight for territory, for what we believe is right or The Truth. We talk about peace and brotherhood, yet act contrary much of the time whether we admit it or not.We waver between trust and distrust, confidence and a lack thereof. Hence, we find ourselves in the world of duality creating controlling issues or evidencing arrogance or experiencing feelings of alienation. Yet, we somehow know such practices are self-defeating as we become ever more aware of nondual interdependence.We are our own aggregate mystery. And it all happens in our heads this illusion we call the human experience. Let us join together and fathom the way out of our self-created conundrum. Join-in an eye-opening experience of mystery, wonderment, and awe.
On the Patio
Emergent Connections
In this workshop, through ancient inquiry, letting go, meditation, movement and dance, you’ll explore the body, the mind, and the stillness within all. You’ll see through false perceptions of self and unveil the direct experience of inherent freedom. The human body can be seen as a seemingly localized expression through which to realize the non-local and infinite origin of all Life. Having unconditional compassion for this body and its human story with all its innocence, trials, and triumphs, can bring a profound relaxation and rest. This can turn our suffering on an island of aloneness - into experiencing life as a universe of beloved Oneness. Come and uncover this infinite sense of being – right in the center of the human story that you're experiencing every precious moment of life.
San Juan Bautista
C17. New Ways of Seeing
There is one reality, but it is vast, multi-layered and profoundly comprehensive. Humans don't have the mechanism to take it all in at once. Rather, we're like a lens, focusing on this or that aspect of the whole. As we move through the 7 stages of enlightenment, our relationship with the whole changes and with it our perception and understanding of reality.
We could say reality is different in different stages of development. However, our perspective is also strongly influenced by our dominant guna or quality. Do we see the world as concrete and real? As an illusion? Or as a play of the Divine?
How does this impact our relationship with the one reality? What are the common variations in perception? How does this influence the variety of descriptions through the ages? David will explore the two parallel processes of consciousness and refinement in the path of spiritual unfolding.
San Martin
C15. Awakening of the Human Heart
Life is the embodiment of Consciousness. Therefore, everything we experience reflects our knowledge or ignorance of our true nature. Awakening is concretely manifested in and as our everyday life. In this integration, traditionally called “enlightenment”, Emptiness is expressed in form without being filtered through a sense of separate self. The ego-based mind should not take this as a goal of perfection, but rather as the impossible and precious meeting of that which is already perfect with the apparent limitations of space, time, matter, error, and death. God becomes human while remaining Divine. The unmanifested Divine journeys through the miracle of the manifested, living experience.
As T. S. Elliot put it, “We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
The “we” to which he refers is the Divine itself. There are not many souls looking for God, but one Divine Consciousness awakening to itself through all forms, and in doing so, playing in the polarities of life - death and birth, error and wisdom, happiness and suffering. The Divine exploration of embodied life is not a descent or a fall, but rather a blossoming of unmanifest Emptiness into greater Fullness. Becoming human is therefore the sublime participation in the impulse of the Divine to become a Living Reality.
Hayes Ballroom
Panel - Ethics and Spiritual Teaching, Rick Archer; Jac O' Keeffe; Craig Holliday; Caverly Morgan
We are witnessing a sea change in collective consciousness. From entertainment to politics to athletics, sexual misconduct is no longer tolerated. Sexual and other forms of abuse have also plagued the spiritual world which the SAND family inhabits. While actors and politicians might not be expected to have developed high moral values, most people expect spiritually awakened people to have done so. Contrary examples have led many to conclude that higher consciousness and ethical behavior are not correlated. Some have become cynical about the motives of all gurus and teachers and have lost faith in spirituality altogether.
Yet, every spiritual tradition includes codes of ethics that apply to both teachers and students. Ethical behavior has been regarded not only as a reflection of spiritual development but as conducive to it.
Unlike the legal, medical, psychological, and other professions, spiritual teachers lack a shared code of ethics and an organization to formalize them. At this writing, the members of this panel have made significant progress in drafting such a code. By conference time, we hope to have established an organization which would offer the following:
_Teacher membership would imply trustworthiness, as it would be predicated upon agreeing to the code of ethics.
_Teachers would be encouraged to be more open to feedback, transparent, and accountable.
_Students would be emboldened to expect high moral standards in teachers and might become more discriminating in choosing a teacher.
_A place where those who have been abused might submit grievances.
Madrone
Attention Schema Theory Plus a Proposed Three-Agent Model Explains Multiple Forms of Conscious Awareness Including Nonduality, Frank Heile
The proposed model of the brain consists of three sub-agents: The Thinker, Doer, and Experiencer. The Thinker and Doer are justified because of their consistency with well established, experimentally derived models of cognition in two different academic fields. In the field of psychology, Dual Process Theory would map the Thinker to System 2 (slow, deliberative, explicit, & conscious), and the Doer to System 1 (fast, intuitive, implicit, & subconscious). In the field of neuroscience, a model by Henry Yin and Barbara Knowlton would map the Thinker to the action-outcome contingency system and the Doer to the stimulus-response habit system. A theorem in control theory by Conant and Ashby proposes that every good agent should contain a model of the world where the agent operates. This theorem suggests the existence of the third agent, the Experiencer; this agent would construct the model of the world needed by the Thinker and Doer. Attention schema theory proposes a model of awareness containing three sub-models: a self-model of the agent, the attention schema (which is a model of attention), and the representation of the object of attention. This awareness model is applied to each of the three proposed sub-agents to describe the form of awareness that each sub-agent has about external objects. Additionally, attention schema theory is utilized to determine the type of self-awareness each agent would experience. This integration of attention schema theory and the three sub-agents results in three different forms of conscious awareness. One of these forms of awareness would be the consciousness that animals (and ancient humans) would experience. The second is the default awareness state of modern humans. The third form of awareness exactly explains the experiences reported in Nonduality and other enlightened consciousness states. This model could also explain some of the experiences described as flow states, or peak consciousness states.
Love is a perennial theme in painting, literature, music, and the movies, but what do we really discover about the nature of love, sexual desire and relationships from the arts? Does art inform us with deep, eternal truths about love or merely bounce back the beliefs and biases of its time? And, if so, does art effectively constrain our notions of love, and place culture-bound limits on it? Can love be liberated from art, or by art?
In movies about love and relationships, there is a well worn path to commercial success that relies on familiar tropes. In a typical romantic comedy, boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy then makes outlandish gesture and wins girl’s heart for-ever. In a drama triangle, a marriage is threatened when one partner “strays” and brings down the sky in the process. Conventions of storytelling require that transgressions be punished before harmony can be restored. Women in particu-lar are never permitted sexual desire beyond the confines of a monogamous rela-tionship. In family comedies, hapless husbands are to be tamed and domesticat-ed. Characters are rarely represented as having real communication skills or emotional intelligence. Arthouse films about love are far more nuanced, but the underlying cultural rulebook mostly still applies. Do such films truly reflect what love and relationships are, or can be, or do they simply force people into a box? In this presentation I’ll look at how love has been historically portrayed in the movies, how this might influence our own beliefs about relationships, and offer examples that break free of the monogamous heteronormative rulebook.
In this presentation, Scott Kiloby will explain how the Kiloby Center’s innovative inquiry and mindfulness tools allow us to explore previously unconscious patterns of suffering connected to addiction. The focus of Scotts addiction recovery work is not behavior. The focus is on the psychological and emotional issues such as shame and lack. These tools were developed to help those who have no background in nonduality to access the natural state of awareness more easily and dissolve the persistent suffering that lies at the core of addiction.
Scott will speak to how addiction cannot be truly healed without dealing with these unconscious drivers. Scott will also provide some very helpful tips on avoiding bypassing while on the path to recovery and/or awakening.
Finally Scott will provide fresh insight into how some modern day nonduality teachings are actually prolonging addictions and trauma by implicitly encouraging bypassing.
Morgan Hill
This is it: Enlightenment , David Thomas
From the moment we are born into this world, we are socially conditioned by our outside environment. Unconsciously, we embrace the norms and ideologies of society that influence our behaviors, thinking, and the decisions we make in life. Through this constant programing, we have forgotten who we truly are and our unlimited potential. Our disconnection from the true self, has created mental patterns of unworthiness, fear, loneliness, anxiety, anger, and depression.
In this talk, David Thomas will discuss social programming, limiting beliefs, and the low-level energies we have unconsciously adopted. David will lead a guided meditation to help you to focus on the present moment and find a place of stillness within. As a result, you will be able to go beyond the veil of the mind and ultimately realize that you are the source of your own peace, joy, love, and liberation.
In this experiential presentation that will include a talk, guided meditation, and dialogue, we will explore how being fully human requires both the awakening of the deep Heart that is shared by all beings as well as the full embrace of the vulnerable human heart. It is the deep or universal Heart of compassionate presence that is able to most tenderly and fully hold the suffering human heart, creating an optimal environment for its natural unfolding.
The heart area is a center of great emotional and energetic sensitivity as well as a portal to our true nature as loving awareness. It is where we feel self-love and self-loathing, a core worthiness or unworthiness, as well as grief and joy. It is also the wellspring of profound gratitude, appreciation and wonder and where we recognize our inherent wholeness and non-separateness from all of life.
Madrone
Humanity as Dynamical Multiverse Singularity: Thought as Event Horizon and a New Geometrization of Time, Coleman Dobson
What breaks information symmetry and fuels paradigm shifts such as the shift from Newtonian mechanics to the very profound everything not forbidden is compulsory�xiom of quantum mechanics? Why do we still perceive in linear time when there exist two time dimensions in F-Theory and four levels in the Holographic Multiverse?
Quantum mechanics posits that particles are mathematical possibilities, irreducible representations of Lie Groups. It is as if space itself were a time crystal, where the perceived low-energy configuration, the grand what is, is symmetric with respect to quantum time. But what is quantum time and who could create it?
Using Mirror Symmetry, Level 4 of the Multiverse, and Noncommutative Algebras, I propose that in proportion as we integrate as fully actualized human beings, we change our mathematical constructs which therefore directly change perceived reality. So humanity is the dynamical singularity between the black and white hole, constantly replacing old paradigms with emergent constructs, and thought itself is an event horizon.
Firstly, we explore powerful shifts in theoretical physics which parallel the spiritual movement to the human integrating to the 6th Density of lovelight wisdom: gravity as geometry and tensor networks; multi-verse circle time; entanglement as black holes.
Secondly, we propose that the fully actualized human would construct quantum time as a holographic mirror symmetry, as it will no longer be relevant to perceive through linear time.
Using F-theory and Loop Quantum Gravity, we argue that space and time are pre-geometric emergent mirror pairs, emerging from the symmetries of spin networks of quantum complexity. So just as we made classical time an approximation symmetry, we could construct a quantum multiverse time, where humans could perceive their magical multiverse copies. Imagine the effect on the isms of humanity, if tomorrow were replaced with infinite day returning?
“The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener”
Billy O'Brien
“We collectively create results that nobody wants …“
C. Otto Scharmer
How is it that we, as a society, with all of our technological, philosophical and spiritual advancements, are ineffective in creating a thriving environment for our citizens?
The origin of our attention, our interior condition, is often hidden from our awareness and therefore impacts our actions directly, like an unseen car in the rearview mirror blind spot.
Observing our body sensations and actions gives us insight into what/who is at the source of our individual and collective actions, and helps us discern when we are driven by fear and habits instead of being fully present to each unique moment.
Listening to our body can help us connect with that to which we all belong to and support our ability to co-create actions that flow and flourish.
Hayes Ballroom
PL6. Collective Initiations
The recognition and treatment of buried trauma within individuals is at the leading edge of psychotherapy today. The recent discovery that trauma can have epigenetic effects that are passed down through generations is at the leading edge of biological research. While we are gaining a greater understanding of how trauma can affect the health of individuals, we have not yet understood the impact of collective trauma. Could it be that a hidden layer of collective trauma underlies many of the seemingly intractable social, economic, and even environmental issues humanity faces today?
On a spiritual level, it is crucial that we understand the implications of trauma and collective trauma in our lives order to create a spiritual path that is embodied and grounded and is not used to bypass our difficulties. Only by bringing our spiritual practice into relationship with the darkest parts of our history can we break free of repetitive patterns and open the door to new possibilities.
The ecological crisis that most people currently attribute to greenhouse gases will not be resolved by merely switching energy sources. It invites us into a profoundly different relationship to the planet and the rest of life, even a different sense of who we are and what is real. It is an invitation, not a compulsion. Will we choose life, or continued death? How might we change the psychic conditions from which we choose?
As the fierce and tender voice of the feminine rises again, we are gifted with renewed access to the women mystics and wisdom beings across the spiritual traditions, such as, Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, Mary Magdalene, Sophia, the Shekinah, Song of Songs, Rabia, Fatima, Tara, Quan Yin, Kali, and indigenous Mother goddesses. In this gathering we engage in contemplative readings from the mystics, group reflections, evocative writing exercises, inter-spiritual chanting and silent sitting, weaving these luminous elements into a basket of awakened community.
Interlude
Edenvale
C19. Integrated Conversations
While we are gaining a greater understanding of the psychological and biological effects of trauma on the health of individuals, we have not yet fully understood the impact of trauma on our collective wellbeing. Could it be that a hidden layer of collective trauma underlies many of the seemingly intractable social, economic, and even environmental issues humanity faces today? How can we uncover the traumas embedded in our social body and work together to heal those wounds?
Through guided meditation and dialogue, Thomas Hübl will lead us to inquire into the collective trauma layer that is a part of our being, and become aware of its effects in our own lives and in our society. We will explore how spiritual practice can either be a way to bypass our personal and collective traumas, or a powerful ally when brought into relationship with the darkest parts of our shared human history. Together we will activate the potential to heal our collective nervous system, break free of repetitive patterns, and transform the trajectory of humanity’s future.
Guadalupe
Experiential
Guadalupe
Our Body in Relationship, Dev Bry
The majority of what occurs when we relate with one another is body-based communication. Through our breath, our heart rate, our muscle tension, our nerves, our tone, our shapes and our qualities of movement, we are in constant communion with the world around us. Through body-based play,we will explore and honor our body’s responses to proximity (closeness and distance), eye contact, motion, tone and qualities of touch. Come play and inquire with others. Together, we will make this “dance” of relationship a living, breathing, work of art.
A four-billion-year-old cycling evolutionary engine of creation lifted us improbable and beautiful human beings into existence. The very process by which we were made is driven by the dual nature of night and day, death and reproduction, despair and hope. The dark and light parts of our nature now starkly face each other in a high stakes planetary stand-off which will determine our very survival. The secret to our future may be to invoke Jedi-like transformative powers into the midst of the stand-off. To paraphrase Master Yoda… “Jedi need the dark force of the Empire to grow skills stronger… to answer power with power, the Jedi way this is not… so you must face the truth, and choose to give off light, for Luminous beings we are., Padawan.”
Madrone
C24. Many Journeys, One Consciousness
What is grasper and grasping? It is object and subject. When an object first appears to sentient beings they become attached, then thoughts move. For example, insects become bound to a spider's web. The more the insect's body moves, the more it becomes bound in the web. The result is like that of grasper and grasping. All ignorance comes from grasper and grasping. The ideas of "You" and "I" comes from grasper and grasping. Ego-grasping is part of that. The cause of samsara is also the grasper and grasping view. Karma comes from delusion and delusion comes from ego-grasping view. When it is dark at night, we can see a multi-colored rope that looks like a snake. We then become afraid. This is created from grasping. The grasping is actually a mistaken perception. When the object appears to the practitioner, it is immediately integrated into the Natural State. The object is dissolved into Ultimate Truth. There is no foundation of attachment. At that time the practitioner observes without the grasping view. For example, when we meditate in the Natural State, there is no object and subject. Why is the grasping view a mistaken perception? Whatever first appears: Where did it originate from? Where is it abiding? Where will it disappear to? Everything is pervaded with intrinsic awareness. It is non-dual with the natural state. According to high practitioners, there is no rejection, no negativity. For example, if you visualize a golden place, you will not find earth and stone there. When we meditate we must continue our session without grasping. There is no difference between the observer and the observed. It is non-duality. This is what we call "self-knowing wisdom". When we experience this, we get liberated or achieve Enlightenment.
Monterey Room
C22. Panels - Embracing Yin & Mud to Lotus
Monterey Room
Panel: Embracing Yin; Awakening in the Body, Vanessa Scotto; Brooke Thomas; Dorothy Hunt; Jeannie Zandi; Kiran Trace
There is an ever expanding conversation these days within nondual circles about embodiment as a maturational process in awakening, yet there is little talk about how awakening is actually integrated within our human body. Could it be that freedom from suffering is not about transcending form, but rather, becoming more fully present with the field of experience within the body? How does the health and tone of the nervous system correlate with awakening if at all? How can we meet the arising energies, emotions, conditioning and ego structure that are implicit to having a human form? In traditions that have historically pointed to the experience of the truth that lies beyond form, how to we begin to include the physical body in the conversation of awakening?
In this panel discussion with teachers Jeannie Zandi, Kiran Trace, Dorothy Hunt we will explore themes such as how to be present in the body, the role the body may play in awakening to truth as well as the impact awakening may have on the body, how we can have a direct experience of the body without concept or objectification, the intelligence and conditioning that lies within the body, the relationships between trauma, the body and awakening, the feminine movement of embodiment and what it means to live a fully human existence within physical form once you’ve awakened from the dream of separation.
Morgan Hill
C20. New Approaches to Mental Health
“Underneath all his [her] preoccupations with sex, society, religion, etc. (all the staple abstractions which allow the forebrain to chatter) there is, quite simply, a person tortured beyond endurance by the lack of tenderness in the world.”
— Lawrence Durrell
After 45 years of clinical and developmental research, I've come to several realizations: 1. No one escapes pain, 2. From a psychological point of view, our first developmental milestone is learning to trust soothing and affection from another (resonance-at-our-core), 3. Suffering is our experience of pain without resonance, 4. As resonance increases, suffering diminishes and transformation ensues.
“We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.
— H.H. Dalai Lama
This micro-seminar will begin by focusing on current developmental research regarding infant sensitivity to resonance. We will then look at defensive process (“It’s up to me”) as the inevitable response to non-resonance. Finally, we will glimpse the dance of duality/non-duality as “Oneing Affection” (Cloud of Unknowing).
San Jose
Experiential
Ai: natural balance; Ki: living energy of connection: so Aiki: conscious unity;
Do: universal Truth, Dharma. The practice of Aikido as Budo, the Way of the Warrior is a way of non-duality, in three stages: Coordination, Connection and Realization
To learn the martial art of effectively receiving and applying Aikido techniques is a process of emptying habits of reactiveness and control, and so developing the humility and trust in oneself as an embodiment of Great Nature. This is the true self-confidence that leads to self-knowledge and to gratitude for life and in turn is the key for healthy relationships to flourish. So we can say with O Sensei:
“True victory is victory over one’s self.”
In this experiential session, we will practice safe drills with partners, involving minimal physical effort and requiring no special skills. We will seek to embody the power and beauty of both internal spirit-mind-body connection and of connection with another person. We will see how, when feeling stuck, there is always another way: one that can be found not by “fighting through” a problem, but by embodying unity, in which resolution naturally occurs.
San Juan Bautista
C23. The Dance of Human-Divine
San Juan Bautista
Shakti - The Dance of Spirit in the Matter, Nadeshwari Joythimayananda
In the process of incarnating the body, so many imprintings are shaping us, so many dimensions become part of our cells. And everything starts from the void of the heart creating eternal movement of energy that dances life.
A journey through the voice and the silences.
Now with sweetness and now with power, we will be landscapes of nature whose scent recalls the temples in the forests of ancient India where every day flowers were offered as a tribute to the Goddesses; and at the same time, we will be in this millennium, to awake us at this present moment, to stay with what there is now.
Vibrations that enters in the body and dances in the silence of feelings.
Through the thousand nuances of the frequencies of the vital energy and the primordial sound of the Mantras recited by Nadeshwari, we will have the opportunity to gradually leave resistances so that we will be transported to the place where the Spirit resides ... in our heart.
Love others by remaining in connection with you.
Love yourself by remaining connected to the heart of those around you.
Dance these two possibilities to perceive them as part of a single feeling.
A space were we can meet saints, sages, rishis and muni ... yogini and yogis.
Those who for centuries have met the forces of nature in the beauty, strength and simplicity
San Martin
C21. Integrated Conversations
The debate of whether awakening is sudden and without cause, or progressive and supported by practices, has raged for millennia. Strong evidence exists for both sides of the argument. The do nothing side points to the ever-present Ground that we are, which needs no practice of any kind to Be and to be realized. The practice diligently�ide points to the thousands of years of scientific testing (in places like Tibet) that spiritual practices (in this case Buddhist) have refined and honed, to increase the likelihood of awakening. Why choose? Both sides are true, if we embrace a both/and perspective rather than an either/or perspective. In particular, the Tibetan Buddhist practice of dzogchen, with the support of a concentrated mindstream, have much to offer the modern non-dual practitioner in the recognition and stabilization of non-dual realization as part of our human experience. This session provides participants a brief overview of the practice elements in which non-dual realization can be actively cultivated, in addition to the possibility of non-duality being realized spontaneously. Non-dual practitioners curious about what has made Tibetan Buddhism endure throughout the ages, can find in this session some answers that highlight the rich wisdom and usefulness of these ancient practices, even (and maybe especially) in this modern age. This session will also include neuroscience research highlighting the scientifically measurable benefits that Buddhist meditation has on not only the software of our personality conditioning, but the hardware of the grey matter of the brain. These benefits of meditation not only support realization of Reality, but provide health, relationship, and anti-aging advantages that have been discovered through neuroscience to support a modern human life.
We all believe we have, or are, a self. But what is a self? What is my self? What does it mean to say that I, myself, am doing something? What does it mean to claim that I, myself, have a history?
One of the "jobs" of my self is to appear as a character in the episodic memories with which I reconstruct my personal past. But who is this character, how does it relate to me, and why do I, now, believe that the events depicted or described by these "memory" experiences actually happened in some "past" to which I have no independent access? Another role of my self is to "own" the beliefs, actions, emotions and other feelings that I call "mine." But what does this ownership consist of? If a thought or a feeling occurs, did my self create it? If I'm driving my car or having a conversation with someone, is it my self that is acting? If not, why is my self claiming ownership?
This talk will examine these questions from the perspectives of cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary biology. We will consider how the experienced self is "put together" out of memories and feelings, and how alterations in neurocognitive function can produce subtle or radical changes in the experience of a self, from confabulated memories to ecstatic experiences. We will ask how an experienced self might be advantageous in evolutionary terms. We will discuss how the idea that the self is invented as a means of organizing experience can influence how we interpret our experiences of selfhood.
Morgan Hill
VR As A Mental Health Application for Psychospiritual Transformation, Dorote Lucci
Virtual Reality may well be an ideal tool to use for psychotherapeutic support. What are the possible uses for mobile virtual reality (VR) and VR within the mental health field? What are the possibilities to produce worldview shifts that encourage growth, balance and integration within the individual and the group? What would be better than to be able to provide patients with a universe and a world view that is a way for embodied cognition and visual stimuli to be activated in a positive manner? VR may well prove to be a major mental health tool in the future. Additionally there are specific elements in the way it can be applied that are unique to non dual psychotherapy. It can if designed specifically for it, be a transformational tool towards spiritual embodiment.
San Juan Bautista
How Available are you to Live as a Human-Divine? I Am in Love with Life. Are you? , Marlise Cocheret
All the women in my family live with hereditary kidney dis-ease. How does one relate to a chronic dis-ease? What is it like to hear you have 2 more weeks to live? Choose dialysis or not? Transplant or not? And, much more!
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 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 thru offering the most wonderful challenges. When we leave the search behind, we live in total intimacy with what is, which is the dance of our Humanity and our Divine radiance.
We are left in Love!
Madrone
A Journey of Consciousness: From Our Primal Beginnings to Full Awakening & Beyond, Marea Claassen
We are currently living into a new paradigm of consciousness, a glimpse of the future human being. This presentation will elucidate the human journey of consciousness from primal hominid to the possible human edging toward enlightenment. Drawing on the work of Jean Gebser (The Ever-Present Origin) and C.G. Jung (The Collected Works) as well as the wisdom of dreams, we’ll explore the story of collective human development through five phases of unfoldment: Archaic, Magical, Mythical, Mental, and Integral. Each structure of consciousness shapes and determines our perceptions of the world and our relationship with the unknown. Each is a complete and comprehensive way of perceiving and understanding life. It is “a given”, the lens through which we make sense of the world.
These structures are not, however a simple linear progression. Each emergent paradigm blends with, and is added to, the previous structures of consciousness. Our primal origins and successive achievements of consciousness, therefore, are always with us.
Using rich visual imagery, we will explore each of these structures and correlate them with a depth psychological understanding of the layers of the unconscious active in every individual today.
The energy in magical phenomena, the meaning inherent in mythic ranges, and the abstract reasoning of our mental structures are all essential to what is coming into being. It will be transcendent, but cannot yet be fully known. We have only glimpses and yet it looks a lot like collective enlightenment.
Hayes Ballroom
'Ripples in reality' - Consciousness as a process in the fine-scale structure of the universe, Stuart Hameroff MD
Guadalupe
The Organization of Experience: The Transformational Power of Mindfulness and Embodiment in the Hakomi Method, Dominique Lando
The Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy offers an elegant, comprehensive and highly effective approach to human change. Hakomi combines mindfulness, unique and powerful somatic techniques, and a focus on present experience to access and transform deeply held, life-limiting core beliefs. For over 30 years Hakomi has pioneered and integrated the use of mindfulness in the human change process. It is backed by thousands of hours of clinical applications and research into the neurological underpinnings of mindfulness. Psychotherapists can successfully use Hakomi in a wide range of applications including individual, couples/ family therapy, and group work. The Hakomi Method also offers cutting-edge skills for coaches, health professionals and others who work to support human change and growth.
Drawing from different Buddhist traditions and meditation practices, Hakomi employs Mindfulness as a distinct state of mind in which clients can slow down and observe carefully their internal experience. The heart of the method is the precise study of the client's experience in the present moment, designed to reveal their unconscious beliefs about the world and about themselves. These access routes are surprisingly effective to take us straight to the core of how we are organized as beings, the blueprints that we unknowingly place on just about everything. At the core of our organization is where we can create new neural pathways for transformation and expand on our possibilities of being. Together we will engage in this process of setting up experiments in mindfulness.
Monterey Room
Panel: Mud to Lotus: Opening the Masculine Heart, Kent Welsh; Charles Eisenstein; Will Keepin; Jeannie Zandi
The work before us, highlighted by the #metoo movement, is plain: how do we meet the masculine shadow, and support men in reclaiming and opening their hearts? Join Kent Welsh of Open Circle and his panelists who will explore the unique potential and challenges for men opening their hearts and standing up to face the individual and cultural masculine shadow.
A ‘Gong Bath™’ with Richard Rudis is a dynamic meditative concert which acoustically guides each participant via harmonic overtones into realms of spiritual well-being, emotional balance, cellular healing and spiritual awareness. Using an unique 38" Gong, toned to ‘Aum’ frequency of the Earth (in it’s yearly dance with Sol), a multitude of octaves are created designed to entice the brain into Alpha/Theta/Delta wave-scapes of creativity, relaxation and enrichment. (see www.sacredsoundgongbath.com for further description).
Fake news has been in the media this year, but in reality, creating a fake story is a form of human deception that we know from the depth of our bones. After 18 years as an LPC (licensed professional counselor) using EMDR to reprocess trauma, I have witnessed over and over again, how the brain takes snippets of memory and transforms these into narratives that sometimes deceive. Many who have studied this, believe that memories solely exist as a collection of images or sensations. These are tiny flashes, not logical, or full memories. The brain then fills in the gap to create full memories. These may contain false details or be absolutely false. However, false narratives have immense power to move us beyond trauma or keep us frozen in it. It doesn’t even matter that they are false, because it becomes a story we believe in. As a trauma therapist, I reprocess true and false stories. False stories have tortured people for years—stories created around failed relationships, business ventures, money management, etc. We can’t trust the intellect to amplify truth. We need to question our thoughts. We need to flush out the shadow and embody ourselves accurately. If we don’t, instead of grounding ourselves in meditation, we end up grounded in an 8 year old self, frozen in a story of trauma. This talk serves to deconstruct the way we worship the mind and see it as incorruptible. I became a therapist to help people understand why we tell ourselves both true and false stories. We deserve to live in an evolved state, without blind faith in the stories we create.
Morgan Hill
The Mystic And The Psychotic: Holding Space for Anomalous States of Consciousness, Dina Tyler
Mystic or Mad? Psychosis or Spiritual Experience? This workshop will overcome the duality in clinical practice between pathology and awakening with a new vision of altered states of consciousness and a new direction for interventions and treatment. Nonduality points to a paradigm change in understanding of being human, viewing “anomalous” or unexpected mind spaces as needing compassionate response as reflections of greater wholeness. Set and setting, drawn from psychedelic sitting and integration, can help reframe psychosis as an opportunity to embrace non duality and access greater depth in the multidimensional mystery of reality. This workshop will explore methods for working with individuals, family, and self — based on the ongoing work of the Bay Area Mandala Project — leading the way for a much needed paradigm shift in mental healthcare.
San Juan Bautista
Wisdom of Brokenness : Nonduality and the Feminine Path, Vera de Chalambert
Nothing, the Jewish mystics tell us, is as whole as a broken heart. The world breaks our hearts wide open; and it is this openness itself that mends us, re-members us, makes us whole. This presentation will explore the theme of brokenness through the lens of comparative religion and delve into the paradox of divine brokenness through teachings from various spiritual traditions. It will focus on the apophatic and kenotic nature of feminine wisdom, which sees brokenness and emptiness not as negativities, but as intimacy with the very nature of Reality. We will explore sacred narratives of brokenness from the Jewish, Christian, Hindu and Buddhist cosmologies, including the great primordial shattering of divine vessels in Lurianic Kabballah, the story of the Hindu Goddess of Brokenness, as well as the theological implications of Christological wounds, and of the Buddhist Perfection of Wisdom Sutra from which the notion of Bodhisattva rises.
That things will fall apart in our lives, despite our greatest efforts is as inevitable as breath. Indeed, no matter how spiritual, how awake we might be, no matter how clear our intention, or good our karma, there is only one certainty: we will all without exception experience loss, heartbreak and disappointment of a regular human life. Whether it is death, divorce, disease or failure that shakes up our world and makes us tremble, whether it is a broken dream or a broken bone that brings us to our knees, brokenness is an essential part of the human experience and a jewel of the spiritual process. Our brokenness is not a mistake, but an invitation to give up on our projects of fixing ourselves, fixing reality. Instead it kindly points us in the direction of the Divine, it too shattered, fragmented, broken open in its radical wholeness and dwelling among Her broke, broken, broken hearted likeness.
Spiritual seekers often imagine that awakened living means ridding ourselves of our humanness, or that nondual awareness is somehow at odds with its own expression as human beingness. Egoic thought imagines that “it” is what will become ever-present, compassionate and loving, and so continually falls short in its attempt to become what it will never become. Presence, compassion, and unconditional love are already here in our deepest essence, the Heart of Awareness that we share. Awakened living realizes that the Absolute and the relative dimensions of our Being are simply “not-two.” In such seeing, we honor What is already whole and undivided as well as its infinite expressions as life. Through discussion and experiential invitations, we will explore Presence and personhood, and look at ways to approach our inner struggles by not separating ourselves from them yet being willing to look deeply at where we are divided. We often need reminding, “Without mud, there is no lotus.”
Madrone
Being and Becoming Conscious - Towards Christ Consciousness and Non-dual Cosmology, Kimberly Braun
This presentation will offer attendees a vast horizon of consideration directly tending the title. What could it mean that to be human is to be in the process of realization described as _ —being and becoming conscious?
Lawn
Break
Hayes Ballroom
PL7. Healing Trauma as a Spiritual Path: Individual and Collective Dimensions
A conversation with Thomas Huebl and Peter Levine
Silver Creek Dining Room
Dinner
The Nature of Creativity: from Cosmology to Consciousness
Hayes Ballroom
The Mystery Party and Live Music
Hayes Ballroom
Fully Human, Fully Divine: Experiential Group Meditation, Shakti Caterina Maggi
Join us for this experiential group meditation. Through the naked, unfiltered perception of each other, we will merge into Oneness of Being. In this intimacy, we can truly meet as fully human, fully divine.
Dholrhythms Dance Co. highlights the ancestral and ethnic roots of the Punjabi folk dances while pushing boundaries with contemporary influences. The result is a fresh and exciting experience full of joy, energy, and passion.
DJ Dragonfly’s sets bridge all variations of the underground global dance scene. Known for incorporating nu-bass culture with the leading edge of production and programming, he fuses trans-temporal dynamics and genre-morphing beats with the global village's traditional cultural idioms and sounds (sitars, percussion, vocal samples, african drumming, etc.). Spanning all genres, no continent goes unturned in his search for the perfect groove!
To be human is deeply personal to the individual who is experiencing life. To have a body in & of itself, is deeply sensual & experiential. Of the millions, or even billions of nerve receptors in your body, thousands reside in your fingertips alone. They are designed to connect you to pleasure points, memory & processing centers that are aware & co-creative in a fraction of a second. These receptors naturally awaken humans into discovering fields of harmony or disharmony in relationship with everything around us. Traditional religious adherence has often tried to strip away this fact by burying normal human impulses as wild, untamed, animalistic or even dangerous. It has placed extraordinary emphasis on taming the mind & subjugating the body as the Gateway of God. The feelings of Knowing, of Seeing & of Intuiting is pre-wired & given to us by birth, yet has been shredded through the weight of fears & the threats of even torture & death throughout the centuries. To heal the traumas inflicted by this history of suppression, we must invite the tender blossoming of our inherent Sensual Spirituality.
In this experiential session, we will dive into some of these sensitive receptors in both the physical & subtle bodies, and immerse ourselves deeply into a heightened perception via alternate states of consciousness that allow us to experience a realm of sensuality inherent in the spiritual self. Join Kristen Eykel CHt. on this journey to unwind these ancestral bonds of fear & shame. Discover within the universe of your own body, how intimately connected you already are to the Self as Source. Enjoy becoming One with All!
Hayes Ballroom
PL8. Many Threads, One Reality
What if we put into every day practice the scientific truths that we know? What if our lives bore the fruits of the principles in which we are rooted? What if we simply acted like we know what we know?
We are evolving from a Newtonian paradigm of existence in which we are static entities of matter at the mercy of external forces in the universe. We now understand that we live in a quantum field of infinite potentiality, and that we are part of the quantum field itself. We are consciousness in form and our forms are forever changing. As vibrant energetic beings co-creating our reality every moment, we have agency and the ways in which we direct our energy impacts our experience.
Furthermore, our experience is not the facts of what has happened, but our interpretation. We live life at the level of our real time narrative. Our “story” is more than the monotonous repetition of former conclusions; it is our active narration in the moment, projected into the future. Hence, our story is not merely a stagnant photograph of our past; it is an impressionable blueprint for our future. With enough repetition, it is hardwired within our brains such that our sense of possibility is eclipsed by the probability of precedence.
We are quantum beings of infinite potential harnessed by human pre-cognitive commitments limiting our vision of possibility. How do we navigate this paradox? How do we bridge the gap between the unbridled magnificence of our future with measured capacities of our past? How do we create new neuronal synaptic pathways to receive more than our intellect can conceive, let alone comprehend? How do we step into our greater yet to be? Let’s explore our more.
Over the last thirty years, a new systemic understanding of life has emerged at the forefront of science. At the core of this new understanding we find a fundamental change of metaphors: from seeing the world as a machine to understanding it as a network. This change has profound philosophical, social, and political implications. In this lecture, Fritjof Capra will present his synthesis of the new “systems view of life” and will then concentrate on one of its most radical philosophical implications: a scientific theory which, for the first time, unifies mind, matter, and life.
While 26 million Americans have taken LSD since it became illegal, and quite a few took it before that, all of us overlooked microdoses. Albert Hoffman even chided Sandoz Pharmaceuticals for not studying “low doses.” Microdoses research evolved very much the way a lot of science actually happens: A fortunate series of mistakes, misunderstandings, misinformation and unlikely surprises. The first few hundred self-explorers’ findings gave form to a survey of several thousand people from 59 countries. All used the same protocol, and filled in a daily checklist of 23 different emotional states, as well as writing reports going well beyond the statistics.
At the same time, the media endlessly promulgated the notion that creative healthy individuals, like many in Silicon Valley, regularly microdosed, reporting improved energy, heightened work effectiveness, and better health habits including diet, sleep, and exercise. Microdosing went viral.
The survey team reported how often (and far from always) microdosing seemed to help people who have not been helped by antidepressants, antipsychotics, and other mental health pharmaceuticals.
Furthermore, small groups reported changes in conditions that had never been associated with psychedelics, including difficult menstrual periods, chronic migraines, cluster headaches, traumatic brain injuries, and even the painful symptoms of shingles. There were no magnificent breakthroughs into non-duality, no angels nor demons, no giant snakes. Just people with improved school grades, greater success with coding problems, improved intimate relationships, increased libido, eating more salads, and smoking less pot. The very diversity and span of improvements were confusing, but as the next phase of research is starting (well-controlled, double-blind, university based studies in several countries), we are uncovering what may be an underlying pattern.
A few of the case studies are sufficiently remarkable that, as time allows, will be shared.
Hayes Ballroom
The Relative is the Absolute: Touching Race, Injustice, and Love, Caverly Morgan
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 it 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 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?
Hayes Ballroom
Youth Poems
Edenvale
C25. Integrated Conversations
Guadalupe
Experiential: Radical Intimacy and the Play of the Erotic, Michaela Boehm; Steve James
Whether you would like to start a new intimate relationship or want to deepen passion with your partner, the principles of Intimacy and Erotic Friction — the spark that keeps passion alive — are always available to deepen your experience.
The erotic play of masculine and feminine, springing from a radical intimacy with life itself, is a challenging and delightful realm of inquiry. We will explore the deep principles of embodiment, uncover and work with personal blocks to expansion and contraction, engage in practical exercises, dialogue, and learning to widen both heart space and the ability to embody as energy or thrust.
In this experiential session you will be shown the building blocks, practices, and disciplines of creating deeper relational and erotic connections in your life.
Hayes Ballroom
Panel - Awakening to the Divine Feminine, Mirabai Starr; Vera de Chalambert; Francis Bennett; Zhen Dao; Nadeshwari Joythimayananda
Today’s modern society can best be described as a paradox:. On the one hand there seems to be a collective awakening of human consciousness that is creating movement towards greater clarity, creativity, compassion, wellness, communion with nature and a sincere respect for spiritual, ethnic and gender diversity.
On the other hand, our world is grappling with the backlash of social pariahs like racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, class inequalities and religious intolerance, often leading to violence; unbridled materialism and even despair.
As the outdated patriarchal structures rise up in backlash to their inevitable downfall, the need for a more sustainable world paradigm couldn’t be greater. It’s clear that now is the time for balance and integration to be restored to the planet. But how do we bring balance to what sometimes seems like two polar opposite extremes?
Perhaps balance can only be restored by a collective awakening of the Divine Feminine in our society so that women and men can reconnect to a more integrated idea of Source/God/Life and step into a more nurturing relationships with themselves, their communities and the planet.
This panel will be having a conversation on how we can all awaken this healing and nurturing inner feminine energy into our everyday lives and how such an awakening might effect our society and our world..
They will be sharing their own unique perspectives on this topic based on the awakening to the Divine Feminine that has unfolded in their own lives personally and professionally.
Madrone
C30. The Science of Systems
Madrone
The Science of Artificial Emotional Intelligence, Artificial Consciousness, and Maybe Even Artificial Enlightenment Itself, Sean Webb
From a complex systems perspective, it turns out that the operations of our minds are much simpler than we had ever imagined. So much, that our human emotions are now being modeled for tracking and even prediction within computin. This development also opens the door for emotions to be programmed into software to create emotional AI for computers, and even artificial consciousness itself.
Interestingly, as studies show, it turns out this new understanding of our human emotions processing also opens the door to some powerful and practical mind hacks which can be consciously employed to change our brain thought patterns, so that emerging alternative wave patterns can arise during our waking awareness. This new approach not only provides for a more refined control of our waking minds, but it also opens the door to higher intelligence, greater creativity, better problem solving and even heightened levels of inner peace and well being. It also helps us better understand our top level of consciousness called waking awareness
Taking that one step further into the science of split brain patients, proving that we have multiple levels of consciousness in our brains at lower levels, a fundamental question must be asked; just how far down the ladder does consciousness go in our bodies before the line of demarcation between conscious organic activity and seemingly dumb organic molecules shows itself? In short, the evidence suggests our cells themselves are conscious.
So with the recent discovery in a materials lab in Tsukuba, Japan confirming that our neurons DO indeed interact with quantum field vibrations (in the gamma spectrum, our gamma brain waves being highly correlated with altruism and our higher human virtues), do we now have a very clear scientific trail that our very consciousness (and all matter in the universe) indeed springs forth from an infinite empty field of energy vibrating at the frequency of love? Come take this fun, but science-grounded stroll.
Monterey Room
C26. Integrated Conversations
Morgan Hill
C27. Living Love
Morgan Hill
You Drive Me Crazy: Living Love in the Heat of the Gender Divide, Jeannie Zandi
Straight talk from the heart of nondual realization about what it takes to bring the light of realization into the dark crannies of the centuries-old rift between women and men. Jeannie will draw on decades of holding space for women, and her ally work with men since the Men’s Movement of the late 80s. She will be speaking from her experience as cis gender and straight, but everyone and their experience is welcome.
Areas of polarization such as this are a favorite dancing ground for the God(dess) of Love. Come and dance with us!
On the Patio
Emergent Connections
Authentic Movement is a method developed by Mary Whitehouse as an extension of Jung’s free associations, from spoken words to movement and sound. It is an opening of the door of being through the body. The mover closes her eyes and allows her deepest impulses to manifest in movement, sounds and maybe words. The witness tracks the mover and (separately)his own sensations, feelings, images, metaphors. When they meet their sharing is the story of the sacred and undivided unfolding of the field of life.
San Juan Bautista
C29. Paths to Wholeness
San Juan Bautista
Activating We-Consciousness: Venturing Beyond Individual Awakening, Adam Chacksfield
In this session we'll activate and explore the vast alive space of we-consciousness together. We'll use a simple practice to directly enter the experience of this consciousness, and allow ourselves to become vehicles for it's revelation and expression.
For thousands of years spiritual teachings have been devoted to individual awakening, and as this happens more, we're now starting to discover the even greater possibility of awakening the shared consciousness of inter-being. Rather than just individual mysticism and individual revelation, we're being invited into we-mysticism and shared revelation.
When we mutually give ourselves to we-consciousness, we participate in a radically more inclusive, complex, and creative consciousness. This consciousness is unique to the participants, highly dynamic, and greater than the sum of it's parts. To be inside this consciousness together is like entering a dimension of the universe that is only just being discovered.
Love is calling us to give ourselves to each other so profoundly that we move completely beyond separation and inside shared consciousness. When we dissolve into the depth of this intimacy a shared sense of oneness emerges where we are all unique channels for the expression of something much greater.
Despite being typically overlooked, we-consciousness is readily accessible for many, as soon as we turn towards it together. And it can be immediately recognized as resonant for us. This session is an opportunity for us to tap the incredible potential of our shared consciousness that's just waiting to be activated.
San Martin
C28. Graceful Surrender
San Martin
Graceful Surrender: Opening through the Gate of Humility , Miranda McPherson
Grace – direct experience of Divine Presence, always requires some kind of surrender, which Ramana Maharshi described as “giving oneself back to the origin of one’s being”. Yet even after significant realization, the forces of our familiar identity can easily re-constellate, appropriating luminous moments of unity to become a juicier, more spiritually sophisticated ego. In this presentation that includes devotional chanting as well as discourse, Miranda will explore the relationship between true humility and its role in bringing us into the receptive state of Grace. We will explore surrender not something we “do”, but rather, as something we allow the more we bow in humble recognition that only the Divine truly exists. Humility is revealed to be not only the fragrance of a mature soul, a virtue that supports ongoing surrender out of subtle defences, it is the key to ushering us into the mystery of each moment with a fuller humanity.
Sharing her feminine and devotional approach based on Ego Relaxation, Miranda invites you to lay aside your concepts of what you are, and even what the world even is. Together, we can come with wholly empty hands into the Presence, and live its embodiment deeper into our world.
Kundalini, the life force energy of spiritual awakening has been described in the Hindu contemplative and yogic traditions for centuries. The secrets of Kundalini have been buried in esoteric texts guarded by masters. Kundalini is a spiritual energy presumed to reside at the base of the spine and when awakened, it is believed to catalyze spiritual evolution and lead to a higher state of consciousness and integration of body mind and spirit. Practitioners of meditation and Yoga, particularly Tantric traditions, are most familiar with this state. Kundalini awakening can be developed in devotees by these practices, under the guidance and supervision of a competent teacher (guru) to ensure safety and proper integration, but can also arouse spontaneously during breath work (pranayama), NDEs, visionary states, singing, dancing, music (listening and making), ecstatic moments in nature, fasting, injury, trauma, or without apparent cause. The phenomenology of Kundalini activation is well documented, but the psychophysiology is yet to be fully described and understood scientifically. The present EEG studies explore some neural correlates, and provide objective validation of a profound and transformative subjective experience. Kundalini activation is recorded as a high voltage discharge of Delta/Theta brainwaves, followed by increased Beta and Gamma power. The subjects report an ecstatic multi orgasmic experience lasting tens of minutes following the initial discharge. These pioneering studies aim to demystify this remarkable phenomenon.
San Juan Bautista
Fully Human: Nondual Psychotherapy as a Path to Wholeness, Andrea Colombu
Our existence is strongly dictated by deep conditioning, the illusion of separation, and the loss of a true understanding of our humanity. In spite of all the scientific and technological advancement available today, most of us continue to feel disconnected, dissatisfied, and displaced from the true essence of our human nature.
Being fully human and living a fully human life is more necessary than ever. This process requires being able to integrate our relative and conditioned sense of self with our fundamental nature of unconditioned awareness in a cohesive expression of human existence. Nondual psychotherapy provides such an opportunity.
Nondual therapy integrates the timeless wisdom of pure awareness with contemporary therapeutic modalities to facilitate a process that reveals our true nature, dissolves our conditioning, and opens a path to living as a full human being.
In this presentation, we’ll explore key aspects of nondual psychotherapy that support the unfolding of healing, awakening, and the full potential of a human existence lived true to its nature.
The nondual rubber hits the road in our intimate relationships where we must face all that remains hidden in the shadowy recesses of our hearts. This includes our unexamined beliefs about love, the fear of aloneness, and the powerful emotions that arise when our buttons are pushed. Wherever we are on our spiritual path, relationships can offer a crucible to see where we are identified and defended. They can also help us transform co-dependency to a deeper communion in which we relate to one another from a sense of genuine inner freedom and fullness. In this presentation, Amoda will speak about the true purpose of relationship, as well as speaking from her own direct experience of being in a long-term relationship. She will explore central questions, such as: What is it like to relate from an inner fullness rather than lack? How does the awakening process impact the experience of intimacy? How does one deal with emotional reactions when they arise? What if one’s partner has no interest in the process of awakening? Is there such a thing as an “enlightened relationship”? She will also take questions from the audience.
San Martin
Nonduality and Mindfulness - Two Great Traditions that Go Great Together, Michael Taft
In the context of American spiritual practice nondual traditions and mindfulness traditions appear to be in sharp contrast. Nonduality is often associated with the doing nothing schools of meditation, and mindfulness meditation is often very effortful. Mindfulness meditation masters commonly refuse to even discuss enlightenment, whereas nondual teachers never stop talking about how we’re already enlightened.
Is there a common ground for these two great traditions? And are there viewpoints and understandings that they can contribute to each other? I believe so, and will unpack these areas of contrast and overlap in this presentation.
Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo turned the world upside down 400 years ago with scientific evidence regarding our solar system, proving that Earth is not the center of the Universe, shaking organized religion to its core. We are on the verge of a new paradigm, and there are new discoveries regarding the solar system that are even more world-view shattering . . . challenging thousands of years of organized religious belief and hundreds of years of materialistic scientific belief. There is now irrefutable, empirical, scientific evidence that our solar system is different from anything else witnessed in the observed Universe – suggesting that was created intentionally by an EVOLVED consciousness infinitely more expanded than our own. Further, this evidence makes itself known to us as a communication from this totally enlightened, bodhisattvic intelligence . . . a communication having to do with a possible shift in global consciousness. Not explained by science, not necessary for life, and absurdly outside the realm of coincidence, chance or accident, it concerns consciousness itself - and it is time to make this discovery known to the world. I believe that this is the long-sought synthesis between ancient spiritual wisdom and genuine scientific inquiry. This concerns the very heart of sacred geometry - the non-existent, still, point that Buckminster Fuller called ‘the nearest approach we will ever know to eternity and God.’ It is the Kabbalah’s Kether, the Point of Creation at the crown of the Tree of Life. It is the interface between the Ayn, the limitless, and all of manifestation. It is the opening between worlds. It is the Mahabindu, the point representing simultaneously the source of creation and the transcendence of all polarities and final integration at the end of the spiritual journey.’ It is the Stillpoint: The Geometry of Consciousness.
San Juan Bautista
Connecting for Real - Relating straight from the Heart, Nicola Amadora
No matter what spiritual awakenings we may have experienced or what we know conceptually, still, there is an aching, a calling in our own hearts and in our relationships - whether with a friend, partner or stranger on the street- to truly see and be seen, to hear and be heard. Simply to meet in love’s presence exactly as we are right now.
Easier said than done. How do you tap into this river of connection and offer life giving juice? How do you radically include the whole enchilada - the beauty, intelligence, messiness and human vulnerability - in relating and communication? Truly connecting is a profound spiritual practice for sure, especially when the going gets rocky. Yet, it leads us into mutual awakening and enables us to show up fully. Your capacity and courage expands to dive ever deeper into what is flowing between our hearts, connecting us in a most brilliant and often surprising way!
Live practices are offered in this session, which you can use in the streets of our world and for the powerful and tender dance of relating.
Francis doesn't deliver a prepared talk but rather speaks from what arises in the moment.
Hayes Ballroom
PL9. The Mystery of Life
Hayes Ballroom
Interlude
Hayes Ballroom
The Fundamental Differences Between Natural And Artificial Intelligence, Federico Faggin
The recent progress in artificial intelligence combined with claims that conscious computers will be feasible, are challenging the general notions we hold about intelligence and consciousness. Computers are not conscious and yet they perform certain tasks that require human intelligence and conscious attention better than humans. What is intelligence then? and what is consciousness good for? Can computers really become conscious? What will happen if they do? We can no longer dismiss these questions as philosophical musing: We need to clearly understand the boundaries between humans and computers. To do so, we also need to understand the boundaries between living organisms and machines. Human intelligence is intertwined with consciousness, while machine intelligence currently requires no consciousness. How can there be intelligence without consciousness? Science generally considers living organisms to be machines and consciousness to be an emergent property of organisms with brains – also considered to be machines. If we start with these assumptions, we end with the inescapable conclusion that future computers designed by the best minds will become conscious and will be better than us, maybe not in 50 years, but perhaps in 500 years. Yet, those of us who have explored our spiritual nature intuitively reject this conclusion as inconsistent with our deepest experiences. The author has explored these questions since studying and developing neural networks more than 30 years ago. His main conclusion is that to truly understand the differences between natural and artificial intelligence, the materialistic framework of science is insufficient. The author will present his views on intelligence, consciousness, living organisms, and machines based on a framework that answers the above questions in ways that are consistent with both the principles of quantum physics and the insights gained in our most revealing spiritual experiences.
I choose chocolate over vanilla. By monitoring my brain activity, a neuroscientist can predict my choice seven seconds before I’m even aware of my choice. Are we puppets, and neurons our puppeteers?You choose kindness over cruelty, enlightenment over vanity. In 1966, Charles Whitman chose to murder 17 people. His autopsy revealed a brain tumor; his suicide note said, “I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts.” Can you take credit for your choices? Should Whitman be blamed for his? Are you free to choose, or do neurons and tumors choose for you?Einstein said, “I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing?” Sam Harris argues that free will is incoherent: “Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.”To deny free will is, according to the Supreme Court, “inconsistent with the underlying precepts of our criminal justice system.” To endorse free will is, according to many neuroscientists, inconsistent with logic and neuroscience.In this talk, I propose a scientific theory of agents with free will, and explain how it is consistent with logic and neuroscience. Free will is a fundamental aspect of reality, and can be modeled mathematically. Agents can combine to form more complex agents, ad infinitum. The free will choices of lower agents constrain the choices of more complex agents; the choices of higher agents influence, in turn, the choices of lower agents. Free will enjoys a complex dynamics that flows bottom up and top down.
Edenvale
C31. Integrated Conversation
Francis doesn't deliver a prepared talk but rather speaks from what arises in the moment.
Guadalupe
Experiential:
A workshop series intended to hold a space in which ancient & modern insights involving the subtle nature of the spirit sound may be shared along with the application of a variety of self-healing techniques to be directly experienced in a group environment. These techniques/ tools are brought forth to create a sense of community and include a brief multi-media presentation, group exercises such as Shamanic Breath-Work, Vocal Toning & Basic Yoga followed by an Open Sonic Meditation with Quartz Crystal/ Tibetan Singing Bowls, Gong, Chimes & other Harmonically Rich Sounds. Each tool guides an individual towards _Self-Empowerment_ �s once learned the tools are easy to apply and with discipline can be privately practiced to help anyone remain more physically relaxed, emotionally balanced, & mentally focused as daily life goes on.
Monterey Room
C32. Authentic Heart
Monterey Room
Trauma and the Unbound Body: Nonduality and Healing from Trauma, Judith Blackstone
Judith will teach the main practices of the Realization Process, a direct, embodied method of personal and relational healing and nondual awakening. She will discuss the application of these practices to healing from trauma. In the Realization Process we attune to the ground of our own nature as an expanse of undivided, fundamental consciousness pervading our body and environment as a unity. Knowing ourselves as fundamental consciousness facilitates resilience to emotional and sensory stimuli, the integration of cognition, emotion and physical sensation, and the capacity for deep connection with other people without losing inward contact with oneself.
Judith will describe how we constrict and fragment ourselves in reaction to trauma, especially as children, and also how we mirror the trauma-based constrictions of our parents, so that psychological pain and limitation is passed down through the generations. She will demonstrate the Realization Process method for recognizing and releasing the emotional wounds, defenses and compensatory patterns held in the body that conceal our authentic nature. She will also show how nondual realization enhances the therapeutic relationship, by cultivating empathy, subtle perception, and authenticity.
Judith will also present some specific types of psychological issues that often cause suffering for spiritually oriented individuals. These include intolerable levels of sensitivity, a lack of grounding, a sense of isolation and alienation, a tendency to feel merged with or displaced by other people, and a desire for purity and perfection. She will show how the practices of the Realization Process can address these challenges and help spiritually gifted people live more comfortably in the world.
Morgan Hill
C34. Dynamic Rebalancing
Morgan Hill
Conscious Dying: The Next Frontier in the Science and Art of Healing, Jörn Kroll
Laudable attempts exist to correct the myopic stance of our death-phobic society. Such attempts, however, typically fall short of providing a firm foundation. This presentation reports on relatively recently published teachings that analyze the constructive purpose of death in the cosmological context of individual and collective evolution. The source of this expanded vision consists of the 18 books telepathically conveyed (1919-1949) to Alice A. Bailey by an advanced teacher referred to as “The Tibetan”. Bailey’s Esoteric Healing and related works by the Tibetan-Bailey team point out the need for changing our attitude towards death and dying by a thorough understanding of the nature of form (matter), soul, spirit, and their interactions. According to the Tibetan’s teaching, dying and death are universal processes inherent in all forms, and the elimination of forms is necessary and beneficent for the evolutionary progress of the indwelling life that temporarily uses a particular form. If this outlook is understood in all its implications, it will lead to revolutionary cultural and practical changes (e.g., more proactive and effective uses of medical resources). Furthermore, we are told, the advanced human dies with deliberation and in full consciousness and brings about death through an act of the soul-will in accord with social responsibility and service to humanity. Supplementary topics discussed will include: continuity of consciousness; the relation between death and sleep; the key reasons for cremation (beyond expediency); the release of atomic energy resulting in a great light and a great potency and its close parallel in the release of the human form; the soul absorbing the personality, thus merging two conflicting entities into One integrated unit. Following the progressive training, death and dying, the great restorative process, will then become a conscious, transformative adventure and a truly joyful and communal event.
San Jose
Beyond the Trap of Spiritual Bypassing: Core Embodiment Practices for Resting as Awareness while Engaging your Fully Human Life, Ajaya Sommers
Due to early developmental trauma, ancestral trauma and our cultural context at large, there is a prevailing unconscious current of using spirituality and particularly the non-dual orientations to hide, bypass or otherwise disassociate from this intelligence. As if your needs are problems to be ashamed of and to fix or get rid of on your way to spiritual realization. The beauty of any true spiritual path though is that eventually it will take you to the inevitable and ineffable place of reclamation of ALL that you are.
In this class we will dive into somatic practice as a self- healing, oxytocin replenishing, cell-renewing ever fresh and inspired embodiment practice. Utilizing conscious breath, sound vibration, intimate contact, subtle intrinsic movement, embryological anatomy and provocative inquiry we enter into the inner alchemy that allows a dissolve of any out dated structures that may be obstructing our view. A psycho-spiritual somatic reorganization and higher order of self-regulation arises as our cells surrender into the all-pervasive holding ground of nature that is always present. We will re-emerge renewed, resourced and ready to re-engage our senses such that they become thresholds where the divine, the natural world, our culture and the mystery of being human coalesce as the dynamic dance of Life.
San Jose
Experiential
San Juan Bautista
C33. Wisdom and Healing
San Juan Bautista
Mindful Framing: Transform your Anxiety into Vital Energy, Oscar Segurado
Anxiety and stress are epidemic in today’s fast-paced world. In response, many turn to mindfulness and meditation, but mostly experienced practitioners achieve long-term calm and relaxed minds. We need a simpler approach for everyone that includes self-reflection to frame our mind throughout the day around a nature-oriented, empathetic, and healthy lifestyle.Oscar Segurado has developed the practice of Mindful Framing and the associated NEO Chi lifestyle to address this unmet need. A physician scientist passionate for integrative medicine, he experienced firsthand the mental, emotional and physical effects of his high-functioning anxiety as he witnessed its impact on family, friends, and colleagues. HIs extensive work on the nervous and immune systems, published in peer-reviewed journals including Nature and Lancet, has helped uncover how stress and anxiety can trigger serious immune-mediated diseases, including cancer, chronic infections, and autoimmunity. Combining his medical and scientific knowledge with a lifelong interest in Ayurveda and Chinese medicine, he has created a practice that trains the mind to be aware of the present moment while processing actively each and every relevant experience and thought.Designed with the modern world in mind, mindful framing creates an ethical, empathetic and wellness-oriented frame of mind that captures anxiety triggers and transforms them into vital energy. Supported with written and audiovisual materials available at mindfulbook.org, mindful framing defines a novel nature-mind-body connection for the twenty-first century. With up to fifteen minutes of daily practice, easy to memorize through movements, yoga poses and visualization, you will experience a more intimate connection with the natural world, emotional harmony with those around you, and a feeling of overall invigoration.
Hayes Ballroom
The Geometry of Consciousness, James Tagg
Sir Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff propose that human brains don’t compute but rather think, through a process that incorporates a general relativistic modification to quantum mechanics. Although science is far from a unified theory we can see that these ideas would require the brain to obey certain geometrical constraints. This talk explains current research into the structures within the brain including experiments to test the effect of anesthetics on coherent energy transport in brain microtubules and progress on testing Penrose’s objective reduction (OR) hypothesis using Bose Einstein Condensates. Finally, we put this together into a possible model for a thinking machine that is not a computer that might shed light on the puzzle of consciousness.
Morgan Hill
To Know a Tree: Relationships Between Humans and Non-Humans, Laura Pustarfi
How do our relationships with non-humans affirm our humanity? Trees are compelling others as they are often both older and larger that humans with a very different form of livingness, and they exist around us in innumerable ways not only in forests and lining streets, but in our products, metaphors, and mythology. It almost goes without saying that trees are highly impacted by anthropogenic environmental destruction through deforestation and climate change planet-wide. Our relationships to non-humans like trees create opportunities for reimagining who we are as humans especially within the Western tradition where trees are either seen as resources for human use or beautiful scenery. Using the tools of phenomenology along with recent scientific findings on plants, we can examine our consciousness in the presence of a being like a tree and better understand our relationships to non-human others. Our relationships to trees speak volumes about our relationships to ourselves, our human family, and our world.
San Juan Bautista
Psycho-Spiritual Model of Reality as Enunciated by Ramana Maharishi and its Potential for Healing, Siva Kumar
Carl Jung, the celebrated psychologist described Ramana Maharishi as the whitest spot in the white space of spirituality! Mahatma Gandhi,the celebrated peace activist and the father of the Indian national movement for independence held this man attired in a simple white
cod-piece in high esteem often sending his own followers for
recuperation and rejuvenation. Paul Brunton, the celebrated author of
“A Search in Secret India” describes vividly his own experience of the
highest possible attainment for an embodied human being in the
presence of this Master and in a way heralded the ‘Look East’ habit of
the West for spiritual succour.
What indeed was the X - factor that this person possessed that
attracted thousands of people from across the world. In his time, we
could see how individual householders, sorrow-laden young widows,
political activists, outstanding poets, national leaders,
international authors and accomplished writers made a beeline to his
hermitage in the southern corner of the Indian peninsula. Those on
the verge of giving up on life discovered new meaning in his presence
and left healed for a lifetime. In this talk, I shall be attempting
to explore the dimension of reality enunciated and practically
demonstrated by Ramana Maharishi, having experienced in my own way the
salient feature of this teaching over the past two and a half decades.
He lent a new meaning to all faiths, Christians, Muslims and of course
native Hindus. Never demanded anything from anybody and vehemently
discouraged anyone to change the nomenclature encouraging each to rise
upto the higher, and according to the Sage, certainly the highest dimension.
All good accrues spontaneously from here. Come, let us explore by using
this mirror to look at ourselves.
Hayes Ballroom
The White Lions: Substantiating the Science and Sacred Science, Linda Tucker; Jason Turner
In the midst of a global lion crisis that treats Africa’s most sacred animals as a killing commodity in cross-border trade, Linda Tucker and specialist lion ecologist, Jason A. Turner, have dedicated their lives to the solution.
Today, every conservation issue is a global issue.
If Brazil destroys its rain forests, the world has lost its lungs. If South Africa loses its White Lions, humanity has forsaken our most iconic animal offering the key to leadership on this planet, and restoration of order in chaos.
While every crisis is interrelated, so are the solutions.
The work of the Global White Lion Protection Trust has united ancient indigenous knowledge with modern science to help save species, reviving ecosystems and human value systems – in a leadership model of sustainable living with mutual benefits for Lions, Land and People.
The importance of the White Lions’ sudden reoccurrence on the brink of the polar reversal and climate change is directly linked with the appearance of other prophetic “spirit animals” on all continents, including the White Buffalo and the Spirit Bear of British Columbia. Ancient belief holds that these are Nature’s greatest blessing, or final warning.
Their importance, in summary:
Ecologically,
apex predator and “Capstone animal” restoring the biodiversity of a critical important ecosystem through trophic cascading.
Geographically,
unique speciation on the Golden Meridian Zep Tepi – corresponding with the East African Rift Valley, the tectonic seam in the African continent, which scientists identify as the “Birth Canal of Human Species”.
Climactically,
precursors to the forthcoming Ice-Age.
Culturally,
cross-cultural symbol of majestic importance, offering lessons in leadership – at this evolutionary turning point in humanity’s history.
Astrologically,
Turning of Ages which astrologically marks the brink of the Leo-Aquarius Age.
Spiritually,
luminous symbol of unification and good governance, providing luminous inspiration to achieve what may seem impossible: a leadership plan for peace and planetary regeneration.
As awakeness penetrates the human heart, we experience totality with Source love and consciousness. This love and freedom dissolves old perspectives embedded in personality and the personality changes. An unpretentious, unguarded, open loving presence authentically emerges, radiating the singular truth of Being through a unique lens of individuated expression. Our hearts expand to an infinite capacity while resting in the deliciousness of the moment uniquely. Contradiction falls away and the purity of Love loves through the unique personality. We will explore the mystery of being human and divine simultaneously in inner landscapes and practical day to day living.
The laws that govern the Universe are the same laws that apply to body and mind. It is the presence of a vital force and a subtle energy that creates the rhythmic movement of the living. The human being is a being in motion and life is a permanent relationship to the movement.
Like all parts of the Universe, body and mind are an inseparable non-dualistic entity. To give meaning to this concept, it is necessary to be able to recognize that the slightest change leads to a minute or significant change in the totality of being: unity. In osteopathy, Andrew Taylor Still, evokes a link between structure and function so that the mobility of each part (bones, muscles, organs,...) is preserved in order to allow the free circulation of liquids, fluids, nerve impulses that ensure a correct execution of the function: movement. This description highlights the body's ability to self-regulate (homeostasis) and self-healing.
However, the separation between body and mind is all too often the point of origin that leads to dysfunction and chaos of the body. Relationships with our inner world sabotage the functional mechanisms of our body.
Marcus Aurelius described it in his Meditations : "There is nothing bad in undergoing change - or good emerging from it ." (42-Book IV).
Unfortunately, the body elaborates aches under multiple expressions of which the mind is the source. We must use our memories and past events to trace back to the information that traps somato-emotional dysfunction. These reactions are dictated by the unconscious and spread psychophysiological pains that modify movement.
Traumatic events interfere with the way one thinks, feels, and acts. Some people have minimal symptoms after being exposed to trauma and may recover quickly; while others may develop more significant and longer-lasting problems. Long-term consequences can also cause difficulties to victims and their families. Trauma is not an experience but rather an emotional response to an experience.
I know the hand that is typing is my own but on what grounds do I identify this feeling? A reductionist approach reduces trauma to its minimum state, claiming that it can be completely resolved no matter how severe it may be. Although one may suggest employing cognitive and analytical techniques to address the symptoms, I venture to say that trauma can never fully be resolved from the deepest parts of the psyche unless the spirituality that gave rise to it is properly understood.
I will argue that one needs to distinguish between three distinct kinds of body schema: the working body schema involved in action, the psychological body schema involved in emotions, and the spiritual body schema involved in tapping into the need to create trauma. I will then propose what may be conceived as a total perception of the sense of body ownership, which consists of an awareness of the boundaries of one’s body as having a special significance for the trauma. This will lead me to define the phenomenology of ownership of spiritual connection to the sense of telepathy or direct communication.
Hayes Ballroom
Un-Panel: Technology and the Future of Awakening, Federico Faggin; Mikey Siegel; Kate Stockly; Vincent Horn; Carole Griggs
What is technology? Is it not a form of human expression, woven into our vast cultural landscape, along with what we call art, science, politics, religion and spirituality? With the right intention and skill, can technology support individual and collective awakening? Is this already happening? What would this look like? How might our beliefs about, and relationship to technology need to change for it to be truly in service to the evolution of our human experience? How would humanity change if we could create secular, science based, and universally accessible tools, that could radically accelerate the path to awakening? Join us for this interactive Un-Panel, where the audience explores burning questions from the panelists in a lively dialogue.
Guadalupe
Rediscovering Wholeness - Advaita Tantra: 1+1=1' , Peter Littlejohn Cook
Breath, Voicework, Movement, Connection, Communion. Tantra demystified
The traditional approach to psychotherapy is focused on helping people identify underlying thoughts, feelings and beliefs that cause havoc in their lives - and to confront and remove their resistance to changing them. This can be a slow and tedious process, which is only available and affordable to few people in the world.
What if there is another way of reaching people beyond time and space?
What if there is another approach to personal change and spiritual growth?
What if "fixing it" is not the answer?
What if the answer hides in plain view?
What if this new way is low cost and available anywhere, to anyone?
What if this new way allows for the energy of unconditional love to be transmitted 24/7 via an Intention Host Device for healing purposes?
Not possible?
In four distant healing studies which utilized an Intention Host Device (IHD) to transmit a healing intention to participants worldwide, the results were highly significant (Reed,C., Tiller, B. 2005: Reducing Anxiety and Depression; Miller, S., Tiller B., 2013: Autism Study; Hilberg, G., Tiller, B., 2014: Self-Compassion Study; Hilberg, G.,Tiller, B., Mills, P.Chopra Foundation, 2017: Consciousness Field Project).
Come and explore new ways of conceptualizing and implementing a powerful path of healing based on Information Psychology and ground breaking research.
San Juan Bautista
Wisdom of the Heart; Connecting Mind & Body to Reach the Spiriual Self, Jorge Aranda
The heart is the Key organ to connect with the Universal Wisdom. Many cultures, regions and spiritual traditions are well aware of it.
Science is starting to throw some light into the importance of this organ in terms of Mental, Emotional and Physical interactions. From the Osteopathic point of view there is a key biomechanical justification to the role of the Heart in the health of the rest of the body. Anthroposophical understanding of it is as the mediator between the Divine and the Terrenal being.
Different meditations techniques lead to a deeper connection and awareness of the Heart as a gate to reaching wisdom—paying attention to the anatomy, physiology, biomechanics as well as spiritual traditions interpretations.
I will talk about different meditations with special emphasis on techniques directed learned from Mangku (Holly-man) from the Balinese Tradition. Engaging with the root chakra to generate and accumulate inner energy to be sent to the Heart center. Once we have that path developed we can engage with the crown chakra to reinforce the path toward the Heart. Once developed, the Mind and the Body can reach the Spiritual self.
Monterey Room
Friends with your Mind, How to Stop Torturing Yourself with your Thoughts, Lynn Fraser
The mind is a system of stimulus and response, and our brain literally develops in response to our experiences. One of the foundations of being friends with our own mind is to be able to work effectively with our thoughts, with our responses to our thoughts, and with the energy and sensations in our body that are stimulated by our thoughts. We need to know the essentials of how it works to understand our bodymind, feelings, nervous system and identification as a separate self.
Many experiences happen in our early life where we disconnect from ourselves, from our sense of value, and from the present moment. Troubling experiences commonly become core deficiency beliefs of unworthiness and unlovability - that feeling there is something fundamentally wrong with us. This drives unhappiness and addiction, including spiritual seeking. Even after seeing through separation, it is common to have nondual awareness drift out of reach. Our attention is pulled back to thoughts Velcroed to energy in our body.
Scott Kiloby’s Living Inquiries allow us to freeze-frame and look directly and safely at this mechanism. Associations of thought/memory Velcroed with energy in our body are seen and released. We have effective tools to inquire into the memories and associations from our past, and this reduces the drive of our compulsive avoidance. This is a hands-on workshop where you will learn and practice simple strategies to work directly with thoughts and sensation. We then have access to the stillness and ease that is always present.
Through the direct experience of welcoming everything that comes and goes in the field of awareness, we reach a tipping point where we no longer fear our own body and mind. We know in our cells that even intense bodily energy is not here to hurt us. As we intimately know and trust ourselves, we reconnect within and separation dissolves.
San Jose
Youth Programming
Morgan Hill
Freedom and Wholeness in the Yoga-Sutra: Implications for a Fuller Humanity, Ian Whicher
Yoga as classically formulated in Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutra has too often been construed as leading to a freedom from the world, emphasizing renunciation, asceticism, disengagement, and transcendence of the body, mind and world. Yet, from another perspective, freedom can be understood as being in and for the world, thus supporting a life-affirming approach that challenges us to a fuller humanity allowing for evolution, development and innovation through which life progresses and the world is made a better place. An overriding impression that remains today is that traditionally the authentic aims and values of Yoga conflict with the aims and values of life-in-the-world. The overemphasis on a transcendent otherness as being Yoga’s goal of freedom precludes the possibility for other ways of seeing Yoga and assessing its value and relevance today in a global context. Rather than approach classical Yoga from the perspective of dualistic metaphysical assumptions that sever consciousness from cosmos/nature/matter, I pursue a reading of the Yoga-Sutra that privileges the potential embodied experience of yoga over metaphysical abstractions and anachronistic approaches to practice.
While Yoga today in its most popular expressions is primarily associated with a physical culture for which it is well known, the meaning and value of Yoga lies in its deeper dimension, in the domain of mind, consciousness, and self-transformation leading to spiritual liberation or freedom. The potential for an embodied, relational freedom or whereby consciousness is holistically aligned with existence, is either overlooked or left unexplored resulting in a final unworkable duality between liberated spiritual identity and life-in-the-world. Drawing from the classical tradition I explore how Yoga can culminate in a balanced integration of the spiritual, psychological, ethical and material dimensions of life that incorporate a clarity of awareness or power of seeing with the integrity of being.
San Juan Bautista
Non-Duality & Duality in Everyday Life: How Trump, Ex-Wives & World Wounds Grow Self- Awareness more than Spiritual Masters Can, Jean-Philippe Challandes
The “Old Paradigm” often remains an abstract concept and a vague notion that superficially labels the current dysfunctions and obsolescence of the (still) mainstream “system”. It is actually NOT perceptible because most people look at it from ... inside of it. The very lens through which many of us look at things actually IS the old paradigm. It operates like a pair of tainted glasses that distort the vision of everything that is looked at through them. The first part of this talk will therefore offer tools to expand perception beyond the “modern mind-set” unconscious perceptual limitations and habits.
The second part will focus on spaciousness and Self-Awareness and proposes the hypothesis that this core intimate process is both a necessary pre-condition to actually perceive what the “old paradigm” is about - including within oneself - and to create the very possibility of the Emergence of new personal and societal possibilities. It will nevertheless also highlight the widespread danger of a stage in development that looks like a new paradigm, but is ultimately a mere update of the old with the appearance of the new.
The last part will explore how “result-orientation”, victim-hero syndrome and internalized Master-and-Slave relationships are the main symptoms of the absolute continuation of the “Old Paradigm” and that fighting against it keeps actually being the very manifestation of it.
The conclusion will insist on the necessary development of a non- dual relationship between the old and new paradigms, and hint that a “baby steps” approach is likely to be the most effective one for
most people and organizations.
“The New Age can only be rooted in the Dark Ages. There is no other ground.”
San Juan Bautista
Non-Duality & Duality in Everyday Life: How Trump, Ex-Wives & World Wounds Grow Self- Awareness more than Spiritual Masters Can
The “Old Paradigm” often remains an abstract concept and a vague notion that superficially labels the current dysfunctions and obsolescence of the (still) mainstream “system”. It is actually NOT perceptible because most people look at it from ... inside of it. The very lens through which many of us look at things actually IS the old paradigm. It operates like a pair of tainted glasses that distort the vision of everything that is looked at through them. The first part of this talk will therefore offer tools to expand perception beyond the “modern mind-set” unconscious perceptual limitations and habits.
The second part will focus on spaciousness and Self-Awareness and proposes the hypothesis that this core intimate process is both a necessary pre-condition to actually perceive what the “old paradigm” is about - including within oneself - and to create the very possibility of the Emergence of new personal and societal possibilities. It will nevertheless also highlight the widespread danger of a stage in development that looks like a new paradigm, but is ultimately a mere update of the old with the appearance of the new.
The last part will explore how “result-orientation”, victim-hero syndrome and internalized Master-and-Slave relationships are the main symptoms of the absolute continuation of the “Old Paradigm” and that fighting against it keeps actually being the very manifestation of it.
The conclusion will insist on the necessary development of a non-dual relationship between the old and new paradigms, and hint that a “radical baby steps” approach is likely to be the most effective one for most people and organizations.
“The New Age can only be rooted in the Dark Ages.
There is no other ground.”
Break
Hayes Ballroom
PL10. Closing the Circle
Silver Creek Dining Room
Closing Dinner
Tickets are no longer for sale
Hameed Ali (A. H. Almaas), Founder of the Diamond Approach, was born in the Middle East, but at age 18 he moved to the USA to study at the University of California in Berkeley. Hameed was working on his Ph.D. in physics, where he was studying Einstein's theory of general relativity and nuclear physics, when he reached a turning point in his life and destiny that led him more and more into inquiring into the psychological and spiritual aspects of human nature. Hameed is the founder of the Diamond Approach®—a spiritual teaching that utilizes a unique kind of inquiry into realization, where the practice is the expression of realization. Freedom is living our realization, a dynamic enlightenment where our transcendent nondual truth lives personally in the world. This inquiry opens up the infinite creativity of our Being, transforming our lives into a runaway realization, moving from realization to further realization. Almaas' books include: Love Unveiled, Unfolding Now, and The Keys to the Enneagram.
www.diamondapproach.org/almaas
Hayes Ballroom
PL1. The Mystery of Being Human
Hayes Ballroom
The Human as the Wormhole to the Mysteries of Existence, A.H. Almaas
To be human we have the opportunity to grow all the way to enlightenment. But to think of the human stage as simply for enlightenment shortchanges the potential of humanity. It is through the human that the spiritual nature underlying the universe actualizes its potential in a way that it knows. I will address not only the potential for nonduality and enlightenment, but the inherent value in being human and having a true authentic human life. Recognizing that being human we are the locus through which the ultimate nature actualizes its potentialities we see that we are not only indispensable for spiritual realization, but that we can know and experience the infinite potentiality of Being, which is magical and endless. Our human life can be a magnificent adventure, a wormhole through which the secrets of being arise and express themselves. Realization or awakening is simply the beginning of living such true and complete human life.
Hayes Ballroom
PL2. Celebrating The Human
Hayes Ballroom
Panel: Appreciating The Human, A.H. Almaas; Kabir Helminski; Robert Sapolsky
Many teachings do not appreciate that the human being is important for realization and liberation. That there is no awakening without humans. But some do, which is a different kind of appreciation than the scientific exploration of the mystery of being human. We want to discuss what is it to be a human being, both biologically and spiritually, in order for us to value who and what we are, and our necessity for the worlds we experience and know. A dialogue and discussion, mediated by Zaya Benazzo.
Hayes Ballroom
PL3. Being Human
Hayes Ballroom
The Human Being in Spiritual Traditions, A.H. Almaas; Robert Thurman
How do the different spiritual traditions view being human? How do they differ in their appreciation of the human individual and the place of the human in the total scheme of reality? A dialogue in depth that may help us see our value for the universe.
Adam Chacksfield, PhD., offers heart-centered nondual spiritual teaching in North America, Europe, and online, inviting individuals and groups to fall open. After a series of profound realizations he left his early career as a political science professor to devote himself to spiritual exploration. Years later, with Peter Fenner's encouragement and support, Adam started to teach. He developed the four-month “Falling Open” course as a catalyst for the awakening of the mind, heart, and body. Inspired by a spontaneous experience of “we-consciousness,” Adam explored the activation of shared consciousness within the Teacher Body of the Evolutionary Collective. He has also created the “Map of Relationship Paradigms,” and developed “WE-Relating,” a course that supports the evolution of relationships into this new paradigm beyond separation. http://adamchacksfield.com/
San Juan Bautista
Activating We-Consciousness: Venturing Beyond Individual Awakening, Adam Chacksfield
In this session we'll activate and explore the vast alive space of we-consciousness together. We'll use a simple practice to directly enter the experience of this consciousness, and allow ourselves to become vehicles for it's revelation and expression.
For thousands of years spiritual teachings have been devoted to individual awakening, and as this happens more, we're now starting to discover the even greater possibility of awakening the shared consciousness of inter-being. Rather than just individual mysticism and individual revelation, we're being invited into we-mysticism and shared revelation.
When we mutually give ourselves to we-consciousness, we participate in a radically more inclusive, complex, and creative consciousness. This consciousness is unique to the participants, highly dynamic, and greater than the sum of it's parts. To be inside this consciousness together is like entering a dimension of the universe that is only just being discovered.
Love is calling us to give ourselves to each other so profoundly that we move completely beyond separation and inside shared consciousness. When we dissolve into the depth of this intimacy a shared sense of oneness emerges where we are all unique channels for the expression of something much greater.
Despite being typically overlooked, we-consciousness is readily accessible for many, as soon as we turn towards it together. And it can be immediately recognized as resonant for us. This session is an opportunity for us to tap the incredible potential of our shared consciousness that's just waiting to be activated.
Within a field of unconditionally loving presence, Ajaya facilitates a unique discovery process called, Core Embodiment ®. An integrated system of embodiment practices, principles and perceptual orientations to awaken and align with the power of your human potential. She is a Biodynamic Craniosacral Integration Teacher, Authorized Continuum Teacher, gifted healer, writer and creative catalyst in the field of embodied awakening and trauma resolution for the last 26 years. All of her programs are grounded in science, expanded through devotional practice and made real through direct experience.
San Jose
Beyond the Trap of Spiritual Bypassing: Core Embodiment Practices for Resting as Awareness while Engaging your Fully Human Life, Ajaya Sommers
Due to early developmental trauma, ancestral trauma and our cultural context at large, there is a prevailing unconscious current of using spirituality and particularly the non-dual orientations to hide, bypass or otherwise disassociate from this intelligence. As if your needs are problems to be ashamed of and to fix or get rid of on your way to spiritual realization. The beauty of any true spiritual path though is that eventually it will take you to the inevitable and ineffable place of reclamation of ALL that you are.
In this class we will dive into somatic practice as a self- healing, oxytocin replenishing, cell-renewing ever fresh and inspired embodiment practice. Utilizing conscious breath, sound vibration, intimate contact, subtle intrinsic movement, embryological anatomy and provocative inquiry we enter into the inner alchemy that allows a dissolve of any out dated structures that may be obstructing our view. A psycho-spiritual somatic reorganization and higher order of self-regulation arises as our cells surrender into the all-pervasive holding ground of nature that is always present. We will re-emerge renewed, resourced and ready to re-engage our senses such that they become thresholds where the divine, the natural world, our culture and the mystery of being human coalesce as the dynamic dance of Life.
Amoda Maa is a contemporary spiritual teacher and author. After years of spiritual seeking, meditation, and immersion in psycho-spiritual practices, an experience of the dark night of the soul led her to a profound inner awakening. Then, after a long period of integration, she began speaking from silence in small gatherings. Today she offers meetings and retreats, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and events, attracting spiritual seekers and people looking for peace and fulfillment in an increasingly chaotic world. Her teachings are free of religion and tradition, and she brings to them a deep understanding of the human journey, born out of her own experience. Amoda Maa is the author of Radical Awakening and Embodied Enlightenment. www.amodamaa.com
Morgan Hill
Being Awake and Fully Human in Intimate Relationships, Amoda Maa
The nondual rubber hits the road in our intimate relationships where we must face all that remains hidden in the shadowy recesses of our hearts. This includes our unexamined beliefs about love, the fear of aloneness, and the powerful emotions that arise when our buttons are pushed. Wherever we are on our spiritual path, relationships can offer a crucible to see where we are identified and defended. They can also help us transform co-dependency to a deeper communion in which we relate to one another from a sense of genuine inner freedom and fullness. In this presentation, Amoda will speak about the true purpose of relationship, as well as speaking from her own direct experience of being in a long-term relationship. She will explore central questions, such as: What is it like to relate from an inner fullness rather than lack? How does the awakening process impact the experience of intimacy? How does one deal with emotional reactions when they arise? What if one’s partner has no interest in the process of awakening? Is there such a thing as an “enlightened relationship”? She will also take questions from the audience.
San Juan Bautista
Fully Human: Nondual Psychotherapy as a Path to Wholeness, Andrea Colombu
Our existence is strongly dictated by deep conditioning, the illusion of separation, and the loss of a true understanding of our humanity. In spite of all the scientific and technological advancement available today, most of us continue to feel disconnected, dissatisfied, and displaced from the true essence of our human nature.
Being fully human and living a fully human life is more necessary than ever. This process requires being able to integrate our relative and conditioned sense of self with our fundamental nature of unconditioned awareness in a cohesive expression of human existence. Nondual psychotherapy provides such an opportunity.
Nondual therapy integrates the timeless wisdom of pure awareness with contemporary therapeutic modalities to facilitate a process that reveals our true nature, dissolves our conditioning, and opens a path to living as a full human being.
In this presentation, we’ll explore key aspects of nondual psychotherapy that support the unfolding of healing, awakening, and the full potential of a human existence lived true to its nature.
Ariel Giarretto, LMFT, SEP, CSB is an internationally known body-oriented psychotherapist, trauma specialist, and somatic sex educator. Her passion is to support people of all cultures and ages in how to find ease and pleasure in their bodies, increased intimacy, and freedom from the grip of trauma. She is the co-developer of “The Full Embodiment Model” which offers gentle, transformative workshops for people wanting to heal from the effects of sexuality/gender trauma, sexual abuse and disembodiment.
Trained in a wide variety of somatic therapies, she is primarily informed by Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing (SE), the beautiful, heart-centered work that treats the physiological effects of the trauma, as well as connects people to their deepest, core self. For 16 years she has been on the full-time SE teaching faculty, training and mentoring practitioners all over the globe. Throughout the 90’s she was on staff at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, as an active member of the community, a workshop and group leader, a private therapist and part of the bodywork and massage crew. She has extensive training in prenatal and birth therapy with Ray Castellino, as well as attachment and early developmental trauma, and has been a home birth “doula”, a dancer, a drummer, an athlete, a cook, a world traveler and adventurer, a juggler and performer at the Renaissance Faires and is particularly fond of dogs..and her green cheek conures, Tulip and Blu, and of course her partner Jeffrey. She is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. For more info: www.fullembodiment.org
Madrone
The Science and Heart of Sexuality, Low Desire and Aging, Ariel Giarretto
This short lecture will give a quick overview of what happens physiologically and emotionally as we age, or engage in long-term relationships. It will provide valuable information for those hoping to understand what can bring more aliveness into their sexuality, as well as for practitioners working with couples or clients with low sexual desire.
San Jose
Sexuality and the Aging Body-Finding Spark after 50, Ariel Giarretto
Recognizing that many of us, even those with positive experiences and attitudes towards sex, find that sexual desire and responses decline some as we age. Culture, religion, the media, sexism, peer pressure, porn and dozens of other influences give us distorted messages of what sexual intimacy is supposed to look like, especially to those over 50. Jumping off from the earlier lecture on the science of the aging body, this program will experientially explore how you can connect more deeply with your most authentic relationship to sexuality, as well as how to awaken you and your partner’s body. We’ll mix lecture, experiential exercises, opportunities to reflect, and guidance on how to enhance your love life once at home. Please bring paper and pen, and an open mind and heart.
Hayes Ballroom
Interlude; Asoulafire Performance
Interlude
Hayes Terrace
Lunch Music with Asoulafire
Hayes Ballroom
Closing circle, Asoulafire
San Juan Bautista
The Spirituality of Trauma, Atul Kumar Mehra
Traumatic events interfere with the way one thinks, feels, and acts. Some people have minimal symptoms after being exposed to trauma and may recover quickly; while others may develop more significant and longer-lasting problems. Long-term consequences can also cause difficulties to victims and their families. Trauma is not an experience but rather an emotional response to an experience.
I know the hand that is typing is my own but on what grounds do I identify this feeling? A reductionist approach reduces trauma to its minimum state, claiming that it can be completely resolved no matter how severe it may be. Although one may suggest employing cognitive and analytical techniques to address the symptoms, I venture to say that trauma can never fully be resolved from the deepest parts of the psyche unless the spirituality that gave rise to it is properly understood.
I will argue that one needs to distinguish between three distinct kinds of body schema: the working body schema involved in action, the psychological body schema involved in emotions, and the spiritual body schema involved in tapping into the need to create trauma. I will then propose what may be conceived as a total perception of the sense of body ownership, which consists of an awareness of the boundaries of one’s body as having a special significance for the trauma. This will lead me to define the phenomenology of ownership of spiritual connection to the sense of telepathy or direct communication.
Monterey Room
Panel: Embracing Yin; Awakening in the Body, Vanessa Scotto; Brooke Thomas; Dorothy Hunt; Jeannie Zandi; Kiran Trace
There is an ever expanding conversation these days within nondual circles about embodiment as a maturational process in awakening, yet there is little talk about how awakening is actually integrated within our human body. Could it be that freedom from suffering is not about transcending form, but rather, becoming more fully present with the field of experience within the body? How does the health and tone of the nervous system correlate with awakening if at all? How can we meet the arising energies, emotions, conditioning and ego structure that are implicit to having a human form? In traditions that have historically pointed to the experience of the truth that lies beyond form, how to we begin to include the physical body in the conversation of awakening?
In this panel discussion with teachers Jeannie Zandi, Kiran Trace, Dorothy Hunt we will explore themes such as how to be present in the body, the role the body may play in awakening to truth as well as the impact awakening may have on the body, how we can have a direct experience of the body without concept or objectification, the intelligence and conditioning that lies within the body, the relationships between trauma, the body and awakening, the feminine movement of embodiment and what it means to live a fully human existence within physical form once you’ve awakened from the dream of separation.
Monterey Room
Being Human through the Engine of Creation, Bruce Damer
21st Century science is on the verge of recreating the processes that may have brought life into being on the young Earth some four billion years ago. If experimental proof is achieved, these processes would be shown to be the fundamental “boot codes” of the living world. Cycled together they would then constitute an “engine of creation” that continuously generates all of biology, human culture, technology and even conscious experience. The emerging understanding of this conceptual engine bears surprising parallels to the Dao and other spiritual systems. Ironically this highly reductionist work on our deepest ancestry may give us the great gift of unifying the dual magisteria of science and spirit. But if we all live by and within this engine what does this say about how and where consciousness operates and what does this tell us about our own free will and future? Dr. Damer will guide the SAND audience on an illustrated journey from life’s beginning to some possible answers to these big questions. He will conclude by suggesting a way to use the power of this engine to further evolve what it is to be human and how we might collectively realize a truly great destiny.
Hayes Ballroom
PL6. Collective Initiations
Hayes Ballroom
Being Human in the Engine of Creation, Bruce Damer
A four-billion-year-old cycling evolutionary engine of creation lifted us improbable and beautiful human beings into existence. The very process by which we were made is driven by the dual nature of night and day, death and reproduction, despair and hope. The dark and light parts of our nature now starkly face each other in a high stakes planetary stand-off which will determine our very survival. The secret to our future may be to invoke Jedi-like transformative powers into the midst of the stand-off. To paraphrase Master Yoda… “Jedi need the dark force of the Empire to grow skills stronger… to answer power with power, the Jedi way this is not… so you must face the truth, and choose to give off light, for Luminous beings we are., Padawan.”
With her beloved signature burst of color Red Head Wrap, *C.C. White's* distinct *Soul Kirtan* concerts have won her worldwide recognition as “The Queen of Soul Kirtan.” Her unique, soul-flavored chant experiences effortlessly enrapture audiences and bring them to their feet! C.C.’s critically acclaimed CD “This IS Soul Kirtan!”, which debuted at the top of the iTunes World Chart is the first of it’s kind. Featuring a unique blend of Kirtan, Old School Soul, Reggae, Southern Blues, Gospel, R&B & Jazz, this CD bridged music from her roots with the timeless devotion of Kirtan. She's sang on the Grammy award winning CD “Get Up” by *Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite, worked with Jackson Browne, Neil Young, Sting, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Dahni Harrison (George Harrison’s Son), Joe Cocker, Lenny Kravitz and Jason Mraz to name a few. C.C.'s been featured in Yoga Journal, Pranava, Origin and Mantra magazines, her music’s been played on radio stations such as KCRW, Krishna Das Yoga Radio on SiriusXM, KPFK, and WRPI. Get ready for a one of a kind, soul freeing, foot stomping, heart opening, divine Soul Kirtan experience with C.C. White! C.C. says - “Kirtan Feels Good!” www.Soulkirtan.com
Hayes Ballroom
Concert with C.C. White
Come enjoy Soul Kirtan! C.C. White's unique, soul-flavored chant experiences effortlessly enrapture audiences and bring them to their feet!
San Jose
Love Wonder Terror Joy: Journeying with The Radiance Sutras, Lorin Roche; Camille Maurine
Immerse yourself in the vibrant world of The Radiance Sutras, a contemporary version of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, a classic yoga text describing 112 doorways to ecstasy. The text invites us to be at home in our bodies and the universe by accepting every intense or subtle experience, every sensual delight, every ordinary moment, as a gateway to the divine. Each Sutra or meditation practice is a deep dive into aliveness, into the underlying reality of what life is. The meditations work by activating the senses and extending their range further into the inner and the outer world. The basic dynamics of life—breathing, falling asleep, waking up, walking, loving—are all used as paths of alignment and enlightenment. Balance is here at every step; the unshakable serenity of the depths is used as a foundation so that we can tolerate the electrifying vastness of the universe. We are invited to cross the threshold, to walk by the guardian of the gate, to face our terrors, and make our way into the immense and timeless mystery that is always calling.
In the spirit of wonder and play, Lorin and Camille will guide a journey through simple sensory and movement meditations inspired by the Sutras. You will also have the opportunity to explore savoring the sound of the original Sanskrit, which has a luscious, evocative sensuality.
Hayes Ballroom
Un-Panel: Technology and the Future of Awakening, Federico Faggin; Mikey Siegel; Kate Stockly; Vincent Horn; Carole Griggs
What is technology? Is it not a form of human expression, woven into our vast cultural landscape, along with what we call art, science, politics, religion and spirituality? With the right intention and skill, can technology support individual and collective awakening? Is this already happening? What would this look like? How might our beliefs about, and relationship to technology need to change for it to be truly in service to the evolution of our human experience? How would humanity change if we could create secular, science based, and universally accessible tools, that could radically accelerate the path to awakening? Join us for this interactive Un-Panel, where the audience explores burning questions from the panelists in a lively dialogue.
Caverly Morgan is a meditation teacher, author, speaker, and nonprofit founder. She is the founder of Peace in Schools, a nonprofit that created the nation’s first for-credit mindfulness class in public high schools. Caverly is also the founder of Presence Collective, a community of cross-cultural contemplatives committed to personal and collective transformation. She is the author of A Kids Book About Mindfulness and The Heart of Who We Are: realizing freedom together.
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 and leads meditation retreats, workshops and online classes internationally.
Caverly speaks publicly on topics including contemplative practice, personal and collective transformation, social entrepreneurship, authentic leadership, and mindfulness education, and has been featured in publications such as Mindful magazine (as a cover subject) and The New York Times. She has been a teacher and presenter at the Science and Nonduality Conference, 1440 Multiversity, Sangha Live, the Mind and Life International Symposium for Contemplative Research, Buddha at the Gas Pump, Open Circle, the New York Zen Center of Contemplative Care, and many more.
https://www.caverlymorgan.org/books
https://www.caverlymorgan.org/theheartofwhoweare
Hayes Ballroom
Panel - Ethics and Spiritual Teaching, Rick Archer; Jac O' Keeffe; Craig Holliday; Caverly Morgan
We are witnessing a sea change in collective consciousness. From entertainment to politics to athletics, sexual misconduct is no longer tolerated. Sexual and other forms of abuse have also plagued the spiritual world which the SAND family inhabits. While actors and politicians might not be expected to have developed high moral values, most people expect spiritually awakened people to have done so. Contrary examples have led many to conclude that higher consciousness and ethical behavior are not correlated. Some have become cynical about the motives of all gurus and teachers and have lost faith in spirituality altogether.
Yet, every spiritual tradition includes codes of ethics that apply to both teachers and students. Ethical behavior has been regarded not only as a reflection of spiritual development but as conducive to it.
Unlike the legal, medical, psychological, and other professions, spiritual teachers lack a shared code of ethics and an organization to formalize them. At this writing, the members of this panel have made significant progress in drafting such a code. By conference time, we hope to have established an organization which would offer the following:
_Teacher membership would imply trustworthiness, as it would be predicated upon agreeing to the code of ethics.
_Teachers would be encouraged to be more open to feedback, transparent, and accountable.
_Students would be emboldened to expect high moral standards in teachers and might become more discriminating in choosing a teacher.
_A place where those who have been abused might submit grievances.
Hayes Ballroom
The Relative is the Absolute: Touching Race, Injustice, and Love, Caverly Morgan
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 it 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 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?
Celeste Hirschman, M.A. is a host of the series Somatica Sessions with Celeste and Danielle on YouTube and is the co-founder of the Somatica Institute of Sex and Relationship Coaching. She offers her wisdom, love, and deep empathy to students and clients as she helps them embrace the heights and navigate the challenges off all things relational. As a relationship philosopher, a sexual connoisseur, and an academic researcher, Celeste has explored the wide variety of erotic desires, relationship structures, and sexual practices to find self-expression and fulfillment. She believes that people can experience deep connection and freedom if they learn themselves, share vulnerably, and accept others for who they are. Celeste has an M.A. in Human Sexuality Studies and a B.A. in Women’s Studies. She trains coaches in the Somatica Method and also has her own private practice where she sees clients in her San Francisco offce.
San Jose
Experiential: The Deep Insights of Arousal , Danielle Harel; Celeste Hirschman
Presence is foundational to engaging fully the moment-to-moment of lived experience. Bringing arousal into your presence practice can move you beyond engagement into enjoyment and insight. You will find deeper levels of awareness both of yourself and others and uncover hidden information that can inform decision-making in your life. Additionally, understanding what arouses you psychologically deepens insights into your wounds and potential creative pathways to healing. Aroused embodiment also offers you a lived experience of safety and strength, and enhances your ability to detect and move away from unsafe experiences. Finally, it gives you a pathway to embodied empathy and deeper insight and connection into your partners and loved ones. Embodied arousal and an understanding of our own sexual psyche can be a guide to a life truly worth living.
In this workshop, Danielle Harel, Ph.D., and Celeste Hirschman, M.A., Co-Founders of the Somatica® Method of Sex and Relationship Coaching will take you on a journey to discovering your erotic psyche and deepening embodied arousal. Through these practices, you will learn more about who you are, how you want to live in the world, regain trust in your inner wisdom, and reconnect with your internal motivation to follow through.
Charles Eisenstein is an author and speaker focusing on the transition in the narrative/mythological underpinnings of civilization, as these affect ecology, economy, science, politics, technology, medicine, and spirituality. He is the author of several books, including Sacred Economics, The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible, and Climate—A New Story. He lives in Rhode Island with his wife and children. www.charleseisenstein.net
Hayes Ballroom
PL6. Collective Initiations
Hayes Ballroom
The Ecological Initiation, Charles Eisenstein
The ecological crisis that most people currently attribute to greenhouse gases will not be resolved by merely switching energy sources. It invites us into a profoundly different relationship to the planet and the rest of life, even a different sense of who we are and what is real. It is an invitation, not a compulsion. Will we choose life, or continued death? How might we change the psychic conditions from which we choose?
San Martin
Conversation - Obstacle to Our Evolution, Charles Eisenstein
Monterey Room
Panel: Mud to Lotus: Opening the Masculine Heart, Kent Welsh; Charles Eisenstein; Will Keepin; Jeannie Zandi
The work before us, highlighted by the #metoo movement, is plain: how do we meet the masculine shadow, and support men in reclaiming and opening their hearts? Join Kent Welsh of Open Circle and his panelists who will explore the unique potential and challenges for men opening their hearts and standing up to face the individual and cultural masculine shadow.
Monterey Room
Conscious Agent Dynamics, Chetan Prakash
We explore the idea that perceptual experiences do not approximate properties of an “objective” world, but provide a simplified, species-specific, user interface to the world. Donald Hoffman introduced it as the Interface Theory of Perception. Hoffman also introduced his Conscious Realism thesis: the objective world consists of a social network of ‘conscious agents’ and their experiences. Thus consciousness creates all objects and properties of the physical world, reversing the traditional mind-body problem.
Using evolutionary game theory, we support interface theory with a theorem saying that perceptual strategies reporting the truth will, under natural selection, be driven to extinction by those tuned instead to fitness.
A mathematically precise definition of “conscious agents” is proposed, leading to a non-dualistic, dynamical theory of conscious process in which both observer and observed have the same structure, with many possible interfaces.
In support of conscious realism, we then discuss two theorems showing that a conscious agent can see geometric and probabilistic structures that are not necessarily in the world but properties of the conscious agent itself and different agents may see the world as having different (even incompatible!) structures. We will also discuss a way in which interfaces represent a dramatic compression of information which is functional to the agent.
This suggests that space-time is a description of location and dynamics on the perceptual interface of human conscious agents; that the “objects” of Physics are akin to icons on that interface; and that “phenomena” appear as the interactions those icons seem - to us - to be having.
What motivates a species to evolve its particular interface? Federico Faggin has proposed a mechanism for the evolution of interfaces: that it is the desire for comprehension, or self-knowing, that drives this evolution. What is required next is a theory of the process of self-knowing.
San Jose
Aikido: Conscious Embodiment of Non-Duality, Chetan Prakash
Ai: natural balance; Ki: living energy of connection: so Aiki: conscious unity;
Do: universal Truth, Dharma. The practice of Aikido as Budo, the Way of the Warrior is a way of non-duality, in three stages: Coordination, Connection and Realization
To learn the martial art of effectively receiving and applying Aikido techniques is a process of emptying habits of reactiveness and control, and so developing the humility and trust in oneself as an embodiment of Great Nature. This is the true self-confidence that leads to self-knowledge and to gratitude for life and in turn is the key for healthy relationships to flourish. So we can say with O Sensei:
“True victory is victory over one’s self.”
In this experiential session, we will practice safe drills with partners, involving minimal physical effort and requiring no special skills. We will seek to embody the power and beauty of both internal spirit-mind-body connection and of connection with another person. We will see how, when feeling stuck, there is always another way: one that can be found not by “fighting through” a problem, but by embodying unity, in which resolution naturally occurs.
Chris Fields wants to understand how systems exchange information, and how information exchange creates the boundaries that separate and distinguish systems from each other. He uses tools from quantum information theory, evolutionary and developmental biology, and cognitive neuroscience. Chris has become convinced that all information exchange, at all scales, can be described with a single set of simple principles. The trick is to figure out which ones. Biographical details and recent publications are available from http://chrisfieldsresearch.com.
Hayes Ballroom
PL6. Collective Initiations
Hayes Ballroom
Inventing a Self, Chris Fields
We all believe we have, or are, a self. But what is a self? What is my self? What does it mean to say that I, myself, am doing something? What does it mean to claim that I, myself, have a history?
One of the "jobs" of my self is to appear as a character in the episodic memories with which I reconstruct my personal past. But who is this character, how does it relate to me, and why do I, now, believe that the events depicted or described by these "memory" experiences actually happened in some "past" to which I have no independent access? Another role of my self is to "own" the beliefs, actions, emotions and other feelings that I call "mine." But what does this ownership consist of? If a thought or a feeling occurs, did my self create it? If I'm driving my car or having a conversation with someone, is it my self that is acting? If not, why is my self claiming ownership?
This talk will examine these questions from the perspectives of cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary biology. We will consider how the experienced self is "put together" out of memories and feelings, and how alterations in neurocognitive function can produce subtle or radical changes in the experience of a self, from confabulated memories to ecstatic experiences. We will ask how an experienced self might be advantageous in evolutionary terms. We will discuss how the idea that the self is invented as a means of organizing experience can influence how we interpret our experiences of selfhood.
Edenvale
Chris Fields in Conversation with Sir Roger Penrose
The Nature of Creativity: from Cosmology to Consciousness
San Martin
Living Nonduality in a Dualistic World, Chuck Hillig
If you really ARE pure Consciousness; limitless, infinite and sublime, how is it possible to ALSO live an ordinary and mundane human life when you're "down in the marketplace?" Can you live "IN" the Dream world with absolute integrity and authenticity, and yet, also experience not really being "OF" that same world, too? Can you actually walk the proverbial razor's edge between being "god" and being "human" by learning, instead, to simply "BE?" Discover practical ways of embracing the perennial paradox of living as a "ONE-ness" that, quite mysteriously, also likes to pretend that it's a "TWO-ness."
Hayes Terrace
Lunch - Classical guitar with Claudio Tudisco
My classical guitar repertoire consists of many well known pieces ranging from Spanish classical, Bach, F. Sor, romantic movie themes, and modern pieces composed by unknown classical guitar players. I only pick the most beautiful ones.
I am a mathematician, researcher, and author studying Derived Mirror Symmetry, quantum computing, and Grand Unified Theories of Mathematics and Physics. I also intersect Lie Algebras with Continental Thought in Perfectoid-Wittgenstein moduli.
Madrone
Humanity as Dynamical Multiverse Singularity: Thought as Event Horizon and a New Geometrization of Time, Coleman Dobson
What breaks information symmetry and fuels paradigm shifts such as the shift from Newtonian mechanics to the very profound everything not forbidden is compulsory�xiom of quantum mechanics? Why do we still perceive in linear time when there exist two time dimensions in F-Theory and four levels in the Holographic Multiverse?
Quantum mechanics posits that particles are mathematical possibilities, irreducible representations of Lie Groups. It is as if space itself were a time crystal, where the perceived low-energy configuration, the grand what is, is symmetric with respect to quantum time. But what is quantum time and who could create it?
Using Mirror Symmetry, Level 4 of the Multiverse, and Noncommutative Algebras, I propose that in proportion as we integrate as fully actualized human beings, we change our mathematical constructs which therefore directly change perceived reality. So humanity is the dynamical singularity between the black and white hole, constantly replacing old paradigms with emergent constructs, and thought itself is an event horizon.
Firstly, we explore powerful shifts in theoretical physics which parallel the spiritual movement to the human integrating to the 6th Density of lovelight wisdom: gravity as geometry and tensor networks; multi-verse circle time; entanglement as black holes.
Secondly, we propose that the fully actualized human would construct quantum time as a holographic mirror symmetry, as it will no longer be relevant to perceive through linear time.
Using F-theory and Loop Quantum Gravity, we argue that space and time are pre-geometric emergent mirror pairs, emerging from the symmetries of spin networks of quantum complexity. So just as we made classical time an approximation symmetry, we could construct a quantum multiverse time, where humans could perceive their magical multiverse copies. Imagine the effect on the isms of humanity, if tomorrow were replaced with infinite day returning?
Craig Holliday is a gifted Meditation and Spiritual Teacher trained in both the Yogic and Buddhist traditions, and Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) offering mindfulness-based therapy and nondual therapy. He is a founding member of the the Association for Spiritual Integrity, dedicated to cultivating professional growth among spiritual teachers. Craig travels frequently offering Nondual Meditation Workshops, Retreats, and Satsang. He is the author of Fully Human Fully Divine. His work is dedicated to the discovery of our innate Divinity, and the expansion of compassionate action on the planet. He works in a way that addresses our everyday suffering as a doorway to our inherent freedom, empowerment and as a catalyst for social change. He meets with individuals both locally and online in Durango, Colorado.
Info: craigholliday.com
San Juan Bautista
Strong Back, Open Heart A Path of Embodiment of the Divine Masculine and Feminine, Craig Holliday
Conventional Reality sees separation as fundamentally inherent, our self as distinct from all other aspects of existence and from the source and origin of existence itself.
In Nondual Consciousness there is no absolute separation. Existence and nonexistence are undivided. Nondual is beyond and inclusive of unity and uniqueness.
In this pioneering age of the Awakening of Nondual Consciousness, it is important to discriminate and to include the core aspects of its embodied life expression. That is, to remove the bathwater, but to include all the facets of the baby’s essence.
After meeting with over 10,000 individuals in the intimate setting of personal nondual psychotherapy sessions and in small groups, it has become dramatically apparent that there is a need for the realization of both the strength and clarity of our masculine nature and the balance of our heart-centered compassionate feminine qualities for a healthy integration in the human psyche.
It is through both these qualities of our True Nature that we are able to live in a way which is not confused by the play of life, and simultaneously, willing to compassionately embrace our humanity and evolving edge. We must be willing to let go of an "either or" approach and instead adopt a "both and" approach to our spiritual lives. This all begins by first acknowledging that the masculine and feminine aspects of God are available to us all and that they are the very building blocks of our own Divine Nature.
What does this look like in a practical everyday reality? It is the willingness to face everything, with a strong back, an unwavering clear mind rooted in reality and the strength to handle the storms of life’s confusion with an absolute love and compassion.
Hayes Ballroom
Panel - Ethics and Spiritual Teaching, Rick Archer; Jac O' Keeffe; Craig Holliday; Caverly Morgan
We are witnessing a sea change in collective consciousness. From entertainment to politics to athletics, sexual misconduct is no longer tolerated. Sexual and other forms of abuse have also plagued the spiritual world which the SAND family inhabits. While actors and politicians might not be expected to have developed high moral values, most people expect spiritually awakened people to have done so. Contrary examples have led many to conclude that higher consciousness and ethical behavior are not correlated. Some have become cynical about the motives of all gurus and teachers and have lost faith in spirituality altogether.
Yet, every spiritual tradition includes codes of ethics that apply to both teachers and students. Ethical behavior has been regarded not only as a reflection of spiritual development but as conducive to it.
Unlike the legal, medical, psychological, and other professions, spiritual teachers lack a shared code of ethics and an organization to formalize them. At this writing, the members of this panel have made significant progress in drafting such a code. By conference time, we hope to have established an organization which would offer the following:
_Teacher membership would imply trustworthiness, as it would be predicated upon agreeing to the code of ethics.
_Teachers would be encouraged to be more open to feedback, transparent, and accountable.
_Students would be emboldened to expect high moral standards in teachers and might become more discriminating in choosing a teacher.
_A place where those who have been abused might submit grievances.
Monterey
Aware: The Science and Practice of Presence
This in-depth workshop based on Dr. Dan Siegel’s new book provides practical instruction for mastering the Wheel of Awareness, a life-changing tool for cultivating more focus, presence, and peace in one’s day-to-day life. With a look at the science that underlies meditation’s effectiveness, this workshop will teach attendees how to harness the power of the principle “Where attention goes, neural firing flows, and neural connection grows.” Siegel reveals how developing a Wheel of Awareness practice to focus attention, open awareness, and cultivate kind intention can literally help you grow a healthier brain and reduce fear, anxiety, and stress in your life.Whether you have no experience with a reflective practice or are an experienced practitioner, Aware: The Science and Practice of Presence will help you to become more focused and present, as well as more energized and emotionally resilient in the face of stress and the everyday challenges life throws your way.
Hayes Ballroom
PL5. The Thread of Connection
Hayes Ballroom
The Wheel of Awareness, Daniel Siegel
We in the interdisciplinary field of Interpersonal Neurobiology describe the mind as an emergent, self-organizing, embodied and relational process that regulates the flow of energy and information. This definition reveals how this aspect of mind is both within and between us, and helps us clarify how a healthy mind is one that moves these inner and relational movements of energy and information flow toward integration; integration optimizes self-organization. Integration is the linkage of differentiated parts, such as connecting the left and right sides of the brain, or embracing and honoring differences and cultivating compassionate communication. By exploring our mental lives, we can move toward a healthy flow of integration, which creates harmony in our lives. When not moving toward integration, complex systems like our lives move toward either chaos or rigidity, rather than the flexible harmonious flow of integrative wellbeing.
One way to promote integration is with the Wheel of Awareness. In this practice, the center hub of our metaphoric wheel represents the “knowing” of being conscious while the elements on the rim stand for the “known.” Known elements on the external rim include:
• What we see, hear, smell, taste and touch
• What we sense from our inner bodily sensations
• What we experience with our mental activities, such as feelings, thoughts or memories
• Our sense of relational connections—with other people and with the planet
The power of doing the Wheel of Awareness practice is to integrate consciousness by differentiating hub from rim, and systematically linking these various elements intentionally with the movement of a spoke of attention. This integration of consciousness allows us to free the mind to learn to move recurrent thoughts and moods of the rim toward an open space of knowing – the hub. Practicing the Wheel of Awareness can liberate the mind from ingrained patterns of cognition and emotion and help you emerge with a more expansive sense of awareness.
Edenvale
Conversation with Daniel Siegel
Danielle Harel, Ph.D. is a host of the series Somatica Sessions with Celeste and Danielle on YouTube and the co-founder of the Somatica Institute of Sex and Relationship Coaching. She brings a tenacious dedication to self-realization in all of her teaching and coaching. Surrounded by the warm embrace of her mama love and the inviting magnetism of her sexy goddess, her clients and students feel safe and inspired to delve into parts of themselves they never knew were there. Her intuition resides in her body and she supports people in trusting their body’s wisdom to guide them to create their most dynamic and satisfying life. She is a celebrator of people’s turn-ons and is known for her creative and out-of-the-box approach in helping couples find their erotic compatibility. Danielle has a Ph.D. In Human Sexuality Studies, a M.A. in Social Work and a B.A. in Psychology. She sees clients in her Sunnyvale office and trains professionals in the Somatica Method – an experiential and body-based method of interpersonal coaching. www.CelesteAndDanielle.com
San Jose
Experiential: The Deep Insights of Arousal , Danielle Harel; Celeste Hirschman
Presence is foundational to engaging fully the moment-to-moment of lived experience. Bringing arousal into your presence practice can move you beyond engagement into enjoyment and insight. You will find deeper levels of awareness both of yourself and others and uncover hidden information that can inform decision-making in your life. Additionally, understanding what arouses you psychologically deepens insights into your wounds and potential creative pathways to healing. Aroused embodiment also offers you a lived experience of safety and strength, and enhances your ability to detect and move away from unsafe experiences. Finally, it gives you a pathway to embodied empathy and deeper insight and connection into your partners and loved ones. Embodied arousal and an understanding of our own sexual psyche can be a guide to a life truly worth living.
In this workshop, Danielle Harel, Ph.D., and Celeste Hirschman, M.A., Co-Founders of the Somatica® Method of Sex and Relationship Coaching will take you on a journey to discovering your erotic psyche and deepening embodied arousal. Through these practices, you will learn more about who you are, how you want to live in the world, regain trust in your inner wisdom, and reconnect with your internal motivation to follow through.
San Juan Bautista
The Faces of Reality, David Buckland
There is one reality, but it is vast, multi-layered and profoundly comprehensive. Humans don't have the mechanism to take it all in at once. Rather, we're like a lens, focusing on this or that aspect of the whole. As we move through the 7 stages of enlightenment, our relationship with the whole changes and with it our perception and understanding of reality.
We could say reality is different in different stages of development. However, our perspective is also strongly influenced by our dominant guna or quality. Do we see the world as concrete and real? As an illusion? Or as a play of the Divine?
How does this impact our relationship with the one reality? What are the common variations in perception? How does this influence the variety of descriptions through the ages? David will explore the two parallel processes of consciousness and refinement in the path of spiritual unfolding.
Across four continents, as a transformational speaker, performer, teacher and author, David has inspired nearly a quarter million people to see behind the veil of the mind’s illusions and seriousness. The late Norman Cousins called David “an accomplished court jester to humanity.” At age 14 David sensed the boundless presence behind all life—and at 17 he studied how to fashion universes out of emptiness on the theater stage through the ancient art form of pantomime under the tutelage of Kabbalah master Samuel Avital. Seeing our body and being as an expression of the infinite is the foundation of all his workshops, coaching, and performing. David is a regular contributor to non-dual magazines and has authored his recent book, The Ocean of Now. You can see his inspiring and humorous videos on his youtube channel.
San Jose
Experiential: Infinity Dancing as Body and Being, David Ellzey
In this workshop, through ancient inquiry, letting go, meditation, movement and dance, you’ll explore the body, the mind, and the stillness within all. You’ll see through false perceptions of self and unveil the direct experience of inherent freedom. The human body can be seen as a seemingly localized expression through which to realize the non-local and infinite origin of all Life. Having unconditional compassion for this body and its human story with all its innocence, trials, and triumphs, can bring a profound relaxation and rest. This can turn our suffering on an island of aloneness - into experiencing life as a universe of beloved Oneness. Come and uncover this infinite sense of being – right in the center of the human story that you're experiencing every precious moment of life.
Rev. Deborah L. Johnson is the founder of Inner Light Ministries, an omnifaith spiritual community in Santa Cruz, California. She also founded The Motivational Institute, an organizational development consulting firm specializing in cultural diversity over 30 years. A dynamic trainer, facilitator, and public speaker, she is known for her ability to bring clarity to complex and emotionally charged issues. Her passion is building “The Beloved Community” and healing socio-political divides. Wherever she goes, her message is one of possibility, inclusion, empowerment, and transformation. The author of The Sacred Yes and Your Deepest Intent, she was featured in numerous media venues including Showtime, NPR, and Huffington Post Live. She is a board member of The Pachamama Alliance, and a founding member of Agape International Spiritual Center with Michael Bernard Beckwith, and an Advisory Council Member of the Association of Global New Thought.
Hayes Ballroom
PL8. Many Threads, One Reality
Hayes Ballroom
Our Greater Yet to Be, Deborah Johnson
What if we put into every day practice the scientific truths that we know? What if our lives bore the fruits of the principles in which we are rooted? What if we simply acted like we know what we know?
We are evolving from a Newtonian paradigm of existence in which we are static entities of matter at the mercy of external forces in the universe. We now understand that we live in a quantum field of infinite potentiality, and that we are part of the quantum field itself. We are consciousness in form and our forms are forever changing. As vibrant energetic beings co-creating our reality every moment, we have agency and the ways in which we direct our energy impacts our experience.
Furthermore, our experience is not the facts of what has happened, but our interpretation. We live life at the level of our real time narrative. Our “story” is more than the monotonous repetition of former conclusions; it is our active narration in the moment, projected into the future. Hence, our story is not merely a stagnant photograph of our past; it is an impressionable blueprint for our future. With enough repetition, it is hardwired within our brains such that our sense of possibility is eclipsed by the probability of precedence.
We are quantum beings of infinite potential harnessed by human pre-cognitive commitments limiting our vision of possibility. How do we navigate this paradox? How do we bridge the gap between the unbridled magnificence of our future with measured capacities of our past? How do we create new neuronal synaptic pathways to receive more than our intellect can conceive, let alone comprehend? How do we step into our greater yet to be? Let’s explore our more.
Edenvale
Conversation with Deborah Johnson
Deepak Chopra, M.D is the author of more than 70 books, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His medical training is in internal medicine and endocrinology, and he is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, and an adjunct professor of Executive Programs at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University Columbia Business School, adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, Columbia University, and a Senior Scientist at the Gallup organization. For more than a decade, he has participated as a lecturer at the Update in Internal Medicine, an annual event sponsored by Harvard Medical School’s Department of Continuing Education and the Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. www.choprafoundation.org
Edenvale
Panel: Enhancing Human Wellbeing through Nondual Awareness, Deepak Chopra; Judith Blackstone; Zoran Josipovic; Paul Mills; Tiffany Barsotti
The current times seem to be defined by the great promise of technology for human enhancement. Yet the source of capacity to optimize our experience and wellbeing is already present within all of us as the innermost essence of nondual awareness. This panel will present contemporary methods for realizing nondual awareness and the scientific research on its effects on wellbeing.
Speaker. Judith Blackstone, PhD, has been a Realization Process teacher and a psychotherapist in private practice for four decades. She is author of Belonging Here, The Enlightenment Process, The Intimate Life, The Empathic Ground and the upcoming Trauma and the Unbound Body.
Speaker. Tiffany Barsotti, M.Th., C.Ht., MCPLT, is a spiritual, medical intuition counselor and teacher in private practice at HEAL and THRIVE in Encinitas, California. With her spiritual and intuitive guidance, she serves as an integrative practitioner working alongside physicians and other allied health professionals.
Speaker. Zoran Josipovic, PhD, is a research associate at New York University Langone Medical Center, and adjunct assistant professor for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology, New York University. With his wife, Judith Blackstone, he founded the Nonduality Institute, where he is the principal science investigator.
Speaker & Session Chair. Paul J. Mills, PhD, is a Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health, and Director of the Center of Excellence for Research and Training in Integrative Health at the University of California, San Diego. He is currently serving as Director of Research for the Chopra Foundation. He has expertise in Integrative Medicine and psychoneuroimmune processes in wellness and disease, publishing extensively on these topics.
Discussant. Deepak Chopra, MD, is a world-renowned pioneer in mind-body medicine and personal transformation, and Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He has authored more than 80 books, published in more than 43 languages, including 22 New York Times best sellers.
Hayes Ballroom
PL4. Human Essence
Hayes Ballroom
From Human to Meta Human: The Next Leap in Evolution of Species , Deepak Chopra
Self-awareness is a primary human trait, but one we have wrestled with for centuries. Other species are thought to have a marginal capacity to be aware, but only humans are defined by awareness. This constituted a major evolutionary shift in prehistory. We became a consciousness-based species with unlimited potential.
Our origins story began in self-awareness and then unfolded to the point where we inhabit a human universe, not simply colored by our perspective but actually reified—given material existence—by us. Once it is understood that the universe is the play of consciousness in different modes, the next evolutionary leap becomes possible.
Evolving from human to Metahuman can be defined as going beyond the products of consciousness to the source, where existence is consciousness. The scientific search for an irreducible something that forms the ground state of creation has inevitably led here.
To expand on the theme, the following topics will be covered:
* Breaking the habit of personal identity, becoming aware that what constitutes being a person is a malleable process.
* The primacy of experience as a validation of reality.
* Escaping the illusion of virtual reality.
* Adopting a view of consciousness as the creative "stuff" of the universe.
* Accepting the dimensionless and timeless as normal facts of everyday life.
Based in San Francisco Bay Area, Dholrhythms Dance Company is an organization dedicated to promoting the artistic and cultural heritage of India by sharing rhythms of Punjab through classes, workshops, performances and events. Since its inception in 2003, Dholrhythms has grown into a boundless and unique platform for people of diverse backgrounds to come together, express themselves, and dance in a non-competitive and positive environment. The diverse group of women who are part of Dholrhythms Dance Company have become one of the most talked about groups in the San Francisco Bay Area creating a demand for this dance. Led by co-founder vicki virk's Punjabi heritage, Dholrhythms Dance Co. highlights the ancestral and ethnic roots of the Punjabi folk dances while pushing boundaries with contemporary influences. The result is a fresh and exciting experience full of joy, energy, and passion. Dholrhythms has been featured at landmark platforms and stages in San Francisco Bay Area and beyond including War Memorial Opera House, Asian Art Museum, De Young Museum, SF City Hall, Yerba Buena Center For The Arts, Stern Grove Festival, The Fillmore, Oakland Museum of California, TedxSF, and more. Dholrhythms hosts and headlines the award winning event, Non Stop Bhangra, voted "Best Dance Party" in the San Francisco Bay Area! In addition, Dholrhythms curates the "Colors of India" production featured yearly at The Kanbar Center For the Performing Arts. ~Move to the rhythm of your soul & you'll never miss a beat www.dholrhythms.com
Patio Area
Dholrhythms Dance Company
Dholrhythms Dance Co. highlights the ancestral and ethnic roots of the Punjabi folk dances while pushing boundaries with contemporary influences. The result is a fresh and exciting experience full of joy, energy, and passion.
Morgan Hill
The Mystic And The Psychotic: Holding Space for Anomalous States of Consciousness, Dina Tyler
Mystic or Mad? Psychosis or Spiritual Experience? This workshop will overcome the duality in clinical practice between pathology and awakening with a new vision of altered states of consciousness and a new direction for interventions and treatment. Nonduality points to a paradigm change in understanding of being human, viewing “anomalous” or unexpected mind spaces as needing compassionate response as reflections of greater wholeness. Set and setting, drawn from psychedelic sitting and integration, can help reframe psychosis as an opportunity to embrace non duality and access greater depth in the multidimensional mystery of reality. This workshop will explore methods for working with individuals, family, and self — based on the ongoing work of the Bay Area Mandala Project — leading the way for a much needed paradigm shift in mental healthcare.
Hayes Ballroom
Dance Party - Music is Medicine, DJ Dragonfly
DJ Dragonfly’s sets bridge all variations of the underground global dance scene. Known for incorporating nu-bass culture with the leading edge of production and programming, he fuses trans-temporal dynamics and genre-morphing beats with the global village's traditional cultural idioms and sounds (sitars, percussion, vocal samples, african drumming, etc.). Spanning all genres, no continent goes unturned in his search for the perfect groove!
Guadalupe
The Organization of Experience: The Transformational Power of Mindfulness and Embodiment in the Hakomi Method, Dominique Lando
The Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy offers an elegant, comprehensive and highly effective approach to human change. Hakomi combines mindfulness, unique and powerful somatic techniques, and a focus on present experience to access and transform deeply held, life-limiting core beliefs. For over 30 years Hakomi has pioneered and integrated the use of mindfulness in the human change process. It is backed by thousands of hours of clinical applications and research into the neurological underpinnings of mindfulness. Psychotherapists can successfully use Hakomi in a wide range of applications including individual, couples/ family therapy, and group work. The Hakomi Method also offers cutting-edge skills for coaches, health professionals and others who work to support human change and growth.
Drawing from different Buddhist traditions and meditation practices, Hakomi employs Mindfulness as a distinct state of mind in which clients can slow down and observe carefully their internal experience. The heart of the method is the precise study of the client's experience in the present moment, designed to reveal their unconscious beliefs about the world and about themselves. These access routes are surprisingly effective to take us straight to the core of how we are organized as beings, the blueprints that we unknowingly place on just about everything. At the core of our organization is where we can create new neural pathways for transformation and expand on our possibilities of being. Together we will engage in this process of setting up experiments in mindfulness.
Donald Hoffman is a cognitive scientist and author of more than 90 scientific papers and three books, including Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See (W.W. Norton, 2000). He received his BA from UCLA in Quantitative Psychology and his Ph.D. from MIT in Computational Psychology. He joined the faculty of UC Irvine in 1983, where he is now a full professor in the departments of cognitive science, computer science and philosophy. He received a Distinguished Scientific Award of the American Psychological Association for early career research into visual perception, the Troland Research Award of the US National Academy of Sciences for his research on the relationship of consciousness and the physical world, and the Rustum Roy Award of the Chopra Foundation. http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/
Hayes Ballroom
PL9. The Mystery of Life
Hayes Ballroom
The Mystery of Free Will, Donald Hoffman
I choose chocolate over vanilla. By monitoring my brain activity, a neuroscientist can predict my choice seven seconds before I’m even aware of my choice. Are we puppets, and neurons our puppeteers?You choose kindness over cruelty, enlightenment over vanity. In 1966, Charles Whitman chose to murder 17 people. His autopsy revealed a brain tumor; his suicide note said, “I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts.” Can you take credit for your choices? Should Whitman be blamed for his? Are you free to choose, or do neurons and tumors choose for you?Einstein said, “I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing?” Sam Harris argues that free will is incoherent: “Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.”To deny free will is, according to the Supreme Court, “inconsistent with the underlying precepts of our criminal justice system.” To endorse free will is, according to many neuroscientists, inconsistent with logic and neuroscience.In this talk, I propose a scientific theory of agents with free will, and explain how it is consistent with logic and neuroscience. Free will is a fundamental aspect of reality, and can be modeled mathematically. Agents can combine to form more complex agents, ad infinitum. The free will choices of lower agents constrain the choices of more complex agents; the choices of higher agents influence, in turn, the choices of lower agents. Free will enjoys a complex dynamics that flows bottom up and top down.
Hayes Ballroom
PL6. Collective Initiations
Monterey Room
Panel: Embracing Yin; Awakening in the Body, Vanessa Scotto; Brooke Thomas; Dorothy Hunt; Jeannie Zandi; Kiran Trace
There is an ever expanding conversation these days within nondual circles about embodiment as a maturational process in awakening, yet there is little talk about how awakening is actually integrated within our human body. Could it be that freedom from suffering is not about transcending form, but rather, becoming more fully present with the field of experience within the body? How does the health and tone of the nervous system correlate with awakening if at all? How can we meet the arising energies, emotions, conditioning and ego structure that are implicit to having a human form? In traditions that have historically pointed to the experience of the truth that lies beyond form, how to we begin to include the physical body in the conversation of awakening?
In this panel discussion with teachers Jeannie Zandi, Kiran Trace, Dorothy Hunt we will explore themes such as how to be present in the body, the role the body may play in awakening to truth as well as the impact awakening may have on the body, how we can have a direct experience of the body without concept or objectification, the intelligence and conditioning that lies within the body, the relationships between trauma, the body and awakening, the feminine movement of embodiment and what it means to live a fully human existence within physical form once you’ve awakened from the dream of separation.
Hayes Ballroom
Is Nondual Awareness at War with our Humanity? Dorothy Hunt
Spiritual seekers often imagine that awakened living means ridding ourselves of our humanness, or that nondual awareness is somehow at odds with its own expression as human beingness. Egoic thought imagines that “it” is what will become ever-present, compassionate and loving, and so continually falls short in its attempt to become what it will never become. Presence, compassion, and unconditional love are already here in our deepest essence, the Heart of Awareness that we share. Awakened living realizes that the Absolute and the relative dimensions of our Being are simply “not-two.” In such seeing, we honor What is already whole and undivided as well as its infinite expressions as life. Through discussion and experiential invitations, we will explore Presence and personhood, and look at ways to approach our inner struggles by not separating ourselves from them yet being willing to look deeply at where we are divided. We often need reminding, “Without mud, there is no lotus.”
Ellen’s deepest intuition was confirmed when she met her teacher, Francis Lucille. In his presence, she recognized the eternal, limitless and universal nature of our shared reality. Over many years, her understanding deepened to touch all levels of experience. The process of aligning and stabilizing all aspects of her life to this understanding has continued to unfold since then.
As a child Ellen loved to move and dance. She knew without words the joy and limitless transparency that the body dissolved into when it was free and alive.
As an adolescent and young adult, she acutely felt and enacted suffering through her body.
Thus, the experience that we call the body has always been central to all of Ellen’s experiences, both in the ignoring and in the recognition of our true nature.
Today, Ellen offers meetings and retreats in The Awakening Body, sharing a direct exploration of reality sourced in the tradition of Kashmiri Shaivism and self-inquiry.
In addition, she has a private practice as a Psychotherapist, and facilitator of Authentic Movement. Her background of Dance-Movement Therapy and Transpersonal Psychology is shaped by the non-dual understanding.
Ellen lives in Oxford with her husband Rupert Spira, also a teacher in the tradition of non-duality.
Guadalupe
Experiential: Body of Truth, Body of Vibration: A Ritual , Ellen Emmet
When we knowingly take our stand as the limitless field of Awareness we may recognize that all experiences arise spontaneously within it and share their deepest reality with it.
In this workshop, we will give special attention to the body. For most of us, even after an awakening to our true nature of Awareness, we continue to experience the body as a habitual and intricate network of density and tension which perpetuates and reflects the belief in being a fragment that needs to defend, assert and protect itself… These habits are layered, deep rooted and active under the surface of our contemplation. Thus, the body’s original and harmonious nature, its lively flowing expression, and deep silent vibration remain compromised by the impossible task of maintaining itself as an anchor and cage for the separate one…
Together we will explore and discover.
Screen reader support enabled.
Hayes Ballroom
PL9. The Mystery of Life
Hayes Ballroom
The Fundamental Differences Between Natural And Artificial Intelligence, Federico Faggin
The recent progress in artificial intelligence combined with claims that conscious computers will be feasible, are challenging the general notions we hold about intelligence and consciousness. Computers are not conscious and yet they perform certain tasks that require human intelligence and conscious attention better than humans. What is intelligence then? and what is consciousness good for? Can computers really become conscious? What will happen if they do? We can no longer dismiss these questions as philosophical musing: We need to clearly understand the boundaries between humans and computers. To do so, we also need to understand the boundaries between living organisms and machines. Human intelligence is intertwined with consciousness, while machine intelligence currently requires no consciousness. How can there be intelligence without consciousness? Science generally considers living organisms to be machines and consciousness to be an emergent property of organisms with brains – also considered to be machines. If we start with these assumptions, we end with the inescapable conclusion that future computers designed by the best minds will become conscious and will be better than us, maybe not in 50 years, but perhaps in 500 years. Yet, those of us who have explored our spiritual nature intuitively reject this conclusion as inconsistent with our deepest experiences. The author has explored these questions since studying and developing neural networks more than 30 years ago. His main conclusion is that to truly understand the differences between natural and artificial intelligence, the materialistic framework of science is insufficient. The author will present his views on intelligence, consciousness, living organisms, and machines based on a framework that answers the above questions in ways that are consistent with both the principles of quantum physics and the insights gained in our most revealing spiritual experiences.
Hayes Ballroom
Un-Panel: Technology and the Future of Awakening, Federico Faggin; Mikey Siegel; Kate Stockly; Vincent Horn; Carole Griggs
What is technology? Is it not a form of human expression, woven into our vast cultural landscape, along with what we call art, science, politics, religion and spirituality? With the right intention and skill, can technology support individual and collective awakening? Is this already happening? What would this look like? How might our beliefs about, and relationship to technology need to change for it to be truly in service to the evolution of our human experience? How would humanity change if we could create secular, science based, and universally accessible tools, that could radically accelerate the path to awakening? Join us for this interactive Un-Panel, where the audience explores burning questions from the panelists in a lively dialogue.
Hayes Ballroom
Panel - Awakening to the Divine Feminine, Mirabai Starr; Vera de Chalambert; Francis Bennett; Zhen Dao; Nadeshwari Joythimayananda
Today’s modern society can best be described as a paradox:. On the one hand there seems to be a collective awakening of human consciousness that is creating movement towards greater clarity, creativity, compassion, wellness, communion with nature and a sincere respect for spiritual, ethnic and gender diversity.
On the other hand, our world is grappling with the backlash of social pariahs like racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, class inequalities and religious intolerance, often leading to violence; unbridled materialism and even despair.
As the outdated patriarchal structures rise up in backlash to their inevitable downfall, the need for a more sustainable world paradigm couldn’t be greater. It’s clear that now is the time for balance and integration to be restored to the planet. But how do we bring balance to what sometimes seems like two polar opposite extremes?
Perhaps balance can only be restored by a collective awakening of the Divine Feminine in our society so that women and men can reconnect to a more integrated idea of Source/God/Life and step into a more nurturing relationships with themselves, their communities and the planet.
This panel will be having a conversation on how we can all awaken this healing and nurturing inner feminine energy into our everyday lives and how such an awakening might effect our society and our world..
They will be sharing their own unique perspectives on this topic based on the awakening to the Divine Feminine that has unfolded in their own lives personally and professionally.
Francis Lucille is a spiritual teacher of the tradition of Advaita Vedanta (non-duality). He became a disciple of Jean Klein, a French Advaita teacher whom he met in 1975. This was the beginning of a close association that lasted until the death of his friend and spiritual master in 1998. Jean Klein's own guru, "Panditji" Rao, whom he met in India in the nineteen-fifties, was a college professor in Bangalore who taught Sanskrit and belonged to a lineage of traditional Advaita Vedanta teachers.
Hayes Ballroom
The Mystery of Life, Francis Lucille
Francis doesn't deliver a prepared talk but rather speaks from what arises in the moment.
Hayes Ballroom
PL9. The Mystery of Life
Edenvale
Is Consciousness Real? - A Conversation with Francis Lucille
Francis doesn't deliver a prepared talk but rather speaks from what arises in the moment.
Madrone
Attention Schema Theory Plus a Proposed Three-Agent Model Explains Multiple Forms of Conscious Awareness Including Nonduality, Frank Heile
The proposed model of the brain consists of three sub-agents: The Thinker, Doer, and Experiencer. The Thinker and Doer are justified because of their consistency with well established, experimentally derived models of cognition in two different academic fields. In the field of psychology, Dual Process Theory would map the Thinker to System 2 (slow, deliberative, explicit, & conscious), and the Doer to System 1 (fast, intuitive, implicit, & subconscious). In the field of neuroscience, a model by Henry Yin and Barbara Knowlton would map the Thinker to the action-outcome contingency system and the Doer to the stimulus-response habit system. A theorem in control theory by Conant and Ashby proposes that every good agent should contain a model of the world where the agent operates. This theorem suggests the existence of the third agent, the Experiencer; this agent would construct the model of the world needed by the Thinker and Doer. Attention schema theory proposes a model of awareness containing three sub-models: a self-model of the agent, the attention schema (which is a model of attention), and the representation of the object of attention. This awareness model is applied to each of the three proposed sub-agents to describe the form of awareness that each sub-agent has about external objects. Additionally, attention schema theory is utilized to determine the type of self-awareness each agent would experience. This integration of attention schema theory and the three sub-agents results in three different forms of conscious awareness. One of these forms of awareness would be the consciousness that animals (and ancient humans) would experience. The second is the default awareness state of modern humans. The third form of awareness exactly explains the experiences reported in Nonduality and other enlightened consciousness states. This model could also explain some of the experiences described as flow states, or peak consciousness states.
Hayes Ballroom
PL8. Many Threads, One Reality
Hayes Ballroom
Mind, Matter, and Life: A Unified Systemic View, Fritjof Capra
Over the last thirty years, a new systemic understanding of life has emerged at the forefront of science. At the core of this new understanding we find a fundamental change of metaphors: from seeing the world as a machine to understanding it as a network. This change has profound philosophical, social, and political implications. In this lecture, Fritjof Capra will present his synthesis of the new “systems view of life” and will then concentrate on one of its most radical philosophical implications: a scientific theory which, for the first time, unifies mind, matter, and life.
Edenvale
Conversation with Fritjof Capra
Morgan Hill
What Makes People Change?, Gabriele Hilberg
The traditional approach to psychotherapy is focused on helping people identify underlying thoughts, feelings and beliefs that cause havoc in their lives - and to confront and remove their resistance to changing them. This can be a slow and tedious process, which is only available and affordable to few people in the world.
What if there is another way of reaching people beyond time and space?
What if there is another approach to personal change and spiritual growth?
What if "fixing it" is not the answer?
What if the answer hides in plain view?
What if this new way is low cost and available anywhere, to anyone?
What if this new way allows for the energy of unconditional love to be transmitted 24/7 via an Intention Host Device for healing purposes?
Not possible?
In four distant healing studies which utilized an Intention Host Device (IHD) to transmit a healing intention to participants worldwide, the results were highly significant (Reed,C., Tiller, B. 2005: Reducing Anxiety and Depression; Miller, S., Tiller B., 2013: Autism Study; Hilberg, G., Tiller, B., 2014: Self-Compassion Study; Hilberg, G.,Tiller, B., Mills, P.Chopra Foundation, 2017: Consciousness Field Project).
Come and explore new ways of conceptualizing and implementing a powerful path of healing based on Information Psychology and ground breaking research.
Gail Brenner, Ph.D. is a psychologist, author, teacher, and lover of truth with a fire that burns brightly. She is an expert in healing from early trauma and brings to this work years of experience with individuals and groups. Her work lovingly illuminates our everyday humanness with the deepest spiritual truths, and she is known for creating the safe space needed for inner exploration.
Gail has special expertise working with older adults and their families in the transitions of aging, death, and dying. She was an assistant clinical professor at the University of California San Francisco where she trained physicians and maintained a clinical practice. She has published numerous professional articles on coping with stress and chronic medical illness and is the author of the award-winning The End of Self-Help and Suffering Is Optional. She loves exploring different cultures through international volunteering.
For more, please visit www.GailBrenner.com.
Morgan Hill
Leaving No Stone Unturned on the Spiritual Path: The Art of Making Peace with Your Past, Gail Brenner
Are you still plagued by your past—even though you know it’s an illusion? Do you still get stuck—even though you’ve tasted the bliss of your true nature? Many of us on a spiritual path find this confusing. How can we know the truth yet still feel like the pain of the past lives on in our minds and bodies?
In our everyday lives, we feel resentful, blame our parents, and feel hopeless that we will ever find the abiding peace and happiness we just know is possible. Even with our deepest desire to live as the timeless unfolding of life, we find ourselves stuck in patterns rooted in our past such as addictions, chronic anxiety and depression, and difficulties in relationships. We struggle with fear and feelings of lack and inadequacy.
Holding onto stories from the past and repeating them in our minds keeps the sense of the personal, broken self in place—and veils the infinite aliveness of our true nature. Understanding this human suffering is the gateway to being free of it.
In this presentation, we’ll explore how consciousness contracts into believing that you are the one who is separate and wounded. We’ll study how conditioned patterns develop early on in life and learn how to identify when conditioning takes hold. Together we’ll discover that you can relate to your present moment experience in a fresh way that untangles you from the old stories and softens the emotions that underlie them.
The truth of who you are is already free of the past. And it’s right here, right now, to be known and experienced. Now available to explore beyond the old, familiar ways of being, you’re primed to discover what’s always been here…reality: silent, still, and radically free.
Geshe Namgyal is a Tibetan Rimé teacher, primarily teaching Natural Mind Meditation in the Dzogchen Bön tradition. Born in Tibet, he entered the monastery at a young age, eventually leaving Tibet to seek more in-depth teachings. He spent 25 years studying with great Buddhist teachers, attaining his Geshe degree.
As a researcher of Tibetan history, culture and religion, he has presented at numerous conferences and seminars around the world, has written nine books in Tibetan. His most recent English release is Pure Dzogchen: Zhang Zhung Tradition.
His teachings are profoundly simple: Mind, at the deepest level is already whole and complete, being clear, radiant, and peaceful. Through his Kunsang Gar Wisdom Program, Geshe conveys a wealth of knowledge and experience with warmth, humility, and approachability. Currently Spiritual Director of Kunsang Gar, he conducts classes in Santa Cruz and Berkeley, California and elsewhere. For more information, visit kunsanggarcenter.org
Madrone
The View of Non-Dual Grasper and Grasped, Dangsong Namgyal
What is grasper and grasping? It is object and subject. When an object first appears to sentient beings they become attached, then thoughts move. For example, insects become bound to a spider's web. The more the insect's body moves, the more it becomes bound in the web. The result is like that of grasper and grasping. All ignorance comes from grasper and grasping. The ideas of "You" and "I" comes from grasper and grasping. Ego-grasping is part of that. The cause of samsara is also the grasper and grasping view. Karma comes from delusion and delusion comes from ego-grasping view. When it is dark at night, we can see a multi-colored rope that looks like a snake. We then become afraid. This is created from grasping. The grasping is actually a mistaken perception. When the object appears to the practitioner, it is immediately integrated into the Natural State. The object is dissolved into Ultimate Truth. There is no foundation of attachment. At that time the practitioner observes without the grasping view. For example, when we meditate in the Natural State, there is no object and subject. Why is the grasping view a mistaken perception? Whatever first appears: Where did it originate from? Where is it abiding? Where will it disappear to? Everything is pervaded with intrinsic awareness. It is non-dual with the natural state. According to high practitioners, there is no rejection, no negativity. For example, if you visualize a golden place, you will not find earth and stone there. When we meditate we must continue our session without grasping. There is no difference between the observer and the observed. It is non-duality. This is what we call "self-knowing wisdom". When we experience this, we get liberated or achieve Enlightenment.
Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, founder and spiritual director of Ligmincha International, is one of only a few masters of the Bön Dzogchen tradition presently living in the West. An accomplished scholar in the Bön Buddhist textual traditions of philosophy, exegesis, and debate, Tenzin Rinpoche completed a rigorous 11-year course of traditional studies at the Bönpo Monastic Center (Menri Monastery) in India, where he received his Geshe, degree. In 1992 Tenzin Rinpoche founded Ligmincha International in order to preserve and introduce to the West the religious teachings and arts of the ancient Tibetan Bön Buddhist tradition.
Fluent in English, Rinpoche is known for his clear, lively, and insightful teaching style and his ability to make Tibetan practices easily accessible to the Western student. He is a highly respected and beloved teacher to students throughout the United States, Mexico, Europe, and Asia. In addition to Ligmincha International’s affiliates in the United States, Rinpoche has established centers in Central and South America, Europe and India.
Rinpoche is the author of 10 books, including Wonders of the Natural Mind, in which he presents the view and practice of the Bön Dzogchen teachings, and The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep.
San Jose
Spontaneous Creativity:Manifesting Your Positive Qualities
“Creativity can be seen as a state of natural flow, one that spontaneously and effortlessly gives birth not only to manifest form, but to all experiences of body, energy, and mind. This state of flow, which has its roots in openness, occurs only in the absence of hope and fear. It is at once naturally joyful, peaceful, compassionate, expansive, and powerful.”“When you know how to tap fully into this open, creative flow, its beneficial qualities can extend to any area of your life. You can paint more masterful paintings. Your music can have more depth of connection. Your writing can be more genuine and moving. You will be able to solve problems at work, resolve conflicts with loved ones, or even shift your thought patterns with more natural spontaneity. “- Tenzin Wangyal RinpocheThe Great Perfection of Creativity, Shambhala Sun Magazine, November 2012Join us for this opportunity to free yourself from creative obstacles, nurture your capacity for joyful self-expression, and make positive changes in your life.This retreat is for anyone who seeks to usher a vision into reality — whether through creative problem solving, personal growth, or bringing creative artistry to a whole new level.The Tibetan spiritual traditions tell us that unleashing our dynamic creative energy is a matter of recognizing and tapping into the wellspring of creativity that already exists in us. Tenzin Rinpoche will instruct and guide simple meditation practices of body, speech and mind that can help you to:- recognize and clear physical, energetic, and mental obstacles blocking your creative flow- connect with and trust in your innate creative potential- discover the inner strength and confidence that can allow your creativity to naturally blossom
Hayes Ballroom
Spontaneous Creativity: Manifesting Your Positive Qualities
Geshe Tenzin leads the audience on a meditation experience to unveil the obstacles that block creativity and host them in a way that they dissolve and make space for a space of love and clarity.
Ian Whicher is a Canadian and earned his Ph.D from the University of Cambridge. A long-time spiritual practitioner, Dr Whicher is a Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. He specializes in Hinduism and the Yoga tradition and is the author of books and numerous articles including, The Integrity of the Yoga Darśana (State University of New York Press), and coeditor of Yoga: The Indian Tradition (Routledge Curzon). Dr. Whicher is currently completing a volume of his select writings for Motilal Banarsidass (Delhi, India) entitled, Essays on the Yoga-Sutra: Engaging the World in Freedom. He has given numerous public talks and contemplative seminars and is writing a book for a wide readership on The Yoga of Nonduality.
Morgan Hill
Freedom and Wholeness in the Yoga-Sutra: Implications for a Fuller Humanity, Ian Whicher
Yoga as classically formulated in Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutra has too often been construed as leading to a freedom from the world, emphasizing renunciation, asceticism, disengagement, and transcendence of the body, mind and world. Yet, from another perspective, freedom can be understood as being in and for the world, thus supporting a life-affirming approach that challenges us to a fuller humanity allowing for evolution, development and innovation through which life progresses and the world is made a better place. An overriding impression that remains today is that traditionally the authentic aims and values of Yoga conflict with the aims and values of life-in-the-world. The overemphasis on a transcendent otherness as being Yoga’s goal of freedom precludes the possibility for other ways of seeing Yoga and assessing its value and relevance today in a global context. Rather than approach classical Yoga from the perspective of dualistic metaphysical assumptions that sever consciousness from cosmos/nature/matter, I pursue a reading of the Yoga-Sutra that privileges the potential embodied experience of yoga over metaphysical abstractions and anachronistic approaches to practice.
While Yoga today in its most popular expressions is primarily associated with a physical culture for which it is well known, the meaning and value of Yoga lies in its deeper dimension, in the domain of mind, consciousness, and self-transformation leading to spiritual liberation or freedom. The potential for an embodied, relational freedom or whereby consciousness is holistically aligned with existence, is either overlooked or left unexplored resulting in a final unworkable duality between liberated spiritual identity and life-in-the-world. Drawing from the classical tradition I explore how Yoga can culminate in a balanced integration of the spiritual, psychological, ethical and material dimensions of life that incorporate a clarity of awareness or power of seeing with the integrity of being.
San Martin
Being Human: Transcendence or Psychosis, Igor Kufayev
Being Human: what does it mean in the context of Self-realization, which — when properly understood — is aimed at living our innermost potential? After all, the process of Self-realization is to go beyond, to transcend the boundaries of human consciousness — to realize the essence of who we are beyond our most dearly held notions. The way we hold on so dearly to what we call “individuality,” is in itself a telling sign that this may be nothing other than psychosis in varying degrees of intensity. To go beyond this identity requires courage and a different kind of knowledge — opening the possibility for experiencing every shade of what it means to be human, whilst transcending these shades in the light of Awareness which illumines it all.
Though many are going through various stages of awakening and expansion of Consciousness, there is still only a vague understanding of this phenomenon. The dynamics of this process are colored by our psychophysiological conditioning — most of our cognitive responses are automated, because our perception is determined by previous experiences, which in turn plant the seeds for future ones. When seen from this perspective, the ancient line, “Know thyself,” gains an extra dimension. And knowledge of the Self is inseparable from the instrumentality of knowing — the body. The attitude toward that notion marks a point of departure in many spiritual traditions, whose teachings are united by the same goal.
This presentation is an invitation to re-evaluate the human experience — to explore the very meaning and hidden potential of “Human Being.” Is it just a concept? A field of pure transcendence or a conglomerate of neurophysiological responses? Is “individuality” really nothing other than psychosis? What if transcending human experience — without understanding what it represents — is actually bypassing the very purpose of being alive?
San Jose
The Cool Heroism of the Sacred Feminine
In this workshop we will explore the power of the feminine when it is expressed politically and socially. There are many examples of political systems that are governed by the priorities of the Feminine, including the Newar of Nepal, the Hopi of North America, and the Akan of West Africa, to name just a few. Matriarchies are true gender-egalitarian societies that are in no way a mirror image of male dominated societies where power hierarchies are created to hold resources in the hands of a few at the expense of the many. Rather, resources are shared, the nurturing of children is prioritized and the welfare of the group as a whole is emphasized. Rule by consensus, power sharing between cultural groups and fair distribution of goods between men and women, young and old is the norm in cultures which have been organized by women since time immemorial.In this workshop, Drs. Thurman and Gucciardi, who regularly teach the Embracing the Sacred Feminine retreats together, will discuss how we can focus the spiritual aspect of the feminine into the current political climate. They will demonstrate how this focus can be a powerful, transformative force and offer a vision of a new political order that is based on the priorities of feminine forms of power. The surprise, is, in fact, that a political order based on the priorities of the feminine is not new at all. Almost all indigenous cultures were originally matriarchal, and the rise of patriarchal forms of power is actually very new. By returning to the priorities of these earth-based cultures, we can infuse our current culture with the creativity, generativity and possibility that are the hallmarks of feminine power.
Monterey Room
Understanding the Creative Portal, Isa Gucciardi
The mystery and power of the creative process can perhaps be best understood through the lens of the birthing process. The creative portal that opens during the birthing process is the same portal that opens when the creative impulse moves through the artist or scientist who is seeking inspiration. The portal is very clearly delineated and articulated in birthing in a way that is not always so easy to perceive in other types of creative processes. In this talk, we will explore the nature of the creative portal in the birthing process and learn what it shows us about the creative portals that open in other artistic and scientific endeavors. We will learn how the creative portal supports and directs inspiration and how we can align ourselves with it in order to better manifest what we envision. We will also discover what the creative portal asks of us and what kinds of practices we may have to engage in to be able to best serve its requirements. We will explore what happens when we are not in alignment with the portal and how this affects our ability to receive and direct inspiration and intention into that which we wish to manifest. Through experiential work, we will learn how to identify the creative portals in our lives and how to awaken them. Through this exploration, we can learn how to align our lives as human beings with the universal forces of creativity and generativity. By becoming a student of the creative portal, we can learn how to ground these processes in our everyday lives so that we can participate most fully with the mystery of the forces that inspire and guide our lives. This talk is based on the Tracking Spirit in the Birth Environment retreat that Isa has taught for over 10 years.
Jac O’Keeffe experienced a spontaneous, inner awakening in 1997. Her third eye opened, and her life dramatically changed course. She left a successful career pioneering community arts policy at the national level in Ireland to begin a substantial, healing practice, which progressed into residential retreats that explored the spiritual causes underpinning clinical depression. In 2003, she closed her practice, left her Western lifestyle, and eventually moved to India. Intense spiritual practice led to a two year period without thoughts. Spiritual wisdom developed, and Jac now guides others in her teachings and publications to transcend dual and non dual perspectives, and prepares spiritual teachers for liberation. www.jac-okeeffe.com
Berryessa
The Nondual Trap
There is no right or wrong way to experience the awakened state. Each person has his or her own unique path to walk. Self-honesty is what guides our way on. Honesty coupled with continued introspection has led a small group of awakened people to recognize and subsequentially abandon the nondual state. When one dives deeper than both the dual and non-dual viewpoints a new depth of understanding opens. When non-duality is abandoned as an identifiable reference point there is freedom from the force field of polarities. Both separation and unity are viewpoints; the dual and nondual are both lenses of perception. With this recognition, finally, liberation comes into view. Remembering and forgetting Reality ceases. Preference for being in the nondual state over the dual disappears. Identifications with the unified field, with consciousness, the Absolute and Truth disappear.In this workshop we will explore the territory from the dual viewpoint to the non-dual exploring when each lens helps and when it hinders our evolution. And then, dive with total abandon prior to all reference points. Encouraging self-honesty we will explore where beliefs may be limiting our spiritual maturation. Beliefs maintain attachment to the dualistic viewpoint and can also maintain attachment to the nondual. Freedom shows when there is no attachment to any lens of perception. Effective functioning in the world requires the availability of both lenses of perception; each comes into play as determined by life not by habit, beliefs, values or enlightenment. Freedom lies prior to both the dual and nondual viewpoints, prior to consciousness itself.
Hayes Ballroom
PL5. The Thread of Connection
Hayes Ballroom
Psychic Abilities and Awakening, Jac O' Keeffe
Psychic skills offer access to extraordinary insights into the phenomenal world, yet this ability can prove to be a stumbling block on the path to abiding in Absolute Reality. This presentation will explore the nature of the psychic realm, where it fits into the spiritual spectrum, and how to avoid the common pitfalls and potential to get stuck there.
Of those who are given this 'gift' many find it hard to let go of it and its trappings. Yet, the spiritual path necessitates a surrendering into ordinariness. Not letting it go or putting it in its proper perspective can have two common effects: it can distract and prevent one from abiding in the Truth, and it may also make it hard to have a fully embodied and functional phenomenal life (relative reality).
Cultural values placed on psychic abilities range from seeing it as a gift, a curse and indicative of mental health issues. Access to the non-physical worlds offers another layer of perceivable information that may be refined and ethereal but is still part of the cause and effect construct of the illusion (maya). When it is given too much authority or interpreted as truth, the Truth cannot be seen.
On my own journey, a spontaneous third eye opening initiated an abrupt orientation toward spirituality and ultimately Truth. I am amazed at how often people have asked me about my journey and when I answer, they get so caught up in the 3rd eye opening that they never get to the awakening. While subtle skills of perception can be useful when working with a student to pinpoint where they are stuck, for the most part information from non-physical realms is ignored. This talk redefines the role of psychic abilities and non-physical realms within spirituality.
Hayes Ballroom
Panel - Ethics and Spiritual Teaching, Rick Archer; Jac O' Keeffe; Craig Holliday; Caverly Morgan
We are witnessing a sea change in collective consciousness. From entertainment to politics to athletics, sexual misconduct is no longer tolerated. Sexual and other forms of abuse have also plagued the spiritual world which the SAND family inhabits. While actors and politicians might not be expected to have developed high moral values, most people expect spiritually awakened people to have done so. Contrary examples have led many to conclude that higher consciousness and ethical behavior are not correlated. Some have become cynical about the motives of all gurus and teachers and have lost faith in spirituality altogether.
Yet, every spiritual tradition includes codes of ethics that apply to both teachers and students. Ethical behavior has been regarded not only as a reflection of spiritual development but as conducive to it.
Unlike the legal, medical, psychological, and other professions, spiritual teachers lack a shared code of ethics and an organization to formalize them. At this writing, the members of this panel have made significant progress in drafting such a code. By conference time, we hope to have established an organization which would offer the following:
_Teacher membership would imply trustworthiness, as it would be predicated upon agreeing to the code of ethics.
_Teachers would be encouraged to be more open to feedback, transparent, and accountable.
_Students would be emboldened to expect high moral standards in teachers and might become more discriminating in choosing a teacher.
_A place where those who have been abused might submit grievances.
James Fadiman, Ph.D., did his dissertation about LSD-assisted therapy. As well as holding consulting, training, counseling and editorial jobs, he has taught in psychology and design engineering at San Francisco State, Brandeis, and Stanford and, for three decades, taught Sufism and other classes at Sophia University. He has published textbooks, professional books, a self-help book, a novel, a produced play and videos, Drugs: the children are choosingfor National Public Television. He was featured in a National Geographic documentary and had three solo shows of his nature photography. He has been involved in researching microdosing psychedelics since 2010. His most recent books areThe Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys and Healthy Selves: Who We Are and Why You Don’t Know It (with Jordan Gruber).
Hayes Ballroom
PL8. Many Threads, One Reality
Hayes Ballroom
Microdosing- Remarkable Results: Research and Stories, James Fadiman
While 26 million Americans have taken LSD since it became illegal, and quite a few took it before that, all of us overlooked microdoses. Albert Hoffman even chided Sandoz Pharmaceuticals for not studying “low doses.” Microdoses research evolved very much the way a lot of science actually happens: A fortunate series of mistakes, misunderstandings, misinformation and unlikely surprises. The first few hundred self-explorers’ findings gave form to a survey of several thousand people from 59 countries. All used the same protocol, and filled in a daily checklist of 23 different emotional states, as well as writing reports going well beyond the statistics.
At the same time, the media endlessly promulgated the notion that creative healthy individuals, like many in Silicon Valley, regularly microdosed, reporting improved energy, heightened work effectiveness, and better health habits including diet, sleep, and exercise. Microdosing went viral.
The survey team reported how often (and far from always) microdosing seemed to help people who have not been helped by antidepressants, antipsychotics, and other mental health pharmaceuticals.
Furthermore, small groups reported changes in conditions that had never been associated with psychedelics, including difficult menstrual periods, chronic migraines, cluster headaches, traumatic brain injuries, and even the painful symptoms of shingles. There were no magnificent breakthroughs into non-duality, no angels nor demons, no giant snakes. Just people with improved school grades, greater success with coding problems, improved intimate relationships, increased libido, eating more salads, and smoking less pot. The very diversity and span of improvements were confusing, but as the next phase of research is starting (well-controlled, double-blind, university based studies in several countries), we are uncovering what may be an underlying pattern.
A few of the case studies are sufficiently remarkable that, as time allows, will be shared.
Monterey Room
Conversation with James Fadiman
Hayes Ballroom
PL8. Many Threads, One Reality
Hayes Ballroom
PL9. The Mystery of Life
Hayes Ballroom
The White Lions: Substantiating the Science and Sacred Science, Linda Tucker; Jason Turner
In the midst of a global lion crisis that treats Africa’s most sacred animals as a killing commodity in cross-border trade, Linda Tucker and specialist lion ecologist, Jason A. Turner, have dedicated their lives to the solution.
Today, every conservation issue is a global issue.
If Brazil destroys its rain forests, the world has lost its lungs. If South Africa loses its White Lions, humanity has forsaken our most iconic animal offering the key to leadership on this planet, and restoration of order in chaos.
While every crisis is interrelated, so are the solutions.
The work of the Global White Lion Protection Trust has united ancient indigenous knowledge with modern science to help save species, reviving ecosystems and human value systems – in a leadership model of sustainable living with mutual benefits for Lions, Land and People.
The importance of the White Lions’ sudden reoccurrence on the brink of the polar reversal and climate change is directly linked with the appearance of other prophetic “spirit animals” on all continents, including the White Buffalo and the Spirit Bear of British Columbia. Ancient belief holds that these are Nature’s greatest blessing, or final warning.
Their importance, in summary:
Ecologically,
apex predator and “Capstone animal” restoring the biodiversity of a critical important ecosystem through trophic cascading.
Geographically,
unique speciation on the Golden Meridian Zep Tepi – corresponding with the East African Rift Valley, the tectonic seam in the African continent, which scientists identify as the “Birth Canal of Human Species”.
Climactically,
precursors to the forthcoming Ice-Age.
Culturally,
cross-cultural symbol of majestic importance, offering lessons in leadership – at this evolutionary turning point in humanity’s history.
Astrologically,
Turning of Ages which astrologically marks the brink of the Leo-Aquarius Age.
Spiritually,
luminous symbol of unification and good governance, providing luminous inspiration to achieve what may seem impossible: a leadership plan for peace and planetary regeneration.
Jean Houston, Ph.D., scholar, philosopher and researcher in Human Capacities, is one of the foremost visionary thinkers and doers of our time. She is long regarded as one of the principal founders of the Human Potential Movement. Dr. Houston is noted for her ability to combine a deep knowledge of history, culture, new science, spirituality and human development into her teaching. A prolific writer, Dr. Houston is the author of 26 books including Jump Time, A Passion for the Possible, Search for the Beloved, Life Force, The Possible Human, Public Like a Frog, A Mythic Life: Learning to Live Our Greater Story, and Manual of the Peacemaker.
Monterey
Quantum Physics and the Boundless Mind
What if it were possible to access the worlds of your imagination, and bring them to life as never before? Jean Houston, Ph.D., is legendary for exploring the outer limits of human possibilities. Now, she combines her years as a philosopher, author, international consultant for the United Nations, and pioneer in personal and social change with the immense discoveries of the mind’s relationship to quantum physics.We know that when we bring local consciousness to a higher resonance in the Quantum field, we access capacities that until now seem more mythic than real. In this powerful workshop, you’ll discover how your mind can unite with the all-encompassing Matrix of consciousness that transcends all space-time categories.Dr. Houston introduces participants into the field that is then created as an enhanced quantum self. In this state, you’ll learn how your imagination can operate at a higher order of discovery and manifestation. You’ll no longer be caught in habits and expectations of the past, but step into an “imaginal” sphere where intention and imagination can be transformed into a new reality.Each of us is defined by an identity that is influenced by our life experiences, culture, and relationships. What if we were born with a blueprint that is larger and more meaningful than our current understanding? Through revolutionary concepts, personal processes and engaging humor, discover the pathways into the fullest expression of yourself and the ability to bring it to life; learn how to harness the quantum self that you are.
Hayes Ballroom
PL2. Celebrating The Human
Hayes Ballroom
Make Way for the Genius that Lies within you! Jean Houston
Most people roll their eyes if someone tells them that they have the attributes of a genius. The fact is that few have accessed the vast universe of imagination, creativity, problem solving and confidence that these complex times require.
In her international teaching for the past 60 years, Jean Houston, Ph.D., now shares what she has learned from working emerging cultures the world over. She introduces you to what she calls the “Quantum Blueprint” that she believes everyone carries, but seldom accesses. In this fascinating presentation, she’ll take you on a wild ride into your own original mind and help you to unpack the infinite possibilities in this exciting new field of consciousness.
You’ll be pleasantly surprised as you discover higher states of functioning and insights that may have been lost to you by years of conditioning and limiting messages. You will think, feel, and perceive as if you were standing on a star field of possibilities. Once there, you’ll see how entangled you are with all life and how your activation can impact the networks to which you belong.
If you thought genius belonged to others, get ready. You’ll find within yourself the courage, passion, diligence, joy, creativity, spiritual depth, and unimagined capacities that have always awaited your awareness of them. You will leave empowered by your own unique genius, believing in your gifts and inspired to bring them to life.
Edenvale
Conversation with Jean Houston
A former professional Ice Hockey goaltender, Dr. Jean-Philippe Challandesis originally a specialist of the Nation and State building process, his Academic background is History of Power. He holds a PhD from the University of Brasilia and completed a post-doctorate at University Paris1-Sorbonne in that area. An expert of what is commonly described as “Modernity”, he mostly develops and teachessoft skills courses in Business Schools where he helps people understand, break and overcome that very paradigm at personal, organizational and collective levels. Dr. Challandes brings creative ways of “connecting the dots” between personal development, leadership improvement and business. He defines his purpose as opening hearts andmindsto new possibilities andcreating space for the emergence of new personal, organizational and economic ways of thinking. His current main unfolding breakthrough is his endeavour to infuse self-inquiry and wisdom into everyday Business Life.
San Juan Bautista
Non-Duality & Duality in Everyday Life: How Trump, Ex-Wives & World Wounds Grow Self- Awareness more than Spiritual Masters Can
The “Old Paradigm” often remains an abstract concept and a vague notion that superficially labels the current dysfunctions and obsolescence of the (still) mainstream “system”. It is actually NOT perceptible because most people look at it from ... inside of it. The very lens through which many of us look at things actually IS the old paradigm. It operates like a pair of tainted glasses that distort the vision of everything that is looked at through them. The first part of this talk will therefore offer tools to expand perception beyond the “modern mind-set” unconscious perceptual limitations and habits.
The second part will focus on spaciousness and Self-Awareness and proposes the hypothesis that this core intimate process is both a necessary pre-condition to actually perceive what the “old paradigm” is about - including within oneself - and to create the very possibility of the Emergence of new personal and societal possibilities. It will nevertheless also highlight the widespread danger of a stage in development that looks like a new paradigm, but is ultimately a mere update of the old with the appearance of the new.
The last part will explore how “result-orientation”, victim-hero syndrome and internalized Master-and-Slave relationships are the main symptoms of the absolute continuation of the “Old Paradigm” and that fighting against it keeps actually being the very manifestation of it.
The conclusion will insist on the necessary development of a non-dual relationship between the old and new paradigms, and hint that a “radical baby steps” approach is likely to be the most effective one for most people and organizations.
“The New Age can only be rooted in the Dark Ages.
There is no other ground.”
Jeannie Zandi is the director of Living as Love, a nonprofit organization dedicated to 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. Her teaching focuses on the transformational power of incarnated Being. 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. Her groundbreaking work with women and men as allies has been featured at a variety of conferences and through her retreats.
Monterey Room
Panel: Embracing Yin; Awakening in the Body, Vanessa Scotto; Brooke Thomas; Dorothy Hunt; Jeannie Zandi; Kiran Trace
There is an ever expanding conversation these days within nondual circles about embodiment as a maturational process in awakening, yet there is little talk about how awakening is actually integrated within our human body. Could it be that freedom from suffering is not about transcending form, but rather, becoming more fully present with the field of experience within the body? How does the health and tone of the nervous system correlate with awakening if at all? How can we meet the arising energies, emotions, conditioning and ego structure that are implicit to having a human form? In traditions that have historically pointed to the experience of the truth that lies beyond form, how to we begin to include the physical body in the conversation of awakening?
In this panel discussion with teachers Jeannie Zandi, Kiran Trace, Dorothy Hunt we will explore themes such as how to be present in the body, the role the body may play in awakening to truth as well as the impact awakening may have on the body, how we can have a direct experience of the body without concept or objectification, the intelligence and conditioning that lies within the body, the relationships between trauma, the body and awakening, the feminine movement of embodiment and what it means to live a fully human existence within physical form once you’ve awakened from the dream of separation.
Monterey Room
Panel: Mud to Lotus: Opening the Masculine Heart, Kent Welsh; Charles Eisenstein; Will Keepin; Jeannie Zandi
The work before us, highlighted by the #metoo movement, is plain: how do we meet the masculine shadow, and support men in reclaiming and opening their hearts? Join Kent Welsh of Open Circle and his panelists who will explore the unique potential and challenges for men opening their hearts and standing up to face the individual and cultural masculine shadow.
Morgan Hill
You Drive Me Crazy: Living Love in the Heat of the Gender Divide, Jeannie Zandi
Straight talk from the heart of nondual realization about what it takes to bring the light of realization into the dark crannies of the centuries-old rift between women and men. Jeannie will draw on decades of holding space for women, and her ally work with men since the Men’s Movement of the late 80s. She will be speaking from her experience as cis gender and straight, but everyone and their experience is welcome.
Areas of polarization such as this are a favorite dancing ground for the God(dess) of Love. Come and dance with us!
Madrone
Deconstructing the Worship of the Mind, Jenny Simon
Fake news has been in the media this year, but in reality, creating a fake story is a form of human deception that we know from the depth of our bones. After 18 years as an LPC (licensed professional counselor) using EMDR to reprocess trauma, I have witnessed over and over again, how the brain takes snippets of memory and transforms these into narratives that sometimes deceive. Many who have studied this, believe that memories solely exist as a collection of images or sensations. These are tiny flashes, not logical, or full memories. The brain then fills in the gap to create full memories. These may contain false details or be absolutely false. However, false narratives have immense power to move us beyond trauma or keep us frozen in it. It doesn’t even matter that they are false, because it becomes a story we believe in. As a trauma therapist, I reprocess true and false stories. False stories have tortured people for years—stories created around failed relationships, business ventures, money management, etc. We can’t trust the intellect to amplify truth. We need to question our thoughts. We need to flush out the shadow and embody ourselves accurately. If we don’t, instead of grounding ourselves in meditation, we end up grounded in an 8 year old self, frozen in a story of trauma. This talk serves to deconstruct the way we worship the mind and see it as incorruptible. I became a therapist to help people understand why we tell ourselves both true and false stories. We deserve to live in an evolved state, without blind faith in the stories we create.
San Juan Bautista
This Unfathomable Mystery: Exploring the Inconceivable Nature of Experience, John Astin
In this presentation, you’ll be invited to explore through a series of guided inquiries, meditations and dialogue, a very simple yet profound question: What is experience actually made of? Together, we will peer around the edges of what we think our experiences are and discover the myriad ways that each moment radically transcends our ideas about what it is. This investigation reveals that it is not merely those times of great inspiration, beauty or intimacy that lie beyond the reach of our concepts and descriptions, but every experience we have ever encountered. And this discovery that experiences are ultimately indefinable turns out to hold the key to our greatest freedom for every moment, even those we conventionally label as “problems," are in fact a swirling dance of the most miraculous, inconceivable energy, intelligence, lusciousness and depth. I invite you to enter into and enjoy this inquiry.
John J. Prendergast, Ph.D., is the author of In Touch: How to Tune into the Inner Guidance of Your Body and Trust Yourself (Sounds True, 2015) and the senior editor of The Sacred Mirror: Nondual Wisdom andPsychotherapy (2003) and Listening from the Heart of Silence (2007). He is also the Editor -in-Chief of Undivided: The Online Journal ofNonduality and Psychology at www.undividedjournal.com. He offers workshops, retreats, and several self-inquiry groups. He is a psychotherapist in private practice and a retired Adjunct Professor of Psychology at CIIS. www.listeningfromsilence.com
San Martin
The Centrality of the Heart in Being Human, John Prendergast
In this experiential presentation that will include a talk, guided meditation, and dialogue, we will explore how being fully human requires both the awakening of the deep Heart that is shared by all beings as well as the full embrace of the vulnerable human heart. It is the deep or universal Heart of compassionate presence that is able to most tenderly and fully hold the suffering human heart, creating an optimal environment for its natural unfolding.
The heart area is a center of great emotional and energetic sensitivity as well as a portal to our true nature as loving awareness. It is where we feel self-love and self-loathing, a core worthiness or unworthiness, as well as grief and joy. It is also the wellspring of profound gratitude, appreciation and wonder and where we recognize our inherent wholeness and non-separateness from all of life.
After first encountering chocolate making in Oaxaca Mexico in 2012, Jonas founded the bean to bar dark chocolate company Firefly Chocolate in 2014, with the mission of inspiring awe and wonder through cacao. His organic dark chocolate bars are designed for optimal health, sweetened with a minimal amount of coconut sugar. He is also known for his bio-regional chocolate bar containing wild harvested bay nuts, and for his line of 100% ceremonial cacaos, used in ceremonies globally.
Previously, in his roles as Imagineer at Greenlight Planet and engineering lead at Fenix International, he worked on providing affordable solar energy to rural customers. He is a Mechanical Engineering graduate from Stanford University and an immigrant from Germany receiving the prestigious Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for his graduate studies. He also studied permaculture and nature awareness at the Regenerative Design Institute and has lived in eco-villages and cooperative houses for the majority of the last ten years. Now he can frequently be found at farmer's markets, on the dance floor, adventuring to gather spring water, and sharing gratitude and intention over a frothy morning cacao drink. He hopes to meet you one day and share in the awe and wonder of being alive!
On the Patio
Emergent Connections: Cacao Ceremony
On the Patio
Emergent Connections: Cacao Ceremony
Jorge Aranda Ph.D., osteopath and associated professor at the University of Murcia (Spain) and founder of Hands With Heart Foundation which aims to promote and promote ancestral and traditional approaches to Health incorporating aspects of neuroscience.
The integrates different concepts and tools for a deeper comprehension of the health of the individual at a with a mind-body-spirit model of care.
He has developed his method of healing incorporating hands on skills from his osteopathic Medicine background together with Traditional Medicines from Amazon, Andes, Tibet and Bali, combining a somatic experience with a spiritual meditation practices.
San Juan Bautista
Wisdom of the Heart; Connecting Mind & Body to Reach the Spiriual Self, Jorge Aranda
The heart is the Key organ to connect with the Universal Wisdom. Many cultures, regions and spiritual traditions are well aware of it.
Science is starting to throw some light into the importance of this organ in terms of Mental, Emotional and Physical interactions. From the Osteopathic point of view there is a key biomechanical justification to the role of the Heart in the health of the rest of the body. Anthroposophical understanding of it is as the mediator between the Divine and the Terrenal being.
Different meditations techniques lead to a deeper connection and awareness of the Heart as a gate to reaching wisdom—paying attention to the anatomy, physiology, biomechanics as well as spiritual traditions interpretations.
I will talk about different meditations with special emphasis on techniques directed learned from Mangku (Holly-man) from the Balinese Tradition. Engaging with the root chakra to generate and accumulate inner energy to be sent to the Heart center. Once we have that path developed we can engage with the crown chakra to reinforce the path toward the Heart. Once developed, the Mind and the Body can reach the Spiritual self.
Joe Tafur, M.D., is a Colombian-American family physician originally from Phoenix, Arizona. After completing his family medicine training at UCLA, Dr. Tafur spent two years in academic research at the UCSD Department of Psychiatry. After which, over a period of six years, he lived and worked in the Peruvian Amazon at the traditional healing center Nihue Rao Centro Espiritual. There he worked closely with master Shipibo shaman Ricardo Amaringo and trained in ayahuasca shamanism, as described in his new book "The Fellowship of the River: A Medical Doctor's Exploration into Traditional Amazonian Plant Medicine.
Madrone
EEG studies of Kundalini Activation
Kundalini, the life force energy of spiritual awakening has been described in the Hindu contemplative and yogic traditions for centuries. The secrets of Kundalini have been buried in esoteric texts guarded by masters. Kundalini is a spiritual energy presumed to reside at the base of the spine and when awakened, it is believed to catalyze spiritual evolution and lead to a higher state of consciousness and integration of body mind and spirit. Practitioners of meditation and Yoga, particularly Tantric traditions, are most familiar with this state. Kundalini awakening can be developed in devotees by these practices, under the guidance and supervision of a competent teacher (guru) to ensure safety and proper integration, but can also arouse spontaneously during breath work (pranayama), NDEs, visionary states, singing, dancing, music (listening and making), ecstatic moments in nature, fasting, injury, trauma, or without apparent cause. The phenomenology of Kundalini activation is well documented, but the psychophysiology is yet to be fully described and understood scientifically. The present EEG studies explore some neural correlates, and provide objective validation of a profound and transformative subjective experience. Kundalini activation is recorded as a high voltage discharge of Delta/Theta brainwaves, followed by increased Beta and Gamma power. The subjects report an ecstatic multi orgasmic experience lasting tens of minutes following the initial discharge. These pioneering studies aim to demystify this remarkable phenomenon.
Judith Blackstone, Ph.D, is an innovative nonduality teacher and psychotherapist. She developed the Realization Process, an embodied approach to psychological and relational healing and nondual realization and teaches workshops and teacher certication trainings throughout the United States and online. She is author of Belonging Here, The Intimate Life, The Enlightenment Process and The Empathic Ground and a six CD series of the Realization Process from Sounds True. Her latest book is Trauma and the Unbound Body: the Healing Power of Fundamental Consciousness.
Edenvale
Panel: Enhancing Human Wellbeing through Nondual Awareness, Deepak Chopra; Judith Blackstone; Zoran Josipovic; Paul Mills; Tiffany Barsotti
The current times seem to be defined by the great promise of technology for human enhancement. Yet the source of capacity to optimize our experience and wellbeing is already present within all of us as the innermost essence of nondual awareness. This panel will present contemporary methods for realizing nondual awareness and the scientific research on its effects on wellbeing.
Speaker. Judith Blackstone, PhD, has been a Realization Process teacher and a psychotherapist in private practice for four decades. She is author of Belonging Here, The Enlightenment Process, The Intimate Life, The Empathic Ground and the upcoming Trauma and the Unbound Body.
Speaker. Tiffany Barsotti, M.Th., C.Ht., MCPLT, is a spiritual, medical intuition counselor and teacher in private practice at HEAL and THRIVE in Encinitas, California. With her spiritual and intuitive guidance, she serves as an integrative practitioner working alongside physicians and other allied health professionals.
Speaker. Zoran Josipovic, PhD, is a research associate at New York University Langone Medical Center, and adjunct assistant professor for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology, New York University. With his wife, Judith Blackstone, he founded the Nonduality Institute, where he is the principal science investigator.
Speaker & Session Chair. Paul J. Mills, PhD, is a Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health, and Director of the Center of Excellence for Research and Training in Integrative Health at the University of California, San Diego. He is currently serving as Director of Research for the Chopra Foundation. He has expertise in Integrative Medicine and psychoneuroimmune processes in wellness and disease, publishing extensively on these topics.
Discussant. Deepak Chopra, MD, is a world-renowned pioneer in mind-body medicine and personal transformation, and Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He has authored more than 80 books, published in more than 43 languages, including 22 New York Times best sellers.
Monterey Room
Trauma and the Unbound Body: Nonduality and Healing from Trauma, Judith Blackstone
Judith will teach the main practices of the Realization Process, a direct, embodied method of personal and relational healing and nondual awakening. She will discuss the application of these practices to healing from trauma. In the Realization Process we attune to the ground of our own nature as an expanse of undivided, fundamental consciousness pervading our body and environment as a unity. Knowing ourselves as fundamental consciousness facilitates resilience to emotional and sensory stimuli, the integration of cognition, emotion and physical sensation, and the capacity for deep connection with other people without losing inward contact with oneself.
Judith will describe how we constrict and fragment ourselves in reaction to trauma, especially as children, and also how we mirror the trauma-based constrictions of our parents, so that psychological pain and limitation is passed down through the generations. She will demonstrate the Realization Process method for recognizing and releasing the emotional wounds, defenses and compensatory patterns held in the body that conceal our authentic nature. She will also show how nondual realization enhances the therapeutic relationship, by cultivating empathy, subtle perception, and authenticity.
Judith will also present some specific types of psychological issues that often cause suffering for spiritually oriented individuals. These include intolerable levels of sensitivity, a lack of grounding, a sense of isolation and alienation, a tendency to feel merged with or displaced by other people, and a desire for purity and perfection. She will show how the practices of the Realization Process can address these challenges and help spiritually gifted people live more comfortably in the world.
Julie Brown Yau, Ph.D. has a 33-year background in psychological, somatic, and spiritual traditions, providing a unique depth of knowledge and experience. Julie specializes in the resolution of developmental trauma, also intergenerational, and acute trauma. She is an author and speaker, with a passion for helping individuals and groups establish well-being that provides positive qualities of agency, a heart-centered capacity for compassion, presence, and their sense of wholeness.
Julie was also the director of education and program development at CCALS for 15 years, currently the trauma and spiritual care consultant. Julie has taught and lectured in hospitals, universities, and the UCI center for Integrative Medicine; she continues to lecture and write on the topics of trauma and spirituality. She is an authorized teacher of Shri Vidya, where she combines the resolution of trauma with specific spiritual practice. Julie has a private practice in Laguna Beach CA.
Monterey Room
Deepen your Understanding of the Spiritual Nature of Healing Developmental Trauma, Julie Brown Yau
Developmental trauma deeply affects and limits how we connect with ourselves and the world around us; it has been called a silent epidemic. Fortunately, there is now a wide and rich array of integrative interdisciplinary practices available from which to learn, explore and heal. As the seriousness of the impact of early trauma is more widely acknowledged, the silence of this terrible epidemic is being broken. More people are realizing the effects of trauma in their lives and finding their way through the rigors of trauma’s consequences to joyous wellbeing, and spiritual expansion.
Trauma obscures our authentic self—our essential nature, yet trauma can also be a portal to opening to a deeper spiritual reality. The obscurations tend to occur in early life to maintain attachment and love with our caregivers. It is a sacrifice of loss on the altar of survival, where there can be varying degrees of numbing, splitting and dissociation. The adaptations, defenses, & distortions that emerge in the face of trauma, configure to create a false sense of self, which compensates for the loss. It is the false self that we identified with and come to believe we are. If we continue to operate out of those places, we limit our life, vital life force and capacity for connection in every dimension of being. The authentic/essential self is never destroyed, but it is concealed by the web of defenses and survival strategies. To access our essential nature, the systemic dysregulation and the physiological dysregulation that occurs in response to trauma needs to be addressed, and integration needs to occur.
This presentation brings a somatic and scientific approach to healing developmental trauma. How can we transform our lives as we facilitate the integration of consciousness and release identity distortions? As we embrace the unfamiliar and unknown we can connect with our natural drive toward inner harmony and wellbeing.
Jörn Kroll is a philosophical practitioner with a strong interest in expanding consciousness as available in Western esoteric traditions and Asian spiritual teachings. He earned a PhD (University of California, Berkeley) with a dissertation on Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology of place experience. His recent article on “Self, Other, and No-Self: Non-Dual Awareness as Catalyst for Deconstructing Life Stories” has been published in Philosophical Practice Vol. 12.1 and in Detlef Staude and Eckart Ruschmann, eds., Understanding the Other and Oneself. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018. At the World Congress of Philosophy in Beijing (Aug. 2018) he gave a comparative presentation on the ancient Daoist Zhuangzi and psychiatrist / existentialist Karl Jaspers (forthcoming in Existenz). Jörn is a member of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association and a practitioner of the Diamond Approach. He has been invited to speak at a Humanities Therapy Conference in China’s former capital Nanjing (Aug. 2019).
Morgan Hill
Conscious Dying: The Next Frontier in the Science and Art of Healing, Jörn Kroll
Laudable attempts exist to correct the myopic stance of our death-phobic society. Such attempts, however, typically fall short of providing a firm foundation. This presentation reports on relatively recently published teachings that analyze the constructive purpose of death in the cosmological context of individual and collective evolution. The source of this expanded vision consists of the 18 books telepathically conveyed (1919-1949) to Alice A. Bailey by an advanced teacher referred to as “The Tibetan”. Bailey’s Esoteric Healing and related works by the Tibetan-Bailey team point out the need for changing our attitude towards death and dying by a thorough understanding of the nature of form (matter), soul, spirit, and their interactions. According to the Tibetan’s teaching, dying and death are universal processes inherent in all forms, and the elimination of forms is necessary and beneficent for the evolutionary progress of the indwelling life that temporarily uses a particular form. If this outlook is understood in all its implications, it will lead to revolutionary cultural and practical changes (e.g., more proactive and effective uses of medical resources). Furthermore, we are told, the advanced human dies with deliberation and in full consciousness and brings about death through an act of the soul-will in accord with social responsibility and service to humanity. Supplementary topics discussed will include: continuity of consciousness; the relation between death and sleep; the key reasons for cremation (beyond expediency); the release of atomic energy resulting in a great light and a great potency and its close parallel in the release of the human form; the soul absorbing the personality, thus merging two conflicting entities into One integrated unit. Following the progressive training, death and dying, the great restorative process, will then become a conscious, transformative adventure and a truly joyful and communal event.
Hayes Ballroom
PL2. Celebrating The Human
Hayes Ballroom
The Challenge of Transhumanism, Kabir Helminski
Our human-ness will become more and more threatened by AI (artificial intelligence), the augmentation of biological intelligence by machine intelligence, and those who believe that the human entity is nothing more than information that can stored in a memory device. As the world is increasingly governed by AI and as humans inhabit virtual realities more than the realm of nature and interpersonal relationships, we may lose our most human attributes, becoming desensitized, depersonalized, without empathy, bereft of intimacy. The great sacred traditions basically agree that the greatest possibility of human conscious life is to upload our consciousness to an energetic body. The goal of preserving our sensory memories belies a complete misunderstanding of what the human being and individual consciousness essentially is. Society is unprepared emotionally, intellectually, economically, and spiritually for the challenge. Without an adequate articulated metaphysics we may not be able to defend our very human-ness from slipping gradually into a non- or post-human world.
Hayes Ballroom
Panel: Appreciating The Human, A.H. Almaas; Kabir Helminski; Robert Sapolsky
Many teachings do not appreciate that the human being is important for realization and liberation. That there is no awakening without humans. But some do, which is a different kind of appreciation than the scientific exploration of the mystery of being human. We want to discuss what is it to be a human being, both biologically and spiritually, in order for us to value who and what we are, and our necessity for the worlds we experience and know. A dialogue and discussion, mediated by Zaya Benazzo.
Since 1974 Karen Johnson has participated with Hameed Ali (pen name A.H. Almaas) in the discovery and development of the the Diamond Approach, a contemporary path of Spiritual Realization and the wisdom teachings of what it means to be a Complete human being . She has been teaching the Diamond Approach in the US and Europe for 40 years. She is driven by the original spirit of scientific investigation based on the love for truth, which is the main force behind the practices employed in the Diamond Approach Teachings. The mysterious truth that manifests its wonder, dynamism and beauty into and through the physical and spiritual universe has been a motivating force in her life and continues to propel her into new universes.
Hayes Ballroom
PL3. Being Human
Hayes Ballroom
Being Human is a Development Not a Given, Karen Johnson
In these difficult times, we are faced with the dark side of humanity that acts more like animal than what our real potential can be which is a facet of the divine. What does it take to recognize our true human qualities and express them in the world?Being human is not something we should take for granted. Just because we are born Homo Sapiens does not mean we understand what being human is. We are each responsible for discovering what it is to be a true human being. When we explore our nature and find what is the real authentic presence of human beingness, we begin the process of transformation like a butterfly one form of life to quite another creature. Then it is possible to take the next step of expressing this Divine realization in the world while being free from its constraints. We can become conduits for pure awareness and consciousness to support this sacred right in one another. This can make it possible for people of the world to take the next step in the evolution of the true human being.
Katherine J. Bailes, JD, PhD is a practicing attorney and an adjunct professor of mythological studies in Johnson County, Kansas. Dr. Bailes holds a BFA in painting from the University of North Texas and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Kansas, School of Law. She later obtained a Master’s Degree and Ph.D. from Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, California. Her dissertation topic entitled “The Themis Principle: Mystery and Irrationality in the U.S. Legal System” focused on the mythological aspects of the law. She has received numerous awards and served in a variety of leadership positions in art, law and teaching, successfully combining these fields through her understanding of story and the human capacity for myth making.
Madrone
Mythmaking as a Human Characteristic, Katherine Bailes
Humans have engaged in the process of making myth since the beginning of their existence. Mythos, the search for meaning in life, is the companion to logos, the how it works. We create a set of subjective facts that when woven together create a story that others hear and possibly believe. It gives us peace, understanding and meaning until the science of the day catches up. Listen as we explore the thread of mythic expression from classical times to contemporary culture.
Morgan Hill
Resonance-at-the-Core, Kent Hoffman
“Underneath all his [her] preoccupations with sex, society, religion, etc. (all the staple abstractions which allow the forebrain to chatter) there is, quite simply, a person tortured beyond endurance by the lack of tenderness in the world.”
— Lawrence Durrell
After 45 years of clinical and developmental research, I've come to several realizations: 1. No one escapes pain, 2. From a psychological point of view, our first developmental milestone is learning to trust soothing and affection from another (resonance-at-our-core), 3. Suffering is our experience of pain without resonance, 4. As resonance increases, suffering diminishes and transformation ensues.
“We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.
— H.H. Dalai Lama
This micro-seminar will begin by focusing on current developmental research regarding infant sensitivity to resonance. We will then look at defensive process (“It’s up to me”) as the inevitable response to non-resonance. Finally, we will glimpse the dance of duality/non-duality as “Oneing Affection” (Cloud of Unknowing).
Kent Welsh, MA is a founder of Open Circle Center. For 14 years Open Circle has hosted events with local, national, and internationally recognized nondual teachers both online and live in several centers throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Open Circle currently hosts over 100 events a year. Kent has trained with many prominent nondual teachers, as well as in many other spiritual traditions, and is a student and visionary of how the wisdom of eastern traditions emerges, and takes root in the 21st century western culture.
Kent holds an MA in Philosophy & Religion from CIIS.
San Juan Bautista
Embodied Nondual Life : Nondual Archetypal Integral Consciousness, Kent Welsh
Embodied Nondual Life is life’s flow as the conscious flowering of heart’s undivided intimacy with divine emptiness.
Nondual Archetypal Intregral Consciousness: These words each point us towards deeper realms of reality and each illustrate core flavors of the embodiment of divine emptiness; of the lived unique form body of each of us as the unity and uniqueness of Undivided Being.
In this meeting we will explore together these four realms and their emergent potential and illumination of an Embodied Nondual Life.
Monterey Room
Panel: Mud to Lotus: Opening the Masculine Heart, Kent Welsh; Charles Eisenstein; Will Keepin; Jeannie Zandi
The work before us, highlighted by the #metoo movement, is plain: how do we meet the masculine shadow, and support men in reclaiming and opening their hearts? Join Kent Welsh of Open Circle and his panelists who will explore the unique potential and challenges for men opening their hearts and standing up to face the individual and cultural masculine shadow.
Kimberly Braun, Minister, M.A. author, and speaker, has been impelled from and within her contemplative experiences from the age of 5, with over ten of her years spent as a Carmelite monastic nun. Her Masters in theology and psycho-spiritual development was completed at the Washington Theological Union including spiritual director training from the nationally known Shalem Institute. Kimberly’s style is playful, deeply inquiring, and intelligent in the synthesis of not only how to access Source at the center of ourselves, but also how to live from that place more consistently. She is also a seasoned retreat facilitator, TEDx speaker, meditation coach and former faculty at the renowned Omega Institute.
Check out her book, Love Calls, her 3 CDs, monthly videos and articles, meditation library and 3 online courses along with a budding new online spiritual community, EssenceTribe. Or book her for your own retreat or private session.
Madrone
Being and Becoming Conscious - Towards Christ Consciousness and Non-dual Cosmology, Kimberly Braun
This presentation will offer attendees a vast horizon of consideration directly tending the title. What could it mean that to be human is to be in the process of realization described as _ —being and becoming conscious?
Madrone
The Mystery of Being Sexual: A Frank Conversation about Sexuality in the Awakening Process, Kiran Trace
If you're going through the awakening process, you know that it can be delicate to talk about what happens when a whole tsunami of energy hits the second chakra.
In this presentation, we will crack open the door to awakened sex and explore what to do when:
- our blocked energy is being pounded on by Kundalini
-our previous conditions about sex are now are reorienting and if feels so disorienting
- the old spiritual identities want to avoid all this dirty, nasty, human love
-the old patterns of relationship don’t hold or honor this new freedom
Monterey Room
Panel: Embracing Yin; Awakening in the Body, Vanessa Scotto; Brooke Thomas; Dorothy Hunt; Jeannie Zandi; Kiran Trace
There is an ever expanding conversation these days within nondual circles about embodiment as a maturational process in awakening, yet there is little talk about how awakening is actually integrated within our human body. Could it be that freedom from suffering is not about transcending form, but rather, becoming more fully present with the field of experience within the body? How does the health and tone of the nervous system correlate with awakening if at all? How can we meet the arising energies, emotions, conditioning and ego structure that are implicit to having a human form? In traditions that have historically pointed to the experience of the truth that lies beyond form, how to we begin to include the physical body in the conversation of awakening?
In this panel discussion with teachers Jeannie Zandi, Kiran Trace, Dorothy Hunt we will explore themes such as how to be present in the body, the role the body may play in awakening to truth as well as the impact awakening may have on the body, how we can have a direct experience of the body without concept or objectification, the intelligence and conditioning that lies within the body, the relationships between trauma, the body and awakening, the feminine movement of embodiment and what it means to live a fully human existence within physical form once you’ve awakened from the dream of separation.
San Jose
Experiential: Sensual Spirituality
To be human is deeply personal to the individual who is experiencing life. To have a body in & of itself, is deeply sensual & experiential. Of the millions, or even billions of nerve receptors in your body, thousands reside in your fingertips alone. They are designed to connect you to pleasure points, memory & processing centers that are aware & co-creative in a fraction of a second. These receptors naturally awaken humans into discovering fields of harmony or disharmony in relationship with everything around us. Traditional religious adherence has often tried to strip away this fact by burying normal human impulses as wild, untamed, animalistic or even dangerous. It has placed extraordinary emphasis on taming the mind & subjugating the body as the Gateway of God. The feelings of Knowing, of Seeing & of Intuiting is pre-wired & given to us by birth, yet has been shredded through the weight of fears & the threats of even torture & death throughout the centuries. To heal the traumas inflicted by this history of suppression, we must invite the tender blossoming of our inherent Sensual Spirituality.
In this experiential session, we will dive into some of these sensitive receptors in both the physical & subtle bodies, and immerse ourselves deeply into a heightened perception via alternate states of consciousness that allow us to experience a realm of sensuality inherent in the spiritual self. Join Kristen Eykel CHt. on this journey to unwind these ancestral bonds of fear & shame. Discover within the universe of your own body, how intimately connected you already are to the Self as Source. Enjoy becoming One with All!
Kristin Kirk's authentic heart-centered teaching, acuity and embodied presence reside in direct experience independent of any spiritual tradition. She experienced an initial awakening in 2003 which revealed profound healing gifts and an unusually refined awareness of subtle inner workings of consciousness. Kristin illuminates the ineffable with stunning articulation the mind can understand, and rich descriptive detail the" felt sense" can follow, along with a potent transmission that transforms your path. With contagious inspiration and enthusiasm, Kristin meets your mind, heart and body through the multidimensional aspects and stages of awakening, integration, embodiment and self-realization. Kristin offers retreats, online courses and healing sessions internationally to support and facilitate the awakening process and is currently writing a book.
Monterey Room
Authenticity of the Awakened Heart, Kristen Kirk
As awakeness penetrates the human heart, we experience totality with Source love and consciousness. This love and freedom dissolves old perspectives embedded in personality and the personality changes. An unpretentious, unguarded, open loving presence authentically emerges, radiating the singular truth of Being through a unique lens of individuated expression. Our hearts expand to an infinite capacity while resting in the deliciousness of the moment uniquely. Contradiction falls away and the purity of Love loves through the unique personality. We will explore the mystery of being human and divine simultaneously in inner landscapes and practical day to day living.
Morgan Hill
To Know a Tree: Relationships Between Humans and Non-Humans, Laura Pustarfi
How do our relationships with non-humans affirm our humanity? Trees are compelling others as they are often both older and larger that humans with a very different form of livingness, and they exist around us in innumerable ways not only in forests and lining streets, but in our products, metaphors, and mythology. It almost goes without saying that trees are highly impacted by anthropogenic environmental destruction through deforestation and climate change planet-wide. Our relationships to non-humans like trees create opportunities for reimagining who we are as humans especially within the Western tradition where trees are either seen as resources for human use or beautiful scenery. Using the tools of phenomenology along with recent scientific findings on plants, we can examine our consciousness in the presence of a being like a tree and better understand our relationships to non-human others. Our relationships to trees speak volumes about our relationships to ourselves, our human family, and our world.
Hayes Ballroom
PL8. Many Threads, One Reality
Hayes Ballroom
PL9. The Mystery of Life
Hayes Ballroom
The White Lions: Substantiating the Science and Sacred Science, Linda Tucker; Jason Turner
In the midst of a global lion crisis that treats Africa’s most sacred animals as a killing commodity in cross-border trade, Linda Tucker and specialist lion ecologist, Jason A. Turner, have dedicated their lives to the solution.
Today, every conservation issue is a global issue.
If Brazil destroys its rain forests, the world has lost its lungs. If South Africa loses its White Lions, humanity has forsaken our most iconic animal offering the key to leadership on this planet, and restoration of order in chaos.
While every crisis is interrelated, so are the solutions.
The work of the Global White Lion Protection Trust has united ancient indigenous knowledge with modern science to help save species, reviving ecosystems and human value systems – in a leadership model of sustainable living with mutual benefits for Lions, Land and People.
The importance of the White Lions’ sudden reoccurrence on the brink of the polar reversal and climate change is directly linked with the appearance of other prophetic “spirit animals” on all continents, including the White Buffalo and the Spirit Bear of British Columbia. Ancient belief holds that these are Nature’s greatest blessing, or final warning.
Their importance, in summary:
Ecologically,
apex predator and “Capstone animal” restoring the biodiversity of a critical important ecosystem through trophic cascading.
Geographically,
unique speciation on the Golden Meridian Zep Tepi – corresponding with the East African Rift Valley, the tectonic seam in the African continent, which scientists identify as the “Birth Canal of Human Species”.
Climactically,
precursors to the forthcoming Ice-Age.
Culturally,
cross-cultural symbol of majestic importance, offering lessons in leadership – at this evolutionary turning point in humanity’s history.
Astrologically,
Turning of Ages which astrologically marks the brink of the Leo-Aquarius Age.
Spiritually,
luminous symbol of unification and good governance, providing luminous inspiration to achieve what may seem impossible: a leadership plan for peace and planetary regeneration.
San Jose
Love Wonder Terror Joy: Journeying with The Radiance Sutras, Lorin Roche; Camille Maurine
Immerse yourself in the vibrant world of The Radiance Sutras, a contemporary version of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, a classic yoga text describing 112 doorways to ecstasy. The text invites us to be at home in our bodies and the universe by accepting every intense or subtle experience, every sensual delight, every ordinary moment, as a gateway to the divine. Each Sutra or meditation practice is a deep dive into aliveness, into the underlying reality of what life is. The meditations work by activating the senses and extending their range further into the inner and the outer world. The basic dynamics of life—breathing, falling asleep, waking up, walking, loving—are all used as paths of alignment and enlightenment. Balance is here at every step; the unshakable serenity of the depths is used as a foundation so that we can tolerate the electrifying vastness of the universe. We are invited to cross the threshold, to walk by the guardian of the gate, to face our terrors, and make our way into the immense and timeless mystery that is always calling.
In the spirit of wonder and play, Lorin and Camille will guide a journey through simple sensory and movement meditations inspired by the Sutras. You will also have the opportunity to explore savoring the sound of the original Sanskrit, which has a luscious, evocative sensuality.
Monterey Room
Friends with your Mind, How to Stop Torturing Yourself with your Thoughts, Lynn Fraser
The mind is a system of stimulus and response, and our brain literally develops in response to our experiences. One of the foundations of being friends with our own mind is to be able to work effectively with our thoughts, with our responses to our thoughts, and with the energy and sensations in our body that are stimulated by our thoughts. We need to know the essentials of how it works to understand our bodymind, feelings, nervous system and identification as a separate self.
Many experiences happen in our early life where we disconnect from ourselves, from our sense of value, and from the present moment. Troubling experiences commonly become core deficiency beliefs of unworthiness and unlovability - that feeling there is something fundamentally wrong with us. This drives unhappiness and addiction, including spiritual seeking. Even after seeing through separation, it is common to have nondual awareness drift out of reach. Our attention is pulled back to thoughts Velcroed to energy in our body.
Scott Kiloby’s Living Inquiries allow us to freeze-frame and look directly and safely at this mechanism. Associations of thought/memory Velcroed with energy in our body are seen and released. We have effective tools to inquire into the memories and associations from our past, and this reduces the drive of our compulsive avoidance. This is a hands-on workshop where you will learn and practice simple strategies to work directly with thoughts and sensation. We then have access to the stillness and ease that is always present.
Through the direct experience of welcoming everything that comes and goes in the field of awareness, we reach a tipping point where we no longer fear our own body and mind. We know in our cells that even intense bodily energy is not here to hurt us. As we intimately know and trust ourselves, we reconnect within and separation dissolves.
Morgan Hill
Awakened Relating: Embodying our Infinite Nature in Finite Human Relationships for Healing and Transformation, Lynn Marie Lumiere
As human beings we struggle to find lasting harmony in relationships. Despite our frustration, the drive for intimacy and love propels us to seek this. Ultimately, our search leads to the discovery that the root cause of all relationship struggles is the commonly held belief that we are separate from love and from each other. This belief, along with the negative experiences and insecurities that arises from it, can cause endless problems in our intimate relating.
Living in imagined separation and duality has resulted in relational wounding for most of us. Therefore, in addition to the pain of imagined separation, we may be struggling with attachment and developmental trauma that limits our capacity to be in harmonious relating.
It is only possible to fully heal and transform our relational patterns and wounding in the infinite wisdom, love and compassion of our infinite nature. Our finite human nature is not capable of this. So, our struggle to find deep connection and harmony in relationship is always pointing us back to our infinite nature, if we are willing to see.
True intimacy cannot be found while believing we are separate selves in duality. This is found through connecting with our true, nondual nature and being that, together. We may get glimpses of our nondual nature in dualistic relating, but the ongoing deeper intimacy that we all long for eludes us until we recognize and begin to rest as our true identity.
This presentation will include direct pointing to our infinite nature and practical guidance about how to embody that in real human relationship issues such conflict resolution, communication issues, sexuality and lack of self-love.
Madrone
A Journey of Consciousness: From Our Primal Beginnings to Full Awakening & Beyond, Marea Claassen
We are currently living into a new paradigm of consciousness, a glimpse of the future human being. This presentation will elucidate the human journey of consciousness from primal hominid to the possible human edging toward enlightenment. Drawing on the work of Jean Gebser (The Ever-Present Origin) and C.G. Jung (The Collected Works) as well as the wisdom of dreams, we’ll explore the story of collective human development through five phases of unfoldment: Archaic, Magical, Mythical, Mental, and Integral. Each structure of consciousness shapes and determines our perceptions of the world and our relationship with the unknown. Each is a complete and comprehensive way of perceiving and understanding life. It is “a given”, the lens through which we make sense of the world.
These structures are not, however a simple linear progression. Each emergent paradigm blends with, and is added to, the previous structures of consciousness. Our primal origins and successive achievements of consciousness, therefore, are always with us.
Using rich visual imagery, we will explore each of these structures and correlate them with a depth psychological understanding of the layers of the unconscious active in every individual today.
The energy in magical phenomena, the meaning inherent in mythic ranges, and the abstract reasoning of our mental structures are all essential to what is coming into being. It will be transcendent, but cannot yet be fully known. We have only glimpses and yet it looks a lot like collective enlightenment.
Monterey Room
Impossible Truths: Exploring Research at the Boundary where Science and Mystical Experience Meet, Marjorie Woollacott
At the beginning of her professional career, neuroscientist and researcher, Dr. Marjorie Woollacott had no doubt that the brain was solely a physical entity and was controlled by chemical reactions and electrical impulses. She was sure that the loss of brain activity meant the end of existence. The first time she meditated, however, she had a glimpse of another possibility an undeniable experience of unlikely and uncharted energy. Since this time Dr. Woollacott has been actively exploring research on the nature of consciousness. Through her integration of data from objective science and subjective spirituality, Woollacott breaks open the issue of human consciousness and investigates the existence of the non-physical and infinitely powerful human mind.
In this talk Dr. Woollacott shares her own research and key studies from other laboratories supporting a non-dual reality, in which consciousness is primary. She will discuss studies on the mystical experiences of meditators, near-death experiences, and end-of-life experiences, including terminal lucidity and end-of-life telepathic communication.
She will explore questions such as What catalyzes transformation in the life of materialist scientists and others? When a person has Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, which has destroyed the brain, is it possible to return to perfect lucidity and communicate with their loved ones, shortly before death? When a family member living far from us who is dying appears to us telepathically at the moment of their death, is it just our own imagination or can this be verified? The answers to these questions suggest that consciousness does not require a functioning brain and validate the presence of clear awareness at times when the brain is compromised or an individual is pronounced clinically dead.
Mark Gober is the author of An End to Upside Down Thinking: Dispelling the Myth That the Brain Produces Consciousness, and the Implications for Everyday Life. He will be discussing the findings that have led him to the conclusion that changed his worldview 180-degrees: consciousness is the basis of all reality rather than matter. He explores independent areas of evidence, including quantum physics, psychedelics, savants, remote viewing, telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, communications with the deceased, and children who remember previous lives. The implications are immense for science, technology, and medicine as well as happiness, life/death, relationships, and even world peace. The shift to a consciousness-centric picture of reality is regarded by some as the next “Copernican-scale revolution.” Mark’s thesis has been endorsed by well-known thinkers such as Jack Canfield, Dr. Eben Alexander, Dr. Dean Radin, Dr. Ervin Laszlo, Goldie Hawn, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, Dr. Larry Dossey, and others. Mark is a Silicon Valley technology strategist, a former Wall Street investment banker, and former Princeton University tennis team captain.
San Juan Bautista
An End to Upside Down Thinking, Mark Gober
Mark Gober is the author of An End to Upside Down Thinking: Dispelling the Myth That the Brain Produces Consciousness, and the Implications for Everyday Life. He will be discussing the findings that have led him to the conclusion that changed his worldview 180-degrees: consciousness is the basis of all reality rather than matter. He explores independent areas of evidence, including quantum physics, psychedelics, savants, remote viewing, telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, communications with the deceased, and children who remember previous lives. The implications are immense for science, technology, and medicine as well as happiness, life/death, relationships, and even world peace. The shift to a consciousness-centric picture of reality is regarded by some as the next “Copernican-scale revolution.” Mark’s thesis has been endorsed by well-known thinkers such as Jack Canfield, Dr. Eben Alexander, Dr. Dean Radin, Dr. Ervin Laszlo, Goldie Hawn, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, Dr. Larry Dossey, and others
San Jose
Break the Cycle of Inherited Family Trauma
It didn’t start with you, but it can end with you. Unconsciously, we relive our mother’s anxiety. We repeat our father’s disappointments. We replicate the failed relationships of our parents and grandparents. Just as we inherit our eye color and blood type, we also inherit the residue from traumatic events that have taken place in our family. Illness, depression, anxiety, unhappy relationships, and financial challenges can all be forms of this unconscious inheritance. In this workshop, Mark Wolynn, author of the award-winning It Didn't Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle (Penguin, 2017), will offer effective ways to break inherited patterns so we can live healthier, happier, more fulfilled lives.
San Juan Bautista
How Available are you to Live as a Human-Divine? I Am in Love with Life. Are you? , Marlise Cocheret
All the women in my family live with hereditary kidney dis-ease. How does one relate to a chronic dis-ease? What is it like to hear you have 2 more weeks to live? Choose dialysis or not? Transplant or not? And, much more!
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 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 thru offering the most wonderful challenges. When we leave the search behind, we live in total intimacy with what is, which is the dance of our Humanity and our Divine radiance.
We are left in Love!
Madrone
The Ongoing Evolution of Human Sexuality, Mary McGovern
We see a variety of sexual states and behavior, and a growing interest in interdisciplinary studies aimed at investigating aspects of human sexuality and gender issues. Why is marriage increasingly unstable? Why do many experience conflicting needs to express their creative and intellectual abilities and to be good parents and spouses? Why are some attracted to the opposite sex while others are attracted to their own sex or both sexes? This talk will present a comprehensive overview of human sexuality as described by the Danish spiritual writer Martinus (1890-1981). His analyses show the sexual principle to be the wheel of creation, a principle that underlies all creation and experience, human sexuality being only one detail of this principle (The Book of Life, vol. 3, section 827). Martinus describes how sexuality is driven by two poles in our consciousness: the masculine pole and the feminine pole, the relative size of which determines our sexual nature. Human sexuality evolves continuously through reincarnation and the changing constellation of these poles. A completely one-poled state results in a primitive moral standard. A completely two-poled state, in which the male and female poles are equal and balanced in our consciousness, results in the very highest moral standard and is the organic structure for neighborly love. According to Martinus’s analyses, today’s humanity will evolve into a third and truly human sex that is neither male nor female but a harmonious union of the two principles within the one being, a being that will experience a sense of non-duality and oneness with all life. Martinus’s framework for understanding sexual evolution can give us a better insight into our own identity and help us navigate through the changing sexual landscape.
Maya Luna is a poet and teacher of Feminine Gnosis. She belongs to a lineage of untamed feral women who transmit the primordial core of the Tantric wisdom streams.
Her work is focused on the lost Feminine ways of knowing. Her spoken word poetry album Holy Darkness: a Tantric Opus is available at mayaluna.bandcamp.com
Omega: Feral Secrets of the Deep Feminine is her first book of poetry. She is the creator of the Deep Feminine Mystery School.
Hayes Ballroom
Interlude with Maya Luna
Michael W. Taft is a maverick meditation teacher, bestselling author, and podcaster. As a mindfulness coach, he specializes in secular, science-based mindfulness training in retreats, groups, corporate settings, and one-on-one sessions. Michael is the author of several books, including the bestselling The Mindful Geek, and Nondualism: A Brief History of a Timeless Concept.
From Zen temples in Japan to yogi caves in India, Michael has been meditating for over thirty five years and has extensive experience in both Buddhist Vipassana and Hindu Tantric practice. Michael is a senior facilitator in Shinzen Young’s Unified Mindfulness system, and is a regular teacher at the San Francisco Dharma Collective.
San Martin
Nonduality and Mindfulness - Two Great Traditions that Go Great Together, Michael Taft
In the context of American spiritual practice nondual traditions and mindfulness traditions appear to be in sharp contrast. Nonduality is often associated with the doing nothing schools of meditation, and mindfulness meditation is often very effortful. Mindfulness meditation masters commonly refuse to even discuss enlightenment, whereas nondual teachers never stop talking about how we’re already enlightened.
Is there a common ground for these two great traditions? And are there viewpoints and understandings that they can contribute to each other? I believe so, and will unpack these areas of contrast and overlap in this presentation.
Guadalupe
The Embodied Path to Intimacy
Intimacy starts with our connection to ourselves, via our feeling body. Our bodily genius holds the secrets of intimate perception and deep connection. As we become more sensitive to the signals of our body we become more aware of others and true connections can begin. From here there are endless means of artfully deepening and enlivening these connections through communication, touch, and gaze. In this interactive class we will engage in a series of practices to sensitize and open both body and heart, resulting in greater feeling capacity and sensitivity towards yourself and others. From there we will explore ways to deepen into intimacy and dive into the mysteries of erotic friction by engaging with the full spectrum of energetic offerings and touch, from the sublime light to the mysterious dark.
Guadalupe
Experiential: Radical Intimacy and the Play of the Erotic, Michaela Boehm; Steve James
Whether you would like to start a new intimate relationship or want to deepen passion with your partner, the principles of Intimacy and Erotic Friction — the spark that keeps passion alive — are always available to deepen your experience.
The erotic play of masculine and feminine, springing from a radical intimacy with life itself, is a challenging and delightful realm of inquiry. We will explore the deep principles of embodiment, uncover and work with personal blocks to expansion and contraction, engage in practical exercises, dialogue, and learning to widen both heart space and the ability to embody as energy or thrust.
In this experiential session you will be shown the building blocks, practices, and disciplines of creating deeper relational and erotic connections in your life.
Mikey Siegel, Founder Consciousness Hacking & BioFluent Technologies Mikey Siegel is a robotics engineer turned consciousness hacker. He envisions a present and future where science and technology support psychological, emotional and spiritual flourishing. Where our devices not only connect us to information, but also connect us to ourselves and each other, acting as a catalyst for individual and collective awakening. He is currently teaching at Stanford University, founder of Consciousness Hacking, BioFluent Technologies, and the Transformative Technology Conference. He received an MS in robotics from the MIT Media Lab.
Hayes Ballroom
Un-Panel: Technology and the Future of Awakening, Federico Faggin; Mikey Siegel; Kate Stockly; Vincent Horn; Carole Griggs
What is technology? Is it not a form of human expression, woven into our vast cultural landscape, along with what we call art, science, politics, religion and spirituality? With the right intention and skill, can technology support individual and collective awakening? Is this already happening? What would this look like? How might our beliefs about, and relationship to technology need to change for it to be truly in service to the evolution of our human experience? How would humanity change if we could create secular, science based, and universally accessible tools, that could radically accelerate the path to awakening? Join us for this interactive Un-Panel, where the audience explores burning questions from the panelists in a lively dialogue.
Mirabai Starr is an award-winning author of creative non-fiction and contemporary translations of sacred literature. She taught Philosophy and World Religions at the University of New Mexico-Taos for 20 years and now teaches and speaks internationally on contemplative practice and inter-spiritual dialog. A certified bereavement counselor, Mirabai helps mourners harness the transformational power of loss. Her youngest daughter, Jenny, was killed in a car accident in 2001 at the age of fourteen. On that same day, Mirabai’s first book, a translation of Dark Night of the Soul, was released. She considers this experience, and the connection between profound loss and longing for God, the ground of her own spiritual life. Her latest book, WILD MERCY: Living the Fierce & Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics, was named one of the “Best Books of 2019” by Spirituality & Practice. Mirabai is on the 2020 Watkins List of the “100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People of the World.” She lives with her extended family in the mountains of northern New Mexico.
Berryessa
Prayer of Quiet: Saint Teresa of Avila and Restless Mind
The great Spanish mystic, Teresa of Avila, had a vision of the soul as a sacred sphere made up of seven moradas, the spiritual chambers of our “interior castle,” in which each one represents a station on our journey to union with the Divine. While this is not a linear path, Teresa’s instructions for the cultivation of contemplative practice (the “prayer of quiet”) serve to help the seeker navigate the common features of the inner wilderness, leading to peace and connectedness with the Beloved.In this gathering, we weave readings from Teresa’s writings with deep dialog, writing exercises and contemplative practice, paying special attention to how the development of a contemplative life enables us to be of service in a wounded world.
Hayes Ballroom
PL6. Collective Initiations
Hayes Ballroom
Wild Mercy: The Wisdom of the Feminine, Mirabai Starr
As the fierce and tender voice of the feminine rises again, we are gifted with renewed access to the women mystics and wisdom beings across the spiritual traditions, such as, Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, Mary Magdalene, Sophia, the Shekinah, Song of Songs, Rabia, Fatima, Tara, Quan Yin, Kali, and indigenous Mother goddesses. In this gathering we engage in contemplative readings from the mystics, group reflections, evocative writing exercises, inter-spiritual chanting and silent sitting, weaving these luminous elements into a basket of awakened community.
San Martin
Conversation - The Wisdom of the Feminine, Mirabai Starr
Hayes Ballroom
Panel - Awakening to the Divine Feminine, Mirabai Starr; Vera de Chalambert; Francis Bennett; Zhen Dao; Nadeshwari Joythimayananda
Today’s modern society can best be described as a paradox:. On the one hand there seems to be a collective awakening of human consciousness that is creating movement towards greater clarity, creativity, compassion, wellness, communion with nature and a sincere respect for spiritual, ethnic and gender diversity.
On the other hand, our world is grappling with the backlash of social pariahs like racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, class inequalities and religious intolerance, often leading to violence; unbridled materialism and even despair.
As the outdated patriarchal structures rise up in backlash to their inevitable downfall, the need for a more sustainable world paradigm couldn’t be greater. It’s clear that now is the time for balance and integration to be restored to the planet. But how do we bring balance to what sometimes seems like two polar opposite extremes?
Perhaps balance can only be restored by a collective awakening of the Divine Feminine in our society so that women and men can reconnect to a more integrated idea of Source/God/Life and step into a more nurturing relationships with themselves, their communities and the planet.
This panel will be having a conversation on how we can all awaken this healing and nurturing inner feminine energy into our everyday lives and how such an awakening might effect our society and our world..
They will be sharing their own unique perspectives on this topic based on the awakening to the Divine Feminine that has unfolded in their own lives personally and professionally.
Miranda Macpherson has been guiding others into direct experience of the Sacred for over thirty years internationally. She shares a holistic and feminine approach to spiritual surrender and non-dual realization based on the practice of Ego Relaxation. Inspired by Ramana Maharshi, A Course in Miracles, extensive study of the world’s mystical traditions, and more recently the Diamond Approach, her methods integrate inquiry, meditation and devotion, with psychological wisdom. Miranda’s books include The Way of Grace: The Transforming Power of Ego Relaxation (Sounds True) Boundless Love (Rider) and Meditations on Boundless Love (Sounds True). Founder of the OneSpirit Interfaith Foundation in London, where she trained and ordained over 600 interfaith ministers, today Miranda leads the Living Grace Sangha in Northern California, and teaches internationally.
Find out more at www.mirandamacpherson.com or visit her YouTube channel to experience her transmission and teachings.
San Martin
Graceful Surrender: Opening through the Gate of Humility , Miranda McPherson
Grace – direct experience of Divine Presence, always requires some kind of surrender, which Ramana Maharshi described as “giving oneself back to the origin of one’s being”. Yet even after significant realization, the forces of our familiar identity can easily re-constellate, appropriating luminous moments of unity to become a juicier, more spiritually sophisticated ego. In this presentation that includes devotional chanting as well as discourse, Miranda will explore the relationship between true humility and its role in bringing us into the receptive state of Grace. We will explore surrender not something we “do”, but rather, as something we allow the more we bow in humble recognition that only the Divine truly exists. Humility is revealed to be not only the fragrance of a mature soul, a virtue that supports ongoing surrender out of subtle defences, it is the key to ushering us into the mystery of each moment with a fuller humanity.
Sharing her feminine and devotional approach based on Ego Relaxation, Miranda invites you to lay aside your concepts of what you are, and even what the world even is. Together, we can come with wholly empty hands into the Presence, and live its embodiment deeper into our world.
Nadeshwari Joythimayananda embodies the embrace between East and West, desired by the sages of the last century: she was born in Sri Lanka, has Indian origins and grew up in Italy, where She acquired the knowledge of Ayurveda and Yoga as a family tradition in her family Ashram. In India she explores the teachings of Mata Amritanandamayi and Ramana Maharshi and She approaches Tantra Yoga meeting Guru-ji Baswar Rajkumar and his sadhanas through mantras. In Asia, as a child, she learned Bharatanatyam, the indian classical temple dance which she deepened as an adult and became a teacher in Mystical Dance. In 2011 She meets the Mayan shamanism of Vera Cruz and began to perceive the multidimensionality of reality. Since 2013 She is dedicated to the project Danzando La Dea – Female Awareness Meeting. Since 2015 she is the co-creator and author of Matrika - Consciousness Development. She collaborates with the project La Grande Via founded by the oncologis Dr. Franco Berrino. She currently expands the Vedic knowledge concerning the manifestation of human life on Earth with the method of Prenatal and Birth Therapy of Dominique Degranges.
Hayes Ballroom
Mantra, Nadeshwari Joythimayananda
Interlude
Guadalupe
Feminine Yoga - Sacred Shapes , Nadeshwari Joythimayananda
Yoga offered by Nadeshwari is inclusive and exclusive, vibrates freely between the immanent and the transcendent, does not stop at the asanas and does not divide the spiritual world from the material world. In the practice that She transmits a continuous encounter is created between the experience of the physical body aimed at experiencing fluidity, vigor or stasis and the energetic approach to the spiritual path.
The Sacred Shapes sequence is a dynamic method that uses a language of symbols to experience the universal’s energies; Sacred forms moves the dormant and forgotten creative energy of our second Chakra (belly, genital organs, relationships, sensuality ...), makes it savor to our body and gives it to the surrounding environment thus restoring a balance between what we feel and what we want to express in the world.
We will experience a union of soft sacred forms, with lines and angles of the Barathanatyam temple dance that form particular energetic filters in the body so that there is conscious purification and directing of energy. The movements are simple and affordable for everyone, just as nature teaches us.
This Yoga does not derive from a single lineage but flows directly from the source - it is Love. It integrates the creativity and the cyclicity of the female quality (Shakti) with the presence and the linearity of the masculine (Shiva). To this end, several approaches are used: Jnana Yoga (explaining the basis of how the nervous system works at the Ayurvedic and physiological level according to the emerging sciences), Hatha Yoga (you enter the body through movements such as asanas or circular and fluid sequences ), moments of listening, Mantra, Nada Yoga (Yoga of sound) and Pranayama (breath control).
San Juan Bautista
Shakti - The Dance of Spirit in the Matter, Nadeshwari Joythimayananda
In the process of incarnating the body, so many imprintings are shaping us, so many dimensions become part of our cells. And everything starts from the void of the heart creating eternal movement of energy that dances life.
A journey through the voice and the silences.
Now with sweetness and now with power, we will be landscapes of nature whose scent recalls the temples in the forests of ancient India where every day flowers were offered as a tribute to the Goddesses; and at the same time, we will be in this millennium, to awake us at this present moment, to stay with what there is now.
Vibrations that enters in the body and dances in the silence of feelings.
Through the thousand nuances of the frequencies of the vital energy and the primordial sound of the Mantras recited by Nadeshwari, we will have the opportunity to gradually leave resistances so that we will be transported to the place where the Spirit resides ... in our heart.
Love others by remaining in connection with you.
Love yourself by remaining connected to the heart of those around you.
Dance these two possibilities to perceive them as part of a single feeling.
A space were we can meet saints, sages, rishis and muni ... yogini and yogis.
Those who for centuries have met the forces of nature in the beauty, strength and simplicity
Hayes Ballroom
Panel - Awakening to the Divine Feminine, Mirabai Starr; Vera de Chalambert; Francis Bennett; Zhen Dao; Nadeshwari Joythimayananda
Today’s modern society can best be described as a paradox:. On the one hand there seems to be a collective awakening of human consciousness that is creating movement towards greater clarity, creativity, compassion, wellness, communion with nature and a sincere respect for spiritual, ethnic and gender diversity.
On the other hand, our world is grappling with the backlash of social pariahs like racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, class inequalities and religious intolerance, often leading to violence; unbridled materialism and even despair.
As the outdated patriarchal structures rise up in backlash to their inevitable downfall, the need for a more sustainable world paradigm couldn’t be greater. It’s clear that now is the time for balance and integration to be restored to the planet. But how do we bring balance to what sometimes seems like two polar opposite extremes?
Perhaps balance can only be restored by a collective awakening of the Divine Feminine in our society so that women and men can reconnect to a more integrated idea of Source/God/Life and step into a more nurturing relationships with themselves, their communities and the planet.
This panel will be having a conversation on how we can all awaken this healing and nurturing inner feminine energy into our everyday lives and how such an awakening might effect our society and our world..
They will be sharing their own unique perspectives on this topic based on the awakening to the Divine Feminine that has unfolded in their own lives personally and professionally.
Dr. Nandi Hetenyi is a psychospiritual healer, teacher and writer with a doctorate in clinical psychology. She’s carved her own path based on over 25 years of clinical experience along with an equal time studying and practicing Buddhism, yoga, meditation, shamanic healing, ceremony and energy healing. After a dark night of the soul, she recovered herself from addiction and experienced an awakening to her soul. Through her healing, she fused her knowledge of psychology and spirituality to create an innovative approach for healing the wounds of the soul, including mother wounding, trauma, addiction and shame.
Madrone
Embodying the In-Between: Healing the Soul Wound and Becoming Wholly Human, Nandi Hetenyi
We are made of the earth and divine, life force energy itself. We live in-between what is completely solid and dense and what is light and energy and formless. Human is this embodiment of the in-between; this great, alchemical mystery of consciousness and life force and animal. Soul.
Our soul is this life force energy expressing itself as us at this time. It is our soul that is here, in this life, having this journey. This soul is our embodied consciousness that arises in the center of our hearts. This is the core essence of who we are.
Most, if not all, of us experience a wounding our soul in this lifetime from other humans who are also confused about who they are, disconnected from their true nature. This is the soul wound. This soul wound is often emotional in nature and becomes the ground that births shame from our unmetabolized pain.
This unmetabolized pain makes us dislike our own humanity and separates us from our own divine nature and life force energy. It is through this soul wounding we forget who we are and how to find the way back to the center of our own divinity.
In our culture, pain is often pathologized, numbed, ignored, looked down upon, repressed or otherwise made wrong, perpetuating and deepening the effects of our soul wounding. Separation is encouraged to fuel our economy.
Healing the soul wound is a path towards embodying the in-between. It is healing our relationship with source through healing our unmetabolized pain and reconnecting us with something greater than ourselves. This is healing our human hearts and restoring our divine nature.
Drawing from Vajrayana Buddhism, shamanism and psychoanalytic concepts, this presentation will discuss spiritual approaches to healing the soul wound, the wisdom of emotions and the sacred nature of being human
Nick Day is an award-winning filmmaker and speaker based in the Bay Area of San Francisco. Nick brought the biggest event in the history of humanity – India’s Maha Kumbh Mela festival — to movie audiences worldwide in the critically acclaimed documentary Shortcut to Nirvana, along with co-director Maurizio Benazzo. He now focuses his attention on the science of consciousness and its relationship to storytelling and the creative arts. Nick is host of Consciousness Central, the daily broadcast from The Science of Consciousness conference, and producer of the documentary series The Consciousness Chronicles. He has previously presented at SAND, the Science of Consciousness (TSC), Deepak Chopra’s Sages & Scientists Symposium, the Society for Consciousness Studies conference at CIIS, Boom Festival, and with IONS at Burning Man.
San Juan Bautista
Love (and Desire) Go to the Movies, Nick Day
Love is a perennial theme in painting, literature, music, and the movies, but what do we really discover about the nature of love, sexual desire and relationships from the arts? Does art inform us with deep, eternal truths about love or merely bounce back the beliefs and biases of its time? And, if so, does art effectively constrain our notions of love, and place culture-bound limits on it? Can love be liberated from art, or by art?
In movies about love and relationships, there is a well worn path to commercial success that relies on familiar tropes. In a typical romantic comedy, boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy then makes outlandish gesture and wins girl’s heart for-ever. In a drama triangle, a marriage is threatened when one partner “strays” and brings down the sky in the process. Conventions of storytelling require that transgressions be punished before harmony can be restored. Women in particu-lar are never permitted sexual desire beyond the confines of a monogamous rela-tionship. In family comedies, hapless husbands are to be tamed and domesticat-ed. Characters are rarely represented as having real communication skills or emotional intelligence. Arthouse films about love are far more nuanced, but the underlying cultural rulebook mostly still applies. Do such films truly reflect what love and relationships are, or can be, or do they simply force people into a box? In this presentation I’ll look at how love has been historically portrayed in the movies, how this might influence our own beliefs about relationships, and offer examples that break free of the monogamous heteronormative rulebook.
Nicola Amadora PhD. invites into the heart of life and real connection. She offers a refreshingly integrated, distinctly feminine and relational approach to spirituality. She works as a Transpersonal Psychologist, Hakomi Therapist, Non Dual Wisdom and Spiritual Teacher, Relationship and Leadership Educator, and is the Founder of Living Connection. For 30 years she has been offering satsangs, lectures, retreats, private sessions and professional trainings for individuals, groups and the collective internationally. Her own awakening emerged in the wilderness and continues on in the streets of this world. Nicola is passionate about awakening, embodiment and engagement - in a down to earth and powerfully present, alive and fiercely loving way. www.nicolaamadora.com
San Juan Bautista
Connecting for Real - Relating straight from the Heart, Nicola Amadora
No matter what spiritual awakenings we may have experienced or what we know conceptually, still, there is an aching, a calling in our own hearts and in our relationships - whether with a friend, partner or stranger on the street- to truly see and be seen, to hear and be heard. Simply to meet in love’s presence exactly as we are right now.
Easier said than done. How do you tap into this river of connection and offer life giving juice? How do you radically include the whole enchilada - the beauty, intelligence, messiness and human vulnerability - in relating and communication? Truly connecting is a profound spiritual practice for sure, especially when the going gets rocky. Yet, it leads us into mutual awakening and enables us to show up fully. Your capacity and courage expands to dive ever deeper into what is flowing between our hearts, connecting us in a most brilliant and often surprising way!
Live practices are offered in this session, which you can use in the streets of our world and for the powerful and tender dance of relating.
Morgan Hill
Movement to Rebalancing, Olivier Mortara
The laws that govern the Universe are the same laws that apply to body and mind. It is the presence of a vital force and a subtle energy that creates the rhythmic movement of the living. The human being is a being in motion and life is a permanent relationship to the movement.
Like all parts of the Universe, body and mind are an inseparable non-dualistic entity. To give meaning to this concept, it is necessary to be able to recognize that the slightest change leads to a minute or significant change in the totality of being: unity. In osteopathy, Andrew Taylor Still, evokes a link between structure and function so that the mobility of each part (bones, muscles, organs,...) is preserved in order to allow the free circulation of liquids, fluids, nerve impulses that ensure a correct execution of the function: movement. This description highlights the body's ability to self-regulate (homeostasis) and self-healing.
However, the separation between body and mind is all too often the point of origin that leads to dysfunction and chaos of the body. Relationships with our inner world sabotage the functional mechanisms of our body.
Marcus Aurelius described it in his Meditations : "There is nothing bad in undergoing change - or good emerging from it ." (42-Book IV).
Unfortunately, the body elaborates aches under multiple expressions of which the mind is the source. We must use our memories and past events to trace back to the information that traps somato-emotional dysfunction. These reactions are dictated by the unconscious and spread psychophysiological pains that modify movement.
Oscar Segurado is a physician scientist passionate for integrative medicine, he experienced firsthand the mental, emotional and physical effects of his high-functioning anxiety as he witnessed its impact on family, friends, and colleagues. His extensive work on the nervous and immune systems, published in peer-reviewed journals including Nature and Lancet, has helped uncover how stress and anxiety can trigger serious immune-mediated diseases, including cancer, chronic infections, and autoimmunity. He combines his medical and scientific knowledge with a lifelong interest in Ayurveda and Chinese medicine. In his best-selling book ‘Mindful Framing: Transform your Anxiety into Vital Energy’ he teaches how to train the mind to be aware of the present moment while processing actively each and every relevant thought and experience happening in our daily lives.
San Juan Bautista
Mindful Framing: Transform your Anxiety into Vital Energy, Oscar Segurado
Anxiety and stress are epidemic in today’s fast-paced world. In response, many turn to mindfulness and meditation, but mostly experienced practitioners achieve long-term calm and relaxed minds. We need a simpler approach for everyone that includes self-reflection to frame our mind throughout the day around a nature-oriented, empathetic, and healthy lifestyle.Oscar Segurado has developed the practice of Mindful Framing and the associated NEO Chi lifestyle to address this unmet need. A physician scientist passionate for integrative medicine, he experienced firsthand the mental, emotional and physical effects of his high-functioning anxiety as he witnessed its impact on family, friends, and colleagues. HIs extensive work on the nervous and immune systems, published in peer-reviewed journals including Nature and Lancet, has helped uncover how stress and anxiety can trigger serious immune-mediated diseases, including cancer, chronic infections, and autoimmunity. Combining his medical and scientific knowledge with a lifelong interest in Ayurveda and Chinese medicine, he has created a practice that trains the mind to be aware of the present moment while processing actively each and every relevant experience and thought.Designed with the modern world in mind, mindful framing creates an ethical, empathetic and wellness-oriented frame of mind that captures anxiety triggers and transforms them into vital energy. Supported with written and audiovisual materials available at mindfulbook.org, mindful framing defines a novel nature-mind-body connection for the twenty-first century. With up to fifteen minutes of daily practice, easy to memorize through movements, yoga poses and visualization, you will experience a more intimate connection with the natural world, emotional harmony with those around you, and a feeling of overall invigoration.
Pamela speaks the Truth of advaita, non-duality – that the universe is one undivided whole. For the last twenty years she has traveled widely in the United States, Canada and Europe, sharing satsang and giving private sessions. Week-long retreats have been held in Mexico, Costa Rica, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada and the USA. She has endeared herself to many through her lighthearted humor and compassion, and deep understanding of what it is to be human. She lives in Sonoma, California.
San Martin
Silence and Substratum, Pamela Wilson
Silent awareness is mostly drawn to light, sound, color, beauty, movement, patterns and contrast. In the wilderness, we can feel if a huge unseen presence is gazing at us. Or feel the notable absence of people - that hush that can soothe or hasten you home.
At the ocean, seeing is invited to widen and expand past habitual focus - though It is rare to notice silent space itself, between, behind and within it all. The vastness of an African savannah or the evening sky invites us into that which holds everything.
Our gaze is drawn primarily to form rather than to the essence at the heart of everything. And we tend to naturally overlook that which does not move in favor of the ever-changing display of ordinary life. What if it is the unmoving that notices and delights in movement? What if it is silence that adores music?
How lucky we are to have and be an omnidirectional awareness wearing a body that amplifies perception. A curiosity that can formlessly explore the infinity of life, the seen and unseen. And then reflect upon, share and celebrate!
Paul J. Mills is Professor and Chief, UC San Diego Department of Family Medicine and Public Health, Director of the UC San Diego Center of Excellence for Research and Training in Integrative Health, and Director of Research for The Chopra Foundation. He has expertise in Integrative Medicine, with his current work advancing research on traditional whole medical systems, emphasizing the promise of, yet significant limitations of, understanding nonduality and wellbeing in the context of the current biomedical literature, including the integrative and psychiatric literature.He will discuss recent findings from the Self Directed Biological Transformation Initiative, a trans-disciplinary and multi-institutional research collaboration with the Chopra Foundation, including findings of individuals developing self-compassion, spiritual wellbeing and sense of nondual awareness.
Edenvale
Panel: Enhancing Human Wellbeing through Nondual Awareness, Deepak Chopra; Judith Blackstone; Zoran Josipovic; Paul Mills; Tiffany Barsotti
The current times seem to be defined by the great promise of technology for human enhancement. Yet the source of capacity to optimize our experience and wellbeing is already present within all of us as the innermost essence of nondual awareness. This panel will present contemporary methods for realizing nondual awareness and the scientific research on its effects on wellbeing.
Speaker. Judith Blackstone, PhD, has been a Realization Process teacher and a psychotherapist in private practice for four decades. She is author of Belonging Here, The Enlightenment Process, The Intimate Life, The Empathic Ground and the upcoming Trauma and the Unbound Body.
Speaker. Tiffany Barsotti, M.Th., C.Ht., MCPLT, is a spiritual, medical intuition counselor and teacher in private practice at HEAL and THRIVE in Encinitas, California. With her spiritual and intuitive guidance, she serves as an integrative practitioner working alongside physicians and other allied health professionals.
Speaker. Zoran Josipovic, PhD, is a research associate at New York University Langone Medical Center, and adjunct assistant professor for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology, New York University. With his wife, Judith Blackstone, he founded the Nonduality Institute, where he is the principal science investigator.
Speaker & Session Chair. Paul J. Mills, PhD, is a Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health, and Director of the Center of Excellence for Research and Training in Integrative Health at the University of California, San Diego. He is currently serving as Director of Research for the Chopra Foundation. He has expertise in Integrative Medicine and psychoneuroimmune processes in wellness and disease, publishing extensively on these topics.
Discussant. Deepak Chopra, MD, is a world-renowned pioneer in mind-body medicine and personal transformation, and Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He has authored more than 80 books, published in more than 43 languages, including 22 New York Times best sellers.
Paul Stamets, speaker, author, mycologist, medical researcher and entrepreneur, is considered an intellectual and industry leader in fungi: habitat, medicinal use, and production. He lectures extensively to deepen the understanding and respect for the organisms that literally exist under every footstep taken on this path of life.
Paul is the author of six books (including Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World, Growing Gourmet & Medicinal Mushrooms, and Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World), he has discovered and named numerous new species of psilocybin mushrooms. Paul has been awarded more than 40 patents with several patent applications in queue for unexpected activity of psilocybin analogues stacked with other substances.
He has received numerous awards, including: Invention Ambassador (2014-2015) for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the National Mycologist Award (2014) from the North American Mycological Association (NAMA), and the Gordon & Tina Wasson Award (2015) from the Mycological Society of America (MSA).
His work has entered into the mainstream of popular culture. In the new Star Trek: Discovery series on CBS, the Science Officer is portrayed by an Astromycologist.... a Lt. Paul Stamets. Paul's work with mycelium is a central theme of this series.
Hayes Ballroom
PL5. The Thread of Connection
Hayes Ballroom
Mushrooms, Mycelium & The Mycology of Consciousness: An Immersion Lecture , Paul Stamets
Join this engaging speaker, author, mycologist, medical researcher and entrepreneur, for an immersion lecture on mushrooms that will deepen your understanding and respect for the organisms that exists under every footstep you take on this path of life.
His presentation will cover a range of mushroom species and new research showing how mushrooms can help the health of people and planet. Habitats have immune systems, just like people, and mushrooms are cellular bridges between the two. Our close evolutionary relationship to fungi can be the basis for novel pairings in the microbiome that lead to greater sustainability and immune enhancement.
Edenvale
Conversation with Paul Stamets
San Juan Bautista
Embracing The Challenge Of Being Fully Present And Spiritually Real, Penny Fenner
Spiritual teachings tell us we are no one and there is nowhere to go. Everyday life demands we show up, pay our bills and be decent human beings. Learning to know and truly embrace all of who we are demands fierce compassion, truth telling from the inside out and the courage to be and love our authentic self.
In this presentation Penny will share with you how it is possible to have it all, with courage and humility. Rather than an instant moment of awakening full presence takes time, strength and kindness to learn to graciously accept, and respond skillfully to, what is, moment to moment.
Connected presence rarely if ever happens through one or even several moments of waking up but is an ongoing process of revealing, dismantling, readjusting, softening and strengthening. It is by showing up and meeting all aspects of ourselves including our tricky emotional states that we can become spiritual warriors who can embrace and engage fully with life, just as it is.
Peter A Levine, Ph.D., is the developer of Somatic Experiencing®, a naturalistic and neurobiological approach to healing trauma, which he has developed during the past 50 years. He is the Founder of the Somatic Experiencing® Trauma Institute/Foundation for Human Enrichment and the Founder and President of the Ergos Institute of Somatic Education™. His work has been taught to over 50,000 therapists in over 45 countries. Dr. Levine served as a stress consultant for NASA in the early space shuttle development and has served on the American Psychological Association task force for responding to the trauma of large-scale disasters and ethnopolitical warfare. He holds doctorates in both Biophysics and Psychology and is the author of several best-selling books on trauma, including Waking the Tiger, which is published in over 29 languages. He is currently a Senior Fellow and consultant at The Meadows Addiction and Trauma Treatment Center in Wickenburg, Arizona and continues to teach trauma healing workshops internationally.
Edenvale
Spirituality, Archetypes, and Trauma
The treatment of trauma is fraught with many pitfalls and “tight corners.” Generally overlooked, however, is an innate relationship between trauma, archetypes and spirituality. Understanding and applying these intimate relationships can suggest therapeutic strategies that help to support and resource trauma clients and support the genuine transformation of traumatic experience.
The “awe-full” qualities of horror and terror may share essential structural, psycho-physiological and phenomenological roots with those underlying transformative states such as flow, awe, presence, timelessness and ecstasy. Our organisms are designed with primitive-instinctual-proclivities that move us to extraordinary feats of focused attention and action when we perceive that our lives are threatened. The bridging and “owning” of these survival capacities of readiness, “slow motion” perception, and intense, focused, alertness with more “ordinary” states of consciousness promotes the experience of “timelessness” and presence sometimes referred to, in meditation systems, as “the eternal now.”
In addition, the effect of trauma involves a profound compression of activation. The ability to access, and integrate the rhythmic movements of this “bound energy” determines whether it will be destructive or potentially vitalizing.
In the Yoga’s of the East, awakening of the “Kundalini” has long been utilized as a vehicle for spiritual transformation. In trauma, a similar mobilization of (survival) activation is evoked, but with such intensity and rapidity that it is overwhelming. If we can gradually access, titrate and integrate this “energy” into our nervous system and psychic structures then the instinctual survival response imbedded within trauma can also catalyze authentic spiritual- transformation. Most individuals, however, are frightened by these involuntary bodily reactions and brace against them, causing even more fear to develop.
Traditionally, therapies have attempted to change perceptions of the world by means of reason and insight, with conditioning and behavior modification, and with medication. However, perceptions remain fundamentally unchanged until the internal experience of the body changes. In this workshop, we will look at some simple ways to help clients open to and even embrace their spontaneous bodily reactions facilitating not only movement out of traumatic states but access to spiritual dimensions that support the “deep-self”. The class will involve didactic material, live demonstration, experiential practice exercises, video material and some time for case discussions.
Hayes Ballroom
PL1. The Mystery of Being Human
Hayes Ballroom
Spirituality, Archetypes, and Trauma, Peter Levine
The treatment of trauma is fraught with many pitfalls and “tight corners.” Generally overlooked, however, is an innate relationship between trauma, archetypes and spirituality. Understanding and applying these intimate relationships can suggest therapeutic strategies and support the genuine transformation of traumatic experience.
The “awe-full” qualities of horror and terror may share essential structural, psycho-physiological and phenomenological roots with those underlying transformative states such as flow, awe, presence, timelessness and ecstasy. Our organisms are designed with primitive-instinctual-proclivities that move us to extraordinary feats of focused attention and action when we perceive that our lives are threatened. The bridging and “owning” of these survival capacities of readiness, “slow motion” perception, and intense, focused, alertness with more “ordinary” states of consciousness promotes the experience of “timelessness” and presence sometimes referred to, in meditation systems, as “the eternal now.”
In addition, the effect of trauma involves a profound compression of activation. The ability to access, and integrate the rhythmic movements of this “bound energy” determines whether it will be destructive or potentially vitalizing.
In the Yoga’s of the East, awakening of the “Kundalini” has long been utilized as a vehicle for spiritual transformation. In trauma, a similar mobilization of (survival) activation is evoked, but with such intensity and rapidity that it is overwhelming. If we can gradually access, titrate and integrate this “energy” into our nervous system and psychic structures then the instinctual survival response imbedded within trauma can also catalyze authentic spiritual- transformation.
Hayes Ballroom
PL7. Healing Trauma as a Spiritual Path: Individual and Collective Dimensions
A conversation with Thomas Huebl and Peter Levine
Originally studying mathematics and theoretical physics, Peter became increasingly interested in the nature of consciousness, and in the late sixties traveled to India, to study meditation and Eastern philosophy. On his return he established a meditation center in Cambridge, England, and went on to pioneer the introduction of personal growth programs to corporations. He is the author of a dozen books, including The Global Brain, Waking Up In Time, and From Science to God, and Seeds of Awakening. At SAND conferences he has led morning meditation sessions that people have found very helpful.For more information on Peter visit: https://peterrussell.com
Edenvale
Experiential: Guided Meditation
Hayes Ballroom
PL5. The Thread of Connection
Hayes Ballroom
Resting in Being, Peter Russell
Behind all our endeavors lies the desire to be happy—to feel content, relaxed, and at ease. No one wants to be in pain or to suffer unnecessarily. This is our true bottom line. Why then, given the many benefits and comforts of contemporary culture, are we so seldom at peace?
Throughout history, there have been those who’ve discovered a timeless truth about human consciousness: The mind in its natural unperturbed state is already at ease. We don’t need to do anything, or go anywhere to find the inner peace and joy we seek. The beauty of this approach is that nothing needs to be changed or eliminated. It is simply relaxing back into our natural state of effortless being.
Join Peter Russell for an exploration of the nature of human consciousness and the essence of spiritual awakening, how our thoughts can veil the peace within, the distinction between ego and the true self, and how to free meditation from effort and trying.
Monterey Room
Conversation with Peter Russell
San Jose
Full Spectrum Vibrational Healing, Richard Rudis
A ‘Gong Bath™’ with Richard Rudis is a dynamic meditative concert which acoustically guides each participant via harmonic overtones into realms of spiritual well-being, emotional balance, cellular healing and spiritual awareness. Using an unique 38" Gong, toned to ‘Aum’ frequency of the Earth (in it’s yearly dance with Sol), a multitude of octaves are created designed to entice the brain into Alpha/Theta/Delta wave-scapes of creativity, relaxation and enrichment. (see www.sacredsoundgongbath.com for further description).
Rick is the creator and host of the interview show Buddha at the Gas Pump. Since the Fall of 2009, he has since interviewed over 380 “spiritually awakening” people, from the well-known to the unknown, from a variety of backgrounds and traditions. He conducts a new interview each week. Rick learned Transcendental Meditation when he was 18, was trained by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi as a TM teacher in 1970, and served in that capacity for 25 years, teaching hundreds of people, lecturing around the world, helping to train TM teachers, and serving at the international headquarters of the TM organization in Switzerland. He earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Vedic Studies from Maharishi International University. Rick is no longer associated with the TM organization, having become too eclectic and independent in his perspective to affiliate exclusively with any organization. https://batgap.com/
Monterey Room
Q&A with Rick Archer of Buddha at the Gas Pump, Rick Archer
We will discuss anything people wish to discuss, relevant to Buddha at the Gas Pump, either regarding its effect on me, or points that often come up in interviews. For instance, people often ask:
_what effect interviewing so many awakened people has had on me,
_how I might have changed over the nine years I've been doing this,
_what I have learned,
_does incorporating or harmonizing so many different perspectives enrich or confuse me?,
_do I ever get tired of doing this?
Ideas that often come up in interviews include:
_whether the end of seeking is the end of spiritual development,
_whether or not there are levels and stages of enlightenment,
_whether different awakened teachers experience and represent different aspects of Reality,
_whether one can be an enlightened atheist,
_blind spots that students might have in relationship to teachers,
_the importance of integrating awakening to the Absolute in relative life,
_the individuality as an instrument of the Divine
Hayes Ballroom
Panel - Ethics and Spiritual Teaching, Rick Archer; Jac O' Keeffe; Craig Holliday; Caverly Morgan
We are witnessing a sea change in collective consciousness. From entertainment to politics to athletics, sexual misconduct is no longer tolerated. Sexual and other forms of abuse have also plagued the spiritual world which the SAND family inhabits. While actors and politicians might not be expected to have developed high moral values, most people expect spiritually awakened people to have done so. Contrary examples have led many to conclude that higher consciousness and ethical behavior are not correlated. Some have become cynical about the motives of all gurus and teachers and have lost faith in spirituality altogether.
Yet, every spiritual tradition includes codes of ethics that apply to both teachers and students. Ethical behavior has been regarded not only as a reflection of spiritual development but as conducive to it.
Unlike the legal, medical, psychological, and other professions, spiritual teachers lack a shared code of ethics and an organization to formalize them. At this writing, the members of this panel have made significant progress in drafting such a code. By conference time, we hope to have established an organization which would offer the following:
_Teacher membership would imply trustworthiness, as it would be predicated upon agreeing to the code of ethics.
_Teachers would be encouraged to be more open to feedback, transparent, and accountable.
_Students would be emboldened to expect high moral standards in teachers and might become more discriminating in choosing a teacher.
_A place where those who have been abused might submit grievances.
I am not much of anything. I am the moment that ends, the one that is already started and the one that maybe should have not been there at all. At times I notice being the moment of sorrow. Other times I am the sensation in the front of the belly, and again the laughter on the face of the grandmother. I remember once being the joy in the eyes of the little boy when he won the marble. Witnessing all of these moments I have been getting closer to being nothing, and all. That started in Italy many years ago and has been continuing around the world, from California to Portugal following the routes of the old discoverers, just all backward.
San Juan Bautista
Listening to the Body Allows the Future to Emerge, Rita Venturini
“The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener”
Billy O'Brien
“We collectively create results that nobody wants …“
C. Otto Scharmer
How is it that we, as a society, with all of our technological, philosophical and spiritual advancements, are ineffective in creating a thriving environment for our citizens?
The origin of our attention, our interior condition, is often hidden from our awareness and therefore impacts our actions directly, like an unseen car in the rearview mirror blind spot.
Observing our body sensations and actions gives us insight into what/who is at the source of our individual and collective actions, and helps us discern when we are driven by fear and habits instead of being fully present to each unique moment.
Listening to our body can help us connect with that to which we all belong to and support our ability to co-create actions that flow and flourish.
San Jose
Experiential: Authentic Movement, Rita Venturini
Authentic Movement is a method developed by Mary Whitehouse as an extension of Jung’s free associations, from spoken words to movement and sound. It is an opening of the door of being through the body. The mover closes her eyes and allows her deepest impulses to manifest in movement, sounds and maybe words. The witness tracks the mover and (separately)his own sensations, feelings, images, metaphors. When they meet their sharing is the story of the sacred and undivided unfolding of the field of life.
Hayes Terrace
Lunch - Music with Rob Reich (Accordion)
Once upon a time there was this guy named Robert M. Dittler. He entered the phenomenal realm in a place commonly known as San Francisco, California, USA. He has since lived in many parts of the Earth: land, sea, mountains, and sky (given flight miles!). The universe is his home. He earned a Classical Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, a Master of Arts in Counseling and Guidance, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophical Psychology. His specialization is in phenomenology, linguistics, quantum mechanics, and nonduality.
He has taught on many different levels and in varied settings: home-hospital, US Navy air craft carriers and ships at-sea, typical classrooms (middle and high school, college), retired radar shacks, seminar rooms and on treks in the Himalayas such as to Everest Base Camp and Nepali villages.
Robert has served the Learning Handicapped as well as educating students in Latin, English, and Psychology. Currently, when not visiting India or Nepal, he may be found in a seminar room facilitating a communication workshop for the general public or corporate types, public service clubs, or in a pre-nuptial conference and officiating a wedding ceremony. He is a Yoga and Soto Zen practitioner, and a Benedictine priest-monk in the Old Catholic tradition. He is also a certified Clear Beliefs coach and a Heart Math Certified Mentor.
His main interest is nondual awareness clouded in belief systems. He ventures to discern their creation, reformulation, and replacement in the service of increasing one's own personal responsible integrity. Be sure to check-out www.zenmonks.org (The Mind of a Child). And to review his past SAND presentations, please check-out www.wrmosb.org/nonduality/SAND001.html. Robert's wide and varied experiences and his personable manner make his workshops challenging, memorable and certainly delightful!
Thanks and Peace and Joy! :-)
Morgan Hill
Advaita for the 21st Century: A Phenomenology of The Mystery of the Human Experience
Let us dwell in our creation of science, mystery, and the human experience. We think we know from science how many aspects of our experience have come to be and are. Yet, a scientist would admit that there is no absolute scientific explanation for anything. We may conclude that the mystery of Life is but a fantasy of our own creation.We do not know how to cure the common cold nor why or how we maintain a blood pressure. What perhaps may be the mystery of the human experience is our inability to overcome our natural propensity for violence, genocide, and other egregious ways of being while at the same time evidence compassion, empathy, and good will toward our fellow human beings.We are not all that different from our ancestors in the cave. We fight for territory, for what we believe is right or The Truth. We talk about peace and brotherhood, yet act contrary much of the time whether we admit it or not.We waver between trust and distrust, confidence and a lack thereof. Hence, we find ourselves in the world of duality creating controlling issues or evidencing arrogance or experiencing feelings of alienation. Yet, we somehow know such practices are self-defeating as we become ever more aware of nondual interdependence.We are our own aggregate mystery. And it all happens in our heads this illusion we call the human experience. Let us join together and fathom the way out of our self-created conundrum. Join-in an eye-opening experience of mystery, wonderment, and awe.
For more than thirty years Sapolsky has divided his time between field work with baboons and highly technical neurological research in the laboratory. As a result, he can effortlessly move from a discussion of pecking orders in primate societies (human and baboon) to an explanation of how neurotransmitters work during stress—and get laughs doing it. In addition to A Primate’s Memoir, which won the 2001 Bay Area Book Reviewers Award in nonfic- tion, Robert Sapolsky has written The Trouble with Testosterone, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, and Monkeyluv and Other Essays on our Lives as Animals. His most recent book, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, is a Washington Post Best Book of 2017, and also received the Los Angeles Times book prize. Dr. Sapolsky was awarded Rockefeller University’s Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science for 2008. His articles have appeared in publications such as Discover, The New Yorker, and The Los Angeles Times. He writes a biweekly column for the Wall Street Journal entitled “Mind & Matter.”Dr. Sapolsky is a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, a professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University, and a research associate with the Institute of Primate Research at the National Museum of Kenya. In 2008, National Geographic & PBS aired an hour-long special on stress featuring Dr. Sapolsky and his research on the subject. The humor and humanity he brings to sometimes- sobering subject matter make Dr. Sapolsky a fascinating speaker. He lectures widely on topics as diverse as stress and stress-related diseases, baboons, the biology of our individuality, the biology of religious belief, the biology of memory,schizophrenia, depression, aggression, and Alzheimer’s disease.
Hayes Ballroom
PL2. Celebrating The Human
Hayes Ballroom
Humans: Are we Just Another Primate? Are we Just a Bunch of Neurons? Robert Sapolsky
Regardless of the dazzling complexity of humans, at the end of the day, we are a type of mammal, primate, ape, operating on the same basic types of neurons found throughout the animal kingdom. Are we just another primate? Are we just the sum of our neurons? In this lecture, Sapolsky considers the unlikely realms where humans are merely on a continuum with other species….until you look closely.
Hayes Ballroom
Panel: Appreciating The Human, A.H. Almaas; Kabir Helminski; Robert Sapolsky
Many teachings do not appreciate that the human being is important for realization and liberation. That there is no awakening without humans. But some do, which is a different kind of appreciation than the scientific exploration of the mystery of being human. We want to discuss what is it to be a human being, both biologically and spiritually, in order for us to value who and what we are, and our necessity for the worlds we experience and know. A dialogue and discussion, mediated by Zaya Benazzo.
Robert A.F. Thurman is the Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University, President of the Tibet House U.S., a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization, and President of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, a non-profit affiliated with the Center for Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and dedicated to the publication of translations of important artistic and scientific treatises from the Tibetan Tengyur. Time chose Professor Thurman as one of its 25 most influential Americans in 1997, describing him as a “larger than life scholar-activist destined to convey the Dharma, the precious teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, from Asia to America.” The New York Times recently said Thurman “isconsidered the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism.”Thurman is known as a talented popularizer of the Buddha’s teachings. He is a riveting speaker and an author of many books on Tibet, Buddhism, art, politics and culture, including The Central Philosophy of Tibet, Circling the Sacred Mountain, Essential Tibetan Buddhism, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Artof Tibet, Worlds of Transformation, Inner Revolution, Infinite Life, the Jewel Tree of Tibet, Why The Dalai Lama Matters: HisActofTruth as the Solution for China, Tibet, and the World, and, most recently, with Sharon Salzberg, Love Your Enemies. https://bobthurman.com/
San Jose
The Cool Heroism of the Sacred Feminine
In this workshop we will explore the power of the feminine when it is expressed politically and socially. There are many examples of political systems that are governed by the priorities of the Feminine, including the Newar of Nepal, the Hopi of North America, and the Akan of West Africa, to name just a few. Matriarchies are true gender-egalitarian societies that are in no way a mirror image of male dominated societies where power hierarchies are created to hold resources in the hands of a few at the expense of the many. Rather, resources are shared, the nurturing of children is prioritized and the welfare of the group as a whole is emphasized. Rule by consensus, power sharing between cultural groups and fair distribution of goods between men and women, young and old is the norm in cultures which have been organized by women since time immemorial.In this workshop, Drs. Thurman and Gucciardi, who regularly teach the Embracing the Sacred Feminine retreats together, will discuss how we can focus the spiritual aspect of the feminine into the current political climate. They will demonstrate how this focus can be a powerful, transformative force and offer a vision of a new political order that is based on the priorities of feminine forms of power. The surprise, is, in fact, that a political order based on the priorities of the feminine is not new at all. Almost all indigenous cultures were originally matriarchal, and the rise of patriarchal forms of power is actually very new. By returning to the priorities of these earth-based cultures, we can infuse our current culture with the creativity, generativity and possibility that are the hallmarks of feminine power.
Hayes Ballroom
PL3. Being Human
Hayes Ballroom
The Mystery of Being Human, Robert Thurman
Shakyamuni the Buddha took the mystery out of being human by understanding, experiencing, and manifesting it to its fullest extent. He declared that the human life form is created by the humans themselves by developing their wisdom and love/compassion. He saw it as a major achievemtn of animal life, and showed how it serves as a platform to develop that wisdom and love/compassion to its consummate perfection. Wisdom is the complete knowledge of reality, distinguishing the real from the false, starting with critical discernment and summiting into full experience. That experience was found to yield a bliss of total relief from fear and pain, a bliss that fulfils and satisfies beyond all expectation and conception. Love is the natural and spontaneous overflow of that bliss toward others in its experience of their beauty and natural possession of the very same bliss as their very selves. Compassion is the articulation of that bliss in art, driven by its all-embracing recognition that others’ misknowing of their own nature holds them apart from knowing their own natural bliss, and powerfully effective reflecting the suffering beings’ reality of freedom from that separateness.
The “mystery”—the hiddenness—then is the bliss-born beings’ ignorance’s ability to obscure their own reality from their actual experience. The Buddha’s enlightenment encompassed all that, it was no less an enlightenment than the Western one that has unfolded since the 17th century from the materialist disruption of the monotheistic thought control that had crippled European consciousness for over a millennium. To that rational scientific enlightenment coming to understand the material world, the Buddha’s enlightenment added a complete understanding of the mental and spiritual worlds. These two enlightenments are now in the process of meeting and slowly merging. Tonight we will celebrate together that merging, expressing our joy that it is happening at an accelerating pace, overcoming various resistances.
Hayes Ballroom
The Human Being in Spiritual Traditions, A.H. Almaas; Robert Thurman
How do the different spiritual traditions view being human? How do they differ in their appreciation of the human individual and the place of the human in the total scheme of reality? A dialogue in depth that may help us see our value for the universe.
Hayes Ballroom
PL5. The Thread of Connection
Hayes Ballroom
How We Are All Connected: Coherence and The Global Field Environment, Rollin McCraty
The Global Coherence Initiative is exploring the interactions between humanity and the earth’s magnetic fields. The magnetic field produced by the heart can be detected by the nervous systems of other people and a new system for measuring group coherence will be introduced at the conference. New research will be presented showing how people are far more interconnected with each other and the earth’s magnetic field environment than previously imagined.
From an early age Rupert Spira was deeply interested in the nature of reality. At the age of seventeen he learnt to meditate, and began studying and practicing the teachings of the classical Advaita Vedanta tradition under the guidance of Dr. Francis Roles and Shantananda Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of the north of India, which he continued for the next for twenty years. During this time he immersed himself in the teachings of P.D.Ouspensky, J. Krishnamurti, Rumi, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta and Robert Adams, until he met his teacher, Francis Lucille, in 1997. Francis introduced Rupert to the Direct Path teachings of Atmanada Krishnamenon; Jean Klein and the tantric tradition of Kashmir Shaivism; and, more importantly, directly indicated to him the true nature of experience. Rupert is author of several books: The Transparency of Things; Presence; The Light of Pure Knowing; The Ashes of Love; Transparent Body, Luminous World; The Nature of Consciousness; and Being Aware of Being Aware.
Hayes Ballroom
PL4. Human Essence
Hayes Ballroom
The Essence of Non-Duality, Rupert Spira
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.
Edenvale
Experiential: Guided Meditation
Edenvale
Conversation with Rupert Spira
San Juan Bautista
From Wandering to Illumination: The New Eleusinian Mysteries, Ryan Bush
These days, there are many ways for people to learn about consciousness and awakening, but mostly only if they’re already interested in these topics. After all, there is very little cultural awareness about consciousness and awakening, so the great majority of people never realize that there is anything to wake up from, or how to go about waking up. Fortunately, art books and exhibitions provide opportunities to reach people who may not already be interested in consciousness or spirituality, and to build cultural awareness about awakening.
In this proposed presentation, I would take viewers through an exhibition of my 3-D multiple-exposure photographs called, From Wandering to Illumination, inspired by the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece, which were effective for thousands of years at introducing people to experiences of awakening.
The exhibition will progress from black-and-white photographs of bare trees in winter, representing the state of “Wandering” or the ordinary consciousness of our monkey mind/grasping mind, to color photographs of trees in summer, representing the state of Illumination or Awakening. Meanwhile, the accompanying text weaves together the story of Demeter’s search for her daughter Persephone, and our global effort to reclaim our soul.
Just as Persephone was taken away to the underworld, and Demeter wandered the Earth looking for her daughter everywhere, we face a similar loss of soul today on both the personal and collective levels. Our world in general is very much lost in a state of Wandering, with all the mass shootings, corporate greed running amok, infatuation with strongmen, etc.
Fortunately, if we realize that we’re Wandering, we can get back on track. It’s time for us to drop the veil that has kept the Mysteries hidden behind the doors of monasteries, and obscured in esoteric symbolism.
It’s time for us to wake up.
Sally Kempton is a powerful teacher of applied non-dual wisdom, known for her ability to kindle meditative states in others, and to help students apply non-dual awareness to practical life. She teaches teleclasses, retreats, and workshops, appearing regularly at conference centers such as Esalen and Kripalu. Sally is the author of "Meditation for the Love of It," which one reviewer called "the meditation book your heart wants you to read." She writes a regular column, "Wisdom" for Yoga Journal, as well as a column called "Meditation for Life" on the Internet religious site Patheos.com. A former swami in a Vedic order, Sally trained for thirty years in the close company of two enlightened masters. Sally's teachings are based on Kashmir Shaiva tantra, and combine the wisdom of that tradition with the practical understandings of contemporary psychology and Integral theory. www.sallykempton.com.
San Martin
Discovering the True Guru Inside and Out: Beyond the Illusion of the Perfect Teacher, Sally Kempton
We live in an age when spiritual authority feels suspect—and for good reason. Yet we also intuit our own need for models, mentors, and even human embodiments of truth. So what does a human guru actually do for us?
The tantric traditions distinguish between the human teacher and the guru principle itself. The guru principle is a cosmic function, baked into reality. It is the power we often call ‘grace’ or ‘revelation,’ which awakens our intuitive connection to truth. A human teacher may carry the guru principle, but can never own it or block our access to it. us to our real nature and A human teacher can carry the guru principle. But the true guru is a a cosmic function: the power of grace that awakens us to our real nature and to the truth of our interconnectedness.
In short, no human being is your ‘real’ guru. The real guru is the universal principle of cosmic revelation, the subtle power that kindles our own ability to see into the heart of reality. hidden truths of reality unfold within your consciousness. But there’s a paradox. Though the guru principle lives in each of us—it often needs to be kindled by a transmission from another human. This paradox is the heart of the delicate relationship between practioners and our teachers.
This presentation reveals how the guru-principle actually functions, and offers principles that can help you discern the true experience of the guru from the myths.
Guadalupe
Experiential: More Life, Please: Prayer, Participation and Living Non-Dually in this World, Samantha Sweetwater
To live is to participate. To love is to connect. To pray is to offer the depths of our wanting in an intimate dialogue with the responsive fabric of an intelligent universe of which we are a part.
There is a prayer at the center your life.
Every single being, no matter how large or small, has a prayer at the center of its existence. That prayer is a prayer for more life.
“More life, please,” sings the mourning dove. “More life, please,” roars the lion. “More life please,” gurgles the tiny stream as it tumbles downhill, called by the sea."
You are no different. Implicit in the fact of your incarnation is the prayer of wanting more life. The path of prayer is an art of living fully while surrendering. It is a way of showing up and letting go, at the same time.
During this hourlong workshop, learn and practice a powerful a universal methodology for prayer that you can easily integrate into your daily life. Explore the simple grammar of, "thank you," "help me," and "I want," and why these specific grammatical tools are the most fundamental and effective levers you can use to offer up your deepest desires in a dialogue with the greater-than-human universe.
Come play with these gateways to self-awareness, manifestation and unimaginable happiness.
"The only thing that will change is your whole life." ~Barrett Eagle Bear
Scott Kiloby is a noted author and international speaker on the subject of freedom through non-dual recognition (authentic spiritual awakening as it is taught in the East). He is the author of seven books and has traveled the world extensively giving lectures, workshops and intensives on spiritual awakening and the healing of addiction, anxiety, depression and trauma. He is a California Registered Addiction Specialist. He is the co-developer of a new model of addiction recovery that is based on inquiry and unconditional love. Scott is the co-founder of the Kiloby Center for Recovery in Palm Springs California, the first addiction, anxiety, depression and trauma Intensive Outpatient Program to focus primarily on mindfulness. Scott is also the co-owner of the Natural Rest House, a detox and residential center in La Quinta, California. Both facilities focus on Scott’s new model of recovery.
Scott is the inventor of Mindful Pain Management, an app that acts as an interface between physicians and chronic pain patients to help reduce the risk of addiction to painkillers and more mindfully treat chronic pain. Scott is also the founder of two mindfulness/inquiry training programs: Living Inquiries Community, a training program and group of trained facilitators who work with people in over 12 different countries, and the Natural Rest Advanced Mindfulness (NRAM) training program which focuses on the new and latest developments in Scott’s work.
Monterey Room
Addiction Recovery, Scott Kiloby
In this presentation, Scott Kiloby will explain how the Kiloby Center’s innovative inquiry and mindfulness tools allow us to explore previously unconscious patterns of suffering connected to addiction. The focus of Scotts addiction recovery work is not behavior. The focus is on the psychological and emotional issues such as shame and lack. These tools were developed to help those who have no background in nonduality to access the natural state of awareness more easily and dissolve the persistent suffering that lies at the core of addiction.
Scott will speak to how addiction cannot be truly healed without dealing with these unconscious drivers. Scott will also provide some very helpful tips on avoiding bypassing while on the path to recovery and/or awakening.
Finally Scott will provide fresh insight into how some modern day nonduality teachings are actually prolonging addictions and trauma by implicitly encouraging bypassing.
Over the last 20 years, Sean Webb has become one of the world’s leading experts in how the human mind works, particularly in the area of human emotions, the driving force and motivation of all human actions globally. As an alumnus of Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technologies Development Center, Sean has spent years solving complex systems problems for cutting edge technology and supercomputing companies. His latest complex system solve is associated with how to model mind processes, how to manipulate mind output, and how to use those disciplines to our collective human advantage. He is recognized as a leading thinker in the world of Artificial Emotional Intelligence. Sean has spoken at Science of Consciousness, Science and Nonduality, major universities, numerous multinational corporations, and at NASA. Check out Sean’s work at MindHackingHappiness.com.
Madrone
The Science of Artificial Emotional Intelligence, Artificial Consciousness, and Maybe Even Artificial Enlightenment Itself, Sean Webb
From a complex systems perspective, it turns out that the operations of our minds are much simpler than we had ever imagined. So much, that our human emotions are now being modeled for tracking and even prediction within computin. This development also opens the door for emotions to be programmed into software to create emotional AI for computers, and even artificial consciousness itself.
Interestingly, as studies show, it turns out this new understanding of our human emotions processing also opens the door to some powerful and practical mind hacks which can be consciously employed to change our brain thought patterns, so that emerging alternative wave patterns can arise during our waking awareness. This new approach not only provides for a more refined control of our waking minds, but it also opens the door to higher intelligence, greater creativity, better problem solving and even heightened levels of inner peace and well being. It also helps us better understand our top level of consciousness called waking awareness
Taking that one step further into the science of split brain patients, proving that we have multiple levels of consciousness in our brains at lower levels, a fundamental question must be asked; just how far down the ladder does consciousness go in our bodies before the line of demarcation between conscious organic activity and seemingly dumb organic molecules shows itself? In short, the evidence suggests our cells themselves are conscious.
So with the recent discovery in a materials lab in Tsukuba, Japan confirming that our neurons DO indeed interact with quantum field vibrations (in the gamma spectrum, our gamma brain waves being highly correlated with altruism and our higher human virtues), do we now have a very clear scientific trail that our very consciousness (and all matter in the universe) indeed springs forth from an infinite empty field of energy vibrating at the frequency of love? Come take this fun, but science-grounded stroll.
Shakti Caterina Maggi has been sharing a message of awakening to our true nature as One Consciousness since 2003, with workshops and meetings held in Italy, Europe, and around the world. “The opportunity to meet what we are, and to embody it in everyday life, is the very meaning of life itself – not as human beings who seek God, but as the Divine itself experiencing itself through the human experience.” Shakti shares a very contemporary approach to self-realization and reveals the real possibility of seeing what we are and embodying it in our everyday life with clarity, wisdom, and humor.
Shakti points directly to the essence of what we are and invites you to rediscover the divine Self in the core of one's own humanity. Overcoming fear and illusion is to wake up to extraordinary beauty of the moment and be the true embodiment of Consciousness itself in human form. She has been sharing a message of awakening to Life since 2003 with seminars and retreats hold mainly in Italy and Europe. www.shakticaterinamaggi.com
San Martin
Being Divine, Becoming Human , Shakti Caterina Maggi
Life is the embodiment of Consciousness. Therefore, everything we experience reflects our knowledge or ignorance of our true nature. Awakening is concretely manifested in and as our everyday life. In this integration, traditionally called “enlightenment”, Emptiness is expressed in form without being filtered through a sense of separate self. The ego-based mind should not take this as a goal of perfection, but rather as the impossible and precious meeting of that which is already perfect with the apparent limitations of space, time, matter, error, and death. God becomes human while remaining Divine. The unmanifested Divine journeys through the miracle of the manifested, living experience.
As T. S. Elliot put it, “We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
The “we” to which he refers is the Divine itself. There are not many souls looking for God, but one Divine Consciousness awakening to itself through all forms, and in doing so, playing in the polarities of life - death and birth, error and wisdom, happiness and suffering. The Divine exploration of embodied life is not a descent or a fall, but rather a blossoming of unmanifest Emptiness into greater Fullness. Becoming human is therefore the sublime participation in the impulse of the Divine to become a Living Reality.
Hayes Ballroom
Fully Human, Fully Divine: Experiential Group Meditation, Shakti Caterina Maggi
Join us for this experiential group meditation. Through the naked, unfiltered perception of each other, we will merge into Oneness of Being. In this intimacy, we can truly meet as fully human, fully divine.
Edenvale
Experiential: Guided Meditation
Berryessa
The Human Voice as Energy
Like a primordial sound, the voice connects us with our true energetic and emotional nature. It becomes a link with our spiritual life by revealing deeper aspects of the self and the spirit world. With the gentle guidance of Silvia Nakkach - renowned internationally as a master musician with a voice that transports the listeners into the heart of devotion – you will experience freeing your voice as a contemplative journey, through a soundscape of shamanic chants, divine melodies, vocal purification, and deep listening practices that reveal the nuances of a voice that feels opened like never before; In this vocal meditation-like states, there is only breath, attention, and the ecstatic magic of tone. Enhancing the sensibility of the subtle in the mind and the body, what we call singing becomes a doorway into inner silence where we are one with pure vibration. The heart is open, the voice is open, the hands are open, the eyes are softly closed—and we experience a kind of spiritual autonomy equal to unconditional love. Connecting the dots between sound healing, science, spirituality, and the wisdom tradition of Nada Yoga, this is a rare occasion to experience the healing potential of the voice with an innovative approach developed by a vocal artist who is also a longtime Buddhist practitioner. Recommended reading: Silvia Nakkach, Free Your Voice (Sound True).
Hayes Ballroom
PL1. The Mystery of Being Human
Hayes Ballroom
Opening Concert - The Mystery of Listening
Merging technology with shamanic and multilayer sources of light, sound, and the voice, the audience is invited to take a musical journey to the land of tone magic.
Edenvale
Chris Fields in Conversation with Sir Roger Penrose
The Nature of Creativity: from Cosmology to Consciousness
San Juan Bautista
Psycho-Spiritual Model of Reality as Enunciated by Ramana Maharishi and its Potential for Healing, Siva Kumar
Carl Jung, the celebrated psychologist described Ramana Maharishi as the whitest spot in the white space of spirituality! Mahatma Gandhi,the celebrated peace activist and the father of the Indian national movement for independence held this man attired in a simple white
cod-piece in high esteem often sending his own followers for
recuperation and rejuvenation. Paul Brunton, the celebrated author of
“A Search in Secret India” describes vividly his own experience of the
highest possible attainment for an embodied human being in the
presence of this Master and in a way heralded the ‘Look East’ habit of
the West for spiritual succour.
What indeed was the X - factor that this person possessed that
attracted thousands of people from across the world. In his time, we
could see how individual householders, sorrow-laden young widows,
political activists, outstanding poets, national leaders,
international authors and accomplished writers made a beeline to his
hermitage in the southern corner of the Indian peninsula. Those on
the verge of giving up on life discovered new meaning in his presence
and left healed for a lifetime. In this talk, I shall be attempting
to explore the dimension of reality enunciated and practically
demonstrated by Ramana Maharishi, having experienced in my own way the
salient feature of this teaching over the past two and a half decades.
He lent a new meaning to all faiths, Christians, Muslims and of course
native Hindus. Never demanded anything from anybody and vehemently
discouraged anyone to change the nomenclature encouraging each to rise
upto the higher, and according to the Sage, certainly the highest dimension.
All good accrues spontaneously from here. Come, let us explore by using
this mirror to look at ourselves.
Sky Nelson-Isaacs is a theoretical physicist, speaker, musician and author of the new book “Living in Flow: The Science of Synchronicity and How Your Choices Shape Your World.” He has developed a cutting edge scientific approach to flow and synchronicity which is current and relevant for the modern world. He offers a Living in Flow Video Series and MasterClass to help you neutralize your fear, find your power to make change, and reach your next level of capacity. He has a masters degree in physics from San Francisco State University, with a thesis in string theory, and a BS in physics from UC Berkeley. Nelson-Isaacs was a student of the Yogic master Sri Swami Satchidananda from a young age, and connects synchronicity, physics, and real life using research and original ideas. An educator with nine years of classroom experience, Nelson-Isaacs is also an award-winning songwriter and performer. His website is www.LivingInFlowBook.com.
Madrone
The Mystery of Meaningful Action: An Equation for Synchronicity, Sky Nelson-Isaacs
Previous work has proposed a process called "meaningful history selection" which defines "meaningful outcomes" and predicts meaningful coincidence, or Jung's "synchronicity," using the image of a branching apple tree. Recent progress will be presented which provides an equation to calculate the statistics of synchronicity, based upon fundamental physics. A synchronicity is an event which is meaningfully related to future outcomes and becomes statistically more likely based upon the current actions we take. The connection between our current actions and the future outcomes is based on the notion of qualitative experience, or qualia. When a conscious being anticipates a future qualitative experience, future branches of the tree of possibilities are preferentially selected which contain that qualitative experience. A synchronicity (or at least a particular type of synchronicity) is a causally improbable event that become more probable because of its causal relationship with a future anticipated qualitative experience, and one can calculate this change in probability using the equation presented. This research is supported by the Federico and Elvia Faggin Foundation.
Stephen LaBerge is the first scientist to empirically prove the existence of the phenomena of lucid dreaming. His work has developed this technique into a powerful tool for studying mind-body relationships in the dream state and he has demonstrated the considerable potential for lucid dreaming in the fields of psychotherapy and psychosomatic medicine. His book on the subject, Lucid Dreaming, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming and his more academic Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain have received enormous popular interest. He is the founder of The Lucidity Institute, an organization that promotes research into lucid dreaming, as well as running courses for the general public on how to achieve a lucid dream.
Monterey
Exploring Consciousness: Dreaming and Awakening
Our dream experiences seem so real to our sleeping minds that it is usually only after we awaken that we recognize our dreams as the mental experiences they are. Happily, there is an important exception: sometimes while dreaming, we become conscious that we are dreaming. This remarkable state of consciousness is referred to as “lucid dreaming” and is learnable and rewarding. Scientific research has proven the objective reality of lucid dreams, and has led to the development of new methods of inducing them. I will provide a brief overview of lucid dreaming, touching on techniques and technology for achieving lucid dreaming; a model of dreaming and waking consciousness; scientific research on mind-body relationships during REM sleep; and several applications of lucid dreaming — exploring consciousness, enhancing creativity, personal development and self-integration, dream yoga, and transcendent experience.Of the many applications and implications of lucid dreaming, the one of greatest, deepest relevance to SaND-folk is its potential to stimulate spiritual awakening. Implicit in lucid dreaming is the knowledge that one is dreaming, which is to say, that one is not awake. Yet this is the paradox: as the beginning of wisdom is “to know that one knows nothing,” so too, the beginning of awakening is to know that one is not awake. If we suppose we already are awake, as we do in both the dreams we call “false awakenings” and also those we do not call dreams at all, but presumptively term “waking life,” how can we even frame the possibility of waking up? We already (believe) we are. Yet as both ancient Eastern spiritual teachings and recent Western psychological science agree, much of ordinary life is lived in such an automatic unconscious manner, that to say that most of us somnambulate through life seems little exaggeration. In the words of Bahauddin Naqshband (d. 1388) “Here we are all of us in a dream caravan. A caravan, but a dream. A dream, but a caravan. And we know which are the dreams. Therein lies the hope.”
Hayes Ballroom
PL3. Being Human
Hayes Ballroom
Exploring Consciousness: Dreaming And Awakening, Stephen LaBerge
Our dream experiences seem so real to our sleeping minds that it is usually only after we awaken that we recognize our dreams as the mental experiences they are. Happily, there is an important exception: sometimes while dreaming, we become conscious that we are dreaming. This remarkable state of consciousness is referred to as “lucid dreaming” and is learnable and rewarding. Scientific research has proven the objective reality of lucid dreams, and has led to the development of new methods of inducing them. I will provide a brief overview of lucid dreaming, touching on techniques and technology for achieving lucid dreaming; a model of dreaming and waking consciousness; scientific research on mind-body relationships during REM sleep; and several applications of lucid dreaming — exploring consciousness, enhancing creativity, personal development and self-integration, dream yoga, and transcendent experience.
Of the many applications and implications of lucid dreaming, the one of greatest, deepest relevance to SAND-folk is its potential to stimulate spiritual awakening. Implicit in lucid dreaming is the knowledge that one is dreaming, which is to say, that one is not awake. Yet this is the paradox: as the beginning of wisdom is “to know that one knows nothing,” so too, the beginning of awakening is to know that one is not awake. If we suppose we already are awake, as we do in both the dreams we call “false awakenings” and also those we do not call dreams at all, but presumptively term “waking life,” how can we even frame the possibility of waking up? We already (believe) we are. Yet as both ancient Eastern spiritual teachings and recent Western psychological science agree, much of ordinary life is lived in such an automatic unconscious manner, that to say that most of us somnambulate through life seems little exaggeration. In the words of Bahauddin Naqshband (d. 1388) “Here we are all of us in a dream caravan. A caravan, but a dream. A dream, but a caravan. And we know which are the dreams. Therein lies the hope.”
Edenvale
Dreaming and Awakening - A Conversation, Stephen LaBerge
Steve travels internationally teaching somatic practices, meditation, yoga, as well as leading explorations in contemplative, mystic, and relational realms. Known for his direct, grounded approach and his dedication to first-hand research he has extensive experience in elite athletic performance, contemplative and spiritual disciplines, the arts, extreme outdoor survival, and human behaviour. In addition to private client work and international public workshops, Steve has recently released a DVD/download of his movement approach called the Movement Koan® Method, a fusion of joint-nourishing movement and body-based mindfulness. Steve's current private clients range from pioneering entrepreneur CEO's and multi-billion dollar fund managers to multiple Grammy-winning musical artists and Oscar-winning actors. www.guruviking.com
Guadalupe
The Embodied Path to Intimacy
Intimacy starts with our connection to ourselves, via our feeling body. Our bodily genius holds the secrets of intimate perception and deep connection. As we become more sensitive to the signals of our body we become more aware of others and true connections can begin. From here there are endless means of artfully deepening and enlivening these connections through communication, touch, and gaze. In this interactive class we will engage in a series of practices to sensitize and open both body and heart, resulting in greater feeling capacity and sensitivity towards yourself and others. From there we will explore ways to deepen into intimacy and dive into the mysteries of erotic friction by engaging with the full spectrum of energetic offerings and touch, from the sublime light to the mysterious dark.
Guadalupe
Experiential: Radical Intimacy and the Play of the Erotic, Michaela Boehm; Steve James
Whether you would like to start a new intimate relationship or want to deepen passion with your partner, the principles of Intimacy and Erotic Friction — the spark that keeps passion alive — are always available to deepen your experience.
The erotic play of masculine and feminine, springing from a radical intimacy with life itself, is a challenging and delightful realm of inquiry. We will explore the deep principles of embodiment, uncover and work with personal blocks to expansion and contraction, engage in practical exercises, dialogue, and learning to widen both heart space and the ability to embody as energy or thrust.
In this experiential session you will be shown the building blocks, practices, and disciplines of creating deeper relational and erotic connections in your life.
Stuart R. Hameroff, MD Professor Emeritus, Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychology Director, Center for Consciousness Studies The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona Dr. Hameroff's research for 35 years has involved consciousness—how the pinkish gray meat between our ears produces the richness of experiential awareness. Studying anesthetic gas mechanisms, he focused on how quantum effects control protein conformational dynamics. Following an interest which began in medical school in the computational capacity of microtubules inside neurons, Dr. Hameroff teamed up with the eminent British physicist Sir Roger Penrose in the early 90s to develop a highly controversial theory of consciousness called Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR). Dr. Hameroff began the international, interdisciplinary conferences on consciousness (Toward a Science of Consciousness) as Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. He has published five books and well over 100 research articles, and appeared in the film What the Bleep do we know!!?? www.quantumconsciousness.org
Hayes Ballroom
'Ripples in reality' - Consciousness as a process in the fine-scale structure of the universe, Stuart Hameroff MD
Suzy is an artist, certified yoga instructor, energy healing practitioner, and trauma release practitioner. She facilitates creative process workshops that inspire to embrace one’s creative abilities. Suzy writes for yogapedia.com
and is the founder of Bīja Healing Sanctuary in Roccamassima, Italy and the creator of ArtKeyTypes, a therapeutic painting process. She holds a Ph.D from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Her dissertation is entitled: The States of Presence and Insight in the Painting Process.
San Jose
Experiential: Yoga
We will practice yoga by tuning into our physical, emotional, and subtle bodies respectively, while trying to tune into the connection between all three and noticing any differences that arise in the moments. I will verbally guide you through the nuances of such inquiry as you flow mindfully on your mat.
Dr. Syamala D Hari is a mathematical physicist, computer scientist, system engineer, and consciousness researcher. Has a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics and MS in computer science and a dozen publications in the Journal of Mathematical Physics and Nuovo Cimento. She was a system engineer in telecommunications R&D for 25 years and retired from Lucent Technologies (formerly called bell Laboratories) as a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff. Being interested in intelligence aspects in our brains which cannot be simulated in a computer, Organized some IEEE SMC meetings on the subject and made presentations herself. She found that Vedantic concepts of matter and mind are compatible with quantum physics and neuroscience, and applicable to solving the Chalmers’s “hard problem” of consciousness. After retirement, she continued her research in consciousness and published over twenty articles on this topic in journals including: https://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/. Spoke at conferences including SAND 2015and 2016, SCS Conference at Yale University 2017, International Congress of Vedanta (2017) at University of Massachusetts (Center for Indic Studies), Sadhu Sanga conferences in 2014, 2017.
Madrone
How Quantum Mechanics Blurs the Objectivity Subjectivity Divide, Syamala Hari
If we call the content of all our conscious experience as information, we may say that matter is accessible to senses and that information is not. This inaccessibility is implied when we say that our experiences are all subjective. A quantum particle (QP) is not directly accessible to senses and needs to be 'observed' in a suitably designed measurement experiment. Even in such an experiment, what we actually observe is the ‘classical’ measuring device. The position and other 'observable' properties of a QP are only inferred from the devices’ readings. Quantum mechanics tells us that QPs are packets of de Broglie's phase waves, each of which is supposed to have a speed greater than that of light. Clearly, the phase wave is a mathematical abstraction, an idea in physicists' minds and unphysical. It cannot be observed like light or heard like sound. But at the same time, the phase wave’s wavelength can be measured in a suitably designed experiment. So, we may say that the de Broglie's phase wave is ‘objective information’! Although electromagnetic waves different from light such as X-rays cannot also be directly perceived but are detected only by their effects on matter, such effects can be predicted deterministically. De Broglie waves on the other hand, are the reason for the nondeterministic behavior of quantum matter. Since the measuring device, and in general, ‘classical’ matter is supposed to be made of numerous QPs, all matter is made of ‘objective information’ according to quantum mechanics. We will analyze the idea of ‘objective information’ in this presentation.
Morgan Hill
Enacting Wholeness Amidst Fragmentation: A New Republic of the Heart, Terry Patten
Wholeness is the nature of reality; and yet human civilization seems to be shaken by a crisis of fragmentation. We are living amidst a multidimensional, radical revolution, one fraught with dangers but also offering nearly inconceivable opportunities. How, in practical, personal terms, can wholeness reassert itself through us? We can each become an active agent of love, and of the transformation of human civilization which is necessary to continued human survival. While today's world crises appear virtually insoluble, they also create openings for rapid evolution, as have past periods of acute challenge.
We will stay present to two inseparable aspects of reality our dynamic but fractured and threatened world, and its underlying unity and wholeness. Only by honoring both simultaneously can we enact sustainable changes in ourselves, our communities, our body politic, and our planetary life-support system. The mission of the awakened practitioner and that of the activist are not-two. Each of us is called to express our best and most beneficent capacities, not just personally but mutually.
Terry Patten's major new book, A New Republic of the Heart provides a comprehensive understanding and inspiring vision for the inner work that can lead to the whole-system change necessary to heal the most intractable problems of our time: environmental, economic, political, cultural, and spiritual.
We will consider how to have "conversations that matter" and how to co-create communities of practice, enterprises, and forms of dialogue can enact wholeness more broadly.
We thus discover that a "new republic of the heart" is already coming into being, invisibly and quietly, as more and more of us organically respond to our evolutionary imperative. Wholeness is not abstract. It has agency, and in response to fragmentation, through you and me, it is beginning to reassert itself.
Thomas Hübl, PhD, is a renowned teacher, author, and international facilitator who works within the complexity of systems and cultural change, integrating the core insights of the great wisdom traditions and mysticism with the discoveries of science. Since the early 2000s, he has led large-scale events and courses on the healing of collective trauma, with a special focus on the shared history of Israelis and Germans, and facilitated healing and dialogue around racism, oppression, colonialism, and genocide.He is the author of Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World and Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds. He has served as an advisor and guest faculty for universities and organizations and is currently a visiting scholar at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University.
Hayes Ballroom
PL6. Collective Initiations
Hayes Ballroom
Collective Trauma: the Hidden Obstacle to Our Evolution, Thomas Huebl
The recognition and treatment of buried trauma within individuals is at the leading edge of psychotherapy today. The recent discovery that trauma can have epigenetic effects that are passed down through generations is at the leading edge of biological research. While we are gaining a greater understanding of how trauma can affect the health of individuals, we have not yet understood the impact of collective trauma. Could it be that a hidden layer of collective trauma underlies many of the seemingly intractable social, economic, and even environmental issues humanity faces today?
On a spiritual level, it is crucial that we understand the implications of trauma and collective trauma in our lives order to create a spiritual path that is embodied and grounded and is not used to bypass our difficulties. Only by bringing our spiritual practice into relationship with the darkest parts of our history can we break free of repetitive patterns and open the door to new possibilities.
Edenvale
Conversation: Breaking the Cycle of Collective Trauma, Thomas Huebl
While we are gaining a greater understanding of the psychological and biological effects of trauma on the health of individuals, we have not yet fully understood the impact of trauma on our collective wellbeing. Could it be that a hidden layer of collective trauma underlies many of the seemingly intractable social, economic, and even environmental issues humanity faces today? How can we uncover the traumas embedded in our social body and work together to heal those wounds?
Through guided meditation and dialogue, Thomas Hübl will lead us to inquire into the collective trauma layer that is a part of our being, and become aware of its effects in our own lives and in our society. We will explore how spiritual practice can either be a way to bypass our personal and collective traumas, or a powerful ally when brought into relationship with the darkest parts of our shared human history. Together we will activate the potential to heal our collective nervous system, break free of repetitive patterns, and transform the trajectory of humanity’s future.
Hayes Ballroom
PL7. Healing Trauma as a Spiritual Path: Individual and Collective Dimensions
A conversation with Thomas Huebl and Peter Levine
Edenvale
Panel: Enhancing Human Wellbeing through Nondual Awareness, Deepak Chopra; Judith Blackstone; Zoran Josipovic; Paul Mills; Tiffany Barsotti
The current times seem to be defined by the great promise of technology for human enhancement. Yet the source of capacity to optimize our experience and wellbeing is already present within all of us as the innermost essence of nondual awareness. This panel will present contemporary methods for realizing nondual awareness and the scientific research on its effects on wellbeing.
Speaker. Judith Blackstone, PhD, has been a Realization Process teacher and a psychotherapist in private practice for four decades. She is author of Belonging Here, The Enlightenment Process, The Intimate Life, The Empathic Ground and the upcoming Trauma and the Unbound Body.
Speaker. Tiffany Barsotti, M.Th., C.Ht., MCPLT, is a spiritual, medical intuition counselor and teacher in private practice at HEAL and THRIVE in Encinitas, California. With her spiritual and intuitive guidance, she serves as an integrative practitioner working alongside physicians and other allied health professionals.
Speaker. Zoran Josipovic, PhD, is a research associate at New York University Langone Medical Center, and adjunct assistant professor for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology, New York University. With his wife, Judith Blackstone, he founded the Nonduality Institute, where he is the principal science investigator.
Speaker & Session Chair. Paul J. Mills, PhD, is a Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health, and Director of the Center of Excellence for Research and Training in Integrative Health at the University of California, San Diego. He is currently serving as Director of Research for the Chopra Foundation. He has expertise in Integrative Medicine and psychoneuroimmune processes in wellness and disease, publishing extensively on these topics.
Discussant. Deepak Chopra, MD, is a world-renowned pioneer in mind-body medicine and personal transformation, and Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He has authored more than 80 books, published in more than 43 languages, including 22 New York Times best sellers.
Madrone
Traditional Buddhist Tools to Support a Modern Non-Dual Path, Tina Rasmussen
The debate of whether awakening is sudden and without cause, or progressive and supported by practices, has raged for millennia. Strong evidence exists for both sides of the argument. The do nothing side points to the ever-present Ground that we are, which needs no practice of any kind to Be and to be realized. The practice diligently�ide points to the thousands of years of scientific testing (in places like Tibet) that spiritual practices (in this case Buddhist) have refined and honed, to increase the likelihood of awakening. Why choose? Both sides are true, if we embrace a both/and perspective rather than an either/or perspective. In particular, the Tibetan Buddhist practice of dzogchen, with the support of a concentrated mindstream, have much to offer the modern non-dual practitioner in the recognition and stabilization of non-dual realization as part of our human experience. This session provides participants a brief overview of the practice elements in which non-dual realization can be actively cultivated, in addition to the possibility of non-duality being realized spontaneously. Non-dual practitioners curious about what has made Tibetan Buddhism endure throughout the ages, can find in this session some answers that highlight the rich wisdom and usefulness of these ancient practices, even (and maybe especially) in this modern age. This session will also include neuroscience research highlighting the scientifically measurable benefits that Buddhist meditation has on not only the software of our personality conditioning, but the hardware of the grey matter of the brain. These benefits of meditation not only support realization of Reality, but provide health, relationship, and anti-aging advantages that have been discovered through neuroscience to support a modern human life.
Hayes Ballroom
PL1. The Mystery of Being Human
Hayes Ballroom
Opening Concert - The Mystery of Listening
Merging technology with shamanic and multilayer sources of light, sound, and the voice, the audience is invited to take a musical journey to the land of tone magic.
Monterey Room
Panel: Embracing Yin; Awakening in the Body, Vanessa Scotto; Brooke Thomas; Dorothy Hunt; Jeannie Zandi; Kiran Trace
There is an ever expanding conversation these days within nondual circles about embodiment as a maturational process in awakening, yet there is little talk about how awakening is actually integrated within our human body. Could it be that freedom from suffering is not about transcending form, but rather, becoming more fully present with the field of experience within the body? How does the health and tone of the nervous system correlate with awakening if at all? How can we meet the arising energies, emotions, conditioning and ego structure that are implicit to having a human form? In traditions that have historically pointed to the experience of the truth that lies beyond form, how to we begin to include the physical body in the conversation of awakening?
In this panel discussion with teachers Jeannie Zandi, Kiran Trace, Dorothy Hunt we will explore themes such as how to be present in the body, the role the body may play in awakening to truth as well as the impact awakening may have on the body, how we can have a direct experience of the body without concept or objectification, the intelligence and conditioning that lies within the body, the relationships between trauma, the body and awakening, the feminine movement of embodiment and what it means to live a fully human existence within physical form once you’ve awakened from the dream of separation.
Vera de Chalambert, MTS, is a spiritual storyteller and scholar of comparative religion. Vera speaks and writes about spiritual culture, mindfulness and the emergence of the Feminine. Vera holds a Master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School and has mined for her soul at the Barbara Brennan School of Healing and Jason Shulman’s Institute for Nondual Healing and Awakening. Her work explores the meeting place of creativity, psychology and spirituality. She is deeply influenced by Buddhist and Kabbalistic lineages and is a lover of the world’s great wisdom traditions. She offers spiritual direction and works with people in times of dissolution, transition and transformation when the old certainties shatter and we are called into the fires of the Real. This is also what she sees happening in our culture at large. Learn more about Vera's work at www.healingawakening.com
San Juan Bautista
Wisdom of Brokenness : Nonduality and the Feminine Path, Vera de Chalambert
Nothing, the Jewish mystics tell us, is as whole as a broken heart. The world breaks our hearts wide open; and it is this openness itself that mends us, re-members us, makes us whole. This presentation will explore the theme of brokenness through the lens of comparative religion and delve into the paradox of divine brokenness through teachings from various spiritual traditions. It will focus on the apophatic and kenotic nature of feminine wisdom, which sees brokenness and emptiness not as negativities, but as intimacy with the very nature of Reality. We will explore sacred narratives of brokenness from the Jewish, Christian, Hindu and Buddhist cosmologies, including the great primordial shattering of divine vessels in Lurianic Kabballah, the story of the Hindu Goddess of Brokenness, as well as the theological implications of Christological wounds, and of the Buddhist Perfection of Wisdom Sutra from which the notion of Bodhisattva rises.
That things will fall apart in our lives, despite our greatest efforts is as inevitable as breath. Indeed, no matter how spiritual, how awake we might be, no matter how clear our intention, or good our karma, there is only one certainty: we will all without exception experience loss, heartbreak and disappointment of a regular human life. Whether it is death, divorce, disease or failure that shakes up our world and makes us tremble, whether it is a broken dream or a broken bone that brings us to our knees, brokenness is an essential part of the human experience and a jewel of the spiritual process. Our brokenness is not a mistake, but an invitation to give up on our projects of fixing ourselves, fixing reality. Instead it kindly points us in the direction of the Divine, it too shattered, fragmented, broken open in its radical wholeness and dwelling among Her broke, broken, broken hearted likeness.
Hayes Ballroom
Panel - Awakening to the Divine Feminine, Mirabai Starr; Vera de Chalambert; Francis Bennett; Zhen Dao; Nadeshwari Joythimayananda
Today’s modern society can best be described as a paradox:. On the one hand there seems to be a collective awakening of human consciousness that is creating movement towards greater clarity, creativity, compassion, wellness, communion with nature and a sincere respect for spiritual, ethnic and gender diversity.
On the other hand, our world is grappling with the backlash of social pariahs like racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, class inequalities and religious intolerance, often leading to violence; unbridled materialism and even despair.
As the outdated patriarchal structures rise up in backlash to their inevitable downfall, the need for a more sustainable world paradigm couldn’t be greater. It’s clear that now is the time for balance and integration to be restored to the planet. But how do we bring balance to what sometimes seems like two polar opposite extremes?
Perhaps balance can only be restored by a collective awakening of the Divine Feminine in our society so that women and men can reconnect to a more integrated idea of Source/God/Life and step into a more nurturing relationships with themselves, their communities and the planet.
This panel will be having a conversation on how we can all awaken this healing and nurturing inner feminine energy into our everyday lives and how such an awakening might effect our society and our world..
They will be sharing their own unique perspectives on this topic based on the awakening to the Divine Feminine that has unfolded in their own lives personally and professionally.
After a conventional upbringing in England (although she did work for the Beatles at Apple Records!), Vivienne came to the San Francisco Bay Area at age 27 and became an instant full-on activist.
She co-founded two non-profit organizations and produced 5 documentaries about the nuclear arms race and peace, winning 25 film awards, including an Academy Award. She has addressed the U.S. Senate, the British Parliament and the U.N. and many international symposiums. She was awarded an Honorary Ph.D. from Ball State University.
In the 1990s, Vivienne contracted Lyme disease and by 2005 she could no longer work.
In 2008, she was introduced to Wisdom Healing Qigong and studied with Master Mingtong Gu. Qigong cured her of Lyme as well as the effects of early childhood trauma.
Vivienne is known for her ability to activate a tangible unified qifield, experienced as deep relaxation and unconditional love. With compassion and a gift for healing, she guides us back to our true nature and infinite potential.
She is a Senior Teacher with Mingtong, teaching at his retreats and also in Bolinas, Ca.
Her website is embodyinglove.us
San Jose
Embodying Infinite Love: Waking Up through Movement & Visualization
The form of qigong I teach was created in 1989 by a Chinese man who was recognized as a genius at a young age. He studied with 19 Grandmasters, became a doctor of Chinese and Western medicine, and was steeped in Daoism, Buddhism, Confusionism and Quantum Physics. All types of illness have been documented as being healed using these practices, including my own 20-year struggle with Lyme disease.And the practices have a profound effect on our ego identity. Having experiences of opening to the timeless infinite source of all existence gradually (or not so gradually) awakens us out of the illusory separate self. The limiting patterns of belief about self and world dissolve on the energetic level. Empty of old programming, our essence is revealed—a deep inner joy and peace, independent of outer circumstances. The experience is being infinite Love embodied. In this session, we will have the opportunity to experience this transformation together as I guide us through moving meditations. The standing practices can be modified or done sitting or lying down, while still following the visualizations. Beginners and experienced practitioners most welcome. Your unlimited potential is awaiting activation!
Madrone
Reveal and Heal Hidden Trauma with Medical Intuition, Wendie Colter
"Recent advances in the field of mind/body medicine suggest the importance of including intuition when treating clients, based on theory and empirical research from traumatology, psychoneuroimmunology, spiritual psychology, and nursing theory, among others. [Marks-Tarlow, 2012; Hassani-Abdi, 2016; Johansson-Palmqvist-Ronnenberg, 2017].
This presentation aligns with the conference theme of ""The Mystery of Being Human,"" and the topic of Trauma, in relation to uncovering the hidden mysteries of the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual/energetic impacts of trauma on the human experience. Current research and case studies will be presented and discussed.
Medical Intuition is defined as a system of expanded perception gained through the development of the human sense of intuition. It focuses on a holistic approach to health and wellness with the use of visualization skills and intuitive scanning to obtain information from the body's physical systems and biofield. It is also designed to address the energetic influence of thoughts, beliefs and emotions, and how they affect the health and well-being of the client.
As the body of literature on intuition grows, the healthcare field can be broadened to include the practical use of Medical Intuition to assist in alleviating the long-term effects of trauma, including PTSD and early life experiences. It is designed to reveal the origins and details of trauma events, including age and life circumstances, unconscious decisions and potential future effects that may correspond to a client's present state of illness, imbalance or disease. This method is learnable and applicable to any clinical setting.
Medical Intuition offers a new vision for personalized healthcare, including insights for long-term wellness. Clients often report profound perceptions of ""finding the missing pieces,"" and a path to increased compliance and recovery in their healing journey."
Monterey Room
Panel: Mud to Lotus: Opening the Masculine Heart, Kent Welsh; Charles Eisenstein; Will Keepin; Jeannie Zandi
The work before us, highlighted by the #metoo movement, is plain: how do we meet the masculine shadow, and support men in reclaiming and opening their hearts? Join Kent Welsh of Open Circle and his panelists who will explore the unique potential and challenges for men opening their hearts and standing up to face the individual and cultural masculine shadow.
San Juan Bautista
One Human Heart Awakening - the Science and Spirituality of Humanity Evolving, Will Pye
Exploring the intersection of individual awakening with humanity evolving through response to the many challenges we face into collective flourishing.
Utilizing the lens of one holographic reality, One Unitive Consciousness we will play with the possibility and experience of realizing One Human Being, One Heart Awakening. Through this we will see and enjoy how the integration and embodiment of Truth in each of us is essential to the co-creation of a flourishing humanity globally.
We will enjoy the 'Unitive Breath One Grateful Heart' meditation to give the direct experience of the ideas outlined in the presentation.
Discover the power of our full surrender to being lived by Love. Explore and experience the beautiful qualities of being a 'New Earth Ninja', awake, empowered and inspired to serve the whole.
Zhenevere Sophia Dao is the founder of the philosophy of Post-Daoism and the MogaDao practice tradition. A teacher and innovator of “mythosomatic” practices for nearly 30 years, she is a poet and writer on a wide variety of spiritual, philosophical, and cultural subjects. She was a Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University, and has published fiction with Penguin Books. She lives in a small cabin deep in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, and in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she teaches immersions in MogaDao’s Ethea, or themes of care and practice, at the MogaDao Institute. She is also the founding director, scriptwriter, and choreographer of the SACRA Theater Company, and the founding director of the trans-activist organization, The Transgender Necessity.
Guadalupe
The Erotic Basis of Being Human and SACRA: Immanence Theater
Eros is fading from our lives: our sensitivity, our relationship to each other, to the earth, to birth and death, our embodied longing: these qualities are diminishing in the wake of tremendous alienating forces—and yet eros is the foundation of being itself. Eros includes but also transcends the sexual; it is the call to be; to exist; to become; to emerge; to depend; to transform; to unveil; to fulfill; to cultivate uncompromisingly authentic relations; to need; and to sacrifice. The Erotic Basis of Being program consists of practices and exercises that employ original embodied Daoist movement arts seen through a “Western” mythopoetic and archetypal lens. Master Zhenzan Dao leads students through an exhilarating repertoire of sensitivity and enlivening training—both physical and psychospiritual—based on many of the MogaDao disciplines. This enlivening, which is both individual and communal, is then brought into the extraordinarily creative work space of the SACRA:Immanence Theater company exercises. SACRA is not conventional theater; there are no “roles” to play, only selves to be revealed. Language and body are seamlessly interpenetrated in the experiments. SACRA is a penetrating journey into the authentic, the living experience of the irrepressible life force as it searches, through self-transcendence and group inter-dependence, for the sacred. Although all manner of movement modalities are employed in this work, this is an all-bodies workshop and no particular experience or training history is necessary.
Hayes Ballroom
PL1. The Mystery of Being Human
Hayes Ballroom
Music of the Spheres
This performance theater piece, with audience co-creation, establishes the atmosphere of human mutual dependency, what Zhen Dao calls the "eros bond" of the ecology of need, vulnerability, honesty, and emotional bravery that makes all of life, and certainly learning, possible. A choreography and choir are created literally on-the-spot, and the themes of this work that are foundational, and the ones that emerge inside its beauty, are—even in this short space of time—the themes that make our lives ultimately significant, which is to say profoundly human and spiritualized. THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES is, in short, a theatrical sanctum of invocation to our profoundest suggestibility.
Hayes Ballroom
PL3. Being Human
Hayes Ballroom
Reclaiming Emotion: How Spiritual Consumerism and Scientific Materialism are Damaging our Faith in the Cycles of Life, Zhen Dao
Emotion moves us, changes us, visits us and seems to come from “nowhere” and sometimes to disturb what we thought was our “equanimity,” our calm, our sense of control over our lives. In the 21stcentury, our lives seem more out of control than ever; we feel that we are not so much living as being lived by forces outside of ourselves. We feel programmed from without, distracted constantly against our inmost instincts, and prey to massive forces—sociopolitical, consumerist, technological—that we cannot control. Therefore we have begun to suspect emotion, and to treat it as something that we must control; we feel that emotion is “bad” for us, something that is deterring us from our right and prescribed course, from our rewards. To Zhen Dao this represents nothing less than a tragic loss of faith in being itself. For emotions—like Daoist conceptions of 5 Element Theory—have patterns which fulfill themselves through faith. Zhen Dao will talk about the spiritual purpose of emotion, in particular the so-called “negative emotions,” for no wind, no weather, no authentic tempest in the human soul can be wrong. Rather, it must be seen (and felt) all the way through to its magnificence, that is to say its value and significance for a whole life—and for all of being that touches and depends on that life.
Guadalupe
Archetype And Flesh: The Mythopoetics of the Body in Mogadao Qigong, Zhen Dao
There is often a perceived divide between archetype and flesh—soul and body—as if archetypes, or the forces that make up our personal and collective mythology, are merely “hosted” by the body. This perception persists even after apparent renaissances in mind
body awareness since the middle of the 20th century. MogaDao Qigong, founded by Zhen Dao, is an original tradition of qigong that ensouls the body. “Ensouling the body” means that in MogaDao Qigong a practitioner does not just work with the body’s organs as vessels of functionality, but as talismanic forces of primordial harmony. In MogaDao Qigong, the body is a locus of original power, a totem that is liberated into its primordiality through the formal and graceful movements of MogaDao Qigong. No experience is necessary. All bodies and all health conditions are welcome.
Hayes Ballroom
Panel - Awakening to the Divine Feminine, Mirabai Starr; Vera de Chalambert; Francis Bennett; Zhen Dao; Nadeshwari Joythimayananda
Today’s modern society can best be described as a paradox:. On the one hand there seems to be a collective awakening of human consciousness that is creating movement towards greater clarity, creativity, compassion, wellness, communion with nature and a sincere respect for spiritual, ethnic and gender diversity.
On the other hand, our world is grappling with the backlash of social pariahs like racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, class inequalities and religious intolerance, often leading to violence; unbridled materialism and even despair.
As the outdated patriarchal structures rise up in backlash to their inevitable downfall, the need for a more sustainable world paradigm couldn’t be greater. It’s clear that now is the time for balance and integration to be restored to the planet. But how do we bring balance to what sometimes seems like two polar opposite extremes?
Perhaps balance can only be restored by a collective awakening of the Divine Feminine in our society so that women and men can reconnect to a more integrated idea of Source/God/Life and step into a more nurturing relationships with themselves, their communities and the planet.
This panel will be having a conversation on how we can all awaken this healing and nurturing inner feminine energy into our everyday lives and how such an awakening might effect our society and our world..
They will be sharing their own unique perspectives on this topic based on the awakening to the Divine Feminine that has unfolded in their own lives personally and professionally.
Edenvale
Panel: Enhancing Human Wellbeing through Nondual Awareness, Deepak Chopra; Judith Blackstone; Zoran Josipovic; Paul Mills; Tiffany Barsotti
The current times seem to be defined by the great promise of technology for human enhancement. Yet the source of capacity to optimize our experience and wellbeing is already present within all of us as the innermost essence of nondual awareness. This panel will present contemporary methods for realizing nondual awareness and the scientific research on its effects on wellbeing.
Speaker. Judith Blackstone, PhD, has been a Realization Process teacher and a psychotherapist in private practice for four decades. She is author of Belonging Here, The Enlightenment Process, The Intimate Life, The Empathic Ground and the upcoming Trauma and the Unbound Body.
Speaker. Tiffany Barsotti, M.Th., C.Ht., MCPLT, is a spiritual, medical intuition counselor and teacher in private practice at HEAL and THRIVE in Encinitas, California. With her spiritual and intuitive guidance, she serves as an integrative practitioner working alongside physicians and other allied health professionals.
Speaker. Zoran Josipovic, PhD, is a research associate at New York University Langone Medical Center, and adjunct assistant professor for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology, New York University. With his wife, Judith Blackstone, he founded the Nonduality Institute, where he is the principal science investigator.
Speaker & Session Chair. Paul J. Mills, PhD, is a Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health, and Director of the Center of Excellence for Research and Training in Integrative Health at the University of California, San Diego. He is currently serving as Director of Research for the Chopra Foundation. He has expertise in Integrative Medicine and psychoneuroimmune processes in wellness and disease, publishing extensively on these topics.
Discussant. Deepak Chopra, MD, is a world-renowned pioneer in mind-body medicine and personal transformation, and Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He has authored more than 80 books, published in more than 43 languages, including 22 New York Times best sellers.
Robert is a humble soul whose passion i