A.H. Almaas
Adyashanti
Jean Houston
Brian Swimme
Teresa Mateus
Rupert Spira
Cynthia Jurs
East Forest
Lyla June Johnston
Bayo Akomolafe
David Eagleman
Lama Tsomo
Sará King
Orland Bishop
Charles Eisenstein
Francis Lucille
Thomas Hübl
Zvi Ish-Shalom
Ellen Emmet
Julie Brown Yau
Donald Hoffman
Sea Stars
Betsy Polatin
Deborah Johnson
Caverly Morgan
Zhenevere Sophia Dao
Dorothy Hunt
Michael Meade
Chris Fields
Susan Campbell
Adam Gainsburg
Chiara Baldini
Peter Russell
Alicia Dattner
Connie Buffalo
Craig Holliday
Anna-Lisa Adelberg
DJ Dragonfly
Dave Markowitz
David Ellzey
Adam Chacksfield
Arnaud Delorme
Ajaya Sommers
Gail Brenner
Barnaby Willett
David Freeman
David Gordon
Day Schildkret
Akilesh Ayyar
Ellen O'Brian
Eric Lyleson
Frank Echenhofer
Alice Langholt
Frank Heile
Gabriel Axel Montes
Garret Yount
Gia Naranjo-Rivera
Cynthia Merchant
Ian Whicher
Isa Gucciardi
Ivan Castillo
Jac O'Keeffe
James Doty
James Michael Seehof
James Munro
Paul Levy
Jeannie Zandi
Jessica Zeller
Joel Salinas
John Prendergast
Jon Smith
Craig Gundry
Juanito Pascual Trio
Jude Currivan
Julia Mossbridge
Jörn Kroll
Kabir Helminski
Katherine MacLean
Keith Salmon
Kent Welsh
Kimberly Braun
Konda Mason
Kristin Kirk
Loch Kelly
Lorraine DeLear
Lorraine Taylor
Lynn Murphy
Maja Apolonia Rodé
Maleda Gebremedhin
Geshe Dangsong Namgyal
Mariana Caplan
Marion Gilbert
Mark Forman
Mark Wolynn
Sara Aly El Sayed
Marlies Cocheret
Maurissa Afanador
Mauro Zappaterra
Maya Luna
Michaela Boehm
Mirabai Starr
Miranda Macpherson
Mona Haydar
Shakti Caterina Maggi
Pamela Wilson
Juan Acosta-Urquidi
Neil Theise
Cheryl Fraser
Russ Hudson
Nicola Amadora
Oscar Segurado
Mystic Birinder
Peta Morton
Richard Rudis
Rick Archer
Rollin McCraty
Sacra Theater Troupe
Swami Sarvapriyananda
Sean Murphy
Selene Calloni Williams
Robert Dittler
Seth Kostek
Sky Nelson-Isaacs
Prajna Ginty
Steve James
Swami Brahmananda
Candace Cave
Vivienne Verdon-Roe
Zaya Benazzo
Mark Gober
Maurizio Benazzo
Coleman Dobson
Antonia Di Francesco
Daniel Berkman
Robert John Malone
Suellen Primost
Andrea Colombu
Alexander Aris
Sean Webb
Carlos Warter
Sophie Whitney
Allison Zamani
Sonya Bibilos
Nandi Hetenyi
David Sauvage
Zeb Lancaster
Tom Murray
Celia McBride
Briana Di Mara
Helané Wahbeh
Jan Ögren
Manjari Murali
Lincoln Carr
Bill McDonald
Catherine Robertson
Jill Leigh
Katherine Bell
Robert Newton
Jenn Schuppe Botham
Kali Bliss
Newcomb Greenleaf
Michael Taft
Bonnie Greenwell
Olga Colbert
Tomas Frymann
Piper Rose
Smita Sovani
Brian Tierney
Jonas Ketterle
Robert Bengtson
Paul Wong
Keith Lowenstein
Kala Perkins
Holly Thomas
Guadalupe
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP — Sovereignty in Relating: Being Here But Not of Here
Ever feel tugged this way and that by conditioning? Like a bull with a ring in its nose, being at the mercy of our conditioned triggers creates suffering and hampers our relating—how do we free ourselves? The biblical phrase “be in the world but not of the world” implies a being who is living from a deeper reality than the commonly accepted conditioned one—showing up here but living from an embodied truth that stands sovereign and independent of history and conditioned habit.
Free the bull! Join Jeannie and friends for an experiential exploration of embodied sovereignty and its vital role in relational sanity. Embodied sovereignty is known through a grounded relationship between heaven and earth, between awareness and felt experience. Conditioning leaves our attention fused to thought, resulting in the neglect of the holy instrument of the body. Denied of ground, breath and harmonizing awareness, we let unconscious survival fear drive our actions and interactions.
Including the body in our awareness allows us to build a capacity not only to rest below the mind, but to monitor and meet rising patterns in their infancy before they embroil us in triggered exchanges. It also allows light to penetrate flesh, soothing, informing and “enlightening” the creature of the body.
This work will support participants to experience a model of the awareness-penetrated-body as friend, temple, sanctuary and holy receiver. Through teaching, guided meditation and guided partner exercises, participants will be supported to anchor the teachings in their own experience—to rest in heaven while walking on earth.
The storms and tragedies of contemporary life can be termed a spiritual crisis, in which we must awaken to a greater sense of self or else become more isolated and subject to increasing feelings of isolation and helplessness.
Because all things are ultimately interconnected, the challenges we face and the changes underway signal a genuine transformation of the world. Change can be disconcerting; yet in troubled times the inner threads of genius, imagination and wisdom become both more important and surprisingly more available.
Upavita is an old Sanskrit term for the eternal thread of golden imagination that makes each life valuable and noble from the beginning. This sacred thread of life connects the mind with the heart; it ties us to the dream of life and leads us to the purpose of our soul. While holding it, all the moments of our lives make sense; without it, all can seem accidental and pointless.
Call it dharma or the inner law of our being; call it a life dream or a spiritual calling; we are each called to awaken to the inner plotline of a story trying to unfold from within. In learning to express the mythic pattern woven within, we learn to contribute to the renewal of community as well as a restoration of nature.
What we need at this time is not a minor repair, but a major transformation of the world that can only start from the inside. Transformation at the level of the individual heart and soul generates the imagination and collective energy needed to change the conditions of the world.
San Jose
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP — The Magus, the Mystic and the One Who Lives in Nondual Reality
Since time began, visionaries have sought to understand and even live in the Larger Nondual Reality and the many unseen worlds that coexist with our physical existence. Whether as Magus, mystic, shaman or sage, the self within its own unbounded nature is in some sense identical to quantum mind and therefore has many more capacities than those operating in local consciousness. Working with these concepts- both spiritual and scientific Dr Jean Houston has enabled students to be, to do and to create in ways that are suggestive of higher levels of human accomplishment.
In this workshop, she will demonstrate ways of living in more fluid categories of space and time that allow one to experience subjective time in which a short amount of clock time is felt to be much longer and thus one is able to experience adventures, write books, finish projects, go voyaging in the seas of the unconscious, even learn or rehearse things that would normally take a much longer time to do. Similarly from the quantum perspective of the simultaneity of past, present and future we are able to change the story of minor past events until it become a realistic part of one’s memory.
But even our imagination is transcended by the Universe in its quantum, nondual aspect and we find we are no longer simply imaginative but imaginal. We are in the Quantum Holofield of Consciousness. We are no longer caught in our own habits and expectations. In certain states of consciousness, we seemingly access the blueprints, the guidance, forms and patterns of what up to now we have only imagined. What are these states? They are other than the usual conditioned states of worry, the regular fall back to old habitual thoughts and ideas and, frankly the using of modes and thoughts and feelings that no longer serve a personal evolutionary agenda. Having studied the minds of mystics, visionaries, high creatives, she found that these visionary adepts are hacking their own local reality to get beyond serial monotony of same old same old.
The Shamanic Journey is a method of accessing inner wisdom through a meditative state. It is derived from a practice done by the healers, or shamans, of indigenous shamanic cultures. It is performed to gain insight and effect healing, and has been a common practice of many indigenous cultures for thousands of years.
Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D., is an early pioneer of adapting the shamanic journey to a therapeutic practice. Her unique style of teaching the journey includes a process of inquiry that is transformative and helps students step fully into their own personal power. Counseling professionals will find this methodology useful in working with their clients.
This workshop will:
• Thoroughly ground you in a life-changing practice for spiritual inquiry that fits easily into even the busiest schedule.
• Provide tools and tips for framing questions and interpreting your journey experiences.
• Help you to know how to make the distinction between interpreting the often symbolic language of intuitive wisdom and engaging in magical thinking.
• Help you to explore and relate to unfamiliar fields of consciousness safely.
You will find this workshop especially beneficial if you:
• Seek to develop trust in yourself and your connection to your inner wisdom.
• Are eager to enhance your innate creativity or generate the momentum to get unstuck in some area of your life.
• Are ready to step into, and live the rest of your life as, your authentic best self.
• Have burning questions about who you really are and your place in the world. 3 C.E.s available.
Thus far Adam’s Open Human Heart work has grown steadily and quietly through word-of-mouth. For the first time, in this pre-conference workshop, Adam will introduce the Open Human Heart experience to a broader audience.
The Open Human Heart Experience is an immersion into the vastness of our Human Hearts to hold the entirety of our being, beyond emotions, sensations, and energy states. Knowing what’s happening has nothing to do with fully allowing what’s happening in our direct experience. Together we’ll drop out of our heads and awareness as framing our moment and discover how willing we are to authentically feel without agenda.
This workshop will:
• Introduce you to the Open Human Heart Experience
• Invite you into your own direct experience as a human being first
• Demonstrate the power and reliability of I Don’t Know
• Explain what actual Safety is and what it’s not
• Offer teachings on the real reasons why we do the things we do (and why reasons don’t matter)
• Show how healing, evolution and awakening are byproducts of essential honesty.
If you plan to register for this workshop please review and submit these Three Invitations here: https://www.soulsign.com/open-human-heart/open-human-heart-agreement/
This workshop will explore some of the key concepts and techniques in the HeartMath Institute’s Activating the Heart of Teams program. This innovative program combines leading heart-brain science with a tested skillset for real-life application so individuals can flourish, which is at the heart of harmonious and robust teams or groups of individuals in classrooms, boardrooms, families, communities and organizations.
As our world experiences dramatic change and the stress it is causing in societies, people from all cultures are looking for practical ways to expand their heart connections in their communities to affect social change through compassionate awareness and actions. When people learn how to connect more from the heart and interact more harmoniously, we can work toward creating the kind of world in which we all want to live—one of deeper caring, kindness, connection and cooperation.
This workshop will provide the science and practical skills for moving from discord to harmony, raising personal vibration, creating flow in non-flowing situations, and how we can make more meaningful connections with others. An important aspect of the program is the new group coherence technology that provides real-time feedback of a group’s collective heart coherence level.
In this workshop you will learn skills that lead to:
• Increased positive energy and bonding.
• More appreciation, care, kindness and cooperation among individuals.
• Better communication.
• Enhanced collective intuition for increasing creativity and finding solutions to problems.
• Decrease in social discord and adversarial interactions.
• Viewing things from a more inclusive perspective.
• Motivation and momentum to make something purposeful happen.
• Increased sense of well-being and appreciation of collective action.
• Fewer mistakes and errors.• Faster and more accurate decision-making.
• Shorter meeting times.
If you plan to attend this workshop please review and submit these Three Invitations (https://www.soulsign.com/open-human-heart/open-human-heart-agreement/)
This workshop is a wonderful opportunity to discover the unity of body, mind, and spirit based on the tensegrity model. I will offer hands-on guidance and simple exercises to enhance sensory skills by exploring the musculoskeletal, respiratory, and nervous systems, and how they relate to the larger universe.
Through group exercises and one on one instruction, you’ll learn to increase body awareness, and breathing capacity, to change inefficient habits, so that you can move with ease and speak with confidence. Learn to awaken inherent potential by finding the support from the ground that can lead to full stature and expansion, while becoming aware of how trauma and overwhelm can interfere with this process.
San Martin
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP — The Science of Interconnectedness
The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) team will take you on a journey to explore the science of interconnectedness. First, they will review the IONS Discovery Lab, a synergistic handshake between science and direct experience. IONS Discovery Lab (IDL) that we pronounce “ideal” aims to provide a service for workshop leaders to evaluate their offerings providing them evidence-based results, curate the largest dataset on experiential learning practices in the world, and use this knowledge to develop exception science-informed noetic training programs. They will also describe the Exceptional Healer Pilot Study, with 17 energy healers and over 200 pain patients that explores the efficacy of energy healing as a transformative practice.
Then, they will review IONSx a cutting-edge application-driven research program that demonstrates practical examples of consciousness affecting our physical world. Our first IONSx project is to create an ethical consciousness-dependent switch that responds to a specific mental signal from the operator. The IONS Science team will describe the “moonshot” program, its progress to date, and next steps.
Finally, the team will review the IONS Channeling Research Program where how explore how we access information and energy from beyond time and space. The program aims to answer six questions about channeling:
1. What do we already know from published and unpublished resources about this topic?
2. How common is non-local consciousness reception and what are its characteristics?
3. How does channeling work?
4. Are there defining characteristics of someone who is able to receive information more easily?
5. Can we verify the information?
6. Is the content useful?
The studies and results from each of these research questions will be reviewed including our most recent studies on mediumship accuracy and genetic predisposition to psychic abilities.
The workshop will include lecture, group discussion, and question and answer periods.
Edenvale
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP — Awareness in Conflict: Eros and the Spiritual Practices of SACRA Theater
8 Members of the SACRA Immanence Theater Company and Zhen Dao, founder of SACRA and the practice tradition of MogaDao, will lead students on a theatrical and spiritual exploration of the relationship between spiritual practice and creative emergence.
The players of SACRA train in all of the uniquely spiritualized practice disciplines of MogaDao, including MogaDao Tripartite Meditation, 5-Realms Yoga, MogaDao Qigong, Jingshen Gongfu, Depth Sexuality, and MogaDao’s Heartmind Warrior Training Program, which consists of “Neurogenic Exercises,” slow and soft Jingshen Gongfu techniques in partnership, that transform the very structure of our response to stress, conflict, and fear.
This training is the foundation of what Zhen Dao calls “the erotic basis of being,” the ethos of SACRA Theater. Within the context of SACRA theater, these neurogenic exercises function to emancipate actors—and students of all fields of creative expression and paths of spiritual growth—from superficial notions of performance to reality, in all its indeterminacy, beauty, and peril.
We say that we believe in nonduality, but do our lives reflect it, especially in our relationships? We will focus on cultivating the heart space to move beyond othering, particularly when our heart is not in it. This historic moment is calling us higher and deeper than we have ever gone before. Will you answer the call? It’s time to live at a deeper level the oneness we know and proclaim.
AIl can drive cars, create music, recognize objects, find a new solar system, discover a hominid species, and trounce anyone in a game of Go. Reports of its limits have been greatly exaggerated. But can AI enjoy conscious experiences? Can it feel love? Some physicalists claim that unconscious matter, with proper complexity, ignites consciousness. I propose a new framework and question: Can we rejig our spacetime interface to open new portals into the preexisting realm of conscious agents?
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.
3 C.E.s available
Hayes Foyer
Conference Registration Opens
Silver Creek Dining Room
Dinner
Hayes Ballroom
PL1.
Hayes Ballroom
Love Inquiry
While we have unlocked the potential of a single atom we have yet to unlock the full potential of wise, loving and compassionate action. The responsibility to do so does not belong to someone other than each of us. For it is we who posses capacities of loving and wisdom seldom fully realized or embodied in the world of time and space.
At the core of the spiritual heart lies two paradoxical instincts. One is the upward movement of transcendence and wakening up to reality, while the other is of the power and grace of redeeming love and the experience of unity as it expresses itself in the world of time and space. A full and inclusive spiritual life will take full account of both of these paradoxical spiritual instincts. For in the end we are called to wake up from the over identification with form, as well as to re-embrace and re-embody the grace of our true nature in and as the world of form.
Our world is full of challenges and tragedies, opportunities and unlimited potential. To meet these challenges, both personal and collective, we need to act not from fear, resentment and conflict, but from love and wisdom. We need to experience and embody the power and presence of redemptive love.
Redemptive love is an experience of love, given by grace, that at once redeems, meaning that it restores something or someone to their natural condition of wholeness. Redemptive love also seeks to be embodied in our humanity and challenges each of us to embody its grace in the very depths and actions of our humanity. Redemptive love is a love that is fully committed to being a wise and benevolent presence in the relative world for the benefit of all beings.
Whenever and wherever redemptive love is present and embodied in our lives there is the fire of grace alive and active, and life is experienced as containing great meaning and purpose. The circle of spiritual awakening is completed only by literally re-embodying the spirit of awakened wisdom and love in and as our human life. Thus the redemptive power of love can become embodied and in-formed, and pour itself out upon the world.
Hayes Ballroom
Sacred Activism for the Great Turning: Earth Treasure Vase Global Healing Meditation
“What can we do to bring healing and protection to the Earth?” This was the question that dharma teacher, Cynthia Jurs, asked a 106-year-old lama living in a cave in Nepal back in 1990. In response, she was given an ancient practice to fill and seal and bury Earth Treasure Vases. For 30 years Cynthia’s spiritual practice has been to take these holy vessels around the planet to restore balance and harmony to the Earth. The little clay pots are filled with prayers and offerings and planted like seeds in diverse cultures, communities and ecosystems and the heartfelt prayers and intentions they contain take root in surprising ways. With the help of elders, activists and regular folks world-wide, creative initiatives have been catalyzed though this ancient practice of sacred activism especially suited for our times.
Like acupuncture needles in the living body of the Earth, the Treasure Vases form a healing mandala of nodes and meridians imagined as a web of light that is here to serve us as we awaken together into our own unique role in the great work of our time—to heal the web of life, restore balance and harmony, envision our world anew, and embody that vision with every fiber of our life force for the benefit of all.
Participating in the ancient art of making relations with Nature, we see ourselves as a part of Gaia to whom we are inextricably linked. The Earth Treasure Vases have opened doors for us to form an international community, guided by the elders, grounded in the living Earth, dedicated to making a difference and supporting each other on the path of collective awakening.
Cynthia will offer a teaching on the Earth Treasure Vase practice and lead a guided meditation to open us as holy vessels for the work of global healing and collective awakening that is upon us now.
The Mother Mantra belongs to the ancient tradition of shamanic yoga. It presents a practical, simple, yet incredibly powerful system to profoundly change the way we interpret our life, allowing us to acquire awareness and the ability to achieve our aims and our dreams. Even more than that, the Mother Mantra is the path to change a world, a journey towards freedom from social conditioning. If you feel that a revolutionary spiritual leader is waiting inside of you, the Mother Mantra is your most powerful tool to make it happen. As part of the tradition of shamanic yoga, the roots of the Mother Mantra are to be found in all the most ancient mystical traditions of the world. It is nowadays practiced by leading business and entrepreneurs all over the world and has been adopted by many schools of counselling, meditation and traditional yoga as a powerful and holistic tool that provides uncountable benefits for both the body and the mind. Its practices rely on fostering ecstasy—the state in which all shamans, artists, poets operate, the basis of all creativity and happiness.
The tradition of the Mother Mantra sees mystics as the bearers of a vital mission: the mission of returning the feeling of sacredness to a desacralized world. In this are the keys to a human life on earth that can sustain both itself and the rest of the planet. For our species faces challenges that do not require simple ecology, but deep ecology, a revolution in the value and cognitive systems on which our behaviour as a society are based. For such revolutionaries—be they mystics, shamans, poets, artists, geniuses or fools—the Mother Mantra is a concrete path to fulfilment, happiness, prosperity, for themselves and the cosmos.
Hayes Ballroom
PL2.
Hayes Ballroom
What the Human is for: Eros and the Meaning of the Beginning of the End
In this talk, Zhen Dao will address the current war on sense and sensibility and the dematerialization of the human body in the face of the colonization of sensibility itself, a colonization she calls “Info-colonization.” Info-colonization will not neutralize itself, and its acceleration continues increasingly to disable our capacity for wonder, tenderness, and empathy. But rather than pessimism, Zhen Dao sees in this demise of the human the very chance to understand, in an eschatological sense, what the human is for. Establishing this purpose as eros, in the Post-Daoist sense of the term, she will introduce into the language new concepts and terms that might hold inestimable value for those of us who are not willing to allow human tenderness, empathy, and the “holiness of the heart’s affections” to disappear into the history of nostalgia.
Lama Tsomo will teach us the ancient Tibetan compassion practice of Tonglen, one of the Four Boundless Qualities practices that we use, to grow our capacity for feeling the truth of our deep, loving connection with everyone. People will experience it in the moment and then, following this simple practice in a handout or online, we can take it into our daily lives, both on and off the cushion. It is an antidote to isolation and, an antidote to othering … and so, a perfect medicine for these times.
AI can drive cars, create music, recognize objects, find a new solar system, discover a hominid species, and trounce anyone in a game of Go. Reports of its limits have been greatly exaggerated. But can AI enjoy conscious experiences? Can it feel love? Some physicalists claim that unconscious matter, with proper complexity, ignites consciousness. I propose a new framework and question: Can we rejig our spacetime interface to open new portals into the preexisting realm of conscious agents?
In most spiritual traditions, love is seen only as universal or cosmic love. It is true that love is fundamentally a universal dimension to our spiritual nature. But it also expresses itself in our human relationships, including the one with divinity, in personal, relational and embodied ways. It is the same authenticity as in the presence of universal love, but with qualities useful for human relating, and important for the spiritual path. Love has true and full realization only when it is a personal and lived expression. But personal here is not that of the ego, but of the spiritual nature, a truth rarely known. This shows what the true essence of relationship is, and how love and Eros relate the human and the divine.
Edenvale
C1.
Guadalupe
Experiential: Achieving Lasting Inspiration and Energy Through Shamanic Yoga
All the practices of shamanic yoga take place in a state of ecstasy. We must bear in mind that this condition belongs to us by nature; what we can do is increase our awareness of it. If we are to talk about shamanic yoga, then we must consider ecstasy as the founding stone of all practice, as the path that leads to becoming a shaman. To experience ecstasy, one needs to contemporarily undergo the “mother experience” and the “son experience”. The “mother experience” is achieved through the tools of visualisation, devotion, the defeat of fear through love. For the “son experience” we rely on the so-called “flowing sequences”. These are harmonious sequences of asana yoga postures followed by breathing exercises, specific mantras, mudras (that is, psychic gestures) and visualization exercises, such as the “psychic forest”. There are sequences able to cater to very different kinds of needs, such as to stimulate good sleep during the night, getting energized in the morning, turning anger or frustration into positive energy, or even constructing a healthy, harmonious relationship with food and the way we eat, or attaining the power of money. Mystics today must abandon the role attributed to them by organized religion and profoundly revolutionize all those symbols and myths according to which the majority of humans behave. As a powerful means of re-establishing a connection with our guide spirit, the invisible presence that is able to guide us to a life of prosperity and enlightenment, shamanic yoga is now practiced daily by many successful managers and businessmen.
Hayes Ballroom
Two Steps to the Not-Two: Exploring, Understanding and Applying Advaita Vedanta
Advaita Vedanta is the classic and paradigmatic school of nondual philosophy. Put simply, the essential teaching is 'The Absolute (Brahman) is the only reality, the world (jagat) is an appearance (of that nondual Absolute) and the sentient being (jiva) is none other than the nondual Absolute'—in Sanskrit 'Brahma Satyam, jagat mithya, jiva brahmaiva na para'. There is however, a secret to grasping this nondual teaching. The teaching is given in two steps—first, the well known 'neti, neti' 'not this, not this' leading to the realization of our spiritual nature and second, seeing that this newly discovered spiritual nature is nondual. Clarity about both steps is necessary to realize nonduality (Advaita). My talk will aim at achieving this clarity.
Madrone
C6.
The use of specific bioresonance frequencies on particular points, allows to obtain a state of calm and relaxation that is useful to Western people to start meditative processes and awareness. In my speech I demonstrate how the use of bioresonance frequencies, in the range of visible light, induces an optimization of the parameters of emotional pressure, alignment of the chakras, better communication between the left and right hemispheres, measured through the GDV Bio-well, patent by prof. K. Korotkov, University of St. Petersburg. These are the indispensable conditions for starting a good process of personal and spiritual growth. Treatment with bioresonance frequencies is the starting point for aligning the informational, energetic and physical field in humans and when the three fields are aligned humans become powerful creators of their reality, coming into contact with the unified field.
Such a self-organization ability find its physical basis indeed in a Quantum Field Theory (QFT) interpretation of biological living matter which tells us that the electromagnetic dynamics are the fundamental actors to explicate the biological (and therefore also bio-chemical) phenomenology. As it has been shown since ‘80s the most consistent working hypothesis, to describe living dynamics is that “phase correlations” of some kind, i.e. coherence, play a decisive role in the description of biological matter and its activities. Coherence is the indispensable condition, in the micro as in the macro system, for a state of connection to the unified field.
Monterey Room
C2.
Mark Gober, author of “An End to Upside Down Thinking” and host of the podcast “Where Is My Mind?”, will be discussing 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 Dr. Eben Alexander, Dr. Dean Radin, Dr. Ervin Laszlo, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, actress Goldie Hawn, and others.
Mark is a Partner at a Silicon Valley strategy firm, a former Wall Street investment banker, and former Princeton University tennis team captain. He is also a Board member of The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS).
Morgan Hill
C4.
Morgan Hill
The Story of Life is in the Wind: An Invitation to the Four Worlds of the Ojibwe
Native American relationships to the world around us is no longer a curiosity, but a necessity. In this session, Connie Buffalo, a member of the Red Cliff Band of Chippewas, invites you to step into the worldview of her traditional native teachings. You’ll experience the great questions about your origins, where you belong in the circle of creation, what the roles of ancestors are, how to redefine spirituality, and why your name is so important.
You’ll also learn about the role you play in what may be the last of the great prophecies. Your significance takes on a new meaning as you venture into the world of the native mind and spirit. You will leave with a new understanding of what it is to belong to a larger story and to bear the responsibility of being gods.
Come and participate in an interactive art installation using creativity to embody and celebrate (non-)duality. Sit in a circle of sacred casts to contemplate two questions: How do you define non-duality? and What’s one of your favorite dualities? Participate by answering on paper leaves and help ‘bloom’ the two metal Trees of Duality throughout the conference to share and inspire others.
A 90-min experiential workshop sharing ancient & modern insights on sounds influence on us as human beings. Involving the application of a variety of self-healing techniques to be directly experienced in a group environment. These techniques and tools are brought forth to create a sense of community and include exercises such as Breath-Work, Vocal Toning and an Open Sonic Meditation with Quartz Crystal/ Tibetan Singing Bowls, Gong, Chimes & other Harmonically Rich Sounds. Each tool is intended to guide us towards “Self-Empowerment”, as 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.
San Juan Bautista
C5.
You’ll also learn about the role you play in what may be the last of the great prophecies. Your significance takes on a new meaning as you venture into the world of the native mind and spirit. You will leave with a new understanding of what it is to belong to a larger story and to bear the responsibility of being gods.
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
whereby consciousness is wholistically aligned in our day to day lives, is either
overlooked or left unexplored. For example, Yoga as classically formulated in Patañjali’s
Yoga-Sūtra, has far too often been misconstrued as leading to a freedom from the world,
emphasizing renunciation, asceticism, disengagement, and transcendence of the body,
mind and world. Interpretations of Yoga that adhere to an absolute separation of
consciousness or spirit from manifestation or formed existence, implying a final
unworkable dualism between liberated spiritual identity and life-in-the-world, amount to
an impoverishment of the possibilities for an embodied, relational life. 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 an enriched, relational humanity allowing
for evolution, development and innovation through which life progresses and the world is
made a better place.
Through a deeper, mature and adept philosophical and experiential knowing, and
drawing from and updating the classical tradition, we will explore how Yoga can
culminate in a balanced integration of life that incorporates a clarity of awareness with
the integrity of being and action. Yoga manifests as love, the very abiding as and sharing
of our being or power of consciousness, in which the non-separation of self and world,
experiencer and experienced, knower and known, is uncovered and lived as our authentic
nature.
San Martin
C3.
San Martin
Financial Bypassing: Healing our Relationship between Money and Spirituality
Spirituality has a long history of placing values and judgments on how we relate to money. It's a loaded subject, and many people in the spiritual community have an unhealthy relationship with money. Stories and beliefs influence our actions and keep us stuck in repeating behaviors from an old paradigm.
What stories are you telling yourself that keep you from meeting money face to face? Does resistance arise just thinking about the topic of money? The conditioned ideas we tell ourselves keep us from ultimate freedom in our financial as well as spiritual lives. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Some of the more “accepted” stories surrounding money and spirituality are often considered taboo to question. It’s an old belief that spiritual people cannot also be wealthy. The vow of poverty was a religious rule that separated one from dealing with the issue of money directly. This is avoidance, and to fully step into our own autonomy and power we have to bring these repressive patterns to light.
Spiritual growth happens when awareness penetrates every aspect of our human lives. It’s time to evolve into a new relationship where money is seen as another form of energy we interact with in life. With a detached perspective, people in the spiritual community will be able to allow money to come into their lives without an added agenda. Learning how to earn and use money wisely is imperative to being empowered individuals in society. When people with spiritual values are prosperous it presents an opportunity to make changes on a greater scale and influence the redistribution of wealth globally.
Transformation can happen in the world, beginning with freeing ourselves from outdated concepts that have kept us stagnant as individuals and as a collective.
Hayes Ballroom
Dialogue - The Expression of Spirituality in Relationships
What constitutes the essence of a true relationship? And how is this related to our spiritual nature? We will explore the different ways spiritual teachings and traditions view relationship. And how relationship can be part of our practice, and at the same time enriched by our realization. An understanding not usually known by society and rarely discussed in spiritual teachings.
Oscillations of neuronal activity (brainwaves) in different frequency ranges reflect the electrical code of cortical network dynamics and correlate with internal states of subjective consciousness. Gamma oscillations (35-100 Hz) are involved in key cortical computation by coordinating the activity among spatially distributed neural networks and binding spatiotemporal properties of cortical responses involved in behavior perception and cognition. Recent studies of Tibetan monks adept at compassionate meditation discovered a robust increase in Gamma power. Further studies reported increased Gamma in other meditative traditions.
EEG studies of entheogen induced visionary altered states of consciousness (ASC), viz. Ayahuasca and psilocybin also reported increased Gamma. Also, lucid dreaming correlates with increased Gamma and can be induced by tACS neurostimulation at 40 Hz. My own EEG research has revealed increased Gamma power induced by inhalation of DMT (both N,N-DMT and 5-MeO- DMT). I’ve also discovered increased Gamma power during Kundalini activations producing orgasmic states and bioenergetic healing states. Thus Gamma oscillations are emerging as a distinct EEG signature of ASC that correlate with the attainment of higher states of consciousness, compassion, love, happiness, flow states and positive emotional wellbeing.
This presentation covers the basics of Kriya yoga. It includes specific exercises to help participants have a clear idea of how these techniques may cultivate a deeper embodied experience of self-regulatory and mindfulness practices. This workshop will demonstrate how the various aspects of Kriya, with its subtle nuances, can deepen and enrich a contemplative practice.
These exercises can all be accomplished while seated and will largely focus on posture, breath work, visualization and mantra. Many past participants and students of this work have described it as transformative.
Monterey Room
Panel: New Research on Trauma, Love and Transformation
Without a shift in consciousness, humanity will become extinct. To effect a shift at large scale requires a contemplative turn in our educational systems. Practice- models are needed to blaze a pathway for this transformation. The nonprofit Peace in Schools has pioneered the deepest practice-model in contemplative education in schools.
In 2018, we partnered with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health on the first scientific study globally to research mindfulness and trauma by examining adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in schools. You’ll receive a preview of initial findings and learn about a non-dual, connective, love-based model that we can leverage for collective transformation.
Love began Creation. Love organized Creation. Only through love, each Self can complete the journey through Creation to return to the Supreme Source—The Supreme Reality.
Being on a path is essential for the journey. I will share the Path of the Heart, which is my path and how to enter it.
A novel model of consciousness is proposed that uses three core ideas: (A) a two-agent model of the human brain, (B) Attention Schema Theory (by Princeton Neuroscientist, Michael Graziano), and (C) a theorem from control theory which claims that every good agent must have a model of the world in which the agent is active. The two agents are the Modeler (that creates the model of the world), and the Controller (that controls the body and produces thoughts and feelings). This model: (1) Demonstrates that we are self-models living in our model of the world. (2) Suggests there would be two types of attention mechanisms—a Focal Attention Mechanism and a Diffuse Attention Mechanism. (3) Clarifies the distinction between Access Consciousness and Phenomenal Consciousness (by NYU Philosopher, Ned Block). (4) Proposes a mechanism that produces World Model awareness (which includes, for example, peripheral visual awareness). (4) Explains three kinds of consciousness: Normal human consciousness, Flow state consciousness, and Nondual states of consciousness. (5) Provides an answer to philosophical questions such as: (A) What conditions cause conscious awareness to arise? (B) Why does conscious awareness seem to be fundamentally non-physical and to not have a location in space?
Based on my book Mindful Dreaming and compelling dreams of clients and awakened teachers, I demonstrate how our nightly dreams use the language of metaphor to provide Nondual guidance in deconstructing our conditioned belief in a separate self. Dreams can also offer powerful here and now glimpses of unitive consciousness. Indeed, every dream can be seen as a means to clarify and restore our relationship to our true nature.
As a vehicle for the Progressive Path, I show how dreams teach the core tenets of nonduality e.g., Pure Awareness impartially welcomes all experience; There is no personal Doer: Suffering arises when we resist what is; Nondual awareness ends suffering.
In every dream one of four core habits of thought or ego strategies predominate: Distraction; Control; Judgment; and Attachment. I demonstrate with abundant examples how each of these thoughts creates its own unique quality of suffering in the dream that is parallel to the dreamer’s suffering and emotional contraction in waking life. Each dream narrative also offers respectively, four healing nondual values—Silence/Stillness; Humility/Surrender; Compassion; and Grieving/Letting Go—that can dissolve the contractions corresponding to each type of ego strategy. Dreams present these Nondual qualities to the dreamer via a Dream Mentor—persons, animals, or elements in nature that embody those qualities. In nightmares we feel mortally threatened because we are so strongly identified with an ego strategy that the mere presence of the Mentor’s nondual perspective is intuited (correctly) as tantamount to immanent dissolution and (ego) death. Thus, dreams are frightening or peaceful to the degree that we rigidly resist or welcome the presence of the Mentor.
As a vehicle for the Direct Path, I show how dreams sometimes provide the direct experience of Nondual unitive consciousness even without the dreamer’s exposure to such teachings or previous spiritual practice.
Hayes Ballroom
PL3.
The storms and tragedies of contemporary life can be termed a spiritual crisis, in which we must awaken to a greater sense of self or else become more isolated and subject to increasing feelings of isolation and helplessness.
Because all things are ultimately interconnected, the challenges we face and the changes underway signal a genuine transformation of the world. Change can be disconcerting; yet in troubled times the inner threads of genius, imagination and wisdom become both more important and surprisingly more available.
Upavita is an old Sanskrit term for the eternal thread of golden imagination that makes each life valuable and noble from the beginning. This sacred thread of life connects the mind with the heart; it ties us to the dream of life and leads us to the purpose of our soul. While holding it, all the moments of our lives make sense; without it, all can seem accidental and pointless.
Call it dharma or the inner law of our being; call it a life dream or a spiritual calling; we are each called to awaken to the inner plotline of a story trying to unfold from within. In learning to express the mythic pattern woven within, we learn to contribute to the renewal of community as well as a restoration of nature.
What we need at this time is not a minor repair, but a major transformation of the world that can only start from the inside. Transformation at the level of the individual heart and soul generates the imagination and collective energy needed to change the conditions of the world.
Hayes Ballroom
Radical Love & the Cosmic Mirror: Grounding in the Act of Seeing Sacred Difference
In spiritual contexts there can be a neutralizing of difference as a way of creating community through commonality and with an intention towards a collective consciousness. However, in a world where difference has meaning and impact – queerness, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomics and geographic and historical contexts – to neutralize difference negates pieces of all of our whole selves in their great texture and abundance.
We will explore together the way in which seeing and honoring sacred and beautiful difference builds deeper community, collective awareness and transformation. We will engage in this movement towards a radical love of each other and begin to see how through honoring the tapestry of difference we build connection to the larger social world and a call to manifesting social change.
Because if we see the sacred difference of others it will inherently pull us towards not only honoring that difference, but also protecting it in all the ways it is expressed in the world.
We will engage the ways in which the science of mirroring neurons can offer us a map into this practice of honoring sacred difference. We will close with a practice of mirroring radical love and seeing the sacred difference in each other.
Quantum physics—widely considered the greatest scientific discovery of all time—has already changed the course of history with all of the new technologies it has inspired, but these innovations are considered the “low-hanging fruit,” a miniscule fraction of the real benefit of the quantum gnosis, which is to be found within the human psyche. The revelations emerging from quantum physics are pointing out that we, through our consciousness, are integral participants in nature’s ongoing process of creation who are participating—whether we consciously know it or not—in creating ourexperienceof ourselves and the world at each and every moment. Quantum physics is revealing that we, by our very nature, are creative—and creator—beings who unknowingly possess great power to cast reality in ways we can only imagine.
As if under a spell of our own making, the majority of our species, however, have become entranced by our intrinsic gift for dreaming up our world, unknowingly hypnotizing ourselves via our God-given power to creatively call forth reality in such a way that our creative power unconsciously boomerangs against us, undermining our potential for individual and collective evolution. The revelations emerging from quantum physics are unlocking the vast, world-transforming creative power of the human psyche. The new physics is a spiritual treasure that humanity has dreamed up—both in our world and inside of our minds—as the medicine for the collective psychosis afflicting the human species.
The revelation that is quantum physics expands the realm of the possible to previously unimaginable degrees. In seeing through and dispelling the illusory boundary between mind and matter, between inner and outer, quantum physics has discovered the dreamlike nature of reality. In this presentation we will explore how quantum physics is the physics of the universal dream: it is simultaneously pointing to the dreamlike nature of reality while being an expression—and revelation—of the very dreamlike nature at which it is pointing.
Hayes Ballroom
Love Inquiry
Edenvale
C7.
The auditory constructs of ‘sacred sound’ found within a Gong Bath™ will bend space and awaken that portion of the universal mind within you to deeper understandings of Self.
”To see a world in a grain of sand,
and a heaven in a wild flower,
hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
and eternity in an hour.”
The power of William Blake’s words resonate within this poly-tonal, multi-octave vibratory experience: Anticipate deepening insights into transcendent wisdom, compassion and miracles.
We are aware of thinking and acting, and we typically think this is neurons and brains are for. Their deeper functions in regulating the body, either directly or through neurohormonal and neuroimmune interactions are largely unconscious and therefore neglected. This talk introduces theoretical models and experimental data suggesting an even deeper and evolutionarily older function of nervous systems: regulating the size and shape of the body. If these models are correct, the original function of neurons was the regulation of cell proliferation and differentiation. Neurons still perform these functions, from early embryogenesis through adulthood. We may even, sometimes, be aware of them. Recognizing this gives a new meaning to "embodied cognition."
Madrone
C12.
Many of us are familiar with the powerful construct of the Hero (or Heroine’s) Journey, made popular by the renowned 20th century mythologist and scholar Joseph Campbell. In his work, Campbell identified a potent mythological motif in which the individual, living comfortably in his or her normal and known world, receives a call to adventure. This call requires him or her to encounter magical forces, first outside, and then eventually within the self. These magical discoveries are used to defeat a threat and are eventually integrated into the person’s being. The journey is completed when the Hero returns to his or her community and offers their transformed consciousness as a blessing to those around them.
The Monster’s Journey describes a different—though complementary—transformational journey. This is the journey of the those who, early in their lives, have been changed or altered as a consequence of early childhood trauma. Monsters—or their equivalents, Aliens and Mutants—begin their journey in the world of the abnormal. So instead of being called to a hidden magical world, they are challenged to connect to the normal world, which they see every day but which remains frightening and alienating to them. And instead of gifting their communities with newly discovered inner magic, they may eventually offer back the abilities and heightened personal qualities that have been gifted to them through the process of early traumatization. In this way, the individual finds their authentic self and redeems the suffering caused by the trauma.
This presentation will describe the Monster’s Journey in detail, understanding it as a modern archetype. The talk will benefit both those who have survived early childhood trauma as well as their loved ones and caretakers/therapists. There will be ample time allotted for group sharing among participants as well as question and answer with Dr. Forman.
Monterey Room
C8.
Monterey Room
Panel - Sex, Money, Power, Trauma & Ethics in Spiritual Communities
Join us for a timely conversation exploring a new paradigm supporting psychological health for spiritual teachers, leaders, and communities. Many scandals, traumas, and the common psychological dysfunctions litter the modern spiritual and religious landscape. Instead of focusing on what went wrong, we believe we can learn from past mistakes and collectively focus on spiritual integrity, trauma, shadow work, embodiment, psychological growth, and ethics, in order to cultivate qualities that create healthy, mature spiritual teachers, students, and communities, as well as success and integrity on the path.
Let us together meet the challenging topics of sex, power, money, trauma, hierarchies, groupmind/groupthink, and spiritual bypassing in a supportive and proactive environment. Join us as we work to explore new models based on shared human values while honoring our spiritual nature.
Together we will examine:
• What qualities characterize a psychologically healthy teacher, student, and spiritual community?
• Is there a legitimate role for conventional therapy or other psychologically healing modalities on the spiritual path?
• How do new understandings of trauma research and healing impact our understanding of integrated psychospiritual growth?
• What defines a healthy teacher/student relationship? What is at play when a teacher consciously or unconsciously cultivates dependency in their students?
• What is group mind and group think within spiritual communities and how does it contribute to unhealthy behavior or cult-like tendencies?
• Does the contemporary spiritual community share clear, ethical practices and processes?
At the end of this explorative discussion, are we open to taking on the challenge to support change both within our personal lives and within our spiritual communities? Together we will mobilize to empower ourselves and each other to be the change we want to see within the current climate of contemporary spirituality.
Morgan Hill
C10.
Morgan Hill
The Shamanic Journey OR The Doorway Between the Worlds: Medium and Oracle Traditions in Shamanic and Buddhist Traditions
Within Mahayana Buddhist traditions, there are oracle systems that have guided the course of the tradition and have even helped with the establishment of new schools of thought. We will explore the different forms of wisdom that have emerged out of relationships mediated by the oracle tradition between Tibetan Buddhist deities and well-known scholars. We will explore the worlds that opened through the relationship between Tsongkhapa and Manjushri and between Asanga and Maitreya , for example. Shamanism is a form of spiritual practice based in earth-wisdom traditions whose practices rely heavily on the practitioner's capacity to form oracle relationships with the unseen powers of nature. One of the primary tasks for the shamanic initiate is to master the art of mediumship. Whenever shamans are working, they are expected to be able to offer a vehicle for helping spirits to enter into the world of ordinary reality to assist those in need. Shamans may be called upon to speak with those who have passed on or provide a channel for others to do so. They may also be asked to become a conduit for the subtle energies held in light and sound to be used effectively in all types of healing environments. We will look at the ways in which shamans use oracle work and the channeling of spirits in their work in serving others.
Our human and greater-than-human relationships in life make us who we are. From our best friends, family, ancestry to the water we drink, the deer, the hawk, the spider, the soil, the trees, the ocean, and the sky. This is an altar to honor all the relationships that bind us and that we are bound to, in and through time. This altar, by Day Schildkretand our entire SAND community will be surrounded by a nest made of local branches from local trees. Each branch will be wrapped with the names of our relations that we care about and love.
Invitation: Please take a branch. On a slip of paper write the name of something or someone you care deeply about, are glad they are in this world and will grieve if and when they leave this world. Wrap this paper around the branch and wrap the colored string around the paper, binding the paper to the branch. Hand the branch to the artist, Day for placement in the nest. Witness the altar and nest being created and eventually, deconstructed.
In the life sciences, recurring cycles of differentiation and integration toward greater wholeness is a universal process. And so it is with human lovers. The spark of romantic love promises the possibility of unity. But as lovers continue on this path, differences surface, and our equilibrium is threatened.
The path to wholeness becomes one of inner work:
• how do we work with the projections and fears that surface when my partner wants one thing and I want another?
• what do I do when an innocent action on my part triggers my partner’s insecurities?
• how do we sort through the layers of unconscious motivations and conditioned fears that keep us attached to needing certain things from a partner in order to feel secure?
In this experiential session, we will explore how to use relationship as an awareness practice, a mutual journey of healing and liberation—where together we learn to hold a loving, compassionate space for the rejected, abandoned, angry, or fearful parts of our personalities, rather than identifying with these as who we are. We learn to let go of trying to transcend such messy aspects of our humanity, and discover that the practice of compassionate self-inquiry, while holding space for our disowned parts, pops us into a deepening sense of wholeness, an embodiment of love.
San Juan Bautista
C11.
San Juan Bautista
True Relationship: Creating Healing Connection with Nondual Psychotherapy
In the context of psychotherapy, the client-therapist connection and relationship are of utmost and fundamental importance. However, traditional psychology misses the mark in properly addressing this necessity by holding limited, incomplete, and dualistic therapeutic positions which further reinforce a duality of separation, and limit the transformative power of a true, undifferentiated therapeutic relationship.
In contrast, nondual-based psychotherapy offers the opportunity to dissolve personal and interpersonal dualities, heal from dualistic-based suffering, and give rise to a greater sense of connection to self, to life, and to reality. By creating a relationship based on mutuality within the sacred space of pure awareness, nondual psychotherapy reinforces the rediscovery of our true nature, diffuses the illusion of separation, and promotes healing through the powerful dynamic of true, authentic nondual connection with another human being.
San Martin
C9.
Devotion is a way of relating that invites us to merge, to become fully absorbed, with the object of our devotion. When the object of our devotion is Source, or God, or Consciousness, we merge with this knowing, and we experience ourselves as One with it. Advaita Vedanta is the nondual teaching, and Yoga is the practice, that gives us a direct experience with the true nature of reality and of ourselves.
Join us for this exploration of Bhakti, the practice of Love and Devotion in the Yoga tradition. Explore the ever-deepening stages of awareness and how to remove the illusions that stand in our way from knowing ourselves as the divine. Learn how the practice of love and devotion is the mother of all wisdom, and brings us to the limitless happiness and freedom that we all seek.
The world is in desperate need for compassion. Compassion means to recognize the real nature of every living being, also in actions that express separation. Compassion means too see that there is not a person anywhere, but Consciousness in action. In this recognition you can welcome in your Heart all the suffering of believing that this is not so, knowing that maybe this cannot be seen through every form right away, but accepting seeing this in your Heart until it is possible for everybody. This is the life of a bodhisattva and the life to which we all aspire to as truth seekers. If this is possible, any action of Consciousness that expresses through your form will come from unity and will support only unity in the world. That compassion can do miracles, and arises from that true Heart that is everywhere, as Ramana Maharshi said.
What can we do in front of a crumbling world in which everything seems to be more and more divided?
We are Emptiness that contemplates all form through the human experience. The Heart is this Emptiness that meditates the world. Abiding in the compassion of the empty Heart allows us to dissolve any apparent contradictions and divisions we see in the world, not because we resolve these polarities but because they can all co-exist and dissolve in our Being. In the Heart there is no need to split ourselves into two and polarize into right and wrong, you or me, your truth or my truth - all this can simultaneously exist and be contained in Emptiness.
We will explore the agony which may arise when one tries to think nondually, when this involves significant un-learning. Focusing on the nondual constructive math of Errett Bishop, we will consider the implications for education and philosophy. Constructivists are a tiny deviant sect, who propose a small but painful modification to the “classical” logic used by the vast majority in their mathematics research.
Why should a non-mathematician care? Because it is an issue of pluralism and freedom of choice. Because the path to constructive understanding can be seen as a therapeutic process, a healing or liberation, and also as kicking a habit, as a recovery. Because constructivists offer different understandings, of such concepts as: truth, existence, belief, equality, identity, infinity.
The talk is inspired by my own painful transition from classical to constructive understanding and subsequent research, and by the article Five Stages of Accepting Constructive Mathematics by Andrej Bauer, that appeared in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society in 2017 (The stages are indeed those of Kübler-Ross.)
Truth is an evolutionary force in humanity and the basis of the civilization we have developed. It’s a force that cuts two ways: toward the outer world of things and systems, and toward the inner world of psyche and spirit. It takes truth to further our science, and it takes truth to realize our essential nature. It’s also true that the beliefs humans have collected over our history are often antiquated, no longer apply, or are distorted wishes for the world we want or believe once existed. These beliefs obscure the truths we have discovered about the world and ourselves, and therefore influence how we live together and what world we build.
To continue developing civilization, our use of truth will need to be three-fold:
1) discovering new truths
2) applying those truths as well as the truths we have previously discovered, and
3) undoing the false beliefs and mistaken views we have, both outer and inner.
Given the above, our relationship to truth is the most important relationship we have, both individually and collectively. It will help us live and prosper to understand what our relationship to truth actually is. Do we recognize its significance and importance in our lives and societies? Do we actively cultivate our relationship to it? Is it an evolving relationship? Are we getting closer to it? Is our relationship to truth a love relationship?
It would seem that truth loves humanity in that it has provided us an instrument to discover and apply it. That instrument is inquiry. It is somewhere involved in all human endeavor: science, technology, arts, education, governance, medicine, journalism, spiritual realization ... It’s how we discover reality and build our world. We can use it to optimize our relationship to truth.
What is to come through this birth canal of our collective evolution, we cannot know. It can feel so unstable, so frightening and painful to our vulnerable birthing selves as we leave one world and are not yet fully grounded within a new one. This constant dying and letting go into the emergence of our next expression is what our organic developmental wisdom carries. There is a 13 billion (at least!) years old ancient intelligence that knows how to give birth, to bond and to participate in this inter-being. We are this, that is awake, aware, and trustworthy at the very core of our being. We can allow this intelligence to permeate all of our activities and relationships.
In this class, we will melt below habitual patterns of an over-stimulated nervous system, wired through history, a false sense of separation, and the thinking mind to connect directly with our core intelligence. Using breath, sound vibration, subtle intrinsic movement, embryological anatomy and provocative inquiry we enter into the inner alchemy that allows a dissolve of any outdated structures. 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, when we are seated in the Core. 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.
For 30 years, dharma teacher Cynthia Jurs has taken little clay pots called Earth Treasure Vases, around the world to restore balance and harmony to the Earth. Like acupuncture needles in the living body of Mother Gaia, the Earth Treasure Vases are filled with healing prayers and symbolic offerings, then taken to places calling for protection and renewal to be planted like seeds where they are needed. With the help of elders, activists and regular folks in diverse cultures, communities and ecosystems around the whole planet, the heartfelt prayers and intentions held within these holy vessels take root in surprising ways bringing this ancient practice of sacred activism alive in answer to the call of our times.
Please join Cynthia in a special ceremony to initiate one of the last remaining Earth Treasure Vases she received from the lamas in Nepal that is imbued with sacred medicines connecting it to all the enlightened lineage masters. The destination of the Earth Treasure Vase will be announced at SAND, and after a meditation, will be passed around our circle to receive your prayers and symbolic offerings. The SAND community is invited to join the Gaia Mandala Global Healing Community to envision our world anew and embody that vision for the sake of all beings. Guided by the elders and grounded in the living Earth, with each Earth Treasure Vase, we are planting the seeds of collective awakening and planetary healing — becoming Vessels of the Holy ourselves.
In the ancient Hebrew tradition, discovering hidden relationships between words, letters, and sounds serves to shift our consciousness into states of greater presence and expansion. In this session, we will explore the esoteric relationship between form and formlessness embedded within the Shema, an ancient mystical formula and sacred-sound practice designed to awaken our consciousness into an embodied state of nondual realization and universal love. In this process, the relationship between the dual and the nondual is clarified: the formless is recognized as the form, the transcendent as the immanent, the unmanifest as the manifest, the spiritual as the material.
Madrone
Moduli Space and the Looking-Glass Relations of Grand Unified Theories of Mathematics : a Higgsino Relation to Love
The looking-glass relations of pure mathematics are among the most significant relations of which we are a part. Grand Unified Theories of Physics use mathematical relations called dualities to unify gravity with the Standard Model. One such duality is the powerful Homological Mirror Symmetry, which relates spaces with different topologies by reflection across their Hodge diamond. Grand Unified Theories of Mathematics use mathematical relations called isomorphisms and quasi-isomorphisms to relate number theory and geometry. One such quasi-isomorphism is the Local Langlands Correspondence, which is a conjectured GUT of global class field theory relating Galois groups and automorphic forms in a filtration series of powerful correspondences. These GUTs work in codimension-infinity moduli space, which is a “higher” geometric parameter space relating subsets across all scales. For instance, the power set of R2, the Euclidean xy plane, contains a copy of every book ever written and all books to be written in all futures, since it contains all subsets of points in R2. Thus, the power set is a magical moduli space!
San Juan Bautista
SELF and self: A Compelling Relationship Leading to Union, Being, and Embodiment of Consciousness
Rev. Kimberly Braun stands before you as one surrendered, and surrendering over and again into the embrace of the Beloved. In her presentation she will weave storytelling of her own unitive experiences as a cloistered Carmelite nun, and the mystical insights and systematics of Teilhard de Chardin, Carl Jung, Teresa of Avila and John of the cross to lay out for all attendees the relevance and power of a relationship between the individual person and the Ground of all Being leading to the ultimate dissolution of notions such as ‘I’ and ‘Thou’ INTO simple, all encompassing, all penetrating BEING.
Kimberly does not want anyone to assume what she says is ‘true,’ but rather wishes to invite you into the adventure of discovering truth as your personal experience reveals it to you. Her presentation will both excite your senses with the playfulness with which she recounts stories of union and stir your mind through her compelling insights and reflection on the nature of relationship as part of what it means to be human, Consciousness in Form.
Monterey Room
Panel - Dynamics of Attraction: Divine Masculine and Feminine in Awakening
One consciousness plays itself as two, in this divine dance of apparent separation and union. We will explore the divine masculine and feminine within and the inner union that flourishes in embodied awakening. We will explore what this looks like on the outside and inside both personally and in relationships. We will also explore the perfection of and resolution of longing for the other in the awakening process both in and out of intimate relationships.
Psychedelics have officially re-entered mainstream consciousness, through clinical research trials at major universities, corporate-sponsored pharmaceutical drug development, and decriminalization efforts in major America cities. Everyone from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Michael Pollan now has a story to tell about how mushrooms can save humanity. But let's not forget the original love stories that the mushrooms have been quietly sharing with humans for millennia. In this talk, Dr. Katherine MacLean will weave a tale of scientific discovery, mystical love, super-natural intelligence, and personal redemption from the perspective of individual humans and their amazing encounters with psilocybin mushrooms. Learn more at www.katherinemaclean.org
There is a perspective which holds that all of life is not only ‘inter-connected’ but also ‘inter-experiencing’ each other. From this point of view consciousness is inter-connected and arises through all first person experiences in a given moment simultaneously (inter-experiencing). This idea is captured by the term ‘Interbeing’, coined by Thich Nhat Hanh. Interbeing is a powerful framework for communicating non-duality to audiences with dualist intuitions, for emphasising the practical implications of non-duality, and for capturing the internalization of non-duality into a lasting perception of personal identity. Any individual self embracing the Interbeing lens understands her existence as arising through all other selves as much as through her own—and as such holds the Golden Rule (treat others as you would treat yourself) inherently in her sense of identity.
While a number of self-transcendence and spirituality scales have been developed, none directly address the conceptualization of interbeing in perception of self. The purpose of this preliminary study was to formulate an Interbeing Scale (IS) and its sub-scales, and to build internal and ecological validity of the overall scale and sub-scales. As a first step, the IS was delivered to a pilot sample of 157 adults through an online survey. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was then used to derive an underlying dimension of Interbeing, which was extracted and correlated with outcome variables. Alphas showed strong internal validity. The correlations between IS sub-scales and compassion, giving, and inspiration suggest the possibility of ecological validity. Scale items were also assessed for clarity and validity with a sample of eight senior monastics from the Order of Interbeing, as well as four expert researchers who had developed related scales. Based on data analysis and qualitative feedback an updated version of the IS was then developed and tested.
Many people focus on spiritual awakening to the exclusion of other areas of life, or they focus on trying to fix one or two problem areas of their lives. You are meant to live a vibrant, alive, and aligned life in all areas: spiritual awakening, abundance, relationship, emotional healing, work, and body. When you treat your life as an ecosystem, you’ll find that any area that is lagging behind affects the other areas. Similarly, every area that is awake and embodied can lift up the other facets of life. You have a loving opportunity to illuminate and awaken the whole ecosystem of your life.
Can we remain naked of self images in front of the ignorance of the world? Resting beyond the dualistic game of guilt and blame, the empty Heart sees Love moving in every action and relates only to itself.
True compassion can be in certain cases very controversial, especially when there is a strong tendency to take sides. The ego-concept blinds us to recognize that there is only pure Awareness that moves through all forms. Where Love does not know itself consciously, its expression will be filtered and sometimes even perverted into what we could call evil or darkness. This lack of self recognition is the source of any violence, shame, guilt or blame. Compassion is the ability, by Awareness, to recognize and acknowledge only itself everywhere.
Our deepest essence, Pure Consciousness, is just apparently hidden behind the game of personality and it can - through meditation - re-absorb within itself all ignorance. Standing in the Heart in the face of conflict, we can stop holding on to any position whatsoever, allowing the burning of any defense mechanism. It leads us to stand in the rawness of vulnerability, that is openness itself.
This openness is meeting the world, and ourselves, with a completely transpersonal compassion - it is seeing yourself as the other, feeling their pain as yours. It is Love in action - an exquisite divinely human quality.
As Consciousness you can take that suffering into your Heart, because despite where it appears, ultimately it is all yours. The Heart, as Pure Awareness though the human form, can transform everything in itself.
This living from the Heart becomes a service of our community, embodying our understanding and “walking our talk”.
Compassion can be revolutionary dropping of attachment to any ideas, letting the Heart live us from the mystery and responding just to its silent voice.
This workshop is a wonderful opportunity to discover the unity of body, mind, and spirit based on the tensegrity model. I will offer hands-on guidance and simple exercises to enhance sensory skills by exploring the musculoskeletal, respiratory, and nervous systems, and how they relate to the larger universe.
Through group exercises and one on one instruction, you’ll learn to increase body awareness, and breathing capacity, to change inefficient habits, so that you can move with ease and speak with confidence. Learn to awaken inherent potential by finding the support from the ground that can lead to full stature and expansion, while becoming aware of how trauma and overwhelm can interfere with this process.
Our human and greater-than-human relationships in life make us who we are. From our best friends, family, ancestry to the water we drink, the deer, the hawk, the spider, the soil, the trees, the ocean, and the sky. This is an altar to honor all the relationships that bind us and that we are bound to, in and through time. This altar, by Day Schildkret and our entire SAND community will be surrounded by a nest made of local branches from local trees. Each branch will be wrapped with the names of our relations that we care about and love.
This talk will teach you everything you want to know about what it is to be an empath. David will cover the history of the word, from its inception in literature to its present day use. He'll explore the edges of empathy and where it meets intuitive abilities—then he'll push into the seemingly inexplicable realm of psychic phenomena. You'll learn David's own story, going from skeptic to self-proclaimed empath. He'll describe the nature of his own superpower and his desire to have his superpower, and the superpowers of his fellow empaths, more rigorously studied and understood by science. Lastly, he'll help you discover where you are on the empath spectrum. You might think the word doesn't apply to you, that it's for "those sensitive types," but you might be surprised.
This presentation will focus on how the subtle body can explicitly be incorporated into somatic therapy and psychotherapy in order to assist the healing process. Topics will include an overview of the subtle body, a discussion of subtle body and its connection to emotions, and how this understanding can be used in healing. The presentation will include an experiential component, focus on somatic awareness and incorporating the teachings of the body through pranayama and visualization.
At seventeen, David studied with a Kabbalah master to fashion universes out of emptiness on stage. It is an ancient and rare art form, not unlike life itself.
Break
Hayes Ballroom
PL4.
The complexity of the present time seems to demand a deepening of our nature if we are going to survive. Deepening requires exploration. And for all its byways, exploration leads ultimately to the spiritual source of our existence and to the quest for a faith that will support our continuing explorations. Not since the days of Plato and Buddha and Confucius, some 2500 years ago, has there been such an uprising of spiritual yearning. Though the varieties of contemporary religious experience may look or sound different, they share a core belief—that each human being contains a godseed, a divine essence that can be nurtured through spiritual practice into a fully matured expression of the god stuff within. Moreover, belief in a divine essence as the basis of reality is not limited to explicitly religious paths. Scientists of a Non Dual bent explain reality in terms that are not much different from those mystics use. While mystics speak of steps on the path to union with the Infinite, scientist-seekers talk about the frequency bands of consciousness, some of which are closer than others to Universal being. Speculative scientists often use the metaphor of the hologram to explain humanity's place in the Universal Mind. Each part of a hologram contains an image of the whole. Break a hologram image up, shine a special kind of laser light though any of its pieces, and you get the whole picture back again. In spiritual terms, we might think of ourselves as fragments of the great hologram of Reality. Shine the proper light of consciousness through us, and we each reflect the whole—starfish and sequoias, the sap rising in the winter trees and the yearning of God for each of us. . .This yearning to know our true nature is universal. When I have studied or talked with seekers who have had this experience, they have told me of a joy that passes understanding, an immense surge of creativity, a instant uprush of kindness and tolerance that make them impassioned champions for the betterment of all, bridge builders, magnets for solutions, peacemakers, pathfinders. Best of all, other people feel enriched and nourished around them. Everyone they touch becomes more, because they themselves are more.
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.
Silver Creek Dining Room
Dinner
Lower Level Lobby
Poster session
It’s become fashionable to talk about the need to bring enlightenment from its transcendent position back into the world. We’re told we have to merge it from the coldness of pure consciousness into the warmth of the heart, into relationships, into society. We have to be evolved and ecological.
This misses the point of true self-realization.
The transcendent core of self-realization frees the mind from the burdens of worrying, of thinking, and of doing. The end of self-realization is the disappearance of the world as a separate entity.
It is not that the transcendental comes back down to the mix with the world, but that the world is revealed to have been nothing other than the transcendental the whole time.
The idea that one has to “come back” to deal with the real world is in fact an escape from the full realization of our divine nature.
With illustrations and quotes from Ramana Maharshi, the Yoga Vasistha, and elsewhere, I will tackle the tricky notion of non-doership and argue that the deepest core of self-realization is at risk of being obscured in the sexy quest to ‘integrate’ world and spirit.
In this poster presentation, attendees will see the results of a doctoral dissertation research project which showed, via Heartmath Inner Balance Connectors, how one person, focused on love and gratitude, caused physiological changes in other people in proximity, and also by distance when focusing with intention on that person.
Attendees will have the chance to experience a demonstration using the Inner Balance connector, and see their own state of coherence changed by the Law of Resonance in real time.
Nondual embodiment is a whole-body experience that awakens the most subtle dimension of your being, allowing your relationship with all of life to become disentangled yet intimately engaged and fully experienced.
When you inhabit the whole internal space of your body, including your subtle core, you uncover an infinite expanse of undivided, unchanging fundamental consciousness. This is an embodied, nondual experience of unbroken space pervading your body and the environment as a unity. When two people, or a group of people, attune to this fundamental consciousness together, they experience mutual transparency: a unified, single expanse of relational, nondual consciousness.
Nondual Embodiment via Realization Process supports meaningful and refined contact with another, from a deliciously subtle level beneath the surface of the body/mind. And unified wholeness supports us to receive and respond to others with less projection and less fear, from the ground of love.
Realization Process is a meditation method for direct experience of nondual awakening.
Realization Process is also an embodiment practice for personal and relational healing.
This poster presentation is supported with a brief experiential introduction to Realization Process and is offered in partnership with poster presenter Zeb Lancaster, PhD. You will feel how inhabiting the body is different from body awareness. You will have opportunity to uncover the experience of pervasive, unchanging unity, fundamental consciousness, and use nondual embodiment to explore mutual transparency and non-invasive relational contact. Learn to open your heart without leaving your body.
Literature on the neuroscience of happiness and positive neuroplasticity frequently cite the importance of adopting a gratitude practice as a fundamental tool to impact mood, improve wellbeing and reverse the brains negativity bias. Regularly engaging in a conscious gratitude exercise has been proven to produce multiple benefits including elevating mood, increasing satisfaction with life and building overall resilience.
But could this gentle practice also have a deeper impact on our level of consciousness and connection with the Divine? In 2017 the “60 Day Gratitude Challenge” involving 300 participants from over 12 countries was created with two main intentions:
1. To engage as many people as possible in a conscious gratitude practice
2. To test the hypothesis that gratitude can serve as a gateway to spiritual awakening
Join me as I guide you through the powerful insights from this beautiful journey and learn how deepening a gratitude practice over the course of sixty days enables us to tap into the field of open, loving presence and provides an avenue to connect more deeply to the truth of our Being.
Together we’ll explore the transformative ability of Gratitude to crack the heart open to experience more love, to facilitate a deeper connection to inner wisdom and intuition and its capacity to allow practitioners to experience an innate sense of Oneness and living in a state of harmony with the Universe.
Gratitude most certainly awakens us to our true nature and to the beauty of the world around us – let me share that magic with you!
Many of us feel as though we are never doing enough and that we must constantly prove and re-prove our self-worth. We have a deep-rooted sense of inadequacy that drives us to over-achieve or acquire more than we already have. This sense of ‘not-enoughness’ comes from an over-identification with our dualistic mind.
Science reveals that, through our common ancestry, all life on earth is one. This is one of the basic premises of non-duality, which, if employed as an ongoing spiritual practice, may relieve us from the relentless drive to become ‘something’. If I am one with Everything, how can I not be enough?
‘Being Enough’ is about overcoming inadequacy through identification with the Oneness of All That Is: we are already enough and there is not one more thing we have to do to be enough. Once we understand this basic truth, we can begin the practice of ‘returning’ to our Innate Wholeness. There is no longer anything to become because we already are Everything That Is.
This poster will offer participants the simple practice of connecting to Non-Dual Reality and returning to It, whenever we realize we’ve forgotten or become overly-identified with the separate self.
This process of ‘returning’ is an ongoing relationship that may grow over time, with practice. To what am I returning? Not to something outside of myself but to something That I Am. What does it mean to be in an ongoing relationship with this part of ourselves? Participants will be offered myriad opportunities to explore this relationship to That Which We Already Are and get a solid practice of how to continually ‘return’ in the midst of ongoing, daily life.
Stop by the Poster Session and speak with Dave about healing your pain or illness with a modality unique to Empaths and Sensitives!
Lower Level Lobby
Pluck Another Apple, Eve, and Finish it: Poems of Relationship with LIFE
SAND needs a poet. Someone with a knack for putting into words what can’t be put into words. I will offer poems from my new book, “Pluck Another Apple, Eve, And Finish It”.
From two reviews of “Pluck Another Apple, Eve, And Finish It”:
“I read these poems in one sitting. I could not stop.”
“These poems kick ass.”
“Pluck Another Apple, Eve, And Finish It” exquisitely, intimately, and unflinchingly explores our longing to reconnect—with self, other, spirit, nature, and ALL THAT IS. It springs from the place where science is a gateway to wonder, and wonder is both holy and relentless. The poems stand on their own. But I’m told that my readings transmit powerful energies—light, awe, solace, joy, strength—energies that are both provocative and reassuring. People in my audiences get goosebumps, cry, grin, feel their hearts open and their brains hum. Cataloging such energies isn’t my job; sharing them is.
The Gong is said to be the primal sound. Reminiscent of the Big Bang, this cosmic sound travels through time and space and resonates to our deepest levels of being. When I first started learning to play the Gong from my teacher, Master Gong Healer Guru Mantra Singh Khalsa, a man with 40 years of yoga practice behind him and a Vietnam War Veteran, the magnetic pull of the sound gave me an experience of being fully immersed in the here and now, and at peace. Our relationship to the cosmic source can be reactivated through hearing these cosmic sounds, and the Gong is a sort of “forced meditation” for those who have trouble sitting still or quieting their minds. Like a blanket pulled over our consciousness, we cannot help but surrender to the deep folds of its mysterious vibrations.
Playing the Gong and sharing its story, as well as the power of sound and meditation in my own healing journey following 5 years of Marine Corps service and an additional 4 years abroad in Afghanistan, has been an instrumental part of my career as a teacher. I love to carry forward the teachings and tradition of the primal sounds, and in my presentation I would like to engage the audience in a “Living Presentation” of primal sounds and original frequencies.
Instrumental to creating the sacred space of sound is thoughtfulness, presentation, and the culture of ritual. Ritual involves a distinct set and setting, intention, and a deliberate focus of the sound. It can involve one of a vast number of elements; the key theme is that it creates a sacred space within the individual, where healing and resonance - the Cosmic Relationship - take place.
Participants will hear a little of my own story, and experience the power and mystery behind the Gong.
Lower Level Lobby
From Empathic Merging to Compassionate Connection: An Energetic Protocol for Engaging & Relating
Much is made of the extraordinary sensitivity of empaths. They’re people who feel deeply, tuned in at levels that often require shrinkage — reducing participation in life’s experiences to manage and protect their sensitivity.
They focus on managing what’s ‘out there’ — energy vampires, negative energies, feeling drained and overwhelmed in crowds, excessive emotional and energetic input that create a debilitating myriad of symptoms and emotional, mental and physical issues.
These good people come by their sensitivity honestly. For many, it’s a trauma story from childhood. For others, there’s an innate tendency to take on and hold other people’s emotions and energy.
Many sensitives or empaths become healers; their ability to feel the emotions of others leads them to a helping profession. They are frequently beleaguered by the symptom palette of their clients, experience emotional overwhelm and depletion, often called ‘compassion fatigue’.
Empathic sensitivity has its roots in the energy field, which can be evolved to minimize and resolve the tendency to absorb others emotions and energy.
This experiential workshop offers a powerful, simple protocol to retrain the energy body for self-containment while cultivating a compassionate stance that enables connection without murky merging.
We’ll discuss the energetic factors that foster empathic merging. We’ll contrast this with compassionate connection. We’ll learn and apply an energetic protocol to retrain the chakras and aura to operate differently so that experiences and interactions are nuanced and evolved.
Imagine empaths and sensitives creating, engaging and experiencing the world from a compassionate, self-contained perspective that places them in the center of their own lives and in appropriate and meaningful connection and collaboration with others.
Lower Level Lobby
Understanding Russian and American Behavior in the Context of Nonduality: Cultural Differences in Perception of Self and Other
The environment, or culture, that we are born into and raised in greatly determines how we perceive the boundaries between self and other. There are fundamental differences in how Russians and Americans perceive these boundaries, and these differences lead to diverse interpretations of the world around us and subsequently to disparate modes of interacting with the realities that we co-create and are embedded in. These relationships to the world around us result in what seem to be diametrically opposed systems of governance, social infrastructure, domestic and foreign policy.
Raising awareness of why the differences exist can lead to a deeper understanding of each other. A nondual approach to examining the processes which our cultures and societies are embedded in can help us arrive at more accurate assessments of motives and behavior. If we allow ourselves to interpret behavior in the context of the meaning system in which it arises, then we have the flexibility of adjusting our reactions so that they are more coherent with the foreign context. This new dynamic provides us with access to our inherent interconnection, which makes dialogue possible, and can ultimately lead to improved relations between Russia and the west.
We will look at cultural differences in physical and mental space, privacy, individual and national identity, how we process and express emotions (anger and conflict), examples of how independence and interdependence manifest themselves in our two cultures. We will examine how perceived superiority and inferiority can make it impossible to communicate, how the answers “yes” and “no” are not so simple as we think, and we will learn that simply having good intentions without awareness of our collective self can lead to unexpected outcomes. We will also look at how intergenerational collective trauma complicates cross-cultural understanding.
Lower Level Lobby
Superorganism: The Holographic Emergence of Harmonic Ontologies in Phylogenic Concordances
String theorists call the tiny geometric configurations they study, Calabi-Yau’s, in their various combinations, ‘little creatures’. Even at these tiniest scales we have some innate impetus to recognize the substantiating and pervasive principle of life which integrates, synthesizes, correlates and synergizes the particular into ever more emergent harmonics of complexity and dimensional creative systemics. “The embryo is the universe writing itself on its own body(Grossinger, 2003)”. At the largest scales we recognize and are exploring the multifaceted inter-dimensionalities of what we are calling the Superorganism. We explore the potentiality of phylogenic universe sets gravitationally lensed at the edges of the knowable cosmos, and in the kalpas and yugas of our consciousness sets. Every aspect of this complexity, it’s progressing notes, chords, etudes, and symphonies, builds upon and is vitally interconnected with every other and the Totality, reiterated across scales. As a vast web of multidimensional catacombs from the scale of the cosmos, to ecosystems, bio-systems, and subatomic quantum harmonics, inter-being-ness is reiterated. We are understanding that a complex ontogenesis informs the embryo and it’s organismic emergence far more epigenetic than the interplay of genetics and biology. “A form of consciousness or innate organization flows between levels so that the universe, from end to end, is a single pulse of meta-intelligence encompassing the intelligence of all local systems(Ibid)”. What is the correlation between the flow of plasma in the solar orb and of bio-plasma through the human heart? Might we find a selection of pulsars in our galaxy, or the local cluster, that utters the prototypical pulses of all of the atoms and cells of a particular earth organism, or our own bio-temporality,… or the timing of poems in a set of cultural identities? This presentation explores the poetry of the resonant permutations of Totalities plasmic interrelations.
Our childhood upbringing, environment, and karma have a big effect on us, and who we become. Through our conditioning, we learn patterns and defense mechanisms to keep us safe. Science proves we inherent trauma, behaviors, beliefs, and more, from our parents and ancestors. Experiences can have a significant impact on a child’s future behavior, emotional development, mental and physical health.
The past affects us until we are willing to evolve beyond our baggage and old story. We can confront our subconscious patterns and behaviors and consciously evolve.
We continue to act out our childhood wounds and fear when we abandon ourselves and loose connection with our true heart and self. We hold pain and seek outside ourselves for love while attaching and seeking something beyond us to love us. We act out in self-sabotaging ways in our own attempt to feel loved and secure until we create love within.
This presentation will incorporate a meditation through the chakras and some philosophy, to examine how we can grow authentic and empowered within for self-love. By balancing our energy using Kundalini technology we can release traumas, trapped emotions, change our DNA, and more, to feel better in our mind and body. We will use breathing and energy healing to help the body experience more serenity within.
We will have an open discussion about how Ayurveda’s science of life and Western Astrology can also help us understand our roots and psychology while helping us understand our past and our problems on an individual and collective level. By developing a better inner relationship, observing the kleshas, and confronting our limitations through writing, we are able to feel more secure and self love.
We can overcome our childhood story and transform and liberate ourselves of suffering, to become the authentic and loving person we were born to become.
10,000 Awakenings, documents the awakening experiences of everyday people.
Lower Level Lobby
Fusion and Fission: The Complex Universe of Ignatius Reilly in "A Confederacy of Dunces"
A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole’s novel posthumously published in 1980, tells the story of Ignatius Reilly, a misanthropic and underachieving Medievalist who lives with his mother in a working-class New Orleans Neighborhood in the 1960s. In my view, the novel’s narrative showcases the tension between separation and dependence. The main characters, many of whom don’t know one another, meet randomly at the beginning of the novel, becoming increasingly closer as the novel progresses, their lives intertwining in multiple personal and professional ways. I argue that the structure of the novel reenacts a certain kind of textual explosion. Ignatius and his mother act as the nucleus of the story as all the other characters are drawn to them. However, an even larger amount of textual energy is released in the climatic ending of the novel when mother and son attempt to separate from each other. I see the novel’s atomic metaphor as a reflection on the mid 20th-century paranoia not only about nuclear war and the threat of communism, but also the fear of homosexuality (lavender scare) and racial tension.
There are at least two different senses of connectedness: the connectedness of all things, and the connectedness of all subjective experience. This differentiation is rooted in people’s innate tendency towards a dualistic distinction between mind and matter. Even if all physical things are believed to be connected, it is possible to believe mental experiences are fundamentally separate between individuals. Such separation is the basis from which the devaluation of others emerges. With higher degrees of separateness often come higher degrees of devaluation. Animals, being separate not only at the the individual level but also at the species level, are highly subject to devaluation by humans.
The purpose of this study is to determine whether non-dual education could amplify the impact of an experiential virtual reality simulation designed to reduce moral bias against animals. Participants were assigned into two groups. The experimental group was given a three minute audio-visual presentation and two minute guided meditation on non-duality, followed by a five minute virtual reality intervention provided by PETA’s I, Calf immersive experience. The control group was given an equivalent duration audio-visual presentation and meditation on mindfulness, along with the I, Calf intervention. Measures on the Animal Attitudes Scale (AAS) and Non-Dual Awareness Assessment (NADA) were collected pre and post intervention. Subjects included Columbia University students, recruited in-person on campus.
Preliminary results indicate that the non-duality education intervention was associated with significantly higher changes towards positive attitudes towards animals, and interest in veganism, compared to the control condition. The results of this study demonstrate that non-dual education is not simply a philosophical novelty, but has important practical implications for positively influencing people’s attitudes towards other sentient creatures.
For centuries, Yoga is practiced as a ‘Mind – Body Science’ in India. One of the ancient Sanskrit scriptures ‘Patanjal Yogasutras’ written by a Rishi ‘Patanjali’ explains various aspects of Yoga. Since last century various attempts have been made to translate Yoga into various languages and also to test out whether yogic doctrines are valid and applicable in modern circumstances.
Jose Silva of USA has developed ‘Silva Mind Control Method’ which he named as ‘Psychorientology’.
Smita from India is a student of both methods. She is a Silva Graduate and initiated in Yoga by a Guru who is a doctor of medicine by profession.
Smita has made an attempt to make comparative study of ‘Psychorientology’ and ‘Patanjali’s Yogasutras’. While Silva Method focuses on the application of mind power for the achievement of material goals; Yoga focuses on attainment of ultimate freedom – the union with the source of the divine energy.
Silva method explains the brain-wave patterns measured by an electroencephalograph (EEG) expressed in cycles per second (CPS).
Brain Wave Patterns Patanjal Yoga Silva Method
14 to 21 CPS Beta Vitarka Logic
7 to 14 CPS Alpha Vichara Relaxation
4 to 7 CPS Theta Ananda Deep Meditation
0.5 to 4 Delta Asmita (Samadhi) Unconscious State
When Yogasutras were written, there were no modern aid to study brain waves. However, the four stages of Samadhi explained in the Yogasutras are quite corresponding to the stages explained by Silva. Yogasutras explain the four levels are Vitarka –logic, Vichara –thought, Ananda –bliss and Asmita – Awareness or Samadhi.
The practitioner of Yogasutras becomes non-judgemental and experiences unconditional love. The practitioner develops various mind powers on this path which may help him in having material achievements as well.
Smita is presenting a poster on her findings while studying the Yoga and the Silva Method.
When you live within the whole internal space of your body, you uncover the experience of fundamental consciousness, an infinite expanse of unbroken, unchanging consciousness pervading you and everything around you. When you settle and attune to this embodied nondual experience the most subtle dimension of your own being awakens. Your thoughts, emotions, and sensations become unified.
Embodied nonduality is a stable, realized part of your wholeness, deeper than your injuries. Attunement to fundamental consciousness provides reliable resilience to those aspects of life that lead to personal suffering. Fundamental consciousness supports a more authentic, subtler connection with other people and yourself. From this embodied nondual wholeness, which locates each of us at the center of all our experience, you can uncover oneness with your environment and other people without becoming entangled or overwhelmed.
Embodied nonduality supported by Realization Process practices helps couples heal imbalances in their relationship. By revealing and resolving habit patterns of mind and body that obstruct connection on subtle and meaningful levels of being, these simple but profound meditations awaken each human to their essential wholeness of being.
Realization Process is a meditation practice for direct experience of nondual awakening.
Realization Process is also an embodiment method for personal and relational healing.
This poster presentation is supported with a brief experiential introduction to Realization Process and is offered in partnership with poster presenter, Candace Cave. You will feel how inhabiting the body is different from body awareness. You will have opportunity to uncover the experience of pervasive, unchanging unity, fundamental consciousness, and use embodied nonduality to explore mutual transparency and non-invasive relational contact. Learn to open your heart without leaving your body.
Concert meets ritual in this multi-level experience which incorporates elements of music, meditation and sound healing. Choose a spot to unroll your mat and place your bolster or pillow. Begin to think about your intentions; write them out on a prayer flag to hang or place on an altar. Rest and relax while enjoying a musical concert, mixing traditional East Forest songs with deep ambient soundscapes, that will move you through the energy cycles. Allow the music to take you on a inner journey, to lead you to the wellspring of wisdom within. End the evening with a deep savasana, followed by a tea ceremony that will allow you to share your experience and connect with others. Leave with feelings of tranquility, hopefulness and self-empowerment. (Note: The East Forest Ceremony is not a yoga class, everyone is welcome!)
The form of qigong I teach was created in 1989 by a Chinese man, Dr Ming Pang. He had been recognized as a genius at a young age. He studied with 19 grandmasters and he became a doctor of Chinese and Western medicine. Dr. Ming Pang did in-depth studies of Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Quantum Physics. He integrated these into his theories, teachings and practices. D Pang’s form has successfully treated a wide range of illnesses, including my own 20-year struggle with Lyme disease.
In addition to physical healing, these practices have a profound effect on ego identity. Opening to the infinite timeless source of all existence gradually (or not so gradually) awakens us from 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 as embodied infinite love. The joy and peace experienced is independent of outer circumstances.
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. The session is for beginners and experienced practitioners alike. During our time together, we will merge our now expanded wide open hearts into one energy heart and activate a vision of awakening and healing for all of humanity, all sentient beings and Mother Earth herself. Please join me for this precious opportunity to contribute—to bring harmony into life through the love that is our shared being.
Hayes Ballroom
PL5.
A painful childhood associated with poverty, an alcoholic father and mother suffering from mental illness resulted in a childhood filled with fear, uncertainty, despair and hopelessness. At the age of 12 years everything changed after meeting one person who intuitively knew that the path to transcendence was through compassion and through compassion one is led to oneness. A personal narrative combined with a discussion of our evolution intertwined with the effects of practicing compassion.
“Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) is a radically interdisciplinary and groundbreaking field developed by neuropsychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel that presents us with a scientifically grounded view of the mind, human development, relationships and experience. We are living in a moment in human history—the anthropocene—where everything about this beautiful planet that we live on is being drastically impacted by the human mind. The unconsciousness surrounding our collective traumatic history of structural, physical, and emotional violence has brought us to a tipping point, where we must as a species learn how to reimagine the very meaning of resilient and compassionate relationships in order to move beyond the geopolitics of survival into a sustainable and Beloved Community.
In this talk, Dr. Sará King will discuss the research she conducted at UCLA on yoga, mindfulness and resilience as they relate to trauma and the work of social justice with youth. Additionally, she will discuss the work she has been conducting with her mentor, Dan Siegel, to understand how (IPNB) has deep social justice implications for how we understand and bring about Beloved Community.
Additionally, Dr. King will lead a brief guided meditation practice with the intention of bringing participants into an embodied experience of “MWe”—Dan Siegel’s new framework for shifting our understanding of what it is to have a “self”, in a way that she hopes will illuminate the ways in which we can get in touch with our intergenerational and ancestral resources for healing through the power of mindful relationships.”
We live in a time characterized by convergences of many kinds giving our civilization a threshold of significant climaxes and challenges. These outer forces of intense change are in direct alignment with inner capacities we are yet to acknowledge and live from. It is my hope that this session will allow us to contemplate the rich human and planetary histories we have inherited. The intention here is to consider how we can become aware of our true legacies and step into the realities of our deepest belonging and act from conscience as the prerequisite virtue to initiate our age, the age of humanity.
We presume we are small entities when in fact within each of us is the entire enfolded universe waiting to be unfolded and revealed. Our choice to open to love is the path towards freedom and liberation. We've heard this. We feel it. But how do we do it? How do we unlearn and de-program our toxic and limiting beliefs? How do we rid ourselves of negative cycles and patterns and live in the manner most aligned with our highest purpose? Through the use of ancient technologies and methodologies, we can engage that which is beyond. All of this and more in our session!
Hayes Ballroom
Moments of Integration
Edenvale
C13. Integrated Conversations
In Zhen Dao’s talk, which occurs the day before this experiential, she will essentially be diagnosing the human being as thus far having fallen short of its potential, its purpose. It is Zhen’s contention that this diagnosis represents an opportunity rather than an estimation of failure—that the failure of the human is the human’s last and most beautiful chance to become itself. This experiential will be a sampling of how the entire practice tradition of MogaDao is constellated around this theme of establishing and embodying the purpose of the human.
Using many modalities of the practice tradition of MogaDao and of SACRA Immanence Theater, including The Heartmind Warrior Training Program’s “Neurogenic Exercises” for rebuilding energetic and biological pathways of feeling, empowerment, and empathy, MogaDao Qigong’s 3 Pillars Qigong for Trauma, and the Erotic Basis of Being Program’s studies in vulnerability and empathy, students will be given the opportunity to participate in a small sampling of MogaDao’s trainings or techné as they are practiced at the root school, in Santa Fe, NM, and among the players in training at SACRA Theater.
Hayes Ballroom
Panel - Social Justice: Are We One?
The SAND community is deeply committed to exploring the core, interconnected issues of our time. Yet the inherent biases in our scientific methods, spiritual practices and/or wisdom traditions are not often our focus. In this panel session, we are inviting SAND community members to explore privilege and consequences of racial and ontological identities, as we consider what is inclusive space at SAND.
Some questions the panel may explore:
• What does social justice activism, informed by spirituality look like? And how is it practiced?
• What are the blind spots in largely white, privileged communities—like SAND?
• What is the unconscious conditioning we carry around racism and oppression?
• Do we reflect on the cultural context through which spiritual teachings have been passed to us?
Madrone
C18.
I propose that there is no “relationship” between Nature and myself—we are Not Two. Each one of us is unique and yet totally interdependent with all that IS. What is this “Earth”? How does it become ever more aware through me/as me? How does the habit of human “identification” allow us to limit our care and involvement with other species with whom we share this fragile biosphere? How do we allow our grief for the extinction of members of our greater family to empower us to change our embedded behaviors?
As we find our HOME in this moment, orienting as a human on this planet in this solar system and galaxy, in touch with our ancient elemental roots, we can come to rest in our True Nature as embodied awareness, present in this home of our soul, Earth. Our bodies are Earth’s local representatives. Attending to sensations of subtle energy, we dissolve the membrane of perceived boundaries to allow body, nature, earth, elements and self to melt into the loving presence of awareness in this moment. Using this body as our laboratory, we can track the flow of sensory input co-arising in each moment. We practice looking into the mirror of Nature and then practice the inquiry of “who or what is looking”? What says “I” when I say I? With what is this “I” identified?
Opening to the experiential truth of the interdependence of all, we are more able to be present and available, to play our part in the healing of our precious and only Earth as we each begin to find our soul’s calling, our unique place in this hologramatic jeweled web of life.
Monterey Room
C14.
The cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is a clear fluid that bathes our entire central nervous system (CNS), the brain and spinal cord. At the center of your brain, at the same location of your third eye, your brow center, there is a space filled with CSF called the third ventricle. This space is bordered by the pituitary gland and the pineal gland, and has been referred to as the ‘Crystal Palace’ and the ‘Cave of Brahma.’ CSF is home to many neurotransmitters and signaling molecules, including melatonin and the ‘spirit molecule’ DMT, providing an elaborate range of biological functions. CSF also contains extracellular matrix proteins that make up the connective tissue of the body and therefore is a fluid connective tissue, a liquid matrix for information to be held and transported. CSF evolved as a way to transmit signals from the environment. Therefore, CSF carries information within the fluid, whether it is a protein, a growth factor, or a hormone, and transmits that information to the entire CNS, as a fluid conductor. Our awareness of I AM begins to develop from our earliest moments of existence, when we are immersed in this primordial fluid in our mother’s womb. CSF may serve as a vehicle for signaling to major control centers in the brain and transmitting Source energy to the body and the felt sense of I AM. Connect to your CSF, to your own fluid body, to your liquid light, your liquid prana, your liquid chi, to the structured, resonating primordial ocean within you.
Morgan Hill
C16.
Many long-term spiritual practitioners and teachers experience unnecessary obstacles and suffering along the path when we have not understood the importance of deep psychological inquiry, and healing the trauma that is stored within our bodies. Teachers and students alike need to understand that spiritual awakening does not dissolve trauma and psychological wounds, nor does it replace the necessity for psychological work. Spiritually bypassing in this way frequently leads to spiritual traumas and scandals—approximately 90% related to sex, and generally perpetrated by male teachers.
For over 20 years, I have been supporting spiritual and religious practitioners, teachers/leaders, and communities to heal, grow, and thrive as a psychotherapist, author, consultant, and yoga teacher. I believe that by understanding, addressing, and healing trauma within ourselves and our communities—whether we are teachers or practitioners—we become empowered to end the endless repetition of predictable scandals related to sex, power, and money.
By practicing the potent methods to address our deep psychological wounds and traumas that are available through trauma healing, somatics, and neuroscience, and rigorously applying and integrating them into our spiritual practices and communities, our practice becomes grounded and integrated. When we address these issues in ourselves, we are neither drawn to teachers and practices that are likely to repeat patterns of unresolved trauma within us, nor do we participate in replicating the myriad forms of otherwise avoidable suffering due to unaddressed psychological wounds. When we bring together ancient practices and teachings, and a modern understanding of psychology, trauma, somatics, and neuroscience, we catalyze new possibilities for an integrated awakening within our body, psyche and spirit. Traveling through the eye of the needle of our trauma, our wounds become our gifts and transform into the capacity for discernment—the crowning jewel on the spiritual path.
Come and participate in an interactive art installation using creativity to embody and celebrate (non-)duality. Sit in a circle of sacred casts to contemplate two questions: How do you define non-duality? and What’s one of your favorite dualities? Participate by answering on paper leaves and help ‘bloom’ the two metal Trees of Duality throughout the conference to share and inspire others.
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 processes and exercises to sensitize the body in relationship to another, and explore ways to deepen into an understanding of the principles of intimacy.
San Juan Bautista
C17.
What is life’s expression of Nondual consciousness and love? With the embodiment of Nonduality, life becomes a portal from which divine being emerges into form, identity with separation is surrendered, truth matters more than the structure of beliefs, and our resistance to what is ends. When divine flow is no is longer hindered, consciousness and love unite in dance, in song, and life’s expression emerges from the flowering of heart and minds undivided intimacy with being. All are welcome to join in this exploration of how the divine seeps into the crevices and conquers the diverse territories of our conscious existence.
San Martin
C15.
In this experiential workshop we will use a specific form of partnered meditative inquiry that I have refined over many years to explore two essential questions: 1) What is the true nature of the Heart? and 2) Does it need protection? Relationships are often the most challenging arenas to stay awake within as we try to protect our self from being judged or abandoned. They also offer extraordinary opportunities to see where and how we hold onto the illusion of being a separate self.
This profound form of interpersonal inquiry quickly unveils the deepest dimension of the Heart as innocent, all-inclusive, loving awareness, as well as our conditioned resistance to being so open, especially with an apparent other. Partnered inquiry adds a potent dimension to self-inquiry by offering an opportunity to:
1) Experience our essential non-separateness with another person
2) Stay connected to oneself and not merge while meeting another
3) Be profoundly seen and heard
4) Distinguish the vulnerable human heart from the Heart of awareness
5) Be more aware of how we unconsciously defend ourselves
6) Recognize and question our core limiting beliefs
Madrone
Panpsychism: Phenomenal Bonding Relations, Primacy of Consciousness, or Just Interplay among Mentons?
Panpsychism is the view that consciousness, or some form of mentality, is distributed throughout the universe. This view is as old as Western and Eastern cosmology. Surprisingly, panpsychism is currently experiencing a robust revival, even among analytically oriented philosophers of mind. This presentation gives an overview of the main issues and approaches in the contemporary debate about and within panpsychism, and indicates some ignored roads currently not taken. The contemporary debate is gripped by “the hard problem” of explaining how consciousness can arise from apparently unconscious matter. The renewed interest in panpsychism is motivated by the obvious failure of reductive physicalism to explain phenomenal consciousness or mentality. Panpsychism seems to offer a middle ground between physicalism, idealism, and mind-matter dualism. From the perspective of physicalism, which treats instances of conscious experience as the “curse of the qualia,” consciousness is an anomaly that needs to be explained (away), i.e., reduced to physical concepts. Panpsychists, however, point out a hard datum in favor of their view: the irrefutable existence of consciousness.
We will review contending accounts of panpsychism which have two features in common:
(1) Like their physicalist counterparts, panpsychists are obsessed with explaining consciousness, favoring microphysical upward causation, emergence, or supervenience.
(2) Panpsychists’ biggest problem is the seemingly insurmountable combination problem: how do microphysical, protophenomenal elements add up or combine to account for macrophysical, conscious subjects? An intriguing perspective is opened up by the high probability of downward causation, i.e., causal powers that are not microdetermined by the causal relations at lower levels (as in quantum entanglement). The presentation concludes with a sketch of admirable alternatives to panpsychism in order to round out the newly emerging metaphysics of consciousness.
The urge to unite draws us together like irresistible magnets and we push each other away with equal intensity. The absolute contains these polarities, which makes the dance juicy, fascinating and agonizing too. We have created a rift between women and men, between the masculine and feminine energy and it plays out on a grand scale across the world, in our relationships and within our own souls.
How do we bridge the gap and heal the wounds of centuries? How do we engage to bring forth understanding and deep connection? The crucible to real love is often found where we least expect it: in the separation between the feminine and masculine, within the knots we encounter in relationships and our own being. It asks us to stand in the fire with each other, to meet across the chasm through a new way of communicating and relating.
A call is resounding throughout the lands and hearts to come together in an enliving, liberating and authentic way so we can create a world, where love is given the prime seat in the space between us here and now.
Emptiness, Oneness, Interconnectedness—these are all common ways reality is described in Buddhism. Do they point to the same thing? Different things? If so, how many realities can there be? How do we hold the apparent paradox of no fixed self vs the obvious multiplicity of our relationships? How do we reconcile the indivisibility of the Absolute with the relative appearance of the 10,000 things? And, as the song goes, “What’s Love got to do with it?” Do the techniques offered by Zen practice present a means of answering such questions? Fortunately, in Zen ‘not knowing’ is a highly esteemed principle, and coming to know the great mystery deeply does not require explaining it. In this presentation we’ll apply our ‘Beginners Minds’ to exploring and clarifying these and other such questions, which have beguiled and frustrated human beings since our beginnings.
Relationship is typically defined as the way in which two or more concepts, objects or people are connected—or—the state of being connected. Internally, how we relate to our thoughts, feelings, and emotions as well as, externally, to people, places, things and events—images how much we experience peace and joy, spontaneity and warmth as well as worry, depression, and anxiety. Ah ha! Love, The Human Condition.
Let us dwell for a few moments on how to relate such that we experience and share peace and joy and actually love. How? Learning to engender the spirit of equanimity and not taking life as a personal event. How do we engender a equanimous perspective? How do we show-up in life with composure, calmness, levelheadedness, self-possession, self-control, even-temperedness, coolness, cool-headedness and presence of mind? How do we take life not as an impersonal event but as a non-personal event? How are we love?
Hint: let’s discuss the Human ego, the source of the so-called ten thousand tribulations. Let’s take a look at our delusions (false beliefs), illusions (false perceptions) and allusions (false stories about ourselves and life). Let’s unfold how we are the Eye of the Needle through which, with the thread of our intention, we do mend the fabric of our life. Let’s relate with conscious, awake awareness. Let’s just laugh and be merry, be quiet and still; it is all one in the same, is it not?
Love is the refusal to separate —Nisargadatta Maharaj
From a deeply awakened perspective, the smallest particle and the vastness of space are equal expressions of an infinite mystery that cannot be divided or even named. This infinite mystery is empty of definition, empty of self, empty of resistance. Yet from this ground of infinite potential, life and love move spontaneously. Whether we are scientists looking for a single building block of the universe, or spiritual seekers looking for the deepest Truth, we discover a wholeness of being containing intricate interconnections.
Quarks, the smallest known particles, have flavors, yet apparently cannot be separated or isolated within their energy field. So, too, our ordinary life, filled with ever-changing forms and flavors, cannot be divided from the still, silent ground that seems to create from its own vibrations everything that appears to “be.” What is the energy of this connectivity? Perhaps it is a Love that cannot separate itself from you, from me, from the moment, from the cosmos, from the changing faces of experience, because it is simultaneously the totality of both source and expression. Perhaps your very form is the way that the Infinite knows and loves itself.
This presentation, including experiential invitations, will explore the singularity of That which cannot be divided, yet relates to itself each moment in every conceivable way through an unconditional and timeless Love that can be experienced but not created by any thought that takes itself to be separate.
Many nondual teachings would have us believe that there is only one nonduality, and that it includes everything. However, we know from mathematics that, paradoxically, some infinities are larger than other infinities. Could the same thing be true for nondual experience? That is, is it possible that some nondualities are bigger—and more inclusive—than other nondualities? If so, then how do we connect with these more complete nondual experiences? In this experiential presentation, nondual teacher and author Michael Taft will show you some powerful and fascinating ways to do just that.
What do mindfulness and sex have to do with each other? A lot. Buddhist theory and meditation have deep relevance to relationship and sex therapy. The intense eroticism of a new relationship is based on novelty. Sexual boredom often accompanies familiarity. But what if you could create novelty with the one you are with – using your mind? Move from a sense of disconnected separation to the bliss-union of awakened love? Buddha’s wisdom and new research converge when we apply meditation techniques to your relationship. Mindfulness has been shown to improve couples communication, conflict management, and increase sexual arousal, desire, and overall intimacy. It turns out great love—and great sex—are all in your head.
But what are the practical applications? Does mindfulness really help people have better relationships? The short answer is yes. Drawn from my new book Buddha’s Bedroom—The Mindful Loving Path to Sexual Passion and Lifelong Intimacy—foreword by Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman—this mini-workshop is designed to help participants apply Buddhist philosophy and mindfulness to romantic/sexual relationships.
Topics include:
· Don’t change your Mate, Change your Mind—How Right View can revitalize your love affair
· Never say “I’m Not in The Mood” ever again - Why you need to discriminate between physical arousal and mental desire—the two keys to the erotic engine—and use mindfulness to recreate the attraction and passion you used to have
· The difference between a climax orgasm and a tantric energy orgasm—How you can ride the sexual response cycle to sexual bliss
· The Seven Factors of Enlightened Sex
· From ME to WE to ONE – dissolving, non-self, and the act of making love beyond the body
Plus, join me at the New Harbinger booth for a book signing and Q and A .
Hayes Ballroom
PL6.
Hayes Ballroom
What Science and My Unusual Brain are Teaching us about the Convergence of Reality, Love, and the Senses
Discover how to apply fascinating new insights from brain science to transform how you experience the world as well as your “self” and how you can better connect with anyone, including someone who is different from you in almost every way. Harvard neurologist, scientist, and author Joel Salinas, MD, discusses what you and the people you care about can learn from understanding the profound science behind reality and atypical brains, including his own. Dr. Salinas has an extreme form of synesthesia where all his senses collide—tasting sounds, literally feeling what someone else is physically and emotionally feeling, and more.
Be warned: Dr. Salinas will guide you through an immersive journey down the rabbit hole of his own wildly unusual sensory perception and, at several points along the way, you may learn something powerful about yourself that you never would have expected. Through this mind-altering, multisensory experience, he combines art, science, technology, and spirituality to reveal how we can use these neuroscientific aha moments to radically shape the world around us and within us.
There is a growing tendency to build relationship around external commonalities rather than inner connection. Technology is creating the opportunity for this to trend to continue. There are times when there are good reasons for us to be in relationship with others because of mutual associations. However, we can experience difficulty in building and sustaining relationships when, despite our common association, we cannot actually relate to one another in our heart. Understanding is a good beginning, but it is not enough. We can understand someone and not be able to relate to them. Relating does not develop until you can perceive that whomever or whatever has something to do with you. Oftentimes, the culprit of our inability to genuinely relate in our heart is our adherence to the dualistic paradigm of “otherness.” In this mindset, we simply fail to perceive our interconnectedness, let alone our oneness. Engaging in othering for prolonged periods of time cripples our very capacity to be in authentic relationship. We witness this on all levels from interpersonal family dynamics to geo-socio political affairs. Unbeknownst to us, we have created the equivalent of relationship gerrymandering in which we redraw the boundaries of who is or out of our sphere of connectedness. Rarely do they have any say in the matter. Forgetting that a relationship is merely a real time reflection of how we are relating, we fallaciously believe that we can improve relationships without improving how we actually relate. It’s time for us to put “relate” back into relationship.
We most often associate spiritual practice with inner work and we engage meditation as a path of personal growth and development. While the personal level is an important foundation, the next level is to bring our practice to the interpersonal realm. Cultivating deep presence and awareness in relation with others is a "social contemplation" that reveals the truth of our deep interconnectedness with all of life. Uncovering and illuminating the interconnected web of our human "data network" brings a higher level of coherence and intelligence in the collective body. This opens up the potential for healing the fragmentation in our world and liberates our capacity to respond creatively and whole-heartedly to the immense collective challenges we are facing.
Edenvale
C19.
When we knowingly take our stand as the limitless field of Awareness we may recognise 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.
As our world experiences dramatic change and polarizations, and we see the stress it is causing, people from all cultures are looking for practical ways to deepen heart connections in their communities and affect social change through compassionate awareness and actions. This presentation explores new research on group coherence and the importance of physiological synchronization in increasing group cooperation, collaboration, harmony and performance. The term coherence always implies harmonious relationships and connectedness between the various parts of a larger system. Social coherence can be achieved by the establishment of stable and harmonious relationships, between couples, within families, groups or people within larger organizations. A number of studies have shown that feelings of cooperation, trust, compassion and increased pro-social behaviors depend largely on the establishment of a spontaneous synchronization of physiological rhythms between group members. In order for physiological activity of individuals to synchronize, a signal of some type must convey information between them. The model that best fits the data from various studies is built on field theory and nonlocal information exchange where information about the entire group is simultaneously distributed to all of the group members, creating a “social hologram”. We have suggested that biologically generated magnetic fields may act as a carrier wave for information transfer between individuals and group members. The most commonly found factor that underlies our ability to get in-synch with our deeper self, others, and the rhythms of the Earth is heartfelt connectedness and love.
Madrone
C24.
We live in a society that fosters competition, distrust and separation. We often have a small circle of close friends and sometimes none at all. Festival goers skew towards the social side of that norm but conversation is generally kept “safe” and is rarely intimate. Few of us make a regular effort towards meaningful connection with those we know less well. Being open to everyday deep interaction can gradually shift the norms and expectations of our society. Over time we have the potential of creating a more trusting, compassionate and caring world as we become willing to have meaningful contact with a greater number of individuals and learn to widen our range of comfort and familiarity.
In this 20 minute gathering we will explore becoming closer to those we don’t know. After a brief introduction we will create connection through a series of interactions. Finally, we will explore what we experienced. How we were challenged. What we learned about ourselves and others. How we might bring these insights home and effect change in our community. What is our vision of a world that is open, courageous and caring?
jamesmichaelseehof.com
Monterey Room
C20.
The Mathematics of Nonduality visions a unified psychophysics bringing together physics and psychology through a new understanding of mathematics as both a universal archetypal system and a living process embodied at once in all of psyche and matter. We ‘look and see’ that mathematics is occurring, consciously and unconsciously, in all physical and psychical phenomena. From this perspective all matter is sentient and an embodied universal intelligence is the source of all psychophysical process. In this light the technical issues of incompleteness, undecidability, and indefinability, introduced by the mathematical theorems of Godel and others, and the ‘inexhaustibility of mathematics’ take on a new significance.
Extending the Lucas-Penrose view that Godel’s results imply that the human mind can not be reduced to digital computation, mathematical inexhaustibility becomes a ‘transuniversal’ principle not only of mathematics but also of physics and psychology that implies the existence of a corresponding inexhaustible ‘transuniversal’ psyche. Even in the kind of alternate universes, suggested by some of Stephen Hawking’s last work, in which the laws of physics are different from those of our own universe, inexhaustibility still remains a fundamental law, just as the principles of mathematics understood for what they actually are, must hold true of any possible universe. This psychophysical inexhaustibility is the ‘body and mind of God’.
From this point of view, the discovery of mathematical inexhaustibility is literally an event of cosmic significance and the contemporary ‘crisis’ in our understanding of the foundations of mathematics in the wake of Godel’s work is an intellectually historic moment. This may reflect the psychic and material crises we face as a global culture and we are invited to consider how coming to a new understanding of the nature of mathematics may inform the emerging new cultural paradigm in the face of our planetary crises.
Morgan Hill
C22. Youth Programming
Have you ever felt someone projecting something on you, that wasn’t at all about you? How painful! We all project on each other unconsciously all the time. Yet we all want passionately to be seen. How can we bring our own projections to light? How can we let others know we feel their projections? Lama Tsomo will speak from her body of knowledge both as a Jungian psychotherapist and a trained Tibetan lama, on possible ways, both Eastern and Western, to work productively with projection, give us a sample practice or two to try, and we’ll spend time discussing our experiences with each other.
Our human and greater-than-human relationships in life make us who we are. From our best friends, family, ancestry to the water we drink, the deer, the hawk, the spider, the soil, the trees, the ocean, and the sky. This is an altar to honor all the relationships that bind us and that we are bound to, in and through time. This altar, by Day Schildkretand our entire SAND community will be surrounded by a nest made of local branches from local trees. Each branch will be wrapped with the names of our relations that we care about and love.
Invitation: Please take a branch. On a slip of paper write the name of something or someone you care deeply about, are glad they are in this world and will grieve if and when they leave this world. Wrap this paper around the branch and wrap the colored string around the paper, binding the paper to the branch. Hand the branch to the artist, Day for placement in the nest. Witness the altar and nest being created and eventually, deconstructed.
San Jose
Experiential: Trauma and the Rupture of Interconnection with Somatic Experiencing®
In this 2-hr experiential and didactic public workshop participants will have the opportunity to explore how trauma trapped in the nervous system can affect one’s ability to feel truly connected to the self, the other, and the whole. Through guided exercises in a supportive small group setting, we will practice somatic tools for releasing trauma trapped in the body. Our inner exploration of bodily sensations, imagery, movement, emotions, and meaning will help build coherence and a deeper state of interconnectedness that will support genuine emotional growth and spiritual-transformation.
Somatic Experiencing®, developed by Peter A Levine, PhD, is a body-oriented approach to the healing of trauma and other stress related disorders that cause internal fragmentation due to Autonomic Nervous System dysregulation. The trauma response is a set of defensive bodily reactions that people initially mobilize in order to protect themselves, both from threat, and then later, against feeling emotional and physical pain. However, as time goes on, this holding keeps our reactions frozen and stuck in the past, unable to be fully present in the here and now, and unable to go forward in life with the richness and connection we deserve.
The SE™ approach gently facilitates the release of thwarted survival energy bound in the body, thus addressing the root cause of trauma symptoms and chronic stress. Through a combination of theoretical explanation, demonstrations, and body-oriented exercises, participants will begin to develop a deep and intrinsic body awareness that helps to draw them into the vibrant experience of life-energy, flow, contact with the eternal now, and wholeness.
Trauma and the Rupture of Interconnection is an Ergos Institute of Somatic Education Community Health SE™ Experiential Program brought to you by the office of Peter A Levine, PhD. For more information on Somatic Experiencing® go to: traumahealing.org
.
San Juan Bautista
C23.
In 2010 I was staying at an ashram in Pune, India. The guru there ordered me to go have my Naadi Palm Reading done. I had never heard of these before and had no clue as to what he was talking about. After he explained what it was, I was beyond skeptical of any possibility that they could be accurate, let alone, predictive of my future. I am a strong believer in the use of our Free Will. My issue was how could something that may have been written 2.500 to 5,000 years ago, be true to what would happen to me in the now and the future. Was this all about fate?
I went because I was told to go and have it done. I went to the not so easy location to find in the old city of Pune. I gave them, as is the custom, my right thumb print and waited for my “reading”. I got my reading done that day and have spent the next 9 years watching the predictions made all come to pass including things which happened to me when I was having open heart by-pass surgery where I left my body (OBE, or a NDE) and found myself in India meeting with great sages.
The readings told me who and what I was up until I walked into there for a reading that afternoon. It also told about a significant past life and what would happen to me over the course of the rest of my lifetime. I have since watched in awe, at times, as things have transpired.
I will discuss my personal reading and what has taken place. I will address the issue of our free will and what is fate. I still strongly believe in our ability to control our lives, but I have a new and different perception of how that may work and how our karmic choices (and even the way we have dreamt or thought) all create a pattern that the universe reads. We are the creators, even if we do not recall how that happen. I will discuss my views on this and what I learned from my own encounters and life experiences. I will also take Q& A if time remains.
San Martin
C21.
San Martin
It is all about Making Whoopee: the Playful Connection of Intimacy between Human and Divine.
How can we be intimate with ourselves and another? Our bodies are vehicles of love. Through our body—life experiences itself, how would it be to know the oneness of form and emptiness from our experience? Before we come together in love, we intimately connect with our inner silence, which can be experienced, in our body as a subtle vibration. That makes us touchable, reachable, and open. We are relaxing into our body being, our essence.
As that silent body being, we gaze into each other’s eyes. The couple steps together into the mystery. Naturally, the bodies enter the one stream of subtle vibration. Energy circles back and forth between the bodies and starts living its own life. Before we know it the bodies find each other. Essence meets essence and body meets body. It sounds really wonderful, but it is not always that easy. It takes practice and dedication to move through that, which is in the way to come to the natural joy of making love. The experience of “I am a body falls” away and simultaneously the bodies are moving. They melt into one movement that has nothing to do with us. We are not here and, yes; we are here and intimately experiencing all sensations. It’s almost like you say to each other afterwards, “Was that us making love?”
This can be experienced not only during sex, but also throughout life. Looking in someone’s eyes, being touched by the wind or our lover, the sweetness of a flower, a thought, or an emotion, or chocolate melting on our tongue. All is the making of love! Or is it making whoopee?
Biomimicry is "the conscious emulation of nature's genius—Janine Benyus". Biomimicry has been known in design and technology, by emulating organisms, such as the kingfisher's beak inspiring a more efficient bullet train, or termite mounds inspiring cooler building structures. However, this field is not just about emulating it is also about reconnecting and rekindling our relationship with nature. Nature itself is thriving through its intrictate relationships, whether in the soil of perennial grasslands, or through mutualistic relations of organisms on a coral reef, or even the microorganisms working together to aid in your own body's digestion. We can reconnect to nature, by going outside, or delving inside of us, using our senses, understanding the science and cultivating cooperative relationships.
Psychedelics make the interconnectedness of life palpable, and can open the gates to a direct experience of nonduality. But to benefit from their use, good preparation and a navigational toolkit to work with the experience is essential. Just as in extended spiritual retreat, during medicine journeys the ego is deconstructed, which can be frightening. With the right toolkit in place, the process is more likely to unfold without resistance—and without being derailed by fear. This talk will cover practical methods to slow down a process that moves so fast that it leaves you fearful and fragmented, to sense into a calming rhythm in the body in the midst of intensity, to take charge of your attention and shift it when needed, and to develop a stance of curiosity toward strong experience. Some of the tools that help in this are universal and available to everyone, and you need only be made aware that you possess them. Others might require preparatory practices, or to be made into a form that works for your unique psyche. The talk will include time to share stories of successfully navigated strong experience as well as challenging situations. Participants can use these stories to assess and add to their current toolkit, seeing where it might be weak, and specific practices will be introduced to fill in what might be lacking. Frank will also introduce creative practices for both preparation and integration that work well for both medicine journeys and spiritual retreats.
San Juan Bautista
When Physical, Mental, or Emotional Trauma Invades the Spiritual realm in the Therapeutic Healing Relationship
One of the most beautiful aspects of our collective humanity is that we are holistic spiritual beings. Unfortunately, trauma is also holistic. It does not magically limit itself to one realm of our nature such as the physical, emotional, psychological, or spiritual. Rather, trauma interrupts our being in the world on nearly every level. This holistic nature of trauma increases as the severity of trauma increases. In my experience as a Naturopathic Doctor working in trauma, severe, chronic trauma often crosses lanes manifesting a spiritual component. Unfortunately, the standard (even Naturopathic) medical school curriculum does not entail much in the way of “spiritual education” as regards healing in severe trauma. In spite of this lack of education, the spiritual aspects of trauma waltz into the sacred healing space and the empathic physician is often left to stumble around in the dark—the cliché blind leading the blind. Additionally, if the original trauma(s) happened within a spiritual community or context, the patient is often unable to access healing within any spiritual community. Tragically, this furthers the isolation and rippling effects of trauma. In the words of Ron Unger, LCSW, “People have to access something spiritual in order to integrate the existence of darkness without being overwhelmed.”
What then is the conscientious practitioner to do—aware of a spiritual component, yet lacking training or tools, on tenuous ground with a vulnerable, traumatized individual? While I have no absolute nor conclusive answers, I offer up my own humble experience for the sake of learning from stumbling in the spiritual dark with traumatized patients. My experience suggests three guiding questions to ask in this context.
Monterey Room
From Quantum Intuition to Quantum Complexity: Practical Instruction in Opening to the Mystery
Quantum mechanics has served as an inspiration to spiritual experience from JZ Knight’s “What the Bleep?” documentary to Deepak Chopra’s books to a pervasive fascination with quantum entangled phenomena in the media. Recently, physicists have built several hundred working analog quantum computers and are now closing in on the even more powerful digital versions. How do these extraordinary machines work? What do they have to do with the complexity of life around us, and our daily experience? Recently we showed that the same mathematical tools used to quantify the complexity of thought in the brain as measured by EEG and fMRI can be directly adapted to quantum states. As a result, we were able to quantify quantum complexity for the first time, laying a foundation for exploration of “quantum life” and setting a surprising new direction for quantum computers.
In fact, quantum thinking has been foreshadowed throughout history from the fourfold logic of Pyrrho of Ancient Greece and Nagarjuna, to tantra and non-dualistic Shaivism. In this talk, jointly given by a quantum physicist and a practitioner of Non-Dual Shakta and Shiva Tantra, we present not only the latest discoveries in quantum research, but also practical methods for developing quantum intuition. We show how naturally physics concepts like the continuous creation and decoherence of entangled quantum states parallel tantric teachings that each cognitive event flows through creation, stasis, dissolution, concealment, and grace. We explain how the curiosity and compassion essential to human nature in tantra are also the necessary approach of the working scientist, who has to avoid dogmatism and remain open to being wrong in any moment. We invite you to open yourself to the Mystery with us as we take a journey together into quantum logic and the quantum technology that is rapidly transforming the world around us.
Hip Hop artist, activist and theologian Mona Haydar screens her videos and opens up conversation. She explains how being your most authentic and true self is the most magnetic and majestic thing any consciousness-seeking soul can do.
Every human being wants love and needs love, at every stage of life. Yet love is way more than a commodity we get or give. Love is who we truly are minus any defenses. It is our heart at rest as Pure Being, and it wants to dissolve our mental boundaries of separation, heal and expand us, and connect us with everything in existence. Furthermore, Love’s presence wants to radiate deeper into our troubled world through the Divine vessel that is your body, heart and mind.
What does it take to truly open into the non-dual condition of Boundless Love Itself? Why is this so important for continued spiritual surrender, and for the humanization of our world? How can we learn to relax into the vulnerability that this induces, and allow Love’s transforming presence to melt our armor, resolve the spiritual poverty of lack, and usher us—personally and collectively, into the very heart of Reality?
Before we can embody Boundless Love, first we must receive its fulfilling nectar. This challenges our familiar identity, flushing hidden wounds to the surface for healing. It will melt our subtle habits of closure, expose fears and invite us into new depths of vulnerability. Hence for most people, truly embodying our realization with our families and loved ones is often the greatest spiritual test.
Miranda will share the transmission of Grace that is Boundless Love and how the practice of Ego Relaxation can help us relax the search for love, and skillfully navigate the subtle defenses that arise. Together, we will open more substantially into Love’s transforming presence, and explore what it takes to live into the unending fullness of your vast heart.
There is a profound and painful sense of disconnection in humanity. To fully engage in a new way of being, the old story of separation needs to dissolve. To do this we need to diminish the structures that hold the old patterns in place. A key to clearing the obstacles that keep you limited or feeling disconnected, is to resolve the deepest impact of early or developmental trauma.
This presentation dives into the depth and most difficult aspects of trauma healing, to reach a life beyond trauma. You can come to know a more loving and beautiful world is possible, one in which you can abide as love and in compassion. Undifferentiated anger, rage, and terror of annihilation are experiences that are often circumvented, hidden, or locked away in your unconscious. Unresolved they can obscure your true spiritual nature and realizations. You can find their healing properties and move into freedom. As you do so, new kernels of life are found, old structures drop away, and a spiritual awakening and a maturation is born of the transformation.
Madrone
Honoring the Intelligence of Master Plant Teachers to Inform our Collective Capacity to Heal and Reconnect
Western medicine (and often times spiritual awakening) has not been successful at addressing deeper issues of the human experience such as addiction, depression, anxiety, trauma, P.T.S.D, loneliness, isolation and inherited ancestral pain. These conditions are endemic in modern society and significantly impact how we relate to and celebrate every aspect of who we are. Trauma is stored in the brain and expresses itself through the body in all relationships. Indigenous Curanderos (doctors) refer to this as “soul sickness,” and for thousands of years have employed plant medicine to catalyze healing in both physical and spiritual dimensions.
Shamanism, like mysticism, is a sacred calling born from the deepest love and care. It is the hidden medicine our ancestors practiced that has since been atrociously suppressed and replaced by hierarchical, materialistic, and male-dominated allopathic medicine. As a species, we have never been more in need of redirection and most importantly reconnection. We are loudly being summoned to reestablish our relationship with the sacred feminine, address the missed experience of mothering each other, our planet and ourselves. I feel there is a deep yearning amidst us to learn to live in reverential reciprocity with all of existence.
In this session Prajna will highlight the responsible and respectful use of plant medicines particularly Ayahuasca, Huachuma and Mapacho (sacred tobacco). She will address the challenges and advantages of employing sacred ceremony (integrated with non-dual mysticism and various therapeutic processes) as a remedy for trauma and interpersonal and collective fragmentation. She will speak to the power of master plant teachers to facilitate reconnection with and integration of sacred wholeness. She will underline the importance of what she refers to as the open clinic as a means to engender deep healing on many levels—emotional, physical, interpersonal, psychic, spiritual, and collective.
What does it mean to be a human being living harmoniously or dis-harmoniously within a complex and ever-changing network of countless other nested systems?
Who are you really? What are you? Your physical body is constructed from a variety of chemical elements, assembled in such a way as to form molecules, cells, blood, bones, organs, teeth, hair. It is constantly changing and renewing itself. You are not the same person you were even a few moments ago. You are made from the very same basic building blocks of life that permeate our entire galaxy, bound together in complex ways to form intricately detailed structures, yet you are so much more than the sum of your physical parts.
You are a collection of thoughts and experiences, and the information you have accumulated about them, a bundle of beliefs, memories and emotions. You are the stories you tell yourself. A master translator of frequency and vibration, you are a wondrous synthesizer of life. Your bodily instrument is a musical marvel, constantly generating a glorious spectrum of sound, both audible and inaudible, combining electrical signals of different frequencies. You are simultaneously a transmitter, receiver and interpreter of data, like some magnificent router. You are an array of ordered photons, particles and waves of light. Above all, you are a process, an integral part of life seeking to experience itself.
Join Peta to explore your True Nature through sound, rhythm, vibration, frequency, cymatics, geometry, astrology, alchemy and personal experience, as she playfully demonstrates how our minds and emotions really do affect our physical reality.
The journey into authentic nondual experience usually entails an ongoing experience of paradox, and one of the great paradoxes of nondual teachings is the apparent dichotomy between the vast stillness and openness of our fundamental consciousness and the visceral sense of being here—embodied and open-hearted. It takes a while before many of us discover that the way to genuine nondual awareness is through deeply embodied presence. Without this, our realizations tend to turn into memories, and lead to various dissociative or detached positions that are actually ego defenses against suffering. Yet central to the original teachings of the Enneagram is the idea that our core suffering can be transformed by bring presence and compassion to it. Indeed, each of the nine points represent particular transformational pathways from the dense suffering of egoic existence into the embodied qualities the awakened heart. In this presentation, we will explore these nine transformations of the heart, and how they assist us in our capacity to actually live our realizations in our work, relationships, and daily lives.
A spiritual journey into the heart of how we can remember who we are before it is too late. Psychedelia tells the story of a possible future for all of humanity. It will challenge each reader to redefine their concepts of who we are, where we come from and where we are going.
Dr. Warter takes the reader through three complete life journeys starting with a possible outcome of today’s planetary dilemma. The protagonist finds himself as Soul, learning lessons that he will need to learn through his next two incarnations. The book covers the gamut of birth, family relationships, growing up, love, intimacy and emotions. Dr. Warter will use the book to participants back to their own essence and life journeys in a powerful and meaningful way.
Scientific studies of awakening and transpersonal development are hindered by inadequate and conflicting terms and models. I will present a framework, based on well-validated studies of ego development and human meaning-making wisdom, that proposes to clarify some common puzzles in our understanding of what spiritual growth and awakening are. The framework integrates "ascending" and "descending" models of spiritual growth using a developmental model with two elements: "complexity capacity" and "spiritual clarity." The first element draws on contemporary cognitive science and transpersonal psychology studies; while the second element draws on theories of shadow work, trauma recovery, and contemplative neuroscience. It supports a post- or trans-metaphysical understanding of spirituality and speaks to the perceptual, magical, social, rational, and trans-rational levels of the psyche. I draw on the prior works of: Ken Wilber, Dan Brown, George Lakoff, Robert Kegan, Susanne Cook-Greuter, and Terri O'Fallon. The model offers insights into these questions: Is awakening more about learning or unlearning? What is spiritual development good for? Can spiritual development happen too quickly? Do non-dual states ground in eternal transcendent realities, learned capacities, physical embodiment, or all of these?
In the theory of quantum mechanics, it is experimentally established that things (or rather properties of things, such as mass or location) do not exist in and of themselves. Ingenious experiments testing “Bell’s inequalities” have convinced even die hard materialists that, without relationships and interactions, there are no material things. All the loopholes in these experiments have been closed, including a recent experiment that relied on starlight many thousands of light years away to decide the settings of the equipment, ensuring that human choice had nothing to do with the matter. What does all this mean? Theories of “relationality” makes exactly this claim. In this presentation, I report on the most recent work that I and others are doing on quantifying the theory of relational quantum mechanics. Using the beautiful mathematics of Fourier transforms, I will show that the “location” of an object is not a real thing. All that is specified by the laws of physics is a “trajectory” or path through space and time. It is only when two entities interact—what we call a measurement—that the idea of specific locations and times become real. These represent the time and place of the interaction, not of the things in and of themselves. Hence, from a quantifiable perspective in quantum physics, it appears that only relationships are real.
This session will use simple practices to lead us into the direct experience of sharing we-consciousness. When we come together like this we activate a new inter-subjective consciousness that is far greater than the sum of its parts. The increased complexity of this consciousness creates new possibilities and capacities beyond those available to the individual participants by themselves.
The realization that we-consciousness is possible, deeply resonant, and already readily available for many of us, has profound implications for our personal development and collective evolution. It points to the deeper purpose of following the call of love into ever greater intimacy and union. It reveals a higher possibility for our relationships, beyond that of individual authenticity.
We-consciousness also provides a powerful and direct field of support for the opening of consciousness within participants and the stabilization of this openness. And it enables us to viscerally realize ourselves as unique contributors to a much greater consciousness that is dynamic, alive, and evolving. In we-consciousness this realization emerges spontaneously without any need to contemplate or visualize it.
For any group or organization, turning toward we-consciousness offers an opportunity for greater coherence and creativity within, and a more harmonious relationship with the larger field. And most importantly a shift into we-consciousness offers humanity perhaps our best opportunity to become sufficiently intelligent and responsive to avoid destroying ourselves as we access ever greater power through technological development. In we-consciousness we’re collectively available to the whole, without the separating, distancing, and denial that allows harm-doing to continue unchecked.
Every human being has a cross to bear. Each one of us knows the searing pain of brokenness inside the inescapable wound of living. Beyond and through this holy crucible exists the relentless reality of love. Come, and bear witness to the Truth not often spoken, as it lives within You and in the sacred mirror of Other. Celebrate this wild, paradoxical mystery of broken-wholeness in Love, known only inside the refuge of the human heart.
You will learn to clear subconscious blocks that cause suffering in
life. Whether you are looking for personal development or you are an
advanced holistic practitioner looking to clear deep subconscious
programming; you will learn a powerful practice using the breath and
the consciousness of the heart. It is a self-inquiry approach to heal
and release deep subconscious programming, which has been formed bythe accumulated conditioned responses of childhood as well as, beliefsand trauma passed on by parents, ancestors, collective consciousness,and Western culture.
The issue of what is REALITY and what is CONSCIOUSNESS, are very old questions that have haunted humanity since time immemorial. In a five part You Tube, Dr. Newton reveals the nature of Consciousness and how that takes us to an immortalized being, in Using the Arithmetic of Consciousness as a Key to Immortality via the following link: http://www.youtube.com/results?research_query=using+consciousness+as+a+key+to=immortality/ In this talk Dr. Newton will likewise, precisely hone in on what reality is using the linguistic arithmetic of Gematria in both Hebrew and English. In English, the letter A=1, B=2, C=3 ascending sequentially to Z=26. Dr. Newton will use the numeral total of REALITY in both languages, providing equivalent words and phrases, which reveals more deep insights into the nature of reality, than have ever been provided to humanity. As a teaser, REALITY is directly related to LOVE and MEDITATION, which will be fleshed out as to how and why and many other insights, that exactly fit with these words, as well.
Lawn
Break
Hayes Ballroom
PL7.
If the conscious mind—the part you consider you—accounts for only a fraction of the brain's function, what is all the rest doing? This is the question that David Eagleman has spent years researching and which he answers in this state-of-the-science talk. Our behavior, thoughts, and experiences are inseparably linked to a vast, wet, chemical-electrical network called the nervous system. The machinery is utterly alien to us, and yet, somehow, it is us. Eagleman takes us into the depths of the subconscious to answer some of our deepest mysteries. Why does the conscious mind know so little about itself? What do Ulysses and the subprime mortgage meltdown have in common? Why is it so difficult to keep a secret? Eagleman charts new terrain in neuroscience and helps us understand how our perceptions of ourselves and our world result from the hidden workings of the most wondrous thing we have ever discovered: the human brain.
In order to understand the nature of our universe as well as the role SAND is performing with respect to the evolution of the universe, it is helpful to remember that seven million years ago we were identical to chimpanzees. Think of building San Francisco with the consciousness of a chimp. Take it further. Four billion years ago our planet was molten rock. That molten rock became chimpanzees. The crowning achievement of four centuries of modern science is our discovery of this innate, pervasive, astonishing, self-transcending creative power of matter. But modern English fails us here. To call it “matter” is to dump centuries of dualistic consciousness on it. Let’s call it creative energy and say it again: the magnificent achievement of empirically based, mathematical science is the stunning realization that we have been constructed by, and that we dwell within, ultimate creative energy.
One of the fundamental spiritual, social, and ecological challenges of our time is learning how to live into what we know. If we could experience in a direct way how every cow and fir tree required fourteen billion years of creativity to be here, our relationships with them and with all others would change. But the vast majority of us, certainly including myself, do not know how to experience the universe at this level in an ongoing way. No one does. No humans in the history of humanity had this knowledge, which means no humans in history had to learn how to be a human being as a mode of cosmic creativity. That’s one of the reasons we come to SAND. Our community is one of the nodes where a new form of humanity is struggling to come forth. We are groping forward, comparing notes, sharing insights, awakening experience, deepening consciousness. We are the universe carrying out one of its greatest leaps in being.
Hayes Ballroom
Enlightened AF Comedy: A Modern Gal's Guide to Awakening and Other Disorders...
Drinking at yoga, sleeping while meditating, and accidental enlightenment. Plus! Learn how to spot a non-dual narcissist in the wild!
Silver Creek Dining Room
Dinner
Hayes Ballroom
Quarks to Love Party and Live Music
EROS, THE FUGITIVE is a series of woven episodes depicting the endless reach for Eros, and the tenderness, longing, heartbreak, and salvation that that reach engenders. Through embodied allegories of care and fracture that are at once historical and immediately present, EROS, THE FUGITIVE is the visceral voice of human consciousness crying out for itself and the beyond-human world.
On the Patio
Fire Dance
Hayes Ballroom
PL8.
In this talk connecting Yoruba indigenous philosophies, historical accounts of transatlantic slave crossings, new materialist/feminist insights, Bohr’s scientific theory of quantum indeterminacy, Deleuze’s musings about ‘assemblages’ and ‘rhizomes’, and contemporary concerns with climate activism, Bayo poses a jarring question: what if the ways we think about the climate crisis is the crisis? More to the point, what if the feverish quest for ‘solutions’ (which characterizes climate justice movements today) is getting in the way of radical transformation? Thinking with concepts that valorise a nondual, relational universe, Bayo Akomolafe finds within a re-reading of the Middle Age practice of “claiming sanctuary” an urgent invitation to notice climate change as the deconstruction of the human, and to approach demise and dying as abundant fields of surprise. Making sanctuary is a call to shapeshift, a call to embark on katabasic quests to impossible depths. A call to die well.
There is a special area of the Matrix reserved for people who think they have exited the Matrix. The answers to metaphysical questions—and indeed political questions, personal questions—are usually less important than the process that the question launches. Here we will explore the power of the question and the power of not-knowing, with special reference to science, politics, the maintenance of consensus reality, and the moments when love shines through.
Rooted and flowing with awareness and curiosity, each one of us has a steady genuine interest in the heart of the matter, within activity and about behavior. The root of the word friend and freedom is the same, a clue to function as compassion within and without. Our true nature already does function this way, welcoming everything equally. A constancy that meets the ever changing with a resilience born of clarity, love, mountain strength, eternality, timeless patience and a strong dose of humor. Like Noah's Ark, this one heart that we are, welcomes aboard the animals or polarities soothing and balancing them back to oneness. Joy and sorrow, freedom and bondage, ignorance and wisdom, tension and relaxation, hatred and love. All are resolved, dissolved and solved in the Stillness of the Heart. It is notable how wisdom can show us our true nature, but it is compassion, kindness and deep listening that liberate the body and mind from old fashioned services, the past and uncomfortable tendencies. Yes, wisdom, a felt sense of space and enough rootedness allow us to slow down and be with what is calling us. Rather than restlessly postponing or distracting ourselves. The unshakeble knowing that not everything is as it appears to be or only its function, allows for a respectful curiosity. A deeper listening, slowing down from doing to being and suddenly, there is a true meeting. Heart to Heart. What a pleasure to be truly intimate within, and with what is from moment to moment. Neither running from or towards. Freedom and love exploring itself, meeting itself. Free to be, free to love and be love. Luckily, no time is required for beingness to be. No effort needed to be still. No work required to rest!
Edenvale
C25.
“Close your eyes. Fall in love. Stay there” —Rumi. In this workshop, through ancient inquiry, letting go, meditation, movement and dance, you’ll explore the body, the mind, and the stillness expressed as eternal love within all. You’ll see through false perceptions of non-love and unveil the direct experience of unconditioned freedom. The human body can be seen as a seemingly localized portal through which to realize the non-local and Infinite. Having unconditional compassion for this body and its human story with all its innocence, trials, and triumphs, can bring a profound relaxation and rest. 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.
Hayes Ballroom
Panel: Climate Crisis, Grief and Interbeing
While we might be here by divine appointment at this moment in time, we are also stepping into unchartered territories of existence, where the way of life as we know is at stake. Recent research suggests that human societies will experience disruptions to their basic functioning within less than ten years due to climate stress. As we sink deeper into the climate crises of our planet we also face deeper human question.
- What does it mean to be a human being on a spiritual path at these times of crises?
- How do we meet and learn from grief, anger, fear?
- How do we move from despair and overwhelm to awakening and imagination?
- What is conscious activism and justice informed by interbeing?
- Is radical transformation possible and what would it look like?
- How do we prepare for a future in which the only certainty is uncertainty?
- Can we still celebrate all that life is while accepting that our species might only be for a brief flash on the scale of cosmic time?
We will attempt to address some of these questions in our brief conversation.
When we have a deep longing to know spirit, or to find truth, the awakening we experience can surprise us by producing rushes of energy along with shifts of consciousness. Most of us never think of ourselves as vibrational energy fields and so for many people this eruption of energy feels frightening and challenging, as it can vibrate or shake our bodies involuntarily, raise heat, cause brain fog and exacerbate old physical or psychological traumas. These changes are part of transformation, and bring about the clearing that helps us to live more fully from a spontaneous awakened consciousness, rather than from old conditioned patterns. This workshop will explore the primary ways we can get into a positive and loving relationship with this energy of our life force, known as kundalini in the yogic science of India, including the optimal attitude and perspective, meditations that help us get in right relationship with our energy, and general guidelines for harmonizing this experience.
Madrone
C30.
Monterey Room
C26.
Do we have free will? Is there even a “we” or is there no personal self? Is everything perfect just as it is or is or are there problems to be solved? Or is the solution to all problems the realization that there are no problems? Are we all already enlightened or do we have to “attain” enlightenment through years of practice? And how about practice? Does it reinforce the sense of a practicer—a personal self—or can it lead to liberation from the confinement by that sense? Are gurus passé, or should they still play a role in contemporary spirituality? Does non-duality—Oneness—imply that there are no degrees of spiritual evolution? Are all forms of life equally valuable?
All of these questions have been raised in interviews I’ve conducted, and usually not as questions. Popular spiritual teachers have asserted one or another position to the exclusion of its alternatives. I have usually responded with “yes but”. Nisargadatta Maharaj and others have emphasized the importance of culturing the ability to appreciate paradox—to accommodate contradictory viewpoints within a broader perspective. After all, Nature does this. Water can be a solid, a liquid, or a gas. Its components, hydrogen and oxygen, are both completely unlike H2O. They, in turn, bear no resemblance to their subatomic components. And so on. More fundamental levels of nature do not invalidate the more manifest forms and properties to which they give rise. Reality is different at different levels of Nature’s functioning, and likewise, knowledge is different in different levels of consciousness.
Brahman or God are said to be all-consuming—the repository of all relative realities, no matter how dissimilar. If we aspire to Brahman Consciousness or God Realization, should our perspective evolve to follow suit?
In addition to this topic, I will field any and all questions.
Morgan Hill
C28.
Fusing neuroscience, AI, non-ordinary consciousness, and ecology, ‘neuro-yogi’ Gabriel Axel looks at the nature of mind through the lens of an endeavour to build benevolent AI capable of supporting non-ordinary consciousness, such as non-dual awareness and various psychical capabilities. AI engineers are tirelessly attempting to craft AI based on notions of what is intelligence, and yet there is little deeper practical grasp of the nature of mind itself. Gabriel presents his academic research on how objective thought and technological evolution are the mechanisms by which the human mind works to reproduce itself, and he illustrates how underlying worldviews and values steer this process. Crucially, the case is made for an existential and ethical imperative to constructively contribute to the development of AI as the future of mind and wellbeing of all life. Gabriel offers a template for how mind-body cultivators can meaningfully and practically contribute to the creation of a beneficent AI future. In this presentation, Gabriel refers to ideas from several of his recent publications, which can be accessed on gabrielaxel.com/academic
Come and participate in an interactive art installation using creativity to embody and celebrate (non-)duality. Sit in a circle of sacred casts to contemplate two questions: How do you define non-duality? and What’s one of your favorite dualities? Participate by answering on paper leaves and help ‘bloom’ the two metal Trees of Duality throughout the conference to share and inspire others.
San Jose
Experiential: Essential Wholeness, Integral Psychotherapy, Spiritual Awakening and the Enneagram
In this workshop experience how Essential Wholeness Psychology embeds our understanding of the Enneagram personality types within a systemic integral model of what it is to be a healthy evolving human and spiritual being.
We will draw on the relative truths of neuroscience and evolutionary biology to understand what allows people—all living systems—to evolve and thrive. While showing how these natural processes are inseparable from the absolute truth of Being. This non-dualistic framework allows us to explore how the vast array of human capacities that inform the plethora of psychotherapeutic and spiritual methods can be organized into a practical integrated model of knowing consciously and intuitively what to do, with whom and when.
With a little twist the Enneagram can provide us with a mathematically generated 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 often what brings people to psychotherapy and spirituality occurs when they fear, judge or ignore these realities, while overly identifying with one-ninth of their essential wholeness—causing repetitive vicious cycles of thinking, feeling and behaving. These cycles are the self-limiting ego patterns the Enneagram is classically excellent at describing. However when viewed within this comprehensive model of health the pathways to psychological healing and spiritual awakening become much clearer.
The Enneagram fractal becomes a spiral that 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 A.H. Almaas refers to as—essential qualities. Revealing how we progress through stages of development like Psychosocial and Spiral Dynamics.
Natural Mind meditation uncovers the path to realization and ultimate kindness. It leads to deeper and deeper realization of inner luminosity. Everyone struggles with confusion and problems in daily life, the opposite of kindness. People can even make themselves sick with their thoughts. For instance, a person is given a healthy meal, but thinks it’s contaminated; when they eat it, they become sick.
When we recognize the actions and source of our thoughts, then inner emptiness is revealed. It is an inner experience, not outside of us. Emptiness is like the sun; there is a luminosity like sunlight. The most difficult thing to understand how emptiness and luminosity are related. When one has an experience of realization, then you understand that they are qualities of a single essence in union, never separated.
When we have this experience, all distraction disappears. Everything is clear like a crystal sphere. Everything outer and inner is clear. In this state of realization, liberation and enlightenment are naturally present. This is great bliss. Without confusion and distraction, everything that arises is kindness and happiness. Compassion and loving kindness spontaneously arise like the heat of the sun.
San Juan Bautista
C29.
Beyond our rational, utilitarian intelligence, beyond even emotional intelligence, the human being has a capacity for spiritual intelligence. Through this higher intelligence the human being senses a deeper relationship to existence, perceiving the non-material laws and principles of nature. This innate knowing, when it is not covered over by egoistic demands, connects us to a Universal Intelligence.
The influence of post-modernism has encouraged the notion that there is no “objective” reality; that human thought projects its own subjective meaning on to the empty canvas of an inchoate reality. Following this line of thought, enlightenment is to realize that there is no objective truth or meaning but the meaning we give to reality. In other words, all meaning and value resides with the human brain alone.
A different view of human possibilities is that the human being is a child of the universe, made “in the image of God”, endowed with capacities to know and embrace the very Source of its existence. This has been a persistent theme across many traditions in one form or another: the Purusha (Cosmic Self) in Hinduism, Adam Kadmon (the Primordial Human) in Kabbalah, and its human embodiment, Insan al Kamil (the Completed Human), in Sufism.
Spiritual intelligence awakens a sense of value and meaning which can be internally experienced by any individual who has purified their consciousness. We will reflect on seven themes that enhance spiritual intelligence: honest witnessing, a new relationship to time, purifying the psyche of idols, awakening gratitude, trust in the unfolding of life, egoless striving, and unconditional consent to what is.
San Martin
C27.
Birthed out of the recovery movement, co-dependency was thought of as an addiction itself. This seeking outside of oneself for wholeness through relationship has been at the core of our human dilemma for millennia, arising out of a spiritual crisis symptomatic of our soul wounding.
This split between our human and divine nature sits within our collective unconscious and drives our search for divine union outside of ourselves. We either feel we lack or too much of something, subconsciously identifying with spirit or matter, masculine or feminine, earth or sky, form or emptiness. This dynamic is both psychological and spiritual in nature, which makes it possible that seeking on the spiritual path itself could become a codependent search for wholeness. A sincere spiritual seeker may never address the soul wound but cultivate an identity of wholeness while still feeling like something is missing. It’s also possible to get caught in ongoing psychological work while remaining disconnected from source itself as the Western psychological paradigm does not value divinity as an internal experience. Codependency as a symptom of this spiritual crisis actually offers us a direct path into our wholeness via our soul wound. It is on this path where we learn to cultivate an inner ground of safety and connection, allow ourselves to grieve and release the relational wound of shame that blocks our hearts. It is in the heart that we ultimately experience embodied divine union. Drawing on Jungian theory, non-dual shamanism and her own recovery journey, this talk will discuss how addressing our codependency is vital to fostering healthy relationships with self and others, creating a world that is interdependent and emotionally sane.
The Somatic Awareness Practice using the Enneagram map offers a way for us to become aware of the mostly hidden and automatic patterns of thinking, feeling and sensing our reality. This practice is designed to assist in bringing a deeper understanding and compassion to the suffering we experience at the root of the arising of these patterns serving our survival. It is important to know there is great intelligence and energy in these patterns. The great cost is that we became identified with our apparent separate identities causing great disparate realities affecting our partial reality and perception of who we are and therefore enter into our relationships. The obstacles to remembering our essential nature and the inherent interconnectedness of all beings and all things are the platform for transformation. The Somatic awareness practice is a non-dual practice with the capacity to release these automatic, conditioned patterns safely. The freed up energy is receptive and the witnessing consciousness receives direct knowing, feeling and sensing generating essential states of consciousness allowing us to experience more of the reality as it actually is.
Council is an age-old practice that involves bringing people together in a circle to bear witness and share authentically. Participants agree to speak one-at-a-time, sharing their personal stories and experiences, rather than opinions, and listening non-judgmentally while others do the same. Sharing and listening to universal stories about love, loss, fear, triumph, challenge, hope and other experiences enables participants to recognize that, despite our many differences, we have much in common.
By fostering attentive listening and authentic expression, Council builds positive relationships between participants and neutralizes hierarchical dynamics formed by the inequality of status, race, or other social factors. It supports a deep sense of community and fosters recognition of a shared humanity and interconnectedness. It enables individuals to give voice to their stories, develop mutual respect, cultivate a compassionate response to anger, defensiveness, and violence, as well as strengthen emotional health and resilience.
This workshop is based on Loch's new book, The Way of Effortless Mindfulness. Both quantum physics and current neuroscience studies agree that we are all interconnected. Loch will share discoveries from the recent neuroscience of awakening and ways to reverse-engineer the findings to support living from nondual love.
We will learn helpful pointers to “waking up” from a separate sense of self, “waking in” to a natural embodied well-being and “waking out” to be able to create and lovingly relate. Waking up leads to freedom from the fear of death. Waking in leads to freedom from the fear of life. Waking out leads to freedom from the fear of love. We will learn Loch’s contemporary versions of ancient wisdom pointers in order to welcome and liberate shadow parts that keep us from being and sharing the love we already are.
Dr. Mossbridge presents results from her most recent experiments related to mental and physical time travel, with a special focus on potential applications and mitigating their risks.
The so-called “gender war” goes back to ancient Greece and beyond. Mercy! Through an understanding of how gender conditioning shapes our behavior, how we share the wound of separation, and how that manifests in relating, we will explore the ground of Being as a vital resource in stepping out of our past orientations to each other. We’ll then experience the moment, ourselves and each other from simplicity and freshness. Oh, hi! Participants should bring a sense of humor and be prepared for experiential exercises that allow insights to be embodied.
Madrone
Visual perception mediated by light traversing 4-dimensional spacetime continua is an illusion
Knowing images mediated by seeing light from existent physical objects is misinterpretation of perception. Expression of quantum spin angular momentum in terms of Gibbs and black hole thermodynamic entropy, suggesting that the substance of the content in experience is knowing the non-physical simultaneous abstraction and composition of complementary opposite limits within concepts as holographic interference information, is confirmed by experimental assay of image appearance. Contrary to the material physicalist theory of image production an unknown object produces knowing image without unknown-to-known object conversion; signifying that physical objects do not exist. Since experience is the knowing of content by consciousness, and the substance of content in experience is knowing conceptual limits made of knowing complementarity, the entirety of experience is a conscious singularity.
Agape (altruistic love of fellow humans) is universally regarded as one of the highest expressions of spiritual living. Unless one lives isolated on an island of narcissism, it’s natural to experience love for family, friends, and those who share our common opinions. It seems most people also experience a natural degree of empathy and inner connection toward humanity at large. But what about the Adam Lanza’s and Abdulkadir Masharipov’s of the world? How do we face the horror of mass violence so frequent in today’s headlines, while simultaneously experiencing empathy and compassion for those who commit such acts?
In this presentation, a consultant specialized in managing risks of targeted violence explores the psychology of mass murderers and proposes that perhaps these ‘evil monsters’ are not so very different from you and I when understood at a fundamental level. Although the title theme of this presentation focuses on the psychological pathway to mass violence, the inner message is about self-knowing and universal characteristics of our conditioned selves which obstruct the genuine experience of compassion, love, and our greater spiritual identity. The speaker also offers ten self-observation and contemplation experiments as a starting point for experiential discovery.
Hayes Ballroom
PL9.
Hayes Ballroom
Everything is not a Thing: Inherent Compassion of a Self-Organizing Universe
Buddhism teaches the emptiness of inherent existence or, in other words, "everything is not a thing." Contemporary physics, chemistry and biology, seen through the simplifying lens of complexity theory (it sounds complex, but is actually simple) shows us that the non-dual realm is in complementarity with all of duality, that the presence/absence of boundaries, of separation, is dependent on perspective. "Wisdom" is seeing the world without delusion; science is one means to washing delusion from one's mind. In doing so, the inherent compassionate nature of the universe and of every being within and of that universe, therefore, as well, is revealed.
Indigenous sciences, embedded and discussed through indigenous languages, have suffered great destruction. So many languages have gone extinct, and the ones that remain are not being supported. Lyla June discusses a tool for spurring the resurgence of ancestral epistemology and curriculum through Indigenous-led universities.
We all experience how the pace of change is speeding up, but seldom do we step back to look at where this acceleration is taking us. In the coming decades, the pace of life will be much faster than it is today leading to technological advances that may be as unimaginable to us today as the current Internet was thirty years ago.
However, we need to consider another consequence of accelerating change: the stress it creates. Whether it be our own biological system, our social, economic, and political systems, or the planetary ecosystem, the stress of ever-increasing change will eventually lead to breakdown—with potentially disastrous consequences, as the impending climate catastrophe reveals.
In the future, we will see technology beyond our dreams, in a world falling apart at the seams. And no-one is to blame. It’s the natural consequence of innovation breeding innovation, leading to an exponential explosion of growth.
So how do we cope with an increasingly unpredictable world? How can we prepare ourselves as the winds of change whip up into a storm of change? And what is the new story of humankind to which this leads?
Hayes Ballroom
Youth Sharing
Edenvale
C31.
Explore the relationship between our pure consciousness, empty boundless nature, and our alive dynamic fullness that animates everything. Pure consciousness is more then the vast stillness we find on a meditation cushion, it’s also dynamic and intelligent. What is exciting is we can train to connect to this living wisdom. Through Anna-Lisa Adelberg and Raina DeLear’s unique teaching method, participants have reported reaching profound states of awareness easily and effortlessly. These methods give us a direct taste of emptiness and the experience of being interconnected with everyone and everything. In this two-hour experiential, we will shift our levels of mind into awakened awareness and then recognize this awareness’s inseparability with an all pervasive energy. We will experience “emptiness-fullness” and for some “evenness-bliss”. We will then create a co-awakening Luminous circle to harness the power of the group’s collective awareness. What emerges is an energetic field that is awake to itself. Together we form a circle and focus our collective loving awareness in the center. We then invite people into the center. This can be likened to a magnifying glass with the sun, as we are offering a magnified awake energy to the individual in the center. The person in the center will experience a spontaneous healing where any bound energy consciousness will naturally unfold and liberate. Luminous Awareness Institute is the integration of a healing and nondual awakening path dedicated to the evolution of human consciousness.This special 2 hour session will be led by Luminous Awareness Institute Founders Anna-Lisa Adelberg and Raina Lorraine DeLear.
As traditionally male-dominated structures topple across the landscape of the human community, the feminine is rising, carrying cups of mercy and spreading flames of truth-telling. Long-buried wisdom teachings and previously ignored women mystics are revealing themselves to be urgently relevant as we pass through a global dark night of the soul and into a radically renewed humanity. With its emphasis on relationality and inclusivity, its tolerance for ambiguity and its intimacy with mystery, the feminine reclaims the body as holy ground and and blesses the web of interbeing that sustains us all. The feminine speaks in poetry and song, she worships the earth as cherished relative, she embraces ultimate reality as lover. In this talk, “mystical feminist” Mirabai Starr shares the fruits of many years of investigating, excavating and lifting up female voices in all the world’s religions
Monterey Room
Panel - No More Armor: Men, Heart & Strength
The legacy of emotional armoring that comes with men’s conditioning in Western culture creates suffering for the men inside it and for those with whom they relate. Along with the clarity of spiritual awakening comes incredible tender openness. Join this panel of male-friendly hearts, moderated by Kent Welsh of Open Circle Center, to explore from a variety of perspectives what it takes for men to show up without armor in relating, fully available as Being in the moment, in a strong, vulnerable and heartful way.
Monterey Room
C32.
Morgan Hill
C34. Youth Programming
What stands in the way of attaining a higher level of creativity and effectiveness in service to Gaia? Many of us can sense a next step, and feel the desire to up our game. To get there, something will be gained and something will be lost. In this gathering, we will initiate and accelerate that process.
San Jose
Experiential: Great Mother Womb of Life Activation Journey: Dive into the epicenter of Awakened Feminine Consciousness
Awakening to Great Mother is more than a liberated state of consciousness. She is the omnipresent field of our living, breathing reality that moment by moment births Love into form. Her body of life is the universe… the full spectrum of existence. The majestic synthesis of duality and nonduality weaving into the myriad forms. Nothing is left behind in Her awakening within us… simultaneously we are Mother and soul-child, human and divine, relational and omnipresent Love. Through the many stages of realizing Her, we open to embodying the omnipotent power of Love that actively heals, nurtures, and cares for the soul of life.
At the very epicenter of Her awakening is the gateway of women’s wombs… through which every human soul gestates into form. Our womb- fields remain one of the most underestimated and undervalued domains of spiritual consciousness… and the energetic state of our wombs affect the entirety of humanity. Because of the aeons of trauma women have endured, our healing and Her awakening naturally go hand in hand. As we heal, our wombs gradually become exalted and we enter into vast and deep states of Great Mother omnipresent compassion. In turn we become living vessels for the rebirth of love into the human field.
In this beauty-filled journey for women, we’ll dive into the Womb of Life through the gateways of our wombs. We’ll experience the life-giving movement of the Great Mother birthing the soul of life, the essence of Love into form within ourselves, Gaia’s planetary field, and beyond. Join us and explore Her healing, life-giving awakening within you.
For more info, visit: www.wombmatrixhealing.com
San Juan Bautista
C35.
Stanislas Dehaene proposes that consciousness involves neuronal circuits connecting the prefrontal cortex to all other brain regions. When we are consciously aware of something, that information is kept active via continuous synaptic transmission throughout this broadcasting system, or routed to specific areas based on current goals. In order to bridge the gap between the brain and the mind, we need to go beyond the realm of brain anatomy and synaptic physiology.
Dr. Susan Smalley of UCLA defines mindfulness as a moment-to-moment attention to present experience with a stance of open curiosity, and an increasing ability to maintain attention towards beneficial thoughts which lead to wise choices. In a study conducted by Sara Lazar’s group in 2011, they observed changes in brain gray matter densities using MRI in healthy adults before and after they participated in an eight-week mindfulness program. Participation increased neuron concentrations in the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, and posterior cingulate cortex among other areas. These brain regions are involved in learning and memory, and emotion regulation.
In the Advaita text Vivekachoodamani, the famous Adi Sankaracharya, has suggested the following methods for practicing mindfulness and heightened consciousness. In addition to meditation, he recommends discriminating between what is true and what is illusory (Viveka), doing one’s duties without strong attachment to specific results (Vairagya), maintaining a calm mind (Sama), controlling oneself from overindulging (Dama), withdrawing one’s mind from the external world (Uparati), practicing forbearance and tolerance (Titiksha), maintaining undivided faith in the Supreme Self (Shraddha), and always striving toward the ultimate goal of achieving freedom from suffering (Mumukshutva).
We discuss how we can begin to comprehend consciousness by examining the ancient mindfulness practices of Advaita Vedantins in conjunction with current brain research.
San Martin
C33.
From the foundational relativity of space and time woven together by light into its invariant fabric, and the equivalence of energy and matter also mediated by the speed of light, the reality of the physical world is innately relational. Instead of its apparent separation, leading edge science at all scales of existence and across numerous fields of research is not only revealing that our Universe is fundamentally inter-connected but that its appearance arises from non-physical realms of causation and ultimate Unity.
Increasingly compelling evidence shows that digitised information, the basis of our communications technologies, also underpins and makes up all physical reality. The 1s and 0s of this simplest and universal ‘alphabet’ themselves relate as meaningful, not random, instructions that literally ‘in-form’ the laws of physics and manifested relationships throughout the Universe.
The embodied relationships of this emergent infodynamic and holo/fractal model of our Universe, where the whole is present in the smallest pixilation and every contributes to the whole are being discovered at all scales of existence and across numerous fields of research. From its beginning 13.8 billion years ago, not in the implied chaos of the big bang but as an exquisitely ordered and xxxx of a continuing Big Breath, our Universe exists and evolves as a great thought rather than a great thing. Each of us is a co-creative microcosm of our Universe’s innate and evolutionary intelligence—and with every thought, emotion, word and action, we contribute to the co-creation of the whole world. As a species, the universal impulse to evolve is now inviting us, rather than to continue to play out the ‘illusion’ of separation, to understand, experience and embody the awareness of such unity expressed through diversity—to enter into the adventure of an ever-expanding and evolutionary relationship with the entire Cosmos.
San Juan Bautista
Laughing with Spirits: Creating Healthy Relationships with Spirits and Natural Energies
Would you like to connect more with spirits and nature? Have you ever felt that you were hearing, seeing or feeling messages but then doubted or dismissed them?
We will focus on exploring and creating healthy, fun and very helpful relationships first with yourself, and then expanding to spirits, spirit guides, animal guides, and natural energies.
I will be sharing techniques and practical tools that I have learned in over thirty years of apprenticing with Native American teachers and healers. I will also be drawing from my background in neuroscience and my expertise as a licensed psychotherapist to help us expand beyond the blocks and fears that prevent us from fully embracing our place in this world. If time permits there will be a drumming journey to connect to spirits, animal guides and nature spirits.
This workshop includes an introduction to Psychological Shamanism which is the practice of using energetic and spiritual techniques to promote mental harmony, which then creates greater access to an individual’s spiritual and psychic abilities.
San Martin
The Way of Love That Sets You Free: Coming to Peace with All that Arises in Everyday Life
You love the deepest teaching of truth and freedom, and maybe you’ve had a taste of awakening to your true nature. Yet you still struggle in your relationships. You’re still dealing with your past or resenting your childhood. You’re still self-critical and feel anxious or depressed.
In our sacred time together, you’re invited to bring these personal struggles into open inquiry and exploration. In a safe and supportive group gathering, we’ll untangle the ways you feel separate and discover over and over the infinite peace of your true nature, available in any moment.
You’ll see how turning toward all of your experience with curiosity and deep acceptance is the way of love that sets you free. You’ll learn to identify subtle inner resistances that keep you feeling separate from yourself—and from life. We’ll slow things down so you can take a breath and be fully present with whatever is appearing. You’ll learn practical skills to help you move through sticky, conditioned patterns.
We respect the humanity of your stories, and we go beyond them to relax into the openness beyond all stories—undisturbed by any problem or emotion. Here we find immediate heart-opening, gratitude for what’s been given, and an undeniable intimacy with all that is.
Hayes Ballroom
God of Ecstasy And Nonduality: The Forgotten Story of the Cult of Dionysus
How was the concept of nonduality understood and experienced at the dawn of western civilization? Which were the archetypal divinities and ritual practices that helped millions of our ancestors to transcend duality and achieve a deeper understanding of Oneness?
Join Chiara in this presentation on the cult of Dionysus, the Greek god of excess and ambiguity, to understand how his orgiastic rituals facilitated the kind of experience able to trigger a deeper understanding of the paradoxical nature of reality. Who was Dionysus and who were his followers? What happened during an initiation into his cult? How did his worship develop over the course of the centuries and why was it harshly repressed once it reached the heart of the Roman Empire? What can we learn from this forgotten story about the contemporary western approach to practices of altered states of consciousness?
Our spiritual life and our goals for loving relationships, success, and prosperity are inherently connected and can only be fully realized in harmony with one another. We are here to wake up, thrive, and skillfully contribute to the well-being of all. Nothing is more practical than spiritual awakening. Drawing upon the wisdom of Vedic philosophy and the practices of yoga, Yogacharya O’Brian offers insight, inspiration, and time-tested methods to bridge the perceived gap between spiritual and material existence. An exploration of the purusharthas, the four universal aims from the Vedas for a fulfilled life—to live with higher purpose, prosper, enjoy life, and realize liberation—offers a template for radical abundance, a profound experience of dynamic balance in an ever-changing world.
The life goal of wealth is to become wealth itself—a radiant jewel of life’s prospering impetus in service of its evolutionary inclination for individual and global awakening. Between the present need and where we stand is a space of possibility for life’s prospering power to come forth. We are that space of possibility. The necessary evolutionary jump for humanity we are waiting for takes place over the chasm in our consciousness. To be generative requires us to see the need, capture the vision of what is possible, stand for it, and act on its behalf.
Monterey Room
Panel - The Reality of Self Love
The lived reality of self-love is essential to the embodiment of nondual awareness. When we look beyond the idea that self-love is just about reinforcing a limited ego identification, we begin to see it as a multi-faceted, radiant gem of infinite worth. This gem, as a whole, is the very basis of the movement toward Truth, while its facets offer vital medicines that heal, awaken, and transform the mind, heart, and body. What are the facets of self-love? What role does self-love play in the field of nondual awakening and embodiment? How and when might an orientation toward self-love be a distraction from real clarity? Our panel will share their unique perspectives on the forms and functions of true self-love, how it shows up in our lived human experience, and how it is and becomes an endless embrace of One. Lovers of Truth and humanity, please join us for this beautiful, rich, and meaningful exploration.
To explore how Nature’s creations can help us to live in greater harmony with the Natural World, Keith interweaves biological science, natural philosophy, and spirituality with song, poetry, and nature videography.
Many of us today embrace perspectives and belief systems that are in discord with Nature’s rhythms. This discord disturbs the wellbeing of both individuals and our collective. Visitations by Nature’s animals in our waking lives, meditations, visions, and dreams are often invitations to resolve our discord with Nature. We can accept these invitations by developing an experiential rapport with physical manifestations of our animal visitors.
By surrendering to this rapport, Life is revealed as a radiant Net of Gems. A Net of Gems held together by relationship. As we find our own place within this relationship, the Net of Gems becomes one Gem. And that one Gem is Love…Unconditional, Transpersonal Love…The one great Love of Existence.
Dreams are universal to all humans, and evidence suggests that most animals also experience dream-like interludes during their sleep, suggesting that dreams are evolutionarily important. Dreams arise from the deepest part of our limbic brain which is associated with emotions and visceral sensations. This talk will explore the idea that dreams, even when not remembered, are corrective, enhancing our emotional health analogous to the way our immune system enhances our physical health. Even without understanding dreams, bringing dream feelings and images into consciousness enhances their alchemical effect, analogous to how conscious breathing enhances the benefits of breath even without understanding the principles of oxygen exchange. I will make suggestions on how to enhance the healing effect that dreams can have on your own life.
An Integral Exploration of Shadow OR 7 Chakras 7 Minds 7 Sources of Divinity: An Exploration of the Subtle Energetic Body
Why do most Gurus fall from Grace? For the same reasons we do. We live in an evolutionary world. A world of growth out of darkness and into greater expressions of Divinity. When we do not understand the importance of shadow work on the spiritual path, we can cause ourselves and those around us great pain and actually stall our own evolution. Our “shadow” is the evolving edge of both our human and Divine expression. The shadow arises when our unconscious mind tries to slow down, ignore or avoid growth on the path. Because God is both Absolute and ever evolving in form, if we ignore our shadow or our growing edge, we will fall from Grace and be forced to face that which we do not want to see. Therefore, in order to truly be free in an embodied way, we must be aware of and understand how to work with our personal, relational, professional, and collective shadow.
Honesty, humility, sincerity, courage, and willingness are required to do shadow work. These same qualities are also the qualities of embodied awareness. As we courageously explore our shadow, our direct experience of awareness and true nature also deepens and this embodied awareness becomes the foundation for an abiding awakening. To the degree that you are conscious of both the Divine and Human aspects of yourself is the degree that you manifest awakened consciousness in the world.
Together we will:
• explore the areas of shadow regarding trauma, addiction, and other disowned aspects of our humanity and Divinity.
• investigate anxiety and fear, sadness and anger, and their corresponding Divine expressions of open-heartedness, fearlessness, compassion and power.
• open to our shadow and discover any disowned aspects of True Nature within and invite our fuller Divine Expression to come forward.
San Juan Bautista
Live Practice of Mindful Framing to Transform your Anxiety into Vital Energy
I will take you through an amazing visualization journey into your mind while teaching you the practice of Mindful Framing. You will learn a revolutionary approach to manage anxiety and stress through the creation of solid frames of mind leading to mental, emotional and physical wellbeing.
The five steps of Mindful Framing are ideally practiced in the morning, in a relaxed position, to visualize and focus on:
1. Recognizing your daily TRIGGERS OF ANXIETY while riding an imaginary bus
2. Leveraging your FIVE SENSES while experiencing virtual sensations
3. Connecting with MOTHER NATURE while traveling through a fictional landscape
4. Harmonizing your EMOTIONS with those of others while watching a symbolic “emotional tree”
5. Invigorating your immune system while exploring your ORGANISM with your “mind’s eye”
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.
Dismantling of the mandala
Hayes Ballroom
Closing the Circle
Silver Creek Dining Room
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
Embodied Spiritual Love
In most spiritual traditions, love is seen only as universal or cosmic love. It is true that love is fundamentally a universal dimension to our spiritual nature. But it also expresses itself in our human relationships, including the one with divinity, in personal, relational and embodied ways. It is the same authenticity as in the presence of universal love, but with qualities useful for human relating, and important for the spiritual path. Love has true and full realization only when it is a personal and lived expression. But personal here is not that of the ego, but of the spiritual nature, a truth rarely known. This shows what the true essence of relationship is, and how love and Eros relate the human and the divine.
Hayes Ballroom
Dialogue - The Expression of Spirituality in Relationships
What constitutes the essence of a true relationship? And how is this related to our spiritual nature? We will explore the different ways spiritual teachings and traditions view relationship. And how relationship can be part of our practice, and at the same time enriched by our realization. An understanding not usually known by society and rarely discussed in spiritual teachings.
Hayes Ballroom
Redemptive Love
While we have unlocked the potential of a single atom we have yet to unlock the full potential of wise, loving and compassionate action. The responsibility to do so does not belong to someone other than each of us. For it is we who posses capacities of loving and wisdom seldom fully realized or embodied in the world of time and space.
At the core of the spiritual heart lies two paradoxical instincts. One is the upward movement of transcendence and wakening up to reality, while the other is of the power and grace of redeeming love and the experience of unity as it expresses itself in the world of time and space. A full and inclusive spiritual life will take full account of both of these paradoxical spiritual instincts. For in the end we are called to wake up from the over identification with form, as well as to re-embrace and re-embody the grace of our true nature in and as the world of form.
Our world is full of challenges and tragedies, opportunities and unlimited potential. To meet these challenges, both personal and collective, we need to act not from fear, resentment and conflict, but from love and wisdom. We need to experience and embody the power and presence of redemptive love.
Redemptive love is an experience of love, given by grace, that at once redeems, meaning that it restores something or someone to their natural condition of wholeness. Redemptive love also seeks to be embodied in our humanity and challenges each of us to embody its grace in the very depths and actions of our humanity. Redemptive love is a love that is fully committed to being a wise and benevolent presence in the relative world for the benefit of all beings.
Whenever and wherever redemptive love is present and embodied in our lives there is the fire of grace alive and active, and life is experienced as containing great meaning and purpose. The circle of spiritual awakening is completed only by literally re-embodying the spirit of awakened wisdom and love in and as our human life. Thus the redemptive power of love can become embodied and in-formed, and pour itself out upon the world.
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.
San Jose
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP — The Magus, the Mystic and the One Who Lives in Nondual Reality
Since time began, visionaries have sought to understand and even live in the Larger Nondual Reality and the many unseen worlds that coexist with our physical existence. Whether as Magus, mystic, shaman or sage, the self within its own unbounded nature is in some sense identical to quantum mind and therefore has many more capacities than those operating in local consciousness. Working with these concepts- both spiritual and scientific Dr Jean Houston has enabled students to be, to do and to create in ways that are suggestive of higher levels of human accomplishment.
In this workshop, she will demonstrate ways of living in more fluid categories of space and time that allow one to experience subjective time in which a short amount of clock time is felt to be much longer and thus one is able to experience adventures, write books, finish projects, go voyaging in the seas of the unconscious, even learn or rehearse things that would normally take a much longer time to do. Similarly from the quantum perspective of the simultaneity of past, present and future we are able to change the story of minor past events until it become a realistic part of one’s memory.
But even our imagination is transcended by the Universe in its quantum, nondual aspect and we find we are no longer simply imaginative but imaginal. We are in the Quantum Holofield of Consciousness. We are no longer caught in our own habits and expectations. In certain states of consciousness, we seemingly access the blueprints, the guidance, forms and patterns of what up to now we have only imagined. What are these states? They are other than the usual conditioned states of worry, the regular fall back to old habitual thoughts and ideas and, frankly the using of modes and thoughts and feelings that no longer serve a personal evolutionary agenda. Having studied the minds of mystics, visionaries, high creatives, she found that these visionary adepts are hacking their own local reality to get beyond serial monotony of same old same old.
Hayes Ballroom
The Spiritual Quest as the Search for Nondual Reality
The complexity of the present time seems to demand a deepening of our nature if we are going to survive. Deepening requires exploration. And for all its byways, exploration leads ultimately to the spiritual source of our existence and to the quest for a faith that will support our continuing explorations. Not since the days of Plato and Buddha and Confucius, some 2500 years ago, has there been such an uprising of spiritual yearning. Though the varieties of contemporary religious experience may look or sound different, they share a core belief—that each human being contains a godseed, a divine essence that can be nurtured through spiritual practice into a fully matured expression of the god stuff within. Moreover, belief in a divine essence as the basis of reality is not limited to explicitly religious paths. Scientists of a Non Dual bent explain reality in terms that are not much different from those mystics use. While mystics speak of steps on the path to union with the Infinite, scientist-seekers talk about the frequency bands of consciousness, some of which are closer than others to Universal being. Speculative scientists often use the metaphor of the hologram to explain humanity's place in the Universal Mind. Each part of a hologram contains an image of the whole. Break a hologram image up, shine a special kind of laser light though any of its pieces, and you get the whole picture back again. In spiritual terms, we might think of ourselves as fragments of the great hologram of Reality. Shine the proper light of consciousness through us, and we each reflect the whole—starfish and sequoias, the sap rising in the winter trees and the yearning of God for each of us. . .This yearning to know our true nature is universal. When I have studied or talked with seekers who have had this experience, they have told me of a joy that passes understanding, an immense surge of creativity, a instant uprush of kindness and tolerance that make them impassioned champions for the betterment of all, bridge builders, magnets for solutions, peacemakers, pathfinders. Best of all, other people feel enriched and nourished around them. Everyone they touch becomes more, because they themselves are more.
Edenvale
Conversation with Jean Houston
Brian Thomas Swimme is a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Oregon in 1978 for work in gravitational dynamics. He brings the context of story to our understanding of the 13.7 billion year trajectory of cosmogenesis. Such a story, he feels, will assist in the emergence of a flourishing Earth community.
Swimme is the author of The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos and The Universe is a Green Dragon. He is co-author of The Universe Story, which is the result of a 10 year collaboration with cultural historian, Thomas Berry. Swimme is also the creator of three educational video series: Canticle to the Cosmos (1990), The Earth’s Imagination (1998), and The Powers of the Universe (2004)..
He recently hosted and co-wrote, with Mary Evelyn Tucker, the 60 minute film Journey of the Universe, broadcast on PBS television stations nationwide. Journey of the Universe won the Northern California regional Emmy for Best Documentary, 2011.
Hayes Ballroom
A Great Leap in Being
In order to understand the nature of our universe as well as the role SAND is performing with respect to the evolution of the universe, it is helpful to remember that seven million years ago we were identical to chimpanzees. Think of building San Francisco with the consciousness of a chimp. Take it further. Four billion years ago our planet was molten rock. That molten rock became chimpanzees. The crowning achievement of four centuries of modern science is our discovery of this innate, pervasive, astonishing, self-transcending creative power of matter. But modern English fails us here. To call it “matter” is to dump centuries of dualistic consciousness on it. Let’s call it creative energy and say it again: the magnificent achievement of empirically based, mathematical science is the stunning realization that we have been constructed by, and that we dwell within, ultimate creative energy.
One of the fundamental spiritual, social, and ecological challenges of our time is learning how to live into what we know. If we could experience in a direct way how every cow and fir tree required fourteen billion years of creativity to be here, our relationships with them and with all others would change. But the vast majority of us, certainly including myself, do not know how to experience the universe at this level in an ongoing way. No one does. No humans in the history of humanity had this knowledge, which means no humans in history had to learn how to be a human being as a mode of cosmic creativity. That’s one of the reasons we come to SAND. Our community is one of the nodes where a new form of humanity is struggling to come forth. We are groping forward, comparing notes, sharing insights, awakening experience, deepening consciousness. We are the universe carrying out one of its greatest leaps in being.
Teresa Mateus, LCSW, E-RYT 200 is a trauma therapist, meditation and integrative healing practitioner, professor of Social Work, author and speaker on issues of spirituality, activism and healing. She is the co-founder and Executive Director of The Mystic Soul Project and co-creator of TRACC (trauma response and crisis care) for Movements. She is a graduate of NYU's School of Social Work in the Master's of Clinical Social Work program and a yoga teacher trained in the Sivananda tradition. She is the author of Going Naked: The Camino de Santiago & Life as Pilgrimage, Sacred Wounds: A Path to Healing from Spiritual Trauma, and Mending Broken: A Journey Through the Stages of Trauma + Recovery. She is currently based in Chicago, Illinois.
Hayes Ballroom
Radical Love & the Cosmic Mirror: Grounding in the Act of Seeing Sacred Difference
In spiritual contexts there can be a neutralizing of difference as a way of creating community through commonality and with an intention towards a collective consciousness. However, in a world where difference has meaning and impact – queerness, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomics and geographic and historical contexts – to neutralize difference negates pieces of all of our whole selves in their great texture and abundance.
We will explore together the way in which seeing and honoring sacred and beautiful difference builds deeper community, collective awareness and transformation. We will engage in this movement towards a radical love of each other and begin to see how through honoring the tapestry of difference we build connection to the larger social world and a call to manifesting social change.
Because if we see the sacred difference of others it will inherently pull us towards not only honoring that difference, but also protecting it in all the ways it is expressed in the world.
We will engage the ways in which the science of mirroring neurons can offer us a map into this practice of honoring sacred difference. We will close with a practice of mirroring radical love and seeing the sacred difference in each other.
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
The Essence of Nonduality
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
Conversation with Rupert Spira
Edenvale
Experiential: Guided Meditation
Cynthia Jurs is a Lama in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and a Dharmacharya in the Order of Interbeing of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. In 1990, she made a life-changing pilgrimage to meet an old wise man in a cave, the 106-year-old meditation master, Charok Rinpoche, from whom she received the practice of the Earth Treasure Vases. She founded the Earth Treasure Vase Global Healing Project and directs the Gaia Sangha, teaching an innovative blend of engaged buddhism and sacred activism in response to the call of the Earth. For 30 years, Cynthia has been building a global community committed to planetary healing and collective awakening in partnership with elders and activists around the world. For a decade, she has worked closely with ex-combatants in Liberia, West Africa, teaching mindfulness and co-founding the Peace Hut Alliance for Conflict Transformation. Cynthia’s book, Summoned By The Earth, is coming soon—along with a documentary film.
Hayes Ballroom
Sacred Activism for the Great Turning: Earth Treasure Vase Global Healing Meditation
“What can we do to bring healing and protection to the Earth?” This was the question that dharma teacher, Cynthia Jurs, asked a 106-year-old lama living in a cave in Nepal back in 1990. In response, she was given an ancient practice to fill and seal and bury Earth Treasure Vases. For 30 years Cynthia’s spiritual practice has been to take these holy vessels around the planet to restore balance and harmony to the Earth. The little clay pots are filled with prayers and offerings and planted like seeds in diverse cultures, communities and ecosystems and the heartfelt prayers and intentions they contain take root in surprising ways. With the help of elders, activists and regular folks world-wide, creative initiatives have been catalyzed though this ancient practice of sacred activism especially suited for our times.
Like acupuncture needles in the living body of the Earth, the Treasure Vases form a healing mandala of nodes and meridians imagined as a web of light that is here to serve us as we awaken together into our own unique role in the great work of our time—to heal the web of life, restore balance and harmony, envision our world anew, and embody that vision with every fiber of our life force for the benefit of all.
Participating in the ancient art of making relations with Nature, we see ourselves as a part of Gaia to whom we are inextricably linked. The Earth Treasure Vases have opened doors for us to form an international community, guided by the elders, grounded in the living Earth, dedicated to making a difference and supporting each other on the path of collective awakening.
Cynthia will offer a teaching on the Earth Treasure Vase practice and lead a guided meditation to open us as holy vessels for the work of global healing and collective awakening that is upon us now.
San Martin
Sacred Vessels for Global Healing: Earth Treasure Vase Initiation Ceremony
For 30 years, dharma teacher Cynthia Jurs has taken little clay pots called Earth Treasure Vases, around the world to restore balance and harmony to the Earth. Like acupuncture needles in the living body of Mother Gaia, the Earth Treasure Vases are filled with healing prayers and symbolic offerings, then taken to places calling for protection and renewal to be planted like seeds where they are needed. With the help of elders, activists and regular folks in diverse cultures, communities and ecosystems around the whole planet, the heartfelt prayers and intentions held within these holy vessels take root in surprising ways bringing this ancient practice of sacred activism alive in answer to the call of our times.
Please join Cynthia in a special ceremony to initiate one of the last remaining Earth Treasure Vases she received from the lamas in Nepal that is imbued with sacred medicines connecting it to all the enlightened lineage masters. The destination of the Earth Treasure Vase will be announced at SAND, and after a meditation, will be passed around our circle to receive your prayers and symbolic offerings. The SAND community is invited to join the Gaia Mandala Global Healing Community to envision our world anew and embody that vision for the sake of all beings. Guided by the elders and grounded in the living Earth, with each Earth Treasure Vase, we are planting the seeds of collective awakening and planetary healing — becoming Vessels of the Holy ourselves.
Hayes Ballroom
Panel: Climate Crisis, Grief and Interbeing
While we might be here by divine appointment at this moment in time, we are also stepping into unchartered territories of existence, where the way of life as we know is at stake. Recent research suggests that human societies will experience disruptions to their basic functioning within less than ten years due to climate stress. As we sink deeper into the climate crises of our planet we also face deeper human question.
- What does it mean to be a human being on a spiritual path at these times of crises?
- How do we meet and learn from grief, anger, fear?
- How do we move from despair and overwhelm to awakening and imagination?
- What is conscious activism and justice informed by interbeing?
- Is radical transformation possible and what would it look like?
- How do we prepare for a future in which the only certainty is uncertainty?
- Can we still celebrate all that life is while accepting that our species might only be for a brief flash on the scale of cosmic time?
We will attempt to address some of these questions in our brief conversation.
EAST FOREST has been the leader of underground ‘sound healing’ ceremonies around the world since 2008. Using music as a tool, he has trailblazed the field of organic tech, building bridges between the digital and natural world. Being fully independent and playing in the private shadows allowed the sound of East Forest to emerge: an emotional and spacious musical lexicon with a sound that took shape out of a practical need to play solo for five to six hours while guiding a room full of listeners in deep meditation. Live looping and layered keyboard melodies filled the musical space while angelic vocals and original field recordings floated above.
Moving into festivals, theaters, and clubs, electronic beats and diverse live instrumentation eventually joined in, from strings and analogue synthesizers to african kora. East Forest’s electro-acoustic ethereal sound continued to evolve and he found himself performing in a diverse range of settings from SXSW, Google, Mysteryland, to Grace Cathedral, Summit at Sea, as well as his own TEDx talk. More than a dozen albums later, East Forest continues to explore a path of emotionally driven music that pulls from ambient, classical, electronic and indie-pop genres.
Hayes Ballroom
Bridging Concert & Ritual for a Transformative Life Experience
Concert meets ritual in this multi-level experience which incorporates elements of music, meditation and sound healing. Choose a spot to unroll your mat and place your bolster or pillow. Begin to think about your intentions; write them out on a prayer flag to hang or place on an altar. Rest and relax while enjoying a musical concert, mixing traditional East Forest songs with deep ambient soundscapes, that will move you through the energy cycles. Allow the music to take you on a inner journey, to lead you to the wellspring of wisdom within. End the evening with a deep savasana, followed by a tea ceremony that will allow you to share your experience and connect with others. Leave with feelings of tranquility, hopefulness and self-empowerment. (Note: The East Forest Ceremony is not a yoga class, everyone is welcome!)
Lyla June is a poet, musician, human ecologist, public speaker and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages. Her dynamic, multi-genre performance style has invigorated and inspired audiences across the globe towards personal, collective and ecological healing. Her messages focus on Indigenous rights, supporting youth, inter-cultural healing, historical trauma and traditional land stewardship practices. Her undergraduate studies in human ecology at Stanford University coupled with a traditional upbringing inform her potent messages conveyed through the medium of powerful yet prayerful hip-hop, poetry, acoustic song and speech. Her personal goal is to grow closer to Creator by learning how to love deeper. She is a co-founder of The Taos Peace and Reconciliation Council, which works to heal intergenerational trauma and ethnic division in the northern New Mexico. She was a walker within the Nihigaal Bee Iiná Movement, a 1400 mile prayer journey through Diné homelands for environmental and social justice. She is the lead organizer of the Black Hill Unity Concert. She is the also the founder of Regeneration Festival, an annual celebration of children that occurs in 13 countries around the world every September.
Hayes Ballroom
The Resurgence of Indigenous Knowledge
Indigenous sciences, embedded and discussed through indigenous languages, have suffered great destruction. So many languages have gone extinct, and the ones that remain are not being supported. Lyla June discusses a tool for spurring the resurgence of ancestral epistemology and curriculum through Indigenous-led universities.
Morgan Hill
Conversation and Q&A
Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California and University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Ancient Futures (Australia). In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California’s (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He has also been appointed Senior Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany. He is the recipient of the New Thought Leadership Award 2021 and the Excellence in Ethnocultural Psychotherapy Award by the African Mental Health Summit 2022. www.bayoakomolafe.net
Hayes Ballroom
Making Sanctuary: Is There a Solution for Climate Change?
In this talk connecting Yoruba indigenous philosophies, historical accounts of transatlantic slave crossings, new materialist/feminist insights, Bohr’s scientific theory of quantum indeterminacy, Deleuze’s musings about ‘assemblages’ and ‘rhizomes’, and contemporary concerns with climate activism, Bayo poses a jarring question: what if the ways we think about the climate crisis is the crisis? More to the point, what if the feverish quest for ‘solutions’ (which characterizes climate justice movements today) is getting in the way of radical transformation? Thinking with concepts that valorise a nondual, relational universe, Bayo Akomolafe finds within a re-reading of the Middle Age practice of “claiming sanctuary” an urgent invitation to notice climate change as the deconstruction of the human, and to approach demise and dying as abundant fields of surprise. Making sanctuary is a call to shapeshift, a call to embark on katabasic quests to impossible depths. A call to die well.
Hayes Ballroom
Panel: Climate Crisis, Grief and Interbeing
While we might be here by divine appointment at this moment in time, we are also stepping into unchartered territories of existence, where the way of life as we know is at stake. Recent research suggests that human societies will experience disruptions to their basic functioning within less than ten years due to climate stress. As we sink deeper into the climate crises of our planet we also face deeper human question.
- What does it mean to be a human being on a spiritual path at these times of crises?
- How do we meet and learn from grief, anger, fear?
- How do we move from despair and overwhelm to awakening and imagination?
- What is conscious activism and justice informed by interbeing?
- Is radical transformation possible and what would it look like?
- How do we prepare for a future in which the only certainty is uncertainty?
- Can we still celebrate all that life is while accepting that our species might only be for a brief flash on the scale of cosmic time?
We will attempt to address some of these questions in our brief conversation.
Hayes Ballroom
Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain
If the conscious mind—the part you consider you—accounts for only a fraction of the brain's function, what is all the rest doing? This is the question that David Eagleman has spent years researching and which he answers in this state-of-the-science talk. Our behavior, thoughts, and experiences are inseparably linked to a vast, wet, chemical-electrical network called the nervous system. The machinery is utterly alien to us, and yet, somehow, it is us. Eagleman takes us into the depths of the subconscious to answer some of our deepest mysteries. Why does the conscious mind know so little about itself? What do Ulysses and the subprime mortgage meltdown have in common? Why is it so difficult to keep a secret? Eagleman charts new terrain in neuroscience and helps us understand how our perceptions of ourselves and our world result from the hidden workings of the most wondrous thing we have ever discovered: the human brain.
Hayes Ballroom
Deepening Our Feeling for “Us”: An Ancient Tibetan Practice
Lama Tsomo will teach us the ancient Tibetan compassion practice of Tonglen, one of the Four Boundless Qualities practices that we use, to grow our capacity for feeling the truth of our deep, loving connection with everyone. People will experience it in the moment and then, following this simple practice in a handout or online, we can take it into our daily lives, both on and off the cushion. It is an antidote to isolation and, an antidote to othering … and so, a perfect medicine for these times.
Edenvale
Conversation with Lama Tsomo
Morgan Hill
We all project like crazy. And we just want to be seen.
Have you ever felt someone projecting something on you, that wasn’t at all about you? How painful! We all project on each other unconsciously all the time. Yet we all want passionately to be seen. How can we bring our own projections to light? How can we let others know we feel their projections? Lama Tsomo will speak from her body of knowledge both as a Jungian psychotherapist and a trained Tibetan lama, on possible ways, both Eastern and Western, to work productively with projection, give us a sample practice or two to try, and we’ll spend time discussing our experiences with each other.
Dr. Sará King is a mother, a UCLA-trained neuroscientist, education philosopher, political scientist and critical theorist who will begin a neuroscience post-doctoral fellowship in the department of Neurology at OHSU this fall. She is an internationally recognized thought leader in field of mindfulness and social justice in schools, and enjoys public speaking and advocacy work at the intersection of these fields.
Sará is also an author, entrepreneur, and yoga and meditation teacher who founded MindHeart Consulting, a company dedicated to creating cutting edge research projects and community healing experiences through the framework that she personally developed called "The Science of Social Justice" - which involves the use of an intersectional understanding of the biopsychosocial impact of systemic oppression on marginalized populations, combined with the application of the science of well-being to understand how to create research and healing projects that serve the aims of social justice in underrepresented communities.
She has studied and practiced hatha yoga and Buddhist philosophy for the past 14 years, and has completed a 500 hr. Mindful Yoga and Meditation teacher training at Spirit Rock. She is also an artist who uses poetry, contemplative photography, creative writing and painting as her favorite forms of exploring self expression, and blends these into her personal contemplative practice and professional mindfulness consulting work. mindheartconsulting.com
Hayes Ballroom
The Science of Social Justice: A Generative Field of Collective Healing
“Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) is a radically interdisciplinary and groundbreaking field developed by neuropsychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel that presents us with a scientifically grounded view of the mind, human development, relationships and experience. We are living in a moment in human history—the anthropocene—where everything about this beautiful planet that we live on is being drastically impacted by the human mind. The unconsciousness surrounding our collective traumatic history of structural, physical, and emotional violence has brought us to a tipping point, where we must as a species learn how to reimagine the very meaning of resilient and compassionate relationships in order to move beyond the geopolitics of survival into a sustainable and Beloved Community.
In this talk, Dr. Sará King will discuss the research she conducted at UCLA on yoga, mindfulness and resilience as they relate to trauma and the work of social justice with youth. Additionally, she will discuss the work she has been conducting with her mentor, Dan Siegel, to understand how (IPNB) has deep social justice implications for how we understand and bring about Beloved Community.
Additionally, Dr. King will lead a brief guided meditation practice with the intention of bringing participants into an embodied experience of “MWe”—Dan Siegel’s new framework for shifting our understanding of what it is to have a “self”, in a way that she hopes will illuminate the ways in which we can get in touch with our intergenerational and ancestral resources for healing through the power of mindful relationships.”
Hayes Ballroom
Panel - Social Justice: Are We One?
The SAND community is deeply committed to exploring the core, interconnected issues of our time. Yet the inherent biases in our scientific methods, spiritual practices and/or wisdom traditions are not often our focus. In this panel session, we are inviting SAND community members to explore privilege and consequences of racial and ontological identities, as we consider what is inclusive space at SAND.
Some questions the panel may explore:
• What does social justice activism, informed by spirituality look like? And how is it practiced?
• What are the blind spots in largely white, privileged communities—like SAND?
• What is the unconscious conditioning we carry around racism and oppression?
• Do we reflect on the cultural context through which spiritual teachings have been passed to us?
Orland Bishop works within a global social network of individuals and agencies engaged with the Ecology of Nature and Human Consciousness within the realms of life and death. He is the Founder and Executive Director of Shadetree Multicultural Foundation, a Los Angeles based social agency focused on youth development and social capital development. Shadetree serves in the development of peace processes for urban conflicts, capacity building for economic enterprises in communities and cities, systemic and collaborative leadership development and creating frameworks for emerging economies. Since 2002, he has served as the Presiding Priest of the Aquarian Gospel Temple, founded in 1941 in the City of Los Angeles which supports independent Spiritual Science Research within the US, Africa and other countries linked to their global networks. He is passionate about the power of agreements and intentions for a shared reality among Human Communities.
Hayes Ballroom
I Give You My Word
We live in a time characterized by convergences of many kinds giving our civilization a threshold of significant climaxes and challenges. These outer forces of intense change are in direct alignment with inner capacities we are yet to acknowledge and live from. It is my hope that this session will allow us to contemplate the rich human and planetary histories we have inherited. The intention here is to consider how we can become aware of our true legacies and step into the realities of our deepest belonging and act from conscience as the prerequisite virtue to initiate our age, the age of humanity.
Hayes Ballroom
Panel - Social Justice: Are We One?
The SAND community is deeply committed to exploring the core, interconnected issues of our time. Yet the inherent biases in our scientific methods, spiritual practices and/or wisdom traditions are not often our focus. In this panel session, we are inviting SAND community members to explore privilege and consequences of racial and ontological identities, as we consider what is inclusive space at SAND.
Some questions the panel may explore:
• What does social justice activism, informed by spirituality look like? And how is it practiced?
• What are the blind spots in largely white, privileged communities—like SAND?
• What is the unconscious conditioning we carry around racism and oppression?
• Do we reflect on the cultural context through which spiritual teachings have been passed to us?
Edenvale
Conversation with Orland Bishop
Edenvale
Community Council
Council is an age-old practice that involves bringing people together in a circle to bear witness and share authentically. Participants agree to speak one-at-a-time, sharing their personal stories and experiences, rather than opinions, and listening non-judgmentally while others do the same. Sharing and listening to universal stories about love, loss, fear, triumph, challenge, hope and other experiences enables participants to recognize that, despite our many differences, we have much in common.
By fostering attentive listening and authentic expression, Council builds positive relationships between participants and neutralizes hierarchical dynamics formed by the inequality of status, race, or other social factors. It supports a deep sense of community and fosters recognition of a shared humanity and interconnectedness. It enables individuals to give voice to their stories, develop mutual respect, cultivate a compassionate response to anger, defensiveness, and violence, as well as strengthen emotional health and resilience.
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
The Trap of Being Right
There is a special area of the Matrix reserved for people who think they have exited the Matrix. The answers to metaphysical questions—and indeed political questions, personal questions—are usually less important than the process that the question launches. Here we will explore the power of the question and the power of not-knowing, with special reference to science, politics, the maintenance of consensus reality, and the moments when love shines through.
Hayes Ballroom
Panel: Climate Crisis, Grief and Interbeing
While we might be here by divine appointment at this moment in time, we are also stepping into unchartered territories of existence, where the way of life as we know is at stake. Recent research suggests that human societies will experience disruptions to their basic functioning within less than ten years due to climate stress. As we sink deeper into the climate crises of our planet we also face deeper human question.
- What does it mean to be a human being on a spiritual path at these times of crises?
- How do we meet and learn from grief, anger, fear?
- How do we move from despair and overwhelm to awakening and imagination?
- What is conscious activism and justice informed by interbeing?
- Is radical transformation possible and what would it look like?
- How do we prepare for a future in which the only certainty is uncertainty?
- Can we still celebrate all that life is while accepting that our species might only be for a brief flash on the scale of cosmic time?
We will attempt to address some of these questions in our brief conversation.
Morgan Hill
The Guardian at the Threshold
What stands in the way of attaining a higher level of creativity and effectiveness in service to Gaia? Many of us can sense a next step, and feel the desire to up our game. To get there, something will be gained and something will be lost. In this gathering, we will initiate and accelerate that process.
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
Q&A
Edenvale
Conversation with Francis Lucille
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.
Edenvale
Experiential: Guided Meditation
Hayes Ballroom
Illuminating Our Interconnectedness
We most often associate spiritual practice with inner work and we engage meditation as a path of personal growth and development. While the personal level is an important foundation, the next level is to bring our practice to the interpersonal realm. Cultivating deep presence and awareness in relation with others is a "social contemplation" that reveals the truth of our deep interconnectedness with all of life. Uncovering and illuminating the interconnected web of our human "data network" brings a higher level of coherence and intelligence in the collective body. This opens up the potential for healing the fragmentation in our world and liberates our capacity to respond creatively and whole-heartedly to the immense collective challenges we are facing.
Hayes Ballroom
Toning Meditation
Edenvale
Conversation with Thomas Hübl
Hayes Ballroom
Panel: Climate Crisis, Grief and Interbeing
While we might be here by divine appointment at this moment in time, we are also stepping into unchartered territories of existence, where the way of life as we know is at stake. Recent research suggests that human societies will experience disruptions to their basic functioning within less than ten years due to climate stress. As we sink deeper into the climate crises of our planet we also face deeper human question.
- What does it mean to be a human being on a spiritual path at these times of crises?
- How do we meet and learn from grief, anger, fear?
- How do we move from despair and overwhelm to awakening and imagination?
- What is conscious activism and justice informed by interbeing?
- Is radical transformation possible and what would it look like?
- How do we prepare for a future in which the only certainty is uncertainty?
- Can we still celebrate all that life is while accepting that our species might only be for a brief flash on the scale of cosmic time?
We will attempt to address some of these questions in our brief conversation.
Zvi Ish-Shalom, Ph.D., is an ordained rabbi, a professor of wisdom traditions at Naropa University, and the founder of Kedumah, a universal mystical school that teaches a step-by-step approach to spiritual awakening and personal development.
He is the author of the book The Kedumah Experience: The Primordial Torah and the forthcoming Sleep, Death, and Rebirth: Mystical Practices of the Kabbalah.
To find out more about Zvi's upcoming events, books, and programs, visit: www.kedumah.org
Hayes Ballroom
From Quarks to Love in Ancient Hebrew Mysticism
In the ancient Hebrew tradition, discovering hidden relationships between words, letters, and sounds serves to shift our consciousness into states of greater presence and expansion. In this session, we will explore the esoteric relationship between form and formlessness embedded within the Shema, an ancient mystical formula and sacred-sound practice designed to awaken our consciousness into an embodied state of nondual realization and universal love. In this process, the relationship between the dual and the nondual is clarified: the formless is recognized as the form, the transcendent as the immanent, the unmanifest as the manifest, the spiritual as the material.
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
When we knowingly take our stand as the limitless field of Awareness we may recognise 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.
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.
Hayes Ballroom
Beyond Trauma. Falling into Love
There is a profound and painful sense of disconnection in humanity. To fully engage in a new way of being, the old story of separation needs to dissolve. To do this we need to diminish the structures that hold the old patterns in place. A key to clearing the obstacles that keep you limited or feeling disconnected, is to resolve the deepest impact of early or developmental trauma.
This presentation dives into the depth and most difficult aspects of trauma healing, to reach a life beyond trauma. You can come to know a more loving and beautiful world is possible, one in which you can abide as love and in compassion. Undifferentiated anger, rage, and terror of annihilation are experiences that are often circumvented, hidden, or locked away in your unconscious. Unresolved they can obscure your true spiritual nature and realizations. You can find their healing properties and move into freedom. As you do so, new kernels of life are found, old structures drop away, and a spiritual awakening and a maturation is born of the transformation.
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/
Monterey
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP — Consciousness: A User Guide
AIl can drive cars, create music, recognize objects, find a new solar system, discover a hominid species, and trounce anyone in a game of Go. Reports of its limits have been greatly exaggerated. But can AI enjoy conscious experiences? Can it feel love? Some physicalists claim that unconscious matter, with proper complexity, ignites consciousness. I propose a new framework and question: Can we rejig our spacetime interface to open new portals into the preexisting realm of conscious agents?
Hayes Ballroom
Can A.I. Feel Real Love?
AI can drive cars, create music, recognize objects, find a new solar system, discover a hominid species, and trounce anyone in a game of Go. Reports of its limits have been greatly exaggerated. But can AI enjoy conscious experiences? Can it feel love? Some physicalists claim that unconscious matter, with proper complexity, ignites consciousness. I propose a new framework and question: Can we rejig our spacetime interface to open new portals into the preexisting realm of conscious agents?
Edenvale
Conversation with Donald Hoffman
Sea Stars is the musical collaboration of Kurt Baumann and Katie Gray.
Through the power of intention and a heartfelt tapestry of vibrancy and sound, the music offers deep entry into the subtle and sacred chambers of emotion, feeling and intimacy.
By building and nurturing their connection over the past decade, the two artists co-create a light-filled pathway of sonic resonance that welcomes the listener into spaciousness and self reflection.
Collectively, their music and voices have been featured on 8 major television shows, Jimmy Kimmel, Sirius XM and most recently, a live performance on the NBC Today show.
Sea Stars are honored and humbled to be welcomed into the SAND community and look forward to learning, growing and expanding with all of you!
Hayes Ballroom
Music Performance & Inspirational Speaking
Betsy Polatin, MFA, SEP, an internationally recognized breathing/movement specialist and best-selling author, has been teaching for 45 years. Her unique and intuitive perspectives are greatly influenced by the study of movement, breath, and trauma, as well as the teachings of spiritual and meditation masters. She speaks at conferences around the world.
She’s had numerous articles published in the Huffington Post, and is the author of The Actor’s Secret and Humanual.
San Jose
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP — The Embodiment of Nonduality
This workshop is a wonderful opportunity to discover the unity of body, mind, and spirit based on the tensegrity model. I will offer hands-on guidance and simple exercises to enhance sensory skills by exploring the musculoskeletal, respiratory, and nervous systems, and how they relate to the larger universe.
Through group exercises and one on one instruction, you’ll learn to increase body awareness, and breathing capacity, to change inefficient habits, so that you can move with ease and speak with confidence. Learn to awaken inherent potential by finding the support from the ground that can lead to full stature and expansion, while becoming aware of how trauma and overwhelm can interfere with this process.
San Martin
The Embodiment of Nonduality
This workshop is a wonderful opportunity to discover the unity of body, mind, and spirit based on the tensegrity model. I will offer hands-on guidance and simple exercises to enhance sensory skills by exploring the musculoskeletal, respiratory, and nervous systems, and how they relate to the larger universe.
Through group exercises and one on one instruction, you’ll learn to increase body awareness, and breathing capacity, to change inefficient habits, so that you can move with ease and speak with confidence. Learn to awaken inherent potential by finding the support from the ground that can lead to full stature and expansion, while becoming aware of how trauma and overwhelm can interfere with this process.
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.
Guadalupe
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP — Cultivating Non-Dual Relationships
We say that we believe in nonduality, but do our lives reflect it, especially in our relationships? We will focus on cultivating the heart space to move beyond othering, particularly when our heart is not in it. This historic moment is calling us higher and deeper than we have ever gone before. Will you answer the call? It’s time to live at a deeper level the oneness we know and proclaim.
Hayes Ballroom
Putting Relate Back into Relationship
There is a growing tendency to build relationship around external commonalities rather than inner connection. Technology is creating the opportunity for this to trend to continue. There are times when there are good reasons for us to be in relationship with others because of mutual associations. However, we can experience difficulty in building and sustaining relationships when, despite our common association, we cannot actually relate to one another in our heart. Understanding is a good beginning, but it is not enough. We can understand someone and not be able to relate to them. Relating does not develop until you can perceive that whomever or whatever has something to do with you. Oftentimes, the culprit of our inability to genuinely relate in our heart is our adherence to the dualistic paradigm of “otherness.” In this mindset, we simply fail to perceive our interconnectedness, let alone our oneness. Engaging in othering for prolonged periods of time cripples our very capacity to be in authentic relationship. We witness this on all levels from interpersonal family dynamics to geo-socio political affairs. Unbeknownst to us, we have created the equivalent of relationship gerrymandering in which we redraw the boundaries of who is or out of our sphere of connectedness. Rarely do they have any say in the matter. Forgetting that a relationship is merely a real time reflection of how we are relating, we fallaciously believe that we can improve relationships without improving how we actually relate. It’s time for us to put “relate” back into relationship.
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
Monterey Room
Panel: New Research on Trauma, Love and Transformation
Without a shift in consciousness, humanity will become extinct. To effect a shift at large scale requires a contemplative turn in our educational systems. Practice- models are needed to blaze a pathway for this transformation. The nonprofit Peace in Schools has pioneered the deepest practice-model in contemplative education in schools.
In 2018, we partnered with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health on the first scientific study globally to research mindfulness and trauma by examining adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in schools. You’ll receive a preview of initial findings and learn about a non-dual, connective, love-based model that we can leverage for collective transformation.
Hayes Ballroom
Panel - Social Justice: Are We One?
The SAND community is deeply committed to exploring the core, interconnected issues of our time. Yet the inherent biases in our scientific methods, spiritual practices and/or wisdom traditions are not often our focus. In this panel session, we are inviting SAND community members to explore privilege and consequences of racial and ontological identities, as we consider what is inclusive space at SAND.
Some questions the panel may explore:
• What does social justice activism, informed by spirituality look like? And how is it practiced?
• What are the blind spots in largely white, privileged communities—like SAND?
• What is the unconscious conditioning we carry around racism and oppression?
• Do we reflect on the cultural context through which spiritual teachings have been passed to us?
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.
Edenvale
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP — Awareness in Conflict: Eros and the Spiritual Practices of SACRA Theater
8 Members of the SACRA Immanence Theater Company and Zhen Dao, founder of SACRA and the practice tradition of MogaDao, will lead students on a theatrical and spiritual exploration of the relationship between spiritual practice and creative emergence.
The players of SACRA train in all of the uniquely spiritualized practice disciplines of MogaDao, including MogaDao Tripartite Meditation, 5-Realms Yoga, MogaDao Qigong, Jingshen Gongfu, Depth Sexuality, and MogaDao’s Heartmind Warrior Training Program, which consists of “Neurogenic Exercises,” slow and soft Jingshen Gongfu techniques in partnership, that transform the very structure of our response to stress, conflict, and fear.
This training is the foundation of what Zhen Dao calls “the erotic basis of being,” the ethos of SACRA Theater. Within the context of SACRA theater, these neurogenic exercises function to emancipate actors—and students of all fields of creative expression and paths of spiritual growth—from superficial notions of performance to reality, in all its indeterminacy, beauty, and peril.
Hayes Ballroom
What the Human is for: Eros and the Meaning of the Beginning of the End
In this talk, Zhen Dao will address the current war on sense and sensibility and the dematerialization of the human body in the face of the colonization of sensibility itself, a colonization she calls “Info-colonization.” Info-colonization will not neutralize itself, and its acceleration continues increasingly to disable our capacity for wonder, tenderness, and empathy. But rather than pessimism, Zhen Dao sees in this demise of the human the very chance to understand, in an eschatological sense, what the human is for. Establishing this purpose as eros, in the Post-Daoist sense of the term, she will introduce into the language new concepts and terms that might hold inestimable value for those of us who are not willing to allow human tenderness, empathy, and the “holiness of the heart’s affections” to disappear into the history of nostalgia.
Monterey Room
Panel - Dynamics of Attraction: Divine Masculine and Feminine in Awakening
One consciousness plays itself as two, in this divine dance of apparent separation and union. We will explore the divine masculine and feminine within and the inner union that flourishes in embodied awakening. We will explore what this looks like on the outside and inside both personally and in relationships. We will also explore the perfection of and resolution of longing for the other in the awakening process both in and out of intimate relationships.
Guadalupe
Experiential: The Cultivation of Sense and Sensibility
In Zhen Dao’s talk, which occurs the day before this experiential, she will essentially be diagnosing the human being as thus far having fallen short of its potential, its purpose. It is Zhen’s contention that this diagnosis represents an opportunity rather than an estimation of failure—that the failure of the human is the human’s last and most beautiful chance to become itself. This experiential will be a sampling of how the entire practice tradition of MogaDao is constellated around this theme of establishing and embodying the purpose of the human.
Using many modalities of the practice tradition of MogaDao and of SACRA Immanence Theater, including The Heartmind Warrior Training Program’s “Neurogenic Exercises” for rebuilding energetic and biological pathways of feeling, empowerment, and empathy, MogaDao Qigong’s 3 Pillars Qigong for Trauma, and the Erotic Basis of Being Program’s studies in vulnerability and empathy, students will be given the opportunity to participate in a small sampling of MogaDao’s trainings or techné as they are practiced at the root school, in Santa Fe, NM, and among the players in training at SACRA Theater.
San Martin
That Which Cannot Be Divided
Love is the refusal to separate —Nisargadatta Maharaj
From a deeply awakened perspective, the smallest particle and the vastness of space are equal expressions of an infinite mystery that cannot be divided or even named. This infinite mystery is empty of definition, empty of self, empty of resistance. Yet from this ground of infinite potential, life and love move spontaneously. Whether we are scientists looking for a single building block of the universe, or spiritual seekers looking for the deepest Truth, we discover a wholeness of being containing intricate interconnections.
Quarks, the smallest known particles, have flavors, yet apparently cannot be separated or isolated within their energy field. So, too, our ordinary life, filled with ever-changing forms and flavors, cannot be divided from the still, silent ground that seems to create from its own vibrations everything that appears to “be.” What is the energy of this connectivity? Perhaps it is a Love that cannot separate itself from you, from me, from the moment, from the cosmos, from the changing faces of experience, because it is simultaneously the totality of both source and expression. Perhaps your very form is the way that the Infinite knows and loves itself.
This presentation, including experiential invitations, will explore the singularity of That which cannot be divided, yet relates to itself each moment in every conceivable way through an unconditional and timeless Love that can be experienced but not created by any thought that takes itself to be separate.
Michael Meade, D.H.L., is a renowned storyteller, author, and scholar of mythology, anthropology, and psychology. He combines hypnotic storytelling, street-savvy perceptiveness, and spellbinding interpretations of ancient myths with a deep knowledge of cross-cultural rituals. He has an unusual ability to distill and synthesize these disciplines, tapping into ancestral sources of wisdom and connecting them to the stories we are living today.
He is the author of The Genius Myth, Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of The Soul, Why the World Doesn't End, The Water of Life: Initiation and the Tempering of the Soul; editor, with James Hillman and Robert Bly, of Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart; and editor of Crossroads: A Quest for Contemporary Rites of Passage. Meade is the founder of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, a nonprofit network of artist, activists, and community builders that encourages greater understanding between diverse peoples.
Monterey
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP — The Great Adventure of Life
The storms and tragedies of contemporary life can be termed a spiritual crisis, in which we must awaken to a greater sense of self or else become more isolated and subject to increasing feelings of isolation and helplessness.
Because all things are ultimately interconnected, the challenges we face and the changes underway signal a genuine transformation of the world. Change can be disconcerting; yet in troubled times the inner threads of genius, imagination and wisdom become both more important and surprisingly more available.
Upavita is an old Sanskrit term for the eternal thread of golden imagination that makes each life valuable and noble from the beginning. This sacred thread of life connects the mind with the heart; it ties us to the dream of life and leads us to the purpose of our soul. While holding it, all the moments of our lives make sense; without it, all can seem accidental and pointless.
Call it dharma or the inner law of our being; call it a life dream or a spiritual calling; we are each called to awaken to the inner plotline of a story trying to unfold from within. In learning to express the mythic pattern woven within, we learn to contribute to the renewal of community as well as a restoration of nature.
What we need at this time is not a minor repair, but a major transformation of the world that can only start from the inside. Transformation at the level of the individual heart and soul generates the imagination and collective energy needed to change the conditions of the world.
Hayes Ballroom
Holding the Thread of Life
The storms and tragedies of contemporary life can be termed a spiritual crisis, in which we must awaken to a greater sense of self or else become more isolated and subject to increasing feelings of isolation and helplessness.
Because all things are ultimately interconnected, the challenges we face and the changes underway signal a genuine transformation of the world. Change can be disconcerting; yet in troubled times the inner threads of genius, imagination and wisdom become both more important and surprisingly more available.
Upavita is an old Sanskrit term for the eternal thread of golden imagination that makes each life valuable and noble from the beginning. This sacred thread of life connects the mind with the heart; it ties us to the dream of life and leads us to the purpose of our soul. While holding it, all the moments of our lives make sense; without it, all can seem accidental and pointless.
Call it dharma or the inner law of our being; call it a life dream or a spiritual calling; we are each called to awaken to the inner plotline of a story trying to unfold from within. In learning to express the mythic pattern woven within, we learn to contribute to the renewal of community as well as a restoration of nature.
What we need at this time is not a minor repair, but a major transformation of the world that can only start from the inside. Transformation at the level of the individual heart and soul generates the imagination and collective energy needed to change the conditions of the world.
Edenvale
Conversation with Michael Meade
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
What Are Neurons For?
We are aware of thinking and acting, and we typically think this is neurons and brains are for. Their deeper functions in regulating the body, either directly or through neurohormonal and neuroimmune interactions are largely unconscious and therefore neglected. This talk introduces theoretical models and experimental data suggesting an even deeper and evolutionarily older function of nervous systems: regulating the size and shape of the body. If these models are correct, the original function of neurons was the regulation of cell proliferation and differentiation. Neurons still perform these functions, from early embryogenesis through adulthood. We may even, sometimes, be aware of them. Recognizing this gives a new meaning to "embodied cognition."
Susan Campbell, Ph.D. (Psychology, University of Massachusetts) is founder of the Getting Real Work and author of 10 books, including her 1980’s best-seller The Couples Journey, which popularized the idea of relationship as a path to mutual awakening. A former graduate school professor at UMass for 12 years, she is currently on the Adjunct Faculty of the Saybrook Graduate School. She has also taught part time at Stanford, Harvard, UCLA, CIIS, JFK, and Rutgers. Susan was formerly Co-Director of The Institute for the Study of Conscious Evolution, where she directed a think-tank studying intimate relationships as an evolutionary force.
San Jose
Experiential: Relationship as a Spiritual Journey
In the life sciences, recurring cycles of differentiation and integration toward greater wholeness is a universal process. And so it is with human lovers. The spark of romantic love promises the possibility of unity. But as lovers continue on this path, differences surface, and our equilibrium is threatened.
The path to wholeness becomes one of inner work:
• how do we work with the projections and fears that surface when my partner wants one thing and I want another?
• what do I do when an innocent action on my part triggers my partner’s insecurities?
• how do we sort through the layers of unconscious motivations and conditioned fears that keep us attached to needing certain things from a partner in order to feel secure?
In this experiential session, we will explore how to use relationship as an awareness practice, a mutual journey of healing and liberation—where together we learn to hold a loving, compassionate space for the rejected, abandoned, angry, or fearful parts of our personalities, rather than identifying with these as who we are. We learn to let go of trying to transcend such messy aspects of our humanity, and discover that the practice of compassionate self-inquiry, while holding space for our disowned parts, pops us into a deepening sense of wholeness, an embodiment of love.
Adam facilitates individuals and groups at the leading edge of human inner transformation.
He created Soulsign to empower a profound support system from the three intelligences with which he works: the Living Astrological Sky, our Open Heart Experience and our Soul’s Breath. Together as a continuum, they merge our innate intelligence, timeless wisdom and dynamic creative minds to be our every moment. Adam’s work is an invitation to courageously embrace your full-spectrum humanity: light and dark, identity and essence, temporal and infinite.
Since 2002 he has brought thousands of people into a direct experience of the vastness of their Soul inside their tangible, empowered sense of Self. His devotion to authentic presence and practical life experience—rooted in the somatic intelligence of the Human Heart—manifest through his impeccable skill and genuine kindness. Learn more at https://www.soulsign.com/ and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/soulsign/
Guadalupe
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP — The Open Human Heart Experience
Thus far Adam’s Open Human Heart work has grown steadily and quietly through word-of-mouth. For the first time, in this pre-conference workshop, Adam will introduce the Open Human Heart experience to a broader audience.
The Open Human Heart Experience is an immersion into the vastness of our Human Hearts to hold the entirety of our being, beyond emotions, sensations, and energy states. Knowing what’s happening has nothing to do with fully allowing what’s happening in our direct experience. Together we’ll drop out of our heads and awareness as framing our moment and discover how willing we are to authentically feel without agenda.
This workshop will:
• Introduce you to the Open Human Heart Experience
• Invite you into your own direct experience as a human being first
• Demonstrate the power and reliability of I Don’t Know
• Explain what actual Safety is and what it’s not
• Offer teachings on the real reasons why we do the things we do (and why reasons don’t matter)
• Show how healing, evolution and awakening are byproducts of essential honesty.
If you plan to register for this workshop please review and submit these Three Invitations here: https://www.soulsign.com/open-human-heart/open-human-heart-agreement/
Chiara is an independent researcher from Florence (Italy). She investigates the evolution of the ecstatic cult in the West, particularly in ancient Greece and Rome, contributing to anthologies, psychedelic conferences and festivals. She has been part of the curatorial team of Liminal Village since 2010 while she has also helped to set up and run ConTent, the first cultural area in Fusion Festival, Germany, in 2015 and 2016. Now she is back to Liminal as the program coordinator and she is about to publish an anthology called “Psychedelic Mysteries of the Feminine”. She lives in the Costa Vicentina in Portugal where she often plays as DJ Clandestina.
Hayes Ballroom
God of Ecstasy And Nonduality: The Forgotten Story of the Cult of Dionysus
How was the concept of nonduality understood and experienced at the dawn of western civilization? Which were the archetypal divinities and ritual practices that helped millions of our ancestors to transcend duality and achieve a deeper understanding of Oneness?
Join Chiara in this presentation on the cult of Dionysus, the Greek god of excess and ambiguity, to understand how his orgiastic rituals facilitated the kind of experience able to trigger a deeper understanding of the paradoxical nature of reality. Who was Dionysus and who were his followers? What happened during an initiation into his cult? How did his worship develop over the course of the centuries and why was it harshly repressed once it reached the heart of the Roman Empire? What can we learn from this forgotten story about the contemporary western approach to practices of altered states of consciousness?
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
Hayes Ballroom
The Exponential Explosion
We all experience how the pace of change is speeding up, but seldom do we step back to look at where this acceleration is taking us. In the coming decades, the pace of life will be much faster than it is today leading to technological advances that may be as unimaginable to us today as the current Internet was thirty years ago.
However, we need to consider another consequence of accelerating change: the stress it creates. Whether it be our own biological system, our social, economic, and political systems, or the planetary ecosystem, the stress of ever-increasing change will eventually lead to breakdown—with potentially disastrous consequences, as the impending climate catastrophe reveals.
In the future, we will see technology beyond our dreams, in a world falling apart at the seams. And no-one is to blame. It’s the natural consequence of innovation breeding innovation, leading to an exponential explosion of growth.
So how do we cope with an increasingly unpredictable world? How can we prepare ourselves as the winds of change whip up into a storm of change? And what is the new story of humankind to which this leads?
Internationally-acclaimed comedian Alicia Dattner grew up as part of Swami Satchidananda’s graceful ashram community, Integral yoga, so early on, she had an insatiable desire for cosmic truth, and an inside look at the slight absurdity of the spiritual path. She’s performed with luminaries like Ali Wong, Kamau Bell, and Maria Bamford, in clubs and theaters around the world, from Bali to Bombay, London to Rio, Hollywood to Hawaii, San Francisco, and New York. She’s been voted “Best Comedian” in the SF Weekly and Bay Guardian, Best Storyteller in the NY United Solo Fest, and Top 5 Solo of the Year at the TBA Awards. Her standup One Life Stand is now touring.
www.aliciadattner.com
Hayes Ballroom
Enlightened AF Comedy: A Modern Gal's Guide to Awakening and Other Disorders...
Drinking at yoga, sleeping while meditating, and accidental enlightenment. Plus! Learn how to spot a non-dual narcissist in the wild!
Connie Buffalo is a member of the Red Cliff Band of *Chippewa Indians located in Northern Wisconsin. (The name Chippewa is a name given the Anishinaabe nation by the American government. Anishinaabe is the original name of the people, and is used interchangeably with the name Ojibwe.)
Buffalo’s deep love and appreciation of her culture is woven into her sharing, traditional stories, and respect for both the seen and unseen worlds that surround us. Throughout her professional life, she has consistently taught about her culture and its wisdom stories.
Currently, she is the business partner of Jean Houston, Ph.D. and designs training programs dedicated to encouraging lives of meaning and purpose.
As a mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, she offers a unique perspective on Anishinaabe philosophy and it’s practical value for creating an honorable future for our children and our children’s children.
Morgan Hill
The Story of Life is in the Wind: An Invitation to the Four Worlds of the Ojibwe
Native American relationships to the world around us is no longer a curiosity, but a necessity. In this session, Connie Buffalo, a member of the Red Cliff Band of Chippewas, invites you to step into the worldview of her traditional native teachings. You’ll experience the great questions about your origins, where you belong in the circle of creation, what the roles of ancestors are, how to redefine spirituality, and why your name is so important.
You’ll also learn about the role you play in what may be the last of the great prophecies. Your significance takes on a new meaning as you venture into the world of the native mind and spirit. You will leave with a new understanding of what it is to belong to a larger story and to bear the responsibility of being gods.
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
Monterey Room
Panel - Sex, Money, Power, Trauma & Ethics in Spiritual Communities
Join us for a timely conversation exploring a new paradigm supporting psychological health for spiritual teachers, leaders, and communities. Many scandals, traumas, and the common psychological dysfunctions litter the modern spiritual and religious landscape. Instead of focusing on what went wrong, we believe we can learn from past mistakes and collectively focus on spiritual integrity, trauma, shadow work, embodiment, psychological growth, and ethics, in order to cultivate qualities that create healthy, mature spiritual teachers, students, and communities, as well as success and integrity on the path.
Let us together meet the challenging topics of sex, power, money, trauma, hierarchies, groupmind/groupthink, and spiritual bypassing in a supportive and proactive environment. Join us as we work to explore new models based on shared human values while honoring our spiritual nature.
Together we will examine:
• What qualities characterize a psychologically healthy teacher, student, and spiritual community?
• Is there a legitimate role for conventional therapy or other psychologically healing modalities on the spiritual path?
• How do new understandings of trauma research and healing impact our understanding of integrated psychospiritual growth?
• What defines a healthy teacher/student relationship? What is at play when a teacher consciously or unconsciously cultivates dependency in their students?
• What is group mind and group think within spiritual communities and how does it contribute to unhealthy behavior or cult-like tendencies?
• Does the contemporary spiritual community share clear, ethical practices and processes?
At the end of this explorative discussion, are we open to taking on the challenge to support change both within our personal lives and within our spiritual communities? Together we will mobilize to empower ourselves and each other to be the change we want to see within the current climate of contemporary spirituality.
San Martin
Why Gurus Fall from Grace: The Necessity of Shadow Work on the Path
An Integral Exploration of Shadow OR 7 Chakras 7 Minds 7 Sources of Divinity: An Exploration of the Subtle Energetic Body
Why do most Gurus fall from Grace? For the same reasons we do. We live in an evolutionary world. A world of growth out of darkness and into greater expressions of Divinity. When we do not understand the importance of shadow work on the spiritual path, we can cause ourselves and those around us great pain and actually stall our own evolution. Our “shadow” is the evolving edge of both our human and Divine expression. The shadow arises when our unconscious mind tries to slow down, ignore or avoid growth on the path. Because God is both Absolute and ever evolving in form, if we ignore our shadow or our growing edge, we will fall from Grace and be forced to face that which we do not want to see. Therefore, in order to truly be free in an embodied way, we must be aware of and understand how to work with our personal, relational, professional, and collective shadow.
Honesty, humility, sincerity, courage, and willingness are required to do shadow work. These same qualities are also the qualities of embodied awareness. As we courageously explore our shadow, our direct experience of awareness and true nature also deepens and this embodied awareness becomes the foundation for an abiding awakening. To the degree that you are conscious of both the Divine and Human aspects of yourself is the degree that you manifest awakened consciousness in the world.
Together we will:
• explore the areas of shadow regarding trauma, addiction, and other disowned aspects of our humanity and Divinity.
• investigate anxiety and fear, sadness and anger, and their corresponding Divine expressions of open-heartedness, fearlessness, compassion and power.
• open to our shadow and discover any disowned aspects of True Nature within and invite our fuller Divine Expression to come forward.
Anna-Lisa Adelberg is an internationally renowned transformational coach, healer, and teacher. She is a pioneer in the fields of body, heart, subtle energy and awakened consciousness and has developed and teaches a groundbreaking system called Luminous Awareness. This system was developed and synthesized over 20 years from a wide variety of sources, including Tibetan Buddhism, developmental psychology, neurophysiology, Chi Gong, and subtle energy.
She is dedicated to creating a world of wakefulness, attunement, care and liberation for all beings.
Anna-Lisa Adelberg is well known for her capacity to articulate and transmit the mechanics of subtle phenomena and her uncanny ability, to as her students say, "know what's going on inside of me." She is sought after and has coached some of the world's most renowned business leaders, healers, and spiritual teachers.
She is the founder of the Luminous Awareness Institute and has helped thousands of students and clients, as well as leaders in Meditative paths, Somatics, and Subtle Energy.
Guadalupe
Experiential: The Union of Emptiness and Fullness
Explore the relationship between our pure consciousness, empty boundless nature, and our alive dynamic fullness that animates everything. Pure consciousness is more then the vast stillness we find on a meditation cushion, it’s also dynamic and intelligent. What is exciting is we can train to connect to this living wisdom. Through Anna-Lisa Adelberg and Raina DeLear’s unique teaching method, participants have reported reaching profound states of awareness easily and effortlessly. These methods give us a direct taste of emptiness and the experience of being interconnected with everyone and everything. In this two-hour experiential, we will shift our levels of mind into awakened awareness and then recognize this awareness’s inseparability with an all pervasive energy. We will experience “emptiness-fullness” and for some “evenness-bliss”. We will then create a co-awakening Luminous circle to harness the power of the group’s collective awareness. What emerges is an energetic field that is awake to itself. Together we form a circle and focus our collective loving awareness in the center. We then invite people into the center. This can be likened to a magnifying glass with the sun, as we are offering a magnified awake energy to the individual in the center. The person in the center will experience a spontaneous healing where any bound energy consciousness will naturally unfold and liberate. Luminous Awareness Institute is the integration of a healing and nondual awakening path dedicated to the evolution of human consciousness.This special 2 hour session will be led by Luminous Awareness Institute Founders Anna-Lisa Adelberg and Raina Lorraine DeLear.
Hayes Ballroom
Dance Party - Music is Medicine
Dave Markowitz is a 2x-bestselling author, workshop leader, and healing facilitator. He teaches Empaths and Highly Sensitive Persons how to healthily protect themselves, and how to heal absorbed energies that have led to anxiousness, lethargy, heavy-heartedness, physical pains and more. Dave's book, 'Self-Care for the Self-Aware' was in Amazon's Top 20 in its category for 41 consecutive months and is the most positively reviewed self-published book on the subject. His latest, 'Empathipedia', expands on that work and emphasizes how energetic and emotional support, and a sense of connection with others are vital to the healing process. Dave's work has been endorsed by Lynn Andrews, Shirley MacLaine, Lee Harris, and Dannion Brinkley, and he has shared the lecture bill with Deepak Chopra
Lower Level Lobby
Healing for Empaths & Highly Sensitive Persons
Stop by the Poster Session and speak with Dave about healing your pain or illness with a modality unique to Empaths and Sensitives!
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.
Hayes Ballroom
The Art of Making the Invisible Visible
At seventeen, David studied with a Kabbalah master to fashion universes out of emptiness on stage. It is an ancient and rare art form, not unlike life itself.
Guadalupe
Experiential: Love as Body, Being, and Beyond
“Close your eyes. Fall in love. Stay there” —Rumi. In this workshop, through ancient inquiry, letting go, meditation, movement and dance, you’ll explore the body, the mind, and the stillness expressed as eternal love within all. You’ll see through false perceptions of non-love and unveil the direct experience of unconditioned freedom. The human body can be seen as a seemingly localized portal through which to realize the non-local and Infinite. Having unconditional compassion for this body and its human story with all its innocence, trials, and triumphs, can bring a profound relaxation and rest. 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.
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 Martin
Inside Together: Sharing We-Consciousness
This session will use simple practices to lead us into the direct experience of sharing we-consciousness. When we come together like this we activate a new inter-subjective consciousness that is far greater than the sum of its parts. The increased complexity of this consciousness creates new possibilities and capacities beyond those available to the individual participants by themselves.
The realization that we-consciousness is possible, deeply resonant, and already readily available for many of us, has profound implications for our personal development and collective evolution. It points to the deeper purpose of following the call of love into ever greater intimacy and union. It reveals a higher possibility for our relationships, beyond that of individual authenticity.
We-consciousness also provides a powerful and direct field of support for the opening of consciousness within participants and the stabilization of this openness. And it enables us to viscerally realize ourselves as unique contributors to a much greater consciousness that is dynamic, alive, and evolving. In we-consciousness this realization emerges spontaneously without any need to contemplate or visualize it.
For any group or organization, turning toward we-consciousness offers an opportunity for greater coherence and creativity within, and a more harmonious relationship with the larger field. And most importantly a shift into we-consciousness offers humanity perhaps our best opportunity to become sufficiently intelligent and responsive to avoid destroying ourselves as we access ever greater power through technological development. In we-consciousness we’re collectively available to the whole, without the separating, distancing, and denial that allows harm-doing to continue unchecked.
San Martin
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP — The Science of Interconnectedness
The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) team will take you on a journey to explore the science of interconnectedness. First, they will review the IONS Discovery Lab, a synergistic handshake between science and direct experience. IONS Discovery Lab (IDL) that we pronounce “ideal” aims to provide a service for workshop leaders to evaluate their offerings providing them evidence-based results, curate the largest dataset on experiential learning practices in the world, and use this knowledge to develop exception science-informed noetic training programs. They will also describe the Exceptional Healer Pilot Study, with 17 energy healers and over 200 pain patients that explores the efficacy of energy healing as a transformative practice.
Then, they will review IONSx a cutting-edge application-driven research program that demonstrates practical examples of consciousness affecting our physical world. Our first IONSx project is to create an ethical consciousness-dependent switch that responds to a specific mental signal from the operator. The IONS Science team will describe the “moonshot” program, its progress to date, and next steps.
Finally, the team will review the IONS Channeling Research Program where how explore how we access information and energy from beyond time and space. The program aims to answer six questions about channeling:
1. What do we already know from published and unpublished resources about this topic?
2. How common is non-local consciousness reception and what are its characteristics?
3. How does channeling work?
4. Are there defining characteristics of someone who is able to receive information more easily?
5. Can we verify the information?
6. Is the content useful?
The studies and results from each of these research questions will be reviewed including our most recent studies on mediumship accuracy and genetic predisposition to psychic abilities.
The workshop will include lecture, group discussion, and question and answer periods.
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.
Morgan Hill
Reclaim Your Organic Developmental Wisdoms: Core Embodiment ®
What is to come through this birth canal of our collective evolution, we cannot know. It can feel so unstable, so frightening and painful to our vulnerable birthing selves as we leave one world and are not yet fully grounded within a new one. This constant dying and letting go into the emergence of our next expression is what our organic developmental wisdom carries. There is a 13 billion (at least!) years old ancient intelligence that knows how to give birth, to bond and to participate in this inter-being. We are this, that is awake, aware, and trustworthy at the very core of our being. We can allow this intelligence to permeate all of our activities and relationships.
In this class, we will melt below habitual patterns of an over-stimulated nervous system, wired through history, a false sense of separation, and the thinking mind to connect directly with our core intelligence. Using breath, sound vibration, subtle intrinsic movement, embryological anatomy and provocative inquiry we enter into the inner alchemy that allows a dissolve of any outdated structures. 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, when we are seated in the Core. 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.
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.
San Martin
The Way of Love That Sets You Free: Coming to Peace with All that Arises in Everyday Life
You love the deepest teaching of truth and freedom, and maybe you’ve had a taste of awakening to your true nature. Yet you still struggle in your relationships. You’re still dealing with your past or resenting your childhood. You’re still self-critical and feel anxious or depressed.
In our sacred time together, you’re invited to bring these personal struggles into open inquiry and exploration. In a safe and supportive group gathering, we’ll untangle the ways you feel separate and discover over and over the infinite peace of your true nature, available in any moment.
You’ll see how turning toward all of your experience with curiosity and deep acceptance is the way of love that sets you free. You’ll learn to identify subtle inner resistances that keep you feeling separate from yourself—and from life. We’ll slow things down so you can take a breath and be fully present with whatever is appearing. You’ll learn practical skills to help you move through sticky, conditioned patterns.
We respect the humanity of your stories, and we go beyond them to relax into the openness beyond all stories—undisturbed by any problem or emotion. Here we find immediate heart-opening, gratitude for what’s been given, and an undeniable intimacy with all that is.
Barnaby Willett is Director of Innovation and Partnerships at Peace in Schools. He has helped grow Peace in Schools to be a national leader in mindfulness education and is one of the most experienced school-based mindfulness teachers in the country. He presents at educational and contemplative conferences on behalf of Peace in Schools, is a trainer on adult educator courses, and advises on teen and adult curricula. Barnaby believes that scaling depth in mindfulness education is essential for creating trauma-informed, equitable schools. He is passionate about collaborating with health science leaders, including Johns Hopkins University, to expand the vision for well-being in schools. He is a teacher on iBme teen mindfulness retreats. He also facilitates contemplative practice for adults through Presence Collective in Portland, Oregon. Barnaby began contemplative practice in 1994 and holds a BA in English from Pomona College.
Monterey Room
Panel: New Research on Trauma, Love and Transformation
Without a shift in consciousness, humanity will become extinct. To effect a shift at large scale requires a contemplative turn in our educational systems. Practice- models are needed to blaze a pathway for this transformation. The nonprofit Peace in Schools has pioneered the deepest practice-model in contemplative education in schools.
In 2018, we partnered with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health on the first scientific study globally to research mindfulness and trauma by examining adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in schools. You’ll receive a preview of initial findings and learn about a non-dual, connective, love-based model that we can leverage for collective transformation.
David Freeman is a long-time student of the Diamond Approach spiritual path and is a member of a group taught by the founders Hameed Ali (A.H. Almaas) and Karen Johnson. His own personal area of focus recently has been on the truth of the body. To that end, he is currently developing an “embodiment work for meditators,” so that they may bring their practice and realization more deeply and completely into their bodies. It will be an integration of the guided embodiment exercises of Judith Blackstone's Realization Process and the inquiry practices of the Diamond Approach. He can be found on the web at www.davidmfreeman.com
San Juan Bautista
Our Relationship to Truth
Truth is an evolutionary force in humanity and the basis of the civilization we have developed. It’s a force that cuts two ways: toward the outer world of things and systems, and toward the inner world of psyche and spirit. It takes truth to further our science, and it takes truth to realize our essential nature. It’s also true that the beliefs humans have collected over our history are often antiquated, no longer apply, or are distorted wishes for the world we want or believe once existed. These beliefs obscure the truths we have discovered about the world and ourselves, and therefore influence how we live together and what world we build.
To continue developing civilization, our use of truth will need to be three-fold:
1) discovering new truths
2) applying those truths as well as the truths we have previously discovered, and
3) undoing the false beliefs and mistaken views we have, both outer and inner.
Given the above, our relationship to truth is the most important relationship we have, both individually and collectively. It will help us live and prosper to understand what our relationship to truth actually is. Do we recognize its significance and importance in our lives and societies? Do we actively cultivate our relationship to it? Is it an evolving relationship? Are we getting closer to it? Is our relationship to truth a love relationship?
It would seem that truth loves humanity in that it has provided us an instrument to discover and apply it. That instrument is inquiry. It is somewhere involved in all human endeavor: science, technology, arts, education, governance, medicine, journalism, spiritual realization ... It’s how we discover reality and build our world. We can use it to optimize our relationship to truth.
David Gordon, Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychologist in private practice in Norfolk, VA. and author of the book Mindful Dreaming—a new paradigm of dreamwork seen through the lens of Campbell’s Mythic Journey and Nondual principles.
David’s interest in dreamwork began in his early 20’s with recurrent nightly dreams that provided him with powerful nondual experiences—which he later experienced in waking life under the tutelage of Adyashanti.
David is co-founder of The Dreamwork Institute with his wife Dani Vedros, LCSW through which he conducts dream sharing groups, retreats and workshops throughout the U.S. and Canada. Past Membership Chair for the Board of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD), David has also co-hosted the public radio program DreamWorks on WHRV in Norfolk VA.
In private practice for the past 30 years, he provides in-person or Skype training in Jungian-based and non-dual aspects of individual and group dreamwork. https://www.studioforthehealingarts.org/
San Juan Bautista
Mindful Dreaming: The Healing Power of Nondual Dreamwork
Based on my book Mindful Dreaming and compelling dreams of clients and awakened teachers, I demonstrate how our nightly dreams use the language of metaphor to provide Nondual guidance in deconstructing our conditioned belief in a separate self. Dreams can also offer powerful here and now glimpses of unitive consciousness. Indeed, every dream can be seen as a means to clarify and restore our relationship to our true nature.
As a vehicle for the Progressive Path, I show how dreams teach the core tenets of nonduality e.g., Pure Awareness impartially welcomes all experience; There is no personal Doer: Suffering arises when we resist what is; Nondual awareness ends suffering.
In every dream one of four core habits of thought or ego strategies predominate: Distraction; Control; Judgment; and Attachment. I demonstrate with abundant examples how each of these thoughts creates its own unique quality of suffering in the dream that is parallel to the dreamer’s suffering and emotional contraction in waking life. Each dream narrative also offers respectively, four healing nondual values—Silence/Stillness; Humility/Surrender; Compassion; and Grieving/Letting Go—that can dissolve the contractions corresponding to each type of ego strategy. Dreams present these Nondual qualities to the dreamer via a Dream Mentor—persons, animals, or elements in nature that embody those qualities. In nightmares we feel mortally threatened because we are so strongly identified with an ego strategy that the mere presence of the Mentor’s nondual perspective is intuited (correctly) as tantamount to immanent dissolution and (ego) death. Thus, dreams are frightening or peaceful to the degree that we rigidly resist or welcome the presence of the Mentor.
As a vehicle for the Direct Path, I show how dreams sometimes provide the direct experience of Nondual unitive consciousness even without the dreamer’s exposure to such teachings or previous spiritual practice.
I am devoted to the pursuit of impermanent beauty and how that can become nourishment for life to continue.
As an artist, my eye is often drawn toward the fallen and my hands yearn to resurrect and redeem that which is considered valueless. This has evolved into a daily ritual of foraging local objects that the wild world has discarded to the earth; feathers, leaves, flowers, bones and how, just for a moment, the resurgence of these objects, colors, textures, shapes into a collaboration of proximity can bring forth new forms of beauty and memory.
In today’s overly virtual landscape, I want my viewers to be enchanted by each altar's capacity to awaken their imagination, their awe, their nuanced eye and deep love and connection with the magic and mystery of our earth. I long to have my audiences linger on that ephemeral edge where death and rebirth bring forth and ancient remembering and a new impermanent beauty.
On the Lawn
Morning Altars: Honoring All Our Relationships
Our human and greater-than-human relationships in life make us who we are. From our best friends, family, ancestry to the water we drink, the deer, the hawk, the spider, the soil, the trees, the ocean, and the sky. This is an altar to honor all the relationships that bind us and that we are bound to, in and through time. This altar, by Day Schildkretand our entire SAND community will be surrounded by a nest made of local branches from local trees. Each branch will be wrapped with the names of our relations that we care about and love.
Invitation: Please take a branch. On a slip of paper write the name of something or someone you care deeply about, are glad they are in this world and will grieve if and when they leave this world. Wrap this paper around the branch and wrap the colored string around the paper, binding the paper to the branch. Hand the branch to the artist, Day for placement in the nest. Witness the altar and nest being created and eventually, deconstructed.
Hayes Ballroom
Morning Altars: Honoring All Our Relationships
Our human and greater-than-human relationships in life make us who we are. From our best friends, family, ancestry to the water we drink, the deer, the hawk, the spider, the soil, the trees, the ocean, and the sky. This is an altar to honor all the relationships that bind us and that we are bound to, in and through time. This altar, by Day Schildkret and our entire SAND community will be surrounded by a nest made of local branches from local trees. Each branch will be wrapped with the names of our relations that we care about and love.
On the Lawn
Morning Altars: Honoring All Our Relationships
Our human and greater-than-human relationships in life make us who we are. From our best friends, family, ancestry to the water we drink, the deer, the hawk, the spider, the soil, the trees, the ocean, and the sky. This is an altar to honor all the relationships that bind us and that we are bound to, in and through time. This altar, by Day Schildkretand our entire SAND community will be surrounded by a nest made of local branches from local trees. Each branch will be wrapped with the names of our relations that we care about and love.
Invitation: Please take a branch. On a slip of paper write the name of something or someone you care deeply about, are glad they are in this world and will grieve if and when they leave this world. Wrap this paper around the branch and wrap the colored string around the paper, binding the paper to the branch. Hand the branch to the artist, Day for placement in the nest. Witness the altar and nest being created and eventually, deconstructed.
Lawn
Integrating the altar into our lives
Dismantling of the mandala
Akilesh Ayyar is a spiritual teacher and writer who specializes in a modern interpretation of Sri Ramana Maharshi’s self-inquiry as a path to ultimate truth and liberation. He has been engaged in the Hindu mystical school of Vedanta for over 20 years. He has written two books on self-realization, the more recent of which is How to Find What Isn’t Lost: A Short, Pro-Intellectual, Pro-Desire Guide to Enlightenment. He has a BS and MS in Information Systems from Carnegie-Mellon University, an MA in Forensic Clinical Psycholgy from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and a JD from Harvard Law School. He has externed at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and has served as a Fellow at the Writers’ Institute at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. He has taught and conducted satsangs at Incite Seminars, HealHaus, Maharose, the New York Self-Inquiry group, and elsewhere. He maintains a website at Sifting to the Truth.
Lower Level Lobby
No, Don't Integrate—Transcend!
It’s become fashionable to talk about the need to bring enlightenment from its transcendent position back into the world. We’re told we have to merge it from the coldness of pure consciousness into the warmth of the heart, into relationships, into society. We have to be evolved and ecological.
This misses the point of true self-realization.
The transcendent core of self-realization frees the mind from the burdens of worrying, of thinking, and of doing. The end of self-realization is the disappearance of the world as a separate entity.
It is not that the transcendental comes back down to the mix with the world, but that the world is revealed to have been nothing other than the transcendental the whole time.
The idea that one has to “come back” to deal with the real world is in fact an escape from the full realization of our divine nature.
With illustrations and quotes from Ramana Maharshi, the Yoga Vasistha, and elsewhere, I will tackle the tricky notion of non-doership and argue that the deepest core of self-realization is at risk of being obscured in the sexy quest to ‘integrate’ world and spirit.
Yogacharya Ellen Grace O’Brian is a meditation teacher, award-winning poet, writer, and spiritual director of Center for Spiritual Enlightenment—a Kriya Yoga Meditation Center in San Jose, California. She has taught nationally and internationally for over three decades. Ordained to teach in 1982 by Roy Eugene Davis, a direct disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda, her message is “engaged enlightenment”—an invitation to live an awakened, inspired, serviceful, and fulfilled life. She is the founder of Carry the Vision, a nonviolence education project bringing meditation to schools, the prison population, and other segments of society. She leads Meru Institute, providing healthy lifestyle education and leadership training in yoga studies, Ayurveda, and community service. As host of The Yoga Hour, Yogacharya offers a weekly podcast to listeners in over 130 countries. Her latest book, The Jewel of Abundance: Finding Prosperity Through the Ancient Wisdom of Yoga, was recently released by New World Library.
www.EllenGraceOBrian.com
www.CSEcenter.org
www.CarryTheVision.org
San Juan Bautista
Healing the Split: Dharmic Prosperity for our Time
Our spiritual life and our goals for loving relationships, success, and prosperity are inherently connected and can only be fully realized in harmony with one another. We are here to wake up, thrive, and skillfully contribute to the well-being of all. Nothing is more practical than spiritual awakening. Drawing upon the wisdom of Vedic philosophy and the practices of yoga, Yogacharya O’Brian offers insight, inspiration, and time-tested methods to bridge the perceived gap between spiritual and material existence. An exploration of the purusharthas, the four universal aims from the Vedas for a fulfilled life—to live with higher purpose, prosper, enjoy life, and realize liberation—offers a template for radical abundance, a profound experience of dynamic balance in an ever-changing world.
The life goal of wealth is to become wealth itself—a radiant jewel of life’s prospering impetus in service of its evolutionary inclination for individual and global awakening. Between the present need and where we stand is a space of possibility for life’s prospering power to come forth. We are that space of possibility. The necessary evolutionary jump for humanity we are waiting for takes place over the chasm in our consciousness. To be generative requires us to see the need, capture the vision of what is possible, stand for it, and act on its behalf.
Since 1988 psychologist Eric Lyleson, has been in private practice on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. He has also taught counselling and psychotherapy at the Australian College of Applied Psychology and Relationships Australia, as well as presented at Australian and international conferences. He is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area and graduated from Sonoma State University specializing in Gestalt and Family Therapies.
For forty years Eric has been interested in the integration of psychotherapy, hypnosis, coaching and spirituality (especially Buddhism). He is the author of Essential Wholeness, Integral Psychotherapy, Spiritual Awakening and the Enneagram (2015). Rather than placing the vast array of Eastern and Western psychotherapeutic and spiritual traditions in competition with one another, Essential Wholeness helps us see what methods are best for which people at what time.
San Jose
Experiential: Essential Wholeness, Integral Psychotherapy, Spiritual Awakening and the Enneagram
In this workshop experience how Essential Wholeness Psychology embeds our understanding of the Enneagram personality types within a systemic integral model of what it is to be a healthy evolving human and spiritual being.
We will draw on the relative truths of neuroscience and evolutionary biology to understand what allows people—all living systems—to evolve and thrive. While showing how these natural processes are inseparable from the absolute truth of Being. This non-dualistic framework allows us to explore how the vast array of human capacities that inform the plethora of psychotherapeutic and spiritual methods can be organized into a practical integrated model of knowing consciously and intuitively what to do, with whom and when.
With a little twist the Enneagram can provide us with a mathematically generated 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 often what brings people to psychotherapy and spirituality occurs when they fear, judge or ignore these realities, while overly identifying with one-ninth of their essential wholeness—causing repetitive vicious cycles of thinking, feeling and behaving. These cycles are the self-limiting ego patterns the Enneagram is classically excellent at describing. However when viewed within this comprehensive model of health the pathways to psychological healing and spiritual awakening become much clearer.
The Enneagram fractal becomes a spiral that 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 A.H. Almaas refers to as—essential qualities. Revealing how we progress through stages of development like Psychosocial and Spiral Dynamics.
Frank Echenhofer, PhD, conducted neuroscience research on advanced meditators at the Dalai Lama's monastery in India and on Ayahuasca shamans in Brazil and Peru. Current research in Peru on the San Pedro cactus centers on investigating and developing an approach to healing that combines the best of psychology, spirituality and sacred medicine work. A professor of Clinical Psychology in the PsyD program at the California Institute for Integral Studies, he also sees individuals privately for psycho-spiritual integration work. His spiritual path has included deep study and practice of both Tibetan Buddhism and Sufism, as well as extensive medicine work with Ayahuasca. He is dedicated to identifying and exploring the spiritual truths that lie beyond all systems and theories. His website is frankechenhofer.com.
Madrone
Psychedelics for Spiritual Development: Advanced Navigation Skills
Psychedelics make the interconnectedness of life palpable, and can open the gates to a direct experience of nonduality. But to benefit from their use, good preparation and a navigational toolkit to work with the experience is essential. Just as in extended spiritual retreat, during medicine journeys the ego is deconstructed, which can be frightening. With the right toolkit in place, the process is more likely to unfold without resistance—and without being derailed by fear. This talk will cover practical methods to slow down a process that moves so fast that it leaves you fearful and fragmented, to sense into a calming rhythm in the body in the midst of intensity, to take charge of your attention and shift it when needed, and to develop a stance of curiosity toward strong experience. Some of the tools that help in this are universal and available to everyone, and you need only be made aware that you possess them. Others might require preparatory practices, or to be made into a form that works for your unique psyche. The talk will include time to share stories of successfully navigated strong experience as well as challenging situations. Participants can use these stories to assess and add to their current toolkit, seeing where it might be weak, and specific practices will be introduced to fill in what might be lacking. Frank will also introduce creative practices for both preparation and integration that work well for both medicine journeys and spiritual retreats.
Alice Langholt is a parent, author and teacher with Master level training in several Reiki modalities, and a Certified EFT Practitioner. She teaches classes in Reiki and intuitive development locally and by distance. She is the Executive Director of Reiki Awakening Academy Online School of Intuitive Development.
Alice has a Ph.D in Metaphysical Parapsychology, and Master’s degrees in Jewish Studies and Metaphysical Science.
Alice is the author of the award-winning Reiki resource, Practical Reiki: for balance, well-being, and vibrant health. A guide to a simple, revolutionary energy healing method, which won second place for Best Reiki Book in the 2012 About.com Reader’s Choice Awards, and was a finalist in the 2017 Books of Excellence Awards, as well as 11 other books on holistic subjects. Living in the Washington, DC Metro area with her husband and four children, Alice teaches Animal Reiki at Montgomery College, has a Reiki practice, and is also a wedding officiant.
Find out more at AliceLangholt.com
Lower Level Lobby
See How Love Changes Those Around You
In this poster presentation, attendees will see the results of a doctoral dissertation research project which showed, via Heartmath Inner Balance Connectors, how one person, focused on love and gratitude, caused physiological changes in other people in proximity, and also by distance when focusing with intention on that person.
Attendees will have the chance to experience a demonstration using the Inner Balance connector, and see their own state of coherence changed by the Law of Resonance in real time.
Madrone
An Explanation of Consciousness
A novel model of consciousness is proposed that uses three core ideas: (A) a two-agent model of the human brain, (B) Attention Schema Theory (by Princeton Neuroscientist, Michael Graziano), and (C) a theorem from control theory which claims that every good agent must have a model of the world in which the agent is active. The two agents are the Modeler (that creates the model of the world), and the Controller (that controls the body and produces thoughts and feelings). This model: (1) Demonstrates that we are self-models living in our model of the world. (2) Suggests there would be two types of attention mechanisms—a Focal Attention Mechanism and a Diffuse Attention Mechanism. (3) Clarifies the distinction between Access Consciousness and Phenomenal Consciousness (by NYU Philosopher, Ned Block). (4) Proposes a mechanism that produces World Model awareness (which includes, for example, peripheral visual awareness). (4) Explains three kinds of consciousness: Normal human consciousness, Flow state consciousness, and Nondual states of consciousness. (5) Provides an answer to philosophical questions such as: (A) What conditions cause conscious awareness to arise? (B) Why does conscious awareness seem to be fundamentally non-physical and to not have a location in space?
Gabriel Axel Montes, Ph.D. Candidate, is a neuroscientist, educator, and musician. His 12+ years of research and self-cultivation practice has elucidated both endogenous and technological mechanisms for intervening in the brain’s process of modelling reality and perception, based on evolutionary and cognitive neuroscience. His recent research focuses on informing the development of beneficial artificial general intelligence (AGI) with insights from non-ordinary consciousness (NOC). Gabriel is known for fusing insights from rigorous NOC self-practice into the creation of AGI, virtual/augmented reality, and blockchain technologies. Gabriel is an international educator on the intersection of neuroscience and self-cultivation. As Founder of Neural Axis®, he leads and consults on neuroscience-based technology design and strategy and behavioural change. He is an authority on leading organisations, communities, and individuals in making the nervous system “come alive” in practical experience and awaken for higher development and potentials of consciousness. For more about Gabriel, please visit gabrielaxel.com
Morgan Hill
The Fusion of AI, Neuroscience, and Non-Ordinary Consciousness
Fusing neuroscience, AI, non-ordinary consciousness, and ecology, ‘neuro-yogi’ Gabriel Axel looks at the nature of mind through the lens of an endeavour to build benevolent AI capable of supporting non-ordinary consciousness, such as non-dual awareness and various psychical capabilities. AI engineers are tirelessly attempting to craft AI based on notions of what is intelligence, and yet there is little deeper practical grasp of the nature of mind itself. Gabriel presents his academic research on how objective thought and technological evolution are the mechanisms by which the human mind works to reproduce itself, and he illustrates how underlying worldviews and values steer this process. Crucially, the case is made for an existential and ethical imperative to constructively contribute to the development of AI as the future of mind and wellbeing of all life. Gabriel offers a template for how mind-body cultivators can meaningfully and practically contribute to the creation of a beneficent AI future. In this presentation, Gabriel refers to ideas from several of his recent publications, which can be accessed on gabrielaxel.com/academic
Garret Yount, PhD, is a Scientist at IONS where his research focuses on mapping the mind-gene interface. He was awarded two Postdoctoral Scholarships, one in the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the second in UCSF’s Brain Tumor Research Center. He was awarded a Fellowship from the Robert Steel Foundation for Pediatric Cancer Research in New York. Dr. Yount has a long-standing interest in developing methods and technologies for bridging molecular neurobiology with aspects of consciousness. In 1997, Dr. Yount was among the first scientists to be awarded a Research Project Grant (R01) from the National Institutes of Health. He has evaluated a variety of mental influence models, ranging from human brain cells in petri dishes receiving distant healing intention to hospitalized children experiencing Expressive Arts Therapy. He has spoken nationally and co-authored peer-reviewed papers on the topic of establishing rigorous guidelines for research into biofields and micro-psychokinesis.
San Martin
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP — The Science of Interconnectedness
The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) team will take you on a journey to explore the science of interconnectedness. First, they will review the IONS Discovery Lab, a synergistic handshake between science and direct experience. IONS Discovery Lab (IDL) that we pronounce “ideal” aims to provide a service for workshop leaders to evaluate their offerings providing them evidence-based results, curate the largest dataset on experiential learning practices in the world, and use this knowledge to develop exception science-informed noetic training programs. They will also describe the Exceptional Healer Pilot Study, with 17 energy healers and over 200 pain patients that explores the efficacy of energy healing as a transformative practice.
Then, they will review IONSx a cutting-edge application-driven research program that demonstrates practical examples of consciousness affecting our physical world. Our first IONSx project is to create an ethical consciousness-dependent switch that responds to a specific mental signal from the operator. The IONS Science team will describe the “moonshot” program, its progress to date, and next steps.
Finally, the team will review the IONS Channeling Research Program where how explore how we access information and energy from beyond time and space. The program aims to answer six questions about channeling:
1. What do we already know from published and unpublished resources about this topic?
2. How common is non-local consciousness reception and what are its characteristics?
3. How does channeling work?
4. Are there defining characteristics of someone who is able to receive information more easily?
5. Can we verify the information?
6. Is the content useful?
The studies and results from each of these research questions will be reviewed including our most recent studies on mediumship accuracy and genetic predisposition to psychic abilities.
The workshop will include lecture, group discussion, and question and answer periods.
Gia is a PhD Candidate in Public Health at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, with a focus on child and adolescent development, health equity, trauma, and translational research. Growing up in a low-income, trauma- and adversity-affected family and community fueled her passion to ameliorate suffering and promote thriving. She has directed programs for at-risk youth, advanced human rights in the US and abroad, served as a Public Health Analyst at the National Institutes of Health, conducted health equity research, and taught mindfulness and yoga. Gia recently received the US Excellence in Public Health Award from Johns Hopkins University for her research assessing the impacts of the Peace in Schools mindfulness program on adolescent health, with an emphasis on trauma-affected and marginalized youth. She holds Master’s in Public Administration and MA in International Relations degrees from Syracuse University, and a BA in Political Science with a focus on human rights from Columbia University.
Monterey Room
Panel: New Research on Trauma, Love and Transformation
Without a shift in consciousness, humanity will become extinct. To effect a shift at large scale requires a contemplative turn in our educational systems. Practice- models are needed to blaze a pathway for this transformation. The nonprofit Peace in Schools has pioneered the deepest practice-model in contemplative education in schools.
In 2018, we partnered with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health on the first scientific study globally to research mindfulness and trauma by examining adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in schools. You’ll receive a preview of initial findings and learn about a non-dual, connective, love-based model that we can leverage for collective transformation.
With over thirty years of experience facilitating psycho-educational, transformational learning groups, Cynthia Merchant MFT, SEP is a Marriage Family Therapist and Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner with a rich eclectic approach to healing, transformation, and change. She has facilitated groups throughout the US, and abroad in Europe, South America, Asia and Canada. She has trained directly with Dr. Peter Levine since 1988 & has been a student & collaborator with Dr. Claudio Naranjo since 1989 to the present. In her private practice she works with individuals, couples, children, and families to facilitate the resolution of accumulated, traumatic, and/or developmental stress and nervous system dis-regulation, and to encourage attitudes of self-acceptance and compassion in her clients to support their cultivation of more balanced, satisfying lives.
San Jose
Experiential: Trauma and the Rupture of Interconnection with Somatic Experiencing®
In this 2-hr experiential and didactic public workshop participants will have the opportunity to explore how trauma trapped in the nervous system can affect one’s ability to feel truly connected to the self, the other, and the whole. Through guided exercises in a supportive small group setting, we will practice somatic tools for releasing trauma trapped in the body. Our inner exploration of bodily sensations, imagery, movement, emotions, and meaning will help build coherence and a deeper state of interconnectedness that will support genuine emotional growth and spiritual-transformation.
Somatic Experiencing®, developed by Peter A Levine, PhD, is a body-oriented approach to the healing of trauma and other stress related disorders that cause internal fragmentation due to Autonomic Nervous System dysregulation. The trauma response is a set of defensive bodily reactions that people initially mobilize in order to protect themselves, both from threat, and then later, against feeling emotional and physical pain. However, as time goes on, this holding keeps our reactions frozen and stuck in the past, unable to be fully present in the here and now, and unable to go forward in life with the richness and connection we deserve.
The SE™ approach gently facilitates the release of thwarted survival energy bound in the body, thus addressing the root cause of trauma symptoms and chronic stress. Through a combination of theoretical explanation, demonstrations, and body-oriented exercises, participants will begin to develop a deep and intrinsic body awareness that helps to draw them into the vibrant experience of life-energy, flow, contact with the eternal now, and wholeness.
Trauma and the Rupture of Interconnection is an Ergos Institute of Somatic Education Community Health SE™ Experiential Program brought to you by the office of Peter A Levine, PhD. For more information on Somatic Experiencing® go to: traumahealing.org
.
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.
San Juan Bautista
The Yoga of Non-Separation: Freedom and the Relational Whole
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
whereby consciousness is wholistically aligned in our day to day lives, is either
overlooked or left unexplored. For example, Yoga as classically formulated in Patañjali’s
Yoga-Sūtra, has far too often been misconstrued as leading to a freedom from the world,
emphasizing renunciation, asceticism, disengagement, and transcendence of the body,
mind and world. Interpretations of Yoga that adhere to an absolute separation of
consciousness or spirit from manifestation or formed existence, implying a final
unworkable dualism between liberated spiritual identity and life-in-the-world, amount to
an impoverishment of the possibilities for an embodied, relational life. 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 an enriched, relational humanity allowing
for evolution, development and innovation through which life progresses and the world is
made a better place.
Through a deeper, mature and adept philosophical and experiential knowing, and
drawing from and updating the classical tradition, we will explore how Yoga can
culminate in a balanced integration of life that incorporates a clarity of awareness with
the integrity of being and action. Yoga manifests as love, the very abiding as and sharing
of our being or power of consciousness, in which the non-separation of self and world,
experiencer and experienced, knower and known, is uncovered and lived as our authentic
nature.
San Martin
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP — Introduction to the Shamanic Journey
The Shamanic Journey is a method of accessing inner wisdom through a meditative state. It is derived from a practice done by the healers, or shamans, of indigenous shamanic cultures. It is performed to gain insight and effect healing, and has been a common practice of many indigenous cultures for thousands of years.
Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D., is an early pioneer of adapting the shamanic journey to a therapeutic practice. Her unique style of teaching the journey includes a process of inquiry that is transformative and helps students step fully into their own personal power. Counseling professionals will find this methodology useful in working with their clients.
This workshop will:
• Thoroughly ground you in a life-changing practice for spiritual inquiry that fits easily into even the busiest schedule.
• Provide tools and tips for framing questions and interpreting your journey experiences.
• Help you to know how to make the distinction between interpreting the often symbolic language of intuitive wisdom and engaging in magical thinking.
• Help you to explore and relate to unfamiliar fields of consciousness safely.
You will find this workshop especially beneficial if you:
• Seek to develop trust in yourself and your connection to your inner wisdom.
• Are eager to enhance your innate creativity or generate the momentum to get unstuck in some area of your life.
• Are ready to step into, and live the rest of your life as, your authentic best self.
• Have burning questions about who you really are and your place in the world. 3 C.E.s available.
Morgan Hill
The Shamanic Journey OR The Doorway Between the Worlds: Medium and Oracle Traditions in Shamanic and Buddhist Traditions
Within Mahayana Buddhist traditions, there are oracle systems that have guided the course of the tradition and have even helped with the establishment of new schools of thought. We will explore the different forms of wisdom that have emerged out of relationships mediated by the oracle tradition between Tibetan Buddhist deities and well-known scholars. We will explore the worlds that opened through the relationship between Tsongkhapa and Manjushri and between Asanga and Maitreya , for example. Shamanism is a form of spiritual practice based in earth-wisdom traditions whose practices rely heavily on the practitioner's capacity to form oracle relationships with the unseen powers of nature. One of the primary tasks for the shamanic initiate is to master the art of mediumship. Whenever shamans are working, they are expected to be able to offer a vehicle for helping spirits to enter into the world of ordinary reality to assist those in need. Shamans may be called upon to speak with those who have passed on or provide a channel for others to do so. They may also be asked to become a conduit for the subtle energies held in light and sound to be used effectively in all types of healing environments. We will look at the ways in which shamans use oracle work and the channeling of spirits in their work in serving others.
Ivan Castillo is the founder of Dragon Kundalini, a yogi and student of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Ivan is also a Marine Corps veteran and martial arts instructor. He managed several yoga studios in San Diego and later opened his own Kundalini Yoga studio on the beautiful island of Kauai in Hawaii, before returning to Los Angeles to finish graduate school in Acupuncture. Currently, Ivan and his partner Veronika present workshops and group sound healings both internationally and throughout southern California. In 2018, Ivan published his first book of poetry: Son of a Dragon. You can read more about Dragon Kundalini and follow for upcoming events on Instagram @DragonKundalini.
Lower Level Lobby
Gong Magic: Rituals for Divine Relationship
The Gong is said to be the primal sound. Reminiscent of the Big Bang, this cosmic sound travels through time and space and resonates to our deepest levels of being. When I first started learning to play the Gong from my teacher, Master Gong Healer Guru Mantra Singh Khalsa, a man with 40 years of yoga practice behind him and a Vietnam War Veteran, the magnetic pull of the sound gave me an experience of being fully immersed in the here and now, and at peace. Our relationship to the cosmic source can be reactivated through hearing these cosmic sounds, and the Gong is a sort of “forced meditation” for those who have trouble sitting still or quieting their minds. Like a blanket pulled over our consciousness, we cannot help but surrender to the deep folds of its mysterious vibrations.
Playing the Gong and sharing its story, as well as the power of sound and meditation in my own healing journey following 5 years of Marine Corps service and an additional 4 years abroad in Afghanistan, has been an instrumental part of my career as a teacher. I love to carry forward the teachings and tradition of the primal sounds, and in my presentation I would like to engage the audience in a “Living Presentation” of primal sounds and original frequencies.
Instrumental to creating the sacred space of sound is thoughtfulness, presentation, and the culture of ritual. Ritual involves a distinct set and setting, intention, and a deliberate focus of the sound. It can involve one of a vast number of elements; the key theme is that it creates a sacred space within the individual, where healing and resonance - the Cosmic Relationship - take place.
Participants will hear a little of my own story, and experience the power and mystery behind the Gong.
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
San Martin
Financial Bypassing: Healing our Relationship between Money and Spirituality
Spirituality has a long history of placing values and judgments on how we relate to money. It's a loaded subject, and many people in the spiritual community have an unhealthy relationship with money. Stories and beliefs influence our actions and keep us stuck in repeating behaviors from an old paradigm.
What stories are you telling yourself that keep you from meeting money face to face? Does resistance arise just thinking about the topic of money? The conditioned ideas we tell ourselves keep us from ultimate freedom in our financial as well as spiritual lives. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Some of the more “accepted” stories surrounding money and spirituality are often considered taboo to question. It’s an old belief that spiritual people cannot also be wealthy. The vow of poverty was a religious rule that separated one from dealing with the issue of money directly. This is avoidance, and to fully step into our own autonomy and power we have to bring these repressive patterns to light.
Spiritual growth happens when awareness penetrates every aspect of our human lives. It’s time to evolve into a new relationship where money is seen as another form of energy we interact with in life. With a detached perspective, people in the spiritual community will be able to allow money to come into their lives without an added agenda. Learning how to earn and use money wisely is imperative to being empowered individuals in society. When people with spiritual values are prosperous it presents an opportunity to make changes on a greater scale and influence the redistribution of wealth globally.
Transformation can happen in the world, beginning with freeing ourselves from outdated concepts that have kept us stagnant as individuals and as a collective.
Monterey Room
Panel - Sex, Money, Power, Trauma & Ethics in Spiritual Communities
Join us for a timely conversation exploring a new paradigm supporting psychological health for spiritual teachers, leaders, and communities. Many scandals, traumas, and the common psychological dysfunctions litter the modern spiritual and religious landscape. Instead of focusing on what went wrong, we believe we can learn from past mistakes and collectively focus on spiritual integrity, trauma, shadow work, embodiment, psychological growth, and ethics, in order to cultivate qualities that create healthy, mature spiritual teachers, students, and communities, as well as success and integrity on the path.
Let us together meet the challenging topics of sex, power, money, trauma, hierarchies, groupmind/groupthink, and spiritual bypassing in a supportive and proactive environment. Join us as we work to explore new models based on shared human values while honoring our spiritual nature.
Together we will examine:
• What qualities characterize a psychologically healthy teacher, student, and spiritual community?
• Is there a legitimate role for conventional therapy or other psychologically healing modalities on the spiritual path?
• How do new understandings of trauma research and healing impact our understanding of integrated psychospiritual growth?
• What defines a healthy teacher/student relationship? What is at play when a teacher consciously or unconsciously cultivates dependency in their students?
• What is group mind and group think within spiritual communities and how does it contribute to unhealthy behavior or cult-like tendencies?
• Does the contemporary spiritual community share clear, ethical practices and processes?
At the end of this explorative discussion, are we open to taking on the challenge to support change both within our personal lives and within our spiritual communities? Together we will mobilize to empower ourselves and each other to be the change we want to see within the current climate of contemporary spirituality.
James R. Doty, M.D. is a professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford University School of Medicine. He is also the founder and director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University of which His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the founding benefactor. He works with scientists from a number of disciplines examining the neural bases for compassion and altruism. He is an inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist. He holds multiple patents and is the former CEO of Accuray (ARAY:NASDAQ). He remains a consultant and operating partner to a number of venture capital firms. As a philanthropist, Dr. Doty has given support to a number of charitable organizations supporting peace initiatives and providing healthcare throughout the world. Additionally, he has supported research, provided scholarships and endowed chairs at multiple universities. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discovery the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart now translated into 38 languages. Dr. Doty is also the senior editor of the Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science.
Hayes Ballroom
Transcendence Through Compassion
A painful childhood associated with poverty, an alcoholic father and mother suffering from mental illness resulted in a childhood filled with fear, uncertainty, despair and hopelessness. At the age of 12 years everything changed after meeting one person who intuitively knew that the path to transcendence was through compassion and through compassion one is led to oneness. A personal narrative combined with a discussion of our evolution intertwined with the effects of practicing compassion.
Edenvale
Conversation with James Doty
James Michael Seehof is passionate about supporting the creation of a world culture that is inclusive, compassionate and participatory.
He attained a Graduate Degree in Psychology and was a licensed psychotherapist with a private practice for 15 years. He is currently licensed as a LCPC and LMFT. Beyond the clinical, he explored transpersonal, spiritual and growth issues. He worked with individuals, families and led groups on a number of topics. He attended over 50 workshops at locations including Esalen and Harbin and many conferences including the Mythopoetic Mens Movement, SAND and Bioneers. He led workshops through his practice and shared in diverse settings such as Occupy and substance abuse clinics. Recently he has been exploring plant medicine through the use of Ayahuasca. Last year he presented at Imagine Festival and SAND (Science and NonDuality Conference). This year he will be presenting again at Imagine and SAND.
Madrone
Becoming Closer
We live in a society that fosters competition, distrust and separation. We often have a small circle of close friends and sometimes none at all. Festival goers skew towards the social side of that norm but conversation is generally kept “safe” and is rarely intimate. Few of us make a regular effort towards meaningful connection with those we know less well. Being open to everyday deep interaction can gradually shift the norms and expectations of our society. Over time we have the potential of creating a more trusting, compassionate and caring world as we become willing to have meaningful contact with a greater number of individuals and learn to widen our range of comfort and familiarity.
In this 20 minute gathering we will explore becoming closer to those we don’t know. After a brief introduction we will create connection through a series of interactions. Finally, we will explore what we experienced. How we were challenged. What we learned about ourselves and others. How we might bring these insights home and effect change in our community. What is our vision of a world that is open, courageous and caring?
jamesmichaelseehof.com
James had a successful business career in art publishing. For the past 25 years, he turned to the study, practice, and application of meditation, yoga philosophy, and other intuitive practices which are beneficial, and practical in business and daily life.
James has worked with meditative and other well-being and performance-based approaches in a variety of settings ranging from substance abuse treatment centers, the university lecture hall to the board room. He draws upon a substantial body of scientific research which shows meditation has many benefits.
He is an Adjunct Professor at the Maharishi University of Management, Fairfield, Iowa which applies a consciousness-based approach in its academic programs. He recently designed “Enhanced Performance Technologies for the Computer Professional,” which is part of the Master in Computer Science curriculum.
James regularly conducts meditation groups and business and other retreats. He also presents at professional conferences.
Hayes Ballroom
The Quantum Revelation: A Modern-Day Spiritual Treasure
Quantum physics—widely considered the greatest scientific discovery of all time—has already changed the course of history with all of the new technologies it has inspired, but these innovations are considered the “low-hanging fruit,” a miniscule fraction of the real benefit of the quantum gnosis, which is to be found within the human psyche. The revelations emerging from quantum physics are pointing out that we, through our consciousness, are integral participants in nature’s ongoing process of creation who are participating—whether we consciously know it or not—in creating ourexperienceof ourselves and the world at each and every moment. Quantum physics is revealing that we, by our very nature, are creative—and creator—beings who unknowingly possess great power to cast reality in ways we can only imagine.
As if under a spell of our own making, the majority of our species, however, have become entranced by our intrinsic gift for dreaming up our world, unknowingly hypnotizing ourselves via our God-given power to creatively call forth reality in such a way that our creative power unconsciously boomerangs against us, undermining our potential for individual and collective evolution. The revelations emerging from quantum physics are unlocking the vast, world-transforming creative power of the human psyche. The new physics is a spiritual treasure that humanity has dreamed up—both in our world and inside of our minds—as the medicine for the collective psychosis afflicting the human species.
The revelation that is quantum physics expands the realm of the possible to previously unimaginable degrees. In seeing through and dispelling the illusory boundary between mind and matter, between inner and outer, quantum physics has discovered the dreamlike nature of reality. In this presentation we will explore how quantum physics is the physics of the universal dream: it is simultaneously pointing to the dreamlike nature of reality while being an expression—and revelation—of the very dreamlike nature at which it is pointing.
Edenvale
Conversation with Paul Levy
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.
Guadalupe
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP — Sovereignty in Relating: Being Here But Not of Here
Ever feel tugged this way and that by conditioning? Like a bull with a ring in its nose, being at the mercy of our conditioned triggers creates suffering and hampers our relating—how do we free ourselves? The biblical phrase “be in the world but not of the world” implies a being who is living from a deeper reality than the commonly accepted conditioned one—showing up here but living from an embodied truth that stands sovereign and independent of history and conditioned habit.
Free the bull! Join Jeannie and friends for an experiential exploration of embodied sovereignty and its vital role in relational sanity. Embodied sovereignty is known through a grounded relationship between heaven and earth, between awareness and felt experience. Conditioning leaves our attention fused to thought, resulting in the neglect of the holy instrument of the body. Denied of ground, breath and harmonizing awareness, we let unconscious survival fear drive our actions and interactions.
Including the body in our awareness allows us to build a capacity not only to rest below the mind, but to monitor and meet rising patterns in their infancy before they embroil us in triggered exchanges. It also allows light to penetrate flesh, soothing, informing and “enlightening” the creature of the body.
This work will support participants to experience a model of the awareness-penetrated-body as friend, temple, sanctuary and holy receiver. Through teaching, guided meditation and guided partner exercises, participants will be supported to anchor the teachings in their own experience—to rest in heaven while walking on earth.
San Martin
Burying the Hatchet: Discovering Peace Between Women and Men
The so-called “gender war” goes back to ancient Greece and beyond. Mercy! Through an understanding of how gender conditioning shapes our behavior, how we share the wound of separation, and how that manifests in relating, we will explore the ground of Being as a vital resource in stepping out of our past orientations to each other. We’ll then experience the moment, ourselves and each other from simplicity and freshness. Oh, hi! Participants should bring a sense of humor and be prepared for experiential exercises that allow insights to be embodied.
Monterey Room
Panel - No More Armor: Men, Heart & Strength
The legacy of emotional armoring that comes with men’s conditioning in Western culture creates suffering for the men inside it and for those with whom they relate. Along with the clarity of spiritual awakening comes incredible tender openness. Join this panel of male-friendly hearts, moderated by Kent Welsh of Open Circle Center, to explore from a variety of perspectives what it takes for men to show up without armor in relating, fully available as Being in the moment, in a strong, vulnerable and heartful way.
Jessica Zeller brings her innate love of nature, meditation, music and dance, to help others experience an embodied awareness of Being Human on this Earth. A wife, mother and grandmother, she is passionate about the need for all of us to learn to expand our identity to being a member of a species living with other species in an endangered habitat. She has been a life-long student of mystical wisdom.
She is trained as a teacher of Nondual Meditation by Peter Fenner.
Jessica taught Ecopsychology at Naropa University, and has guided wilderness rites of passage (vision quests) for the Animas Valley Institute, Lama Foundation and Omega Institute.
She and her husband Steve co-founded Natural Pathways Foundation (naturalpathways.org) which is currently working to establish the Center for the Study of Interdependence at Ft. Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. They live on the Animas River in the indigenous heart of our country.
Madrone
Where Nonduality and Interdependence Meet: Coming Home to My Soul
I propose that there is no “relationship” between Nature and myself—we are Not Two. Each one of us is unique and yet totally interdependent with all that IS. What is this “Earth”? How does it become ever more aware through me/as me? How does the habit of human “identification” allow us to limit our care and involvement with other species with whom we share this fragile biosphere? How do we allow our grief for the extinction of members of our greater family to empower us to change our embedded behaviors?
As we find our HOME in this moment, orienting as a human on this planet in this solar system and galaxy, in touch with our ancient elemental roots, we can come to rest in our True Nature as embodied awareness, present in this home of our soul, Earth. Our bodies are Earth’s local representatives. Attending to sensations of subtle energy, we dissolve the membrane of perceived boundaries to allow body, nature, earth, elements and self to melt into the loving presence of awareness in this moment. Using this body as our laboratory, we can track the flow of sensory input co-arising in each moment. We practice looking into the mirror of Nature and then practice the inquiry of “who or what is looking”? What says “I” when I say I? With what is this “I” identified?
Opening to the experiential truth of the interdependence of all, we are more able to be present and available, to play our part in the healing of our precious and only Earth as we each begin to find our soul’s calling, our unique place in this hologramatic jeweled web of life.
Joel Salinas, MD, is an Assistant Professor and a Faculty Neurologist at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Neurology and a Clinical Director of the McCance Center for Brain Health.
Dr. Salinas was born with an extreme form of synesthesia, an extraordinary neurological trait that provides unique insights into his patients and enables him to experience life in a remarkable way. After incidentally discovering how atypical his sensory perception is compared to other people, he pursued a deep curiosity to learn more about the brain and how we all experience the world.
Dr. Salinas has been studied in the labs of renowned neuroscientists, interviewed and cared for thousands of patients, and conducted research to understand how we connect with one another and what that means for our well-being. He has been a featured speaker at national and international events and contributed to broadcast shows and news outlets, including BBC, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, and NPR. He chronicles his experiences as a doctor living with synesthesia in the best-selling book Mirror Touch: A Memoir of Synesthesia and the Secret Life of the Brain, exploring research and issues around empathy, sensory perception, and human behavior.
Hayes Ballroom
What Science and My Unusual Brain are Teaching us about the Convergence of Reality, Love, and the Senses
Discover how to apply fascinating new insights from brain science to transform how you experience the world as well as your “self” and how you can better connect with anyone, including someone who is different from you in almost every way. Harvard neurologist, scientist, and author Joel Salinas, MD, discusses what you and the people you care about can learn from understanding the profound science behind reality and atypical brains, including his own. Dr. Salinas has an extreme form of synesthesia where all his senses collide—tasting sounds, literally feeling what someone else is physically and emotionally feeling, and more.
Be warned: Dr. Salinas will guide you through an immersive journey down the rabbit hole of his own wildly unusual sensory perception and, at several points along the way, you may learn something powerful about yourself that you never would have expected. Through this mind-altering, multisensory experience, he combines art, science, technology, and spirituality to reveal how we can use these neuroscientific aha moments to radically shape the world around us and within us.
Morgan Hill
Conversation and Q&A
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
Partnered Inquiry into the True Nature of the Heart
In this experiential workshop we will use a specific form of partnered meditative inquiry that I have refined over many years to explore two essential questions: 1) What is the true nature of the Heart? and 2) Does it need protection? Relationships are often the most challenging arenas to stay awake within as we try to protect our self from being judged or abandoned. They also offer extraordinary opportunities to see where and how we hold onto the illusion of being a separate self.
This profound form of interpersonal inquiry quickly unveils the deepest dimension of the Heart as innocent, all-inclusive, loving awareness, as well as our conditioned resistance to being so open, especially with an apparent other. Partnered inquiry adds a potent dimension to self-inquiry by offering an opportunity to:
1) Experience our essential non-separateness with another person
2) Stay connected to oneself and not merge while meeting another
3) Be profoundly seen and heard
4) Distinguish the vulnerable human heart from the Heart of awareness
5) Be more aware of how we unconsciously defend ourselves
6) Recognize and question our core limiting beliefs
Monterey Room
Panel - No More Armor: Men, Heart & Strength
The legacy of emotional armoring that comes with men’s conditioning in Western culture creates suffering for the men inside it and for those with whom they relate. Along with the clarity of spiritual awakening comes incredible tender openness. Join this panel of male-friendly hearts, moderated by Kent Welsh of Open Circle Center, to explore from a variety of perspectives what it takes for men to show up without armor in relating, fully available as Being in the moment, in a strong, vulnerable and heartful way.
Lower Level Lobby
Understanding Russian and American Behavior in the Context of Nonduality: Cultural Differences in Perception of Self and Other
The environment, or culture, that we are born into and raised in greatly determines how we perceive the boundaries between self and other. There are fundamental differences in how Russians and Americans perceive these boundaries, and these differences lead to diverse interpretations of the world around us and subsequently to disparate modes of interacting with the realities that we co-create and are embedded in. These relationships to the world around us result in what seem to be diametrically opposed systems of governance, social infrastructure, domestic and foreign policy.
Raising awareness of why the differences exist can lead to a deeper understanding of each other. A nondual approach to examining the processes which our cultures and societies are embedded in can help us arrive at more accurate assessments of motives and behavior. If we allow ourselves to interpret behavior in the context of the meaning system in which it arises, then we have the flexibility of adjusting our reactions so that they are more coherent with the foreign context. This new dynamic provides us with access to our inherent interconnection, which makes dialogue possible, and can ultimately lead to improved relations between Russia and the west.
We will look at cultural differences in physical and mental space, privacy, individual and national identity, how we process and express emotions (anger and conflict), examples of how independence and interdependence manifest themselves in our two cultures. We will examine how perceived superiority and inferiority can make it impossible to communicate, how the answers “yes” and “no” are not so simple as we think, and we will learn that simply having good intentions without awareness of our collective self can lead to unexpected outcomes. We will also look at how intergenerational collective trauma complicates cross-cultural understanding.
In his vocational life, Craig Gundry is a consultant specialized in managing risks of targeted violence and has assisted organizations around the world in developing protective strategies against acts of terrorism and mass homicide. After a life-long career studying the psychology of mass killers, he sees a valuable opportunity to learn from the pathology and behavior of targeted violence as a means toward self-knowing and spiritual discovery.
On matters of nonduality and inner liberation, Craig credits the wisdom of Dr. R. R. Gibson, A. Watts, G.I. Gurdjieff, and J. Krishnamurti as inspiring influences in his personal journey of discovery.
San Juan Bautista
Self-Knowing, Love, and the Horror of Mass Violence
Agape (altruistic love of fellow humans) is universally regarded as one of the highest expressions of spiritual living. Unless one lives isolated on an island of narcissism, it’s natural to experience love for family, friends, and those who share our common opinions. It seems most people also experience a natural degree of empathy and inner connection toward humanity at large. But what about the Adam Lanza’s and Abdulkadir Masharipov’s of the world? How do we face the horror of mass violence so frequent in today’s headlines, while simultaneously experiencing empathy and compassion for those who commit such acts?
In this presentation, a consultant specialized in managing risks of targeted violence explores the psychology of mass murderers and proposes that perhaps these ‘evil monsters’ are not so very different from you and I when understood at a fundamental level. Although the title theme of this presentation focuses on the psychological pathway to mass violence, the inner message is about self-knowing and universal characteristics of our conditioned selves which obstruct the genuine experience of compassion, love, and our greater spiritual identity. The speaker also offers ten self-observation and contemplation experiments as a starting point for experiential discovery.
A versatile virtuoso guitarist/composer/improviser, Juanito Pascual has been called "one of the hottest flamenco guitarists in recent years" by National Public Radio, a major accolade which in this case is just the jumping off point for the Minneapolis native's musical style. His sound is a truly organic blend of a mastery of traditional and contemporary flamenco plus influences ranging from Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead to Miles Davis and J.S. Bach.
The Juanito Pascual Trio features two highly versatile and dynamic musicians, New York-based percussionist Guillermo Barrón (Jose Feliciano Band, John Benitez) and virtuoso Bay-area bassist Sascha Jacobsen (Trio Garufa, Musical Arts Quintet). By combining their distinct musical backgrounds with a powerful personal chemistry, the Trio has created a fresh, exhilarating amd constantly evolving sound, performing to enthralled audiences throughout the U.S. and abroad. The 2014 release “Juanito Pascual New Flamenco Trio” was included in NPR critic Milo Miles’ Best World Music Albums for that year. They are currently preparing to release a recently recorded 3-song EP in addition to work on a new full length album.
Since the 2003 release of his debut solo recording "Cosas en Comun", Pascual's international touring schedule has brought him to venues including the Tanglewood Jazz Festival, New York's Lincoln Center, and Blue Note Jazz Club, The Panama Jazz Festival and Madrid's renowned Casa Patas. He has performed with a lengthy 'who's who' of top flamenco artists including 2016 tour dates with Jorge Pardo (of Paco de Lucia’s legendary Sextet) in addition to collaborations with a diverse range ofmusicians including Grammy-winning soprano Dawn Upshaw, bassist John Patitucci (of Chick Corea's Band), pianist Danilo Perez (of the Wayne Shorter Qt), percussionist Jamey Haddad (of Paul Simon's group), virtuoso guitarist Grisha Goryachev, and many others.
Hayes Terrace
Lunch - Music with Juanito Pascual Trio
Hayes Ballroom
Real-ativity
From the foundational relativity of space and time woven together by light into its invariant fabric, and the equivalence of energy and matter also mediated by the speed of light, the reality of the physical world is innately relational. Instead of its apparent separation, leading edge science at all scales of existence and across numerous fields of research is not only revealing that our Universe is fundamentally inter-connected but that its appearance arises from non-physical realms of causation and ultimate Unity.
Increasingly compelling evidence shows that digitised information, the basis of our communications technologies, also underpins and makes up all physical reality. The 1s and 0s of this simplest and universal ‘alphabet’ themselves relate as meaningful, not random, instructions that literally ‘in-form’ the laws of physics and manifested relationships throughout the Universe.
The embodied relationships of this emergent infodynamic and holo/fractal model of our Universe, where the whole is present in the smallest pixilation and every contributes to the whole are being discovered at all scales of existence and across numerous fields of research. From its beginning 13.8 billion years ago, not in the implied chaos of the big bang but as an exquisitely ordered and xxxx of a continuing Big Breath, our Universe exists and evolves as a great thought rather than a great thing. Each of us is a co-creative microcosm of our Universe’s innate and evolutionary intelligence—and with every thought, emotion, word and action, we contribute to the co-creation of the whole world. As a species, the universal impulse to evolve is now inviting us, rather than to continue to play out the ‘illusion’ of separation, to understand, experience and embody the awareness of such unity expressed through diversity—to enter into the adventure of an ever-expanding and evolutionary relationship with the entire Cosmos.
Morgan Hill
Time Travel Update: Relationships Spanning Across Time
Dr. Mossbridge presents results from her most recent experiments related to mental and physical time travel, with a special focus on potential applications and mitigating their risks.
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).
Madrone
Panpsychism: Phenomenal Bonding Relations, Primacy of Consciousness, or Just Interplay among Mentons?
Panpsychism is the view that consciousness, or some form of mentality, is distributed throughout the universe. This view is as old as Western and Eastern cosmology. Surprisingly, panpsychism is currently experiencing a robust revival, even among analytically oriented philosophers of mind. This presentation gives an overview of the main issues and approaches in the contemporary debate about and within panpsychism, and indicates some ignored roads currently not taken. The contemporary debate is gripped by “the hard problem” of explaining how consciousness can arise from apparently unconscious matter. The renewed interest in panpsychism is motivated by the obvious failure of reductive physicalism to explain phenomenal consciousness or mentality. Panpsychism seems to offer a middle ground between physicalism, idealism, and mind-matter dualism. From the perspective of physicalism, which treats instances of conscious experience as the “curse of the qualia,” consciousness is an anomaly that needs to be explained (away), i.e., reduced to physical concepts. Panpsychists, however, point out a hard datum in favor of their view: the irrefutable existence of consciousness.
We will review contending accounts of panpsychism which have two features in common:
(1) Like their physicalist counterparts, panpsychists are obsessed with explaining consciousness, favoring microphysical upward causation, emergence, or supervenience.
(2) Panpsychists’ biggest problem is the seemingly insurmountable combination problem: how do microphysical, protophenomenal elements add up or combine to account for macrophysical, conscious subjects? An intriguing perspective is opened up by the high probability of downward causation, i.e., causal powers that are not microdetermined by the causal relations at lower levels (as in quantum entanglement). The presentation concludes with a sketch of admirable alternatives to panpsychism in order to round out the newly emerging metaphysics of consciousness.
San Martin
Awakening Spiritual Intelligence
Beyond our rational, utilitarian intelligence, beyond even emotional intelligence, the human being has a capacity for spiritual intelligence. Through this higher intelligence the human being senses a deeper relationship to existence, perceiving the non-material laws and principles of nature. This innate knowing, when it is not covered over by egoistic demands, connects us to a Universal Intelligence.
The influence of post-modernism has encouraged the notion that there is no “objective” reality; that human thought projects its own subjective meaning on to the empty canvas of an inchoate reality. Following this line of thought, enlightenment is to realize that there is no objective truth or meaning but the meaning we give to reality. In other words, all meaning and value resides with the human brain alone.
A different view of human possibilities is that the human being is a child of the universe, made “in the image of God”, endowed with capacities to know and embrace the very Source of its existence. This has been a persistent theme across many traditions in one form or another: the Purusha (Cosmic Self) in Hinduism, Adam Kadmon (the Primordial Human) in Kabbalah, and its human embodiment, Insan al Kamil (the Completed Human), in Sufism.
Spiritual intelligence awakens a sense of value and meaning which can be internally experienced by any individual who has purified their consciousness. We will reflect on seven themes that enhance spiritual intelligence: honest witnessing, a new relationship to time, purifying the psyche of idols, awakening gratitude, trust in the unfolding of life, egoless striving, and unconditional consent to what is.
Katherine MacLean, PhD is a research scientist, teacher and meditator. In her academic research at UC Davis and Johns Hopkins University, she studied how psychedelics and mindfulness meditation can promote beneficial, long-lasting changes in personality, well-being and brain function. Following her younger sister's untimely death from cancer, she left academia and co-founded the Psychedelic Education & Continuing Care Program in New York (www.psychedelicprogam.com), which focuses on increasing awareness and reducing risks of psychedelic use. She has traveled throughout the United States and internationally to facilitate integration groups for psychedelics users and lead trainings and educational workshops for clinicians and the public. She currently lives on an organic farm with her husband and two small children. Learn more: www.katherinemaclean.org
Hayes Ballroom
Befriending the Beloved Mystery with Magic Mushrooms
Psychedelics have officially re-entered mainstream consciousness, through clinical research trials at major universities, corporate-sponsored pharmaceutical drug development, and decriminalization efforts in major America cities. Everyone from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Michael Pollan now has a story to tell about how mushrooms can save humanity. But let's not forget the original love stories that the mushrooms have been quietly sharing with humans for millennia. In this talk, Dr. Katherine MacLean will weave a tale of scientific discovery, mystical love, super-natural intelligence, and personal redemption from the perspective of individual humans and their amazing encounters with psilocybin mushrooms. Learn more at www.katherinemaclean.org
Keith interweaves original imagery, prose, poetry, sound, and song to explore the intimate relationship between the Natural World and our own True Nature. His work represents a constellation of the training, experience, insights, and revelations of his diverse career as a professor of Animal Genetics, sheep farmer, and a teacher of body-based psycho-spirituality—together with his lifelong exploration of Nature through photography, poetry, song, and nature sound recording. He has offered workshops, concerts, and presentations based upon his explorations at gatherings throughout the Canada and the US—including the 2018 International Association for the Study of Dreams Annual Conference. www.truenature.earth
Hayes Ballroom
Intimations of Nature's Grace
To explore how Nature’s creations can help us to live in greater harmony with the Natural World, Keith interweaves biological science, natural philosophy, and spirituality with song, poetry, and nature videography.
Many of us today embrace perspectives and belief systems that are in discord with Nature’s rhythms. This discord disturbs the wellbeing of both individuals and our collective. Visitations by Nature’s animals in our waking lives, meditations, visions, and dreams are often invitations to resolve our discord with Nature. We can accept these invitations by developing an experiential rapport with physical manifestations of our animal visitors.
By surrendering to this rapport, Life is revealed as a radiant Net of Gems. A Net of Gems held together by relationship. As we find our own place within this relationship, the Net of Gems becomes one Gem. And that one Gem is Love…Unconditional, Transpersonal Love…The one great Love of Existence.
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
Nondual Embodiment
What is life’s expression of Nondual consciousness and love? With the embodiment of Nonduality, life becomes a portal from which divine being emerges into form, identity with separation is surrendered, truth matters more than the structure of beliefs, and our resistance to what is ends. When divine flow is no is longer hindered, consciousness and love unite in dance, in song, and life’s expression emerges from the flowering of heart and minds undivided intimacy with being. All are welcome to join in this exploration of how the divine seeps into the crevices and conquers the diverse territories of our conscious existence.
Monterey Room
Panel - No More Armor: Men, Heart & Strength
The legacy of emotional armoring that comes with men’s conditioning in Western culture creates suffering for the men inside it and for those with whom they relate. Along with the clarity of spiritual awakening comes incredible tender openness. Join this panel of male-friendly hearts, moderated by Kent Welsh of Open Circle Center, to explore from a variety of perspectives what it takes for men to show up without armor in relating, fully available as Being in the moment, in a strong, vulnerable and heartful way.
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.
San Juan Bautista
SELF and self: A Compelling Relationship Leading to Union, Being, and Embodiment of Consciousness
Rev. Kimberly Braun stands before you as one surrendered, and surrendering over and again into the embrace of the Beloved. In her presentation she will weave storytelling of her own unitive experiences as a cloistered Carmelite nun, and the mystical insights and systematics of Teilhard de Chardin, Carl Jung, Teresa of Avila and John of the cross to lay out for all attendees the relevance and power of a relationship between the individual person and the Ground of all Being leading to the ultimate dissolution of notions such as ‘I’ and ‘Thou’ INTO simple, all encompassing, all penetrating BEING.
Kimberly does not want anyone to assume what she says is ‘true,’ but rather wishes to invite you into the adventure of discovering truth as your personal experience reveals it to you. Her presentation will both excite your senses with the playfulness with which she recounts stories of union and stir your mind through her compelling insights and reflection on the nature of relationship as part of what it means to be human, Consciousness in Form.
Konda Mason is a social entrepreneur, earth and social justice activist and spiritual teacher. She is a co-founder of Jubilee Partners, a business of wisdom keepers and wealth holders exploring new ways to use capital and Jubilee Justice Journeys (J3) exploring at the intersection of Race, Land, Spirit & Money. She is the Co-Founder and founding CEO of Impact Hub Oakland. She is the Strategic Director of the Runway Project Oakland, a micro-lending fund for African American entrepreneurs intended to close the “Friends & Family” gap funding. Additionally, Konda is the co-founder of the annual COCAP conference in Oakland, focused on “Building the We Economy”.
Konda is an accomplished filmmaker and artists manager and the recipient of an Academy Award nomination and a Grammy Award winner. Konda holds a Permaculture Design Certificate, is a certified yoga teacher and a meditation teacher. She sits on the Board of Directors of The Good Work Institute, Krista Tippett’s On Being, United Roots, and Spirit Rock Meditation Center where she is in a four-year Dharma Teacher Training with Jack Kornfield as her personal mentor.
Hayes Ballroom
Panel - Social Justice: Are We One?
The SAND community is deeply committed to exploring the core, interconnected issues of our time. Yet the inherent biases in our scientific methods, spiritual practices and/or wisdom traditions are not often our focus. In this panel session, we are inviting SAND community members to explore privilege and consequences of racial and ontological identities, as we consider what is inclusive space at SAND.
Some questions the panel may explore:
• What does social justice activism, informed by spirituality look like? And how is it practiced?
• What are the blind spots in largely white, privileged communities—like SAND?
• What is the unconscious conditioning we carry around racism and oppression?
• Do we reflect on the cultural context through which spiritual teachings have been passed to us?
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.
Morgan Hill
Playing the Awakening Game
Monterey Room
Panel - Dynamics of Attraction: Divine Masculine and Feminine in Awakening
One consciousness plays itself as two, in this divine dance of apparent separation and union. We will explore the divine masculine and feminine within and the inner union that flourishes in embodied awakening. We will explore what this looks like on the outside and inside both personally and in relationships. We will also explore the perfection of and resolution of longing for the other in the awakening process both in and out of intimate relationships.
Monterey Room
Panel - The Reality of Self Love
The lived reality of self-love is essential to the embodiment of nondual awareness. When we look beyond the idea that self-love is just about reinforcing a limited ego identification, we begin to see it as a multi-faceted, radiant gem of infinite worth. This gem, as a whole, is the very basis of the movement toward Truth, while its facets offer vital medicines that heal, awaken, and transform the mind, heart, and body. What are the facets of self-love? What role does self-love play in the field of nondual awakening and embodiment? How and when might an orientation toward self-love be a distraction from real clarity? Our panel will share their unique perspectives on the forms and functions of true self-love, how it shows up in our lived human experience, and how it is and becomes an endless embrace of One. Lovers of Truth and humanity, please join us for this beautiful, rich, and meaningful exploration.
Loch Kelly, M.Div., LCSW is author of The Way of Effortless Mindfulness and Shift into Freedom which was named “Top 10 Best Books of the Year” by Spirituality & Health Magazine. Loch is the founder of the non-profit Open-Hearted Awareness Institute. He is a graduate of Columbia University and studied meditation in Sri Lanka, India, and Nepal. Loch trained with Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche and is affiliated with Adyashanti. Loch is a nondual psychotherapist who has worked in community mental health and counseled family members after 9/11 in New York City. He collaborates with neuroscientists at Yale, UPenn and NYU to study how awareness training enhances compassion and wellbeing. Loch is known for his warm sense of humor, and his trust that awakening is the next natural stage of development. He teaches the advanced, yet simple nondual pointers for waking up and growing up. Loch lives in New York City with his wife Paige and their cat Duffy. www.effortlessmindfulness.org
Monterey Room
Panel - Dynamics of Attraction: Divine Masculine and Feminine in Awakening
One consciousness plays itself as two, in this divine dance of apparent separation and union. We will explore the divine masculine and feminine within and the inner union that flourishes in embodied awakening. We will explore what this looks like on the outside and inside both personally and in relationships. We will also explore the perfection of and resolution of longing for the other in the awakening process both in and out of intimate relationships.
Monterey Room
The Art and Science of Nondual Love
This workshop is based on Loch's new book, The Way of Effortless Mindfulness. Both quantum physics and current neuroscience studies agree that we are all interconnected. Loch will share discoveries from the recent neuroscience of awakening and ways to reverse-engineer the findings to support living from nondual love.
We will learn helpful pointers to “waking up” from a separate sense of self, “waking in” to a natural embodied well-being and “waking out” to be able to create and lovingly relate. Waking up leads to freedom from the fear of death. Waking in leads to freedom from the fear of life. Waking out leads to freedom from the fear of love. We will learn Loch’s contemporary versions of ancient wisdom pointers in order to welcome and liberate shadow parts that keep us from being and sharing the love we already are.
For the past 30 years Lorraine has cultivated embodiment of the soft underbelly, or felt sense. Her view has been informed through a diversity of mentorships and her direct experiences of the conjoined inner and outer worlds. This way of embodiment has allowed her to explore, discover and deepen into intimate relationship within the many territories in our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual bodies. Her experiences have given her the unique understandings necessary to bridge conflicting paradigms and to synthesize new ways of identifying unique abilities and ways of perceiving.
In her explorations, Lorraine is blessed to have worked and studied both formally and informally with gifted teachers, scientists, healers and sages.
Lorraine carries the wisdom that we as individuals are magnificent beyond what we know and understand ourselves to be; that as we claim and stand in our majesty, and acknowledge the divine mystery that holds us all, we co-create a better world for ourselves, each other and affect all life on our planet.
Guadalupe
Experiential: The Union of Emptiness and Fullness
Explore the relationship between our pure consciousness, empty boundless nature, and our alive dynamic fullness that animates everything. Pure consciousness is more then the vast stillness we find on a meditation cushion, it’s also dynamic and intelligent. What is exciting is we can train to connect to this living wisdom. Through Anna-Lisa Adelberg and Raina DeLear’s unique teaching method, participants have reported reaching profound states of awareness easily and effortlessly. These methods give us a direct taste of emptiness and the experience of being interconnected with everyone and everything. In this two-hour experiential, we will shift our levels of mind into awakened awareness and then recognize this awareness’s inseparability with an all pervasive energy. We will experience “emptiness-fullness” and for some “evenness-bliss”. We will then create a co-awakening Luminous circle to harness the power of the group’s collective awareness. What emerges is an energetic field that is awake to itself. Together we form a circle and focus our collective loving awareness in the center. We then invite people into the center. This can be likened to a magnifying glass with the sun, as we are offering a magnified awake energy to the individual in the center. The person in the center will experience a spontaneous healing where any bound energy consciousness will naturally unfold and liberate. Luminous Awareness Institute is the integration of a healing and nondual awakening path dedicated to the evolution of human consciousness.This special 2 hour session will be led by Luminous Awareness Institute Founders Anna-Lisa Adelberg and Raina Lorraine DeLear.
Lorraine Taylor is contributing some short gentle yoga asana and pranayama sequences to activate the vagus nerve and the parasympathetic nervous system.
From a very young age, Lorraine was fascinated by the beauty of movement and music. Her childhood was spent exploring the body through gymnastics, ice skating and different styles of dance. In her early twenties, a strong calling to the path of Yoga became the catalyst for many deeper realisations in her life and she left everything behind to follow this call. She has now been a dedicated Yogini and lover of Truth for almost thirty years. She specialises in offering an insightful feminine way of practising Yoga, bringing forth her love of Tantra and Kashmir Shaivism. She has also dedicated many years to the study of Jnana (Non Duality), Bhakti (Devotion) as well as Traditional Hatha Yoga which has led her to discover the depths of the Yogic practice, understanding the beauty of the fluid form while investigating the more subtle layers that exist within us. Ultimately pointing to what lies beyond which is the true meaning of Yoga. Oneness. She is currently very inspired by somatic based practices and trauma informed Yoga, recognising how important this work is right now in our current world. Her classes are a journey of who we are on every level from the physical to the beyond all shared with a healthy dose of humour and an open heart.
San Jose
Experiential: Insightful Yoga with Self Enquiry
San Jose
Experiential: Insightful Yoga with Self Enquiry
Lynn Murphy is a strategic advisor for foundations and NGOs working in the geopolitical South. She was a senior fellow and program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation where she focused on international education and global development. She resigned as a “conscientious objector” to neocolonial philanthropy. She holds an MA and PhD in international comparative education from Stanford University. She is also a certified Laban/Bartenieff movement analyst.
Edenvale
Community Council
Council is an age-old practice that involves bringing people together in a circle to bear witness and share authentically. Participants agree to speak one-at-a-time, sharing their personal stories and experiences, rather than opinions, and listening non-judgmentally while others do the same. Sharing and listening to universal stories about love, loss, fear, triumph, challenge, hope and other experiences enables participants to recognize that, despite our many differences, we have much in common.
By fostering attentive listening and authentic expression, Council builds positive relationships between participants and neutralizes hierarchical dynamics formed by the inequality of status, race, or other social factors. It supports a deep sense of community and fosters recognition of a shared humanity and interconnectedness. It enables individuals to give voice to their stories, develop mutual respect, cultivate a compassionate response to anger, defensiveness, and violence, as well as strengthen emotional health and resilience.
Monterey Room
Panel - The Reality of Self Love
The lived reality of self-love is essential to the embodiment of nondual awareness. When we look beyond the idea that self-love is just about reinforcing a limited ego identification, we begin to see it as a multi-faceted, radiant gem of infinite worth. This gem, as a whole, is the very basis of the movement toward Truth, while its facets offer vital medicines that heal, awaken, and transform the mind, heart, and body. What are the facets of self-love? What role does self-love play in the field of nondual awakening and embodiment? How and when might an orientation toward self-love be a distraction from real clarity? Our panel will share their unique perspectives on the forms and functions of true self-love, how it shows up in our lived human experience, and how it is and becomes an endless embrace of One. Lovers of Truth and humanity, please join us for this beautiful, rich, and meaningful exploration.
Maleda is a gifted evolutionary healer, feminine mystic and midwife of the soul. She has practiced and taught in the field of feminine awakening and spiritual transformation for over 18 years, including intensive training in women’s yoga and as a lead teacher in a monastic ashram.
In 2013 during an extended solitary deep retreat, she experienced a life-altering shift into Great Mother Consciousness and was shown the processes that have become the evolutionary work of the Womb of Life School today.
A healer of healers and pioneer of consciousness, Maleda’s powerful transmissions and healing pathways awaken a feminine template for true and deep spiritual realization. Moving through the spiral of soul healing we access a direct experience of the Omnipresent Mother through the natural gateways of our hearts and wombs.
She offers global healing activations, retreats, and practitioner trainings. www.WombofLifeSchool.com
San Jose
Experiential: Great Mother Womb of Life Activation Journey: Dive into the epicenter of Awakened Feminine Consciousness
Awakening to Great Mother is more than a liberated state of consciousness. She is the omnipresent field of our living, breathing reality that moment by moment births Love into form. Her body of life is the universe… the full spectrum of existence. The majestic synthesis of duality and nonduality weaving into the myriad forms. Nothing is left behind in Her awakening within us… simultaneously we are Mother and soul-child, human and divine, relational and omnipresent Love. Through the many stages of realizing Her, we open to embodying the omnipotent power of Love that actively heals, nurtures, and cares for the soul of life.
At the very epicenter of Her awakening is the gateway of women’s wombs… through which every human soul gestates into form. Our womb- fields remain one of the most underestimated and undervalued domains of spiritual consciousness… and the energetic state of our wombs affect the entirety of humanity. Because of the aeons of trauma women have endured, our healing and Her awakening naturally go hand in hand. As we heal, our wombs gradually become exalted and we enter into vast and deep states of Great Mother omnipresent compassion. In turn we become living vessels for the rebirth of love into the human field.
In this beauty-filled journey for women, we’ll dive into the Womb of Life through the gateways of our wombs. We’ll experience the life-giving movement of the Great Mother birthing the soul of life, the essence of Love into form within ourselves, Gaia’s planetary field, and beyond. Join us and explore Her healing, life-giving awakening within you.
For more info, visit: www.wombmatrixhealing.com
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
San Juan Bautista
Ultimate Kindness in Natural Mind
Natural Mind meditation uncovers the path to realization and ultimate kindness. It leads to deeper and deeper realization of inner luminosity. Everyone struggles with confusion and problems in daily life, the opposite of kindness. People can even make themselves sick with their thoughts. For instance, a person is given a healthy meal, but thinks it’s contaminated; when they eat it, they become sick.
When we recognize the actions and source of our thoughts, then inner emptiness is revealed. It is an inner experience, not outside of us. Emptiness is like the sun; there is a luminosity like sunlight. The most difficult thing to understand how emptiness and luminosity are related. When one has an experience of realization, then you understand that they are qualities of a single essence in union, never separated.
When we have this experience, all distraction disappears. Everything is clear like a crystal sphere. Everything outer and inner is clear. In this state of realization, liberation and enlightenment are naturally present. This is great bliss. Without confusion and distraction, everything that arises is kindness and happiness. Compassion and loving kindness spontaneously arise like the heat of the sun.
Mariana Caplan, PhD, MFT, E-RYT 500, is a psychotherapist, yoga teacher, and the author of eight books in the fields of psychology and spirituality that have been translated in more than a dozen languages, including the Yoga & Psyche: Integrating the Paths of Yoga and Psychology for Healing, Transformation, and Joy , Halfway Up the Mountain: the Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment , Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path, and The Guru Question. She has been teaching workshops and trainings in universities, major retreat centers around the world, online, and in yoga studios since 1997. Dr. Caplan also developed innovative programs as a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Naropa University, John F. Kennedy University, and Sophia University, and she is the founder of the Yoga & Psyche Method and the Yoga & Psyche Conference.
Monterey Room
Panel - Sex, Money, Power, Trauma & Ethics in Spiritual Communities
Join us for a timely conversation exploring a new paradigm supporting psychological health for spiritual teachers, leaders, and communities. Many scandals, traumas, and the common psychological dysfunctions litter the modern spiritual and religious landscape. Instead of focusing on what went wrong, we believe we can learn from past mistakes and collectively focus on spiritual integrity, trauma, shadow work, embodiment, psychological growth, and ethics, in order to cultivate qualities that create healthy, mature spiritual teachers, students, and communities, as well as success and integrity on the path.
Let us together meet the challenging topics of sex, power, money, trauma, hierarchies, groupmind/groupthink, and spiritual bypassing in a supportive and proactive environment. Join us as we work to explore new models based on shared human values while honoring our spiritual nature.
Together we will examine:
• What qualities characterize a psychologically healthy teacher, student, and spiritual community?
• Is there a legitimate role for conventional therapy or other psychologically healing modalities on the spiritual path?
• How do new understandings of trauma research and healing impact our understanding of integrated psychospiritual growth?
• What defines a healthy teacher/student relationship? What is at play when a teacher consciously or unconsciously cultivates dependency in their students?
• What is group mind and group think within spiritual communities and how does it contribute to unhealthy behavior or cult-like tendencies?
• Does the contemporary spiritual community share clear, ethical practices and processes?
At the end of this explorative discussion, are we open to taking on the challenge to support change both within our personal lives and within our spiritual communities? Together we will mobilize to empower ourselves and each other to be the change we want to see within the current climate of contemporary spirituality.
Morgan Hill
Healing Trauma and Ending Sex Scandals in Spiritual Communities
Many long-term spiritual practitioners and teachers experience unnecessary obstacles and suffering along the path when we have not understood the importance of deep psychological inquiry, and healing the trauma that is stored within our bodies. Teachers and students alike need to understand that spiritual awakening does not dissolve trauma and psychological wounds, nor does it replace the necessity for psychological work. Spiritually bypassing in this way frequently leads to spiritual traumas and scandals—approximately 90% related to sex, and generally perpetrated by male teachers.
For over 20 years, I have been supporting spiritual and religious practitioners, teachers/leaders, and communities to heal, grow, and thrive as a psychotherapist, author, consultant, and yoga teacher. I believe that by understanding, addressing, and healing trauma within ourselves and our communities—whether we are teachers or practitioners—we become empowered to end the endless repetition of predictable scandals related to sex, power, and money.
By practicing the potent methods to address our deep psychological wounds and traumas that are available through trauma healing, somatics, and neuroscience, and rigorously applying and integrating them into our spiritual practices and communities, our practice becomes grounded and integrated. When we address these issues in ourselves, we are neither drawn to teachers and practices that are likely to repeat patterns of unresolved trauma within us, nor do we participate in replicating the myriad forms of otherwise avoidable suffering due to unaddressed psychological wounds. When we bring together ancient practices and teachings, and a modern understanding of psychology, trauma, somatics, and neuroscience, we catalyze new possibilities for an integrated awakening within our body, psyche and spirit. Traveling through the eye of the needle of our trauma, our wounds become our gifts and transform into the capacity for discernment—the crowning jewel on the spiritual path.
Marion Gilbert, P.T. is a Somatic Enneagram Teacher and a Physical Therapist. She is the owner of a well-established physical therapy practice and movement studio in Grass Valley, CA and integrates traditional and complementary medicine. She has extensive training in CranioSacral Therapy, SomatoEmotional Release and Trauma Resolution. She has been actively teaching the Enneagram for the past 16 years. Her emphasis is on a non-dual approach to healing and transformation. She developed somatic awakening practices to facilitate personal, professional and spiritual transformation in the Narrative Enneagram Tradition as an integrative three centered approach to the Enneagram work. She is an Adjunct Faculty member of The Narrative Enneagram organization and teaches advanced Enneagram trainings with Helen Palmer. Currently she is also a consultant to the EPP Enneagram Prison Project.
San Juan Bautista
The Enneagram Map and Three Lenses of Perception
The Somatic Awareness Practice using the Enneagram map offers a way for us to become aware of the mostly hidden and automatic patterns of thinking, feeling and sensing our reality. This practice is designed to assist in bringing a deeper understanding and compassion to the suffering we experience at the root of the arising of these patterns serving our survival. It is important to know there is great intelligence and energy in these patterns. The great cost is that we became identified with our apparent separate identities causing great disparate realities affecting our partial reality and perception of who we are and therefore enter into our relationships. The obstacles to remembering our essential nature and the inherent interconnectedness of all beings and all things are the platform for transformation. The Somatic awareness practice is a non-dual practice with the capacity to release these automatic, conditioned patterns safely. The freed up energy is receptive and the witnessing consciousness receives direct knowing, feeling and sensing generating essential states of consciousness allowing us to experience more of the reality as it actually is.
Dr. Mark Forman is a licensed clinical psychologist with twenty years of experience working with men, women, children, and families. He is the author of A Guide to Integral Psychotherapy (2010, SUNY Press). Mark is a former as core faculty at John F. Kennedy University in Pleasant Hill, California as well as adjunct faculty at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology.
Mark is a long-time student of meditation, having studied extensively with Gurumayi Chidvilisananda as well as Kenneth Folk. Mark spent two years in Jungian analysis with Dr. Alden Josey, nearly a decade working with Integral psychotherapist Joe Sousa (Moksananda), and underwent several years of trauma therapy with Dr. Janina Fisher.
In addition to seeing therapeutic and coaching clients, Mark trains other therapists and coaches in his Certified Integral Therapist (CIT) Global Training Online. More information about Dr. Forman’s practice and trainings can found at www.drmarkforman.com and www.citintegral.com.
Madrone
The Monster's Journey: From Trauma to Connection
Many of us are familiar with the powerful construct of the Hero (or Heroine’s) Journey, made popular by the renowned 20th century mythologist and scholar Joseph Campbell. In his work, Campbell identified a potent mythological motif in which the individual, living comfortably in his or her normal and known world, receives a call to adventure. This call requires him or her to encounter magical forces, first outside, and then eventually within the self. These magical discoveries are used to defeat a threat and are eventually integrated into the person’s being. The journey is completed when the Hero returns to his or her community and offers their transformed consciousness as a blessing to those around them.
The Monster’s Journey describes a different—though complementary—transformational journey. This is the journey of the those who, early in their lives, have been changed or altered as a consequence of early childhood trauma. Monsters—or their equivalents, Aliens and Mutants—begin their journey in the world of the abnormal. So instead of being called to a hidden magical world, they are challenged to connect to the normal world, which they see every day but which remains frightening and alienating to them. And instead of gifting their communities with newly discovered inner magic, they may eventually offer back the abilities and heightened personal qualities that have been gifted to them through the process of early traumatization. In this way, the individual finds their authentic self and redeems the suffering caused by the trauma.
This presentation will describe the Monster’s Journey in detail, understanding it as a modern archetype. The talk will benefit both those who have survived early childhood trauma as well as their loved ones and caretakers/therapists. There will be ample time allotted for group sharing among participants as well as question and answer with Dr. Forman.
San Jose
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP — 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.
3 C.E.s available
Sara is pursuing a Ph.D. in food system sustainability, specifically on Women in Arid Region's Regenerative Practices, and an interest in the relationship with micro-organisms. She is co-founder of Nawaya, a social enterprise working as a catalyst to transition small scale farmer communities in Egypt into more sustainable ones through education and research. She is co-founder of Dayma an LLC responsible for outdoor Environmental Education, teaching young adults about Biomimicry and local Egyptian communities. She is an avid traveler and enjoys tasting foods, cooking and interacting with people through food experiences. Sara is on the board of Slow Food, an international movement that started in Italy aiming to safeguard local food cultures and traditions and does so by promoting Good, Clean and Fair food for all.
Hayes Ballroom
Mimicking Nature's Relationships
Biomimicry is "the conscious emulation of nature's genius—Janine Benyus". Biomimicry has been known in design and technology, by emulating organisms, such as the kingfisher's beak inspiring a more efficient bullet train, or termite mounds inspiring cooler building structures. However, this field is not just about emulating it is also about reconnecting and rekindling our relationship with nature. Nature itself is thriving through its intrictate relationships, whether in the soil of perennial grasslands, or through mutualistic relations of organisms on a coral reef, or even the microorganisms working together to aid in your own body's digestion. We can reconnect to nature, by going outside, or delving inside of us, using our senses, understanding the science and cultivating cooperative relationships.
Morgan Hill
Biomimicry
San Martin
It is all about Making Whoopee: the Playful Connection of Intimacy between Human and Divine.
How can we be intimate with ourselves and another? Our bodies are vehicles of love. Through our body—life experiences itself, how would it be to know the oneness of form and emptiness from our experience? Before we come together in love, we intimately connect with our inner silence, which can be experienced, in our body as a subtle vibration. That makes us touchable, reachable, and open. We are relaxing into our body being, our essence.
As that silent body being, we gaze into each other’s eyes. The couple steps together into the mystery. Naturally, the bodies enter the one stream of subtle vibration. Energy circles back and forth between the bodies and starts living its own life. Before we know it the bodies find each other. Essence meets essence and body meets body. It sounds really wonderful, but it is not always that easy. It takes practice and dedication to move through that, which is in the way to come to the natural joy of making love. The experience of “I am a body falls” away and simultaneously the bodies are moving. They melt into one movement that has nothing to do with us. We are not here and, yes; we are here and intimately experiencing all sensations. It’s almost like you say to each other afterwards, “Was that us making love?”
This can be experienced not only during sex, but also throughout life. Looking in someone’s eyes, being touched by the wind or our lover, the sweetness of a flower, a thought, or an emotion, or chocolate melting on our tongue. All is the making of love! Or is it making whoopee?
Monterey Room
Panel - The Reality of Self Love
The lived reality of self-love is essential to the embodiment of nondual awareness. When we look beyond the idea that self-love is just about reinforcing a limited ego identification, we begin to see it as a multi-faceted, radiant gem of infinite worth. This gem, as a whole, is the very basis of the movement toward Truth, while its facets offer vital medicines that heal, awaken, and transform the mind, heart, and body. What are the facets of self-love? What role does self-love play in the field of nondual awakening and embodiment? How and when might an orientation toward self-love be a distraction from real clarity? Our panel will share their unique perspectives on the forms and functions of true self-love, how it shows up in our lived human experience, and how it is and becomes an endless embrace of One. Lovers of Truth and humanity, please join us for this beautiful, rich, and meaningful exploration.
Maurissa Afanador is the amateur filmmaker behind the website, 10000awakeningsproject.com, which documents testimonials of awakening experiences by everyday people.
Lower Level Lobby
10,000 Awakenings Project
10,000 Awakenings, documents the awakening experiences of everyday people.
Mauro Zappaterra obtained his MD and PhD from Harvard Medical School. He is board-certified in physical medicine and rehabilitation with a focus on optimizing human performance, increasing awareness and decreasing suffering. He has been practicing mindfulness since 1998, and teaching mindfulness to patients with chronic pain since 2018, as he is the Director of Multidisciplinary Care at Synovation Medical Group. He has led the Awakening Awareness Program for the Emerging Sciences Foundation which can be found on YouTube. He has published numerous scientific papers and medical book chapters on the cerebrospinal fluid, disability, and pain management. He has also published "I Am", "All One", and "All Love" which are three books exploring topics of awareness, primarily for kids, but really for people of all ages. He has also published "Close Your Eyes, What Do You See?" with his son, which is a story about imagination and intention. He continues to create programs to help patients with chronic pain and investigate the cerebrospinal fluid and integrate new research to evolve the hypothesis of The Cerebrospinal fluid and I Am.
Monterey Room
The Cerebrospinal Fluid and I AM
The cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is a clear fluid that bathes our entire central nervous system (CNS), the brain and spinal cord. At the center of your brain, at the same location of your third eye, your brow center, there is a space filled with CSF called the third ventricle. This space is bordered by the pituitary gland and the pineal gland, and has been referred to as the ‘Crystal Palace’ and the ‘Cave of Brahma.’ CSF is home to many neurotransmitters and signaling molecules, including melatonin and the ‘spirit molecule’ DMT, providing an elaborate range of biological functions. CSF also contains extracellular matrix proteins that make up the connective tissue of the body and therefore is a fluid connective tissue, a liquid matrix for information to be held and transported. CSF evolved as a way to transmit signals from the environment. Therefore, CSF carries information within the fluid, whether it is a protein, a growth factor, or a hormone, and transmits that information to the entire CNS, as a fluid conductor. Our awareness of I AM begins to develop from our earliest moments of existence, when we are immersed in this primordial fluid in our mother’s womb. CSF may serve as a vehicle for signaling to major control centers in the brain and transmitting Source energy to the body and the felt sense of I AM. Connect to your CSF, to your own fluid body, to your liquid light, your liquid prana, your liquid chi, to the structured, resonating primordial ocean within you.
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
The Nectar of Love: A group interactive ritual
Every human being has a cross to bear. Each one of us knows the searing pain of brokenness inside the inescapable wound of living. Beyond and through this holy crucible exists the relentless reality of love. Come, and bear witness to the Truth not often spoken, as it lives within You and in the sacred mirror of Other. Celebrate this wild, paradoxical mystery of broken-wholeness in Love, known only inside the refuge of the human heart.
Hayes Ballroom
Poetry
San Jose
Experiential: 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 processes and exercises to sensitize the body in relationship to another, and explore ways to deepen into an understanding of the principles of intimacy.
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.
Hayes Ballroom
A Fierce & Tender Wisdom
As traditionally male-dominated structures topple across the landscape of the human community, the feminine is rising, carrying cups of mercy and spreading flames of truth-telling. Long-buried wisdom teachings and previously ignored women mystics are revealing themselves to be urgently relevant as we pass through a global dark night of the soul and into a radically renewed humanity. With its emphasis on relationality and inclusivity, its tolerance for ambiguity and its intimacy with mystery, the feminine reclaims the body as holy ground and and blesses the web of interbeing that sustains us all. The feminine speaks in poetry and song, she worships the earth as cherished relative, she embraces ultimate reality as lover. In this talk, “mystical feminist” Mirabai Starr shares the fruits of many years of investigating, excavating and lifting up female voices in all the world’s religions
Edenvale
Conversation with Mirabai Starr
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.
Monterey Room
Panel - Sex, Money, Power, Trauma & Ethics in Spiritual Communities
Join us for a timely conversation exploring a new paradigm supporting psychological health for spiritual teachers, leaders, and communities. Many scandals, traumas, and the common psychological dysfunctions litter the modern spiritual and religious landscape. Instead of focusing on what went wrong, we believe we can learn from past mistakes and collectively focus on spiritual integrity, trauma, shadow work, embodiment, psychological growth, and ethics, in order to cultivate qualities that create healthy, mature spiritual teachers, students, and communities, as well as success and integrity on the path.
Let us together meet the challenging topics of sex, power, money, trauma, hierarchies, groupmind/groupthink, and spiritual bypassing in a supportive and proactive environment. Join us as we work to explore new models based on shared human values while honoring our spiritual nature.
Together we will examine:
• What qualities characterize a psychologically healthy teacher, student, and spiritual community?
• Is there a legitimate role for conventional therapy or other psychologically healing modalities on the spiritual path?
• How do new understandings of trauma research and healing impact our understanding of integrated psychospiritual growth?
• What defines a healthy teacher/student relationship? What is at play when a teacher consciously or unconsciously cultivates dependency in their students?
• What is group mind and group think within spiritual communities and how does it contribute to unhealthy behavior or cult-like tendencies?
• Does the contemporary spiritual community share clear, ethical practices and processes?
At the end of this explorative discussion, are we open to taking on the challenge to support change both within our personal lives and within our spiritual communities? Together we will mobilize to empower ourselves and each other to be the change we want to see within the current climate of contemporary spirituality.
San Martin
Embodying Boundless Love, Grace, Surrender & Ego Relaxation
Every human being wants love and needs love, at every stage of life. Yet love is way more than a commodity we get or give. Love is who we truly are minus any defenses. It is our heart at rest as Pure Being, and it wants to dissolve our mental boundaries of separation, heal and expand us, and connect us with everything in existence. Furthermore, Love’s presence wants to radiate deeper into our troubled world through the Divine vessel that is your body, heart and mind.
What does it take to truly open into the non-dual condition of Boundless Love Itself? Why is this so important for continued spiritual surrender, and for the humanization of our world? How can we learn to relax into the vulnerability that this induces, and allow Love’s transforming presence to melt our armor, resolve the spiritual poverty of lack, and usher us—personally and collectively, into the very heart of Reality?
Before we can embody Boundless Love, first we must receive its fulfilling nectar. This challenges our familiar identity, flushing hidden wounds to the surface for healing. It will melt our subtle habits of closure, expose fears and invite us into new depths of vulnerability. Hence for most people, truly embodying our realization with our families and loved ones is often the greatest spiritual test.
Miranda will share the transmission of Grace that is Boundless Love and how the practice of Ego Relaxation can help us relax the search for love, and skillfully navigate the subtle defenses that arise. Together, we will open more substantially into Love’s transforming presence, and explore what it takes to live into the unending fullness of your vast heart.
Mona Haydar, rapper, chaplain, poet, and MA in Christian Ethics, brings her fierce, wise voice to SAND.
Fresh off the success of her debut EP “Barbarican” and armed with an MA from Union Theological Seminar in New York City, Mona Haydar comes Stateside to discuss her music, her spiritual path and the power of art. Billboard Magazine named Haydar’s breakout hit “Hijabi” one of 2017’s best protest songs and one of the top feminist anthems of all time. Her “Ask A Muslim” project, created in the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks, garnered international attention and extensive press. The project was featured on the series “The Secret Life of Muslims” and remains the most watched episode of the series. As an MA student, she worked as a chaplain at NYU and studied post-colonial theology. The Flint, Michigan-raised Syrian American, daughter of immigrants, and slayer of white supremacy comes to SAND from her current home in Morocco to share some of her work and engage in dialogue with our community.
Hayes Ballroom
You Are the Universe in Ecstatic Motion and Other Truths
We presume we are small entities when in fact within each of us is the entire enfolded universe waiting to be unfolded and revealed. Our choice to open to love is the path towards freedom and liberation. We've heard this. We feel it. But how do we do it? How do we unlearn and de-program our toxic and limiting beliefs? How do we rid ourselves of negative cycles and patterns and live in the manner most aligned with our highest purpose? Through the use of ancient technologies and methodologies, we can engage that which is beyond. All of this and more in our session!
Morgan Hill
Hip Hop, God and Consciousness: Going Viral for Being Yourself
Hip Hop artist, activist and theologian Mona Haydar screens her videos and opens up conversation. She explains how being your most authentic and true self is the most magnetic and majestic thing any consciousness-seeking soul can do.
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
Edenvale
Experiential: Guided Meditation
Hayes Ballroom
Meditating a New World Through Compassion
The world is in desperate need for compassion. Compassion means to recognize the real nature of every living being, also in actions that express separation. Compassion means too see that there is not a person anywhere, but Consciousness in action. In this recognition you can welcome in your Heart all the suffering of believing that this is not so, knowing that maybe this cannot be seen through every form right away, but accepting seeing this in your Heart until it is possible for everybody. This is the life of a bodhisattva and the life to which we all aspire to as truth seekers. If this is possible, any action of Consciousness that expresses through your form will come from unity and will support only unity in the world. That compassion can do miracles, and arises from that true Heart that is everywhere, as Ramana Maharshi said.
What can we do in front of a crumbling world in which everything seems to be more and more divided?
We are Emptiness that contemplates all form through the human experience. The Heart is this Emptiness that meditates the world. Abiding in the compassion of the empty Heart allows us to dissolve any apparent contradictions and divisions we see in the world, not because we resolve these polarities but because they can all co-exist and dissolve in our Being. In the Heart there is no need to split ourselves into two and polarize into right and wrong, you or me, your truth or my truth - all this can simultaneously exist and be contained in Emptiness.
Morgan Hill
Living Compassion, Manifesting a New Reality
Can we remain naked of self images in front of the ignorance of the world? Resting beyond the dualistic game of guilt and blame, the empty Heart sees Love moving in every action and relates only to itself.
True compassion can be in certain cases very controversial, especially when there is a strong tendency to take sides. The ego-concept blinds us to recognize that there is only pure Awareness that moves through all forms. Where Love does not know itself consciously, its expression will be filtered and sometimes even perverted into what we could call evil or darkness. This lack of self recognition is the source of any violence, shame, guilt or blame. Compassion is the ability, by Awareness, to recognize and acknowledge only itself everywhere.
Our deepest essence, Pure Consciousness, is just apparently hidden behind the game of personality and it can - through meditation - re-absorb within itself all ignorance. Standing in the Heart in the face of conflict, we can stop holding on to any position whatsoever, allowing the burning of any defense mechanism. It leads us to stand in the rawness of vulnerability, that is openness itself.
This openness is meeting the world, and ourselves, with a completely transpersonal compassion - it is seeing yourself as the other, feeling their pain as yours. It is Love in action - an exquisite divinely human quality.
As Consciousness you can take that suffering into your Heart, because despite where it appears, ultimately it is all yours. The Heart, as Pure Awareness though the human form, can transform everything in itself.
This living from the Heart becomes a service of our community, embodying our understanding and “walking our talk”.
Compassion can be revolutionary dropping of attachment to any ideas, letting the Heart live us from the mystery and responding just to its silent voice.
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.
Hayes Ballroom
Being at its Best, Life Living itself
Rooted and flowing with awareness and curiosity, each one of us has a steady genuine interest in the heart of the matter, within activity and about behavior. The root of the word friend and freedom is the same, a clue to function as compassion within and without. Our true nature already does function this way, welcoming everything equally. A constancy that meets the ever changing with a resilience born of clarity, love, mountain strength, eternality, timeless patience and a strong dose of humor. Like Noah's Ark, this one heart that we are, welcomes aboard the animals or polarities soothing and balancing them back to oneness. Joy and sorrow, freedom and bondage, ignorance and wisdom, tension and relaxation, hatred and love. All are resolved, dissolved and solved in the Stillness of the Heart. It is notable how wisdom can show us our true nature, but it is compassion, kindness and deep listening that liberate the body and mind from old fashioned services, the past and uncomfortable tendencies. Yes, wisdom, a felt sense of space and enough rootedness allow us to slow down and be with what is calling us. Rather than restlessly postponing or distracting ourselves. The unshakeble knowing that not everything is as it appears to be or only its function, allows for a respectful curiosity. A deeper listening, slowing down from doing to being and suddenly, there is a true meeting. Heart to Heart. What a pleasure to be truly intimate within, and with what is from moment to moment. Neither running from or towards. Freedom and love exploring itself, meeting itself. Free to be, free to love and be love. Luckily, no time is required for beingness to be. No effort needed to be still. No work required to rest!
San Martin
Conversation with Pamela Wilson
Monterey Room
Panel - The Reality of Self Love
The lived reality of self-love is essential to the embodiment of nondual awareness. When we look beyond the idea that self-love is just about reinforcing a limited ego identification, we begin to see it as a multi-faceted, radiant gem of infinite worth. This gem, as a whole, is the very basis of the movement toward Truth, while its facets offer vital medicines that heal, awaken, and transform the mind, heart, and body. What are the facets of self-love? What role does self-love play in the field of nondual awakening and embodiment? How and when might an orientation toward self-love be a distraction from real clarity? Our panel will share their unique perspectives on the forms and functions of true self-love, how it shows up in our lived human experience, and how it is and becomes an endless embrace of One. Lovers of Truth and humanity, please join us for this beautiful, rich, and meaningful exploration.
Madrone
EEG Gamma oscillations are emerging as a distinct signature of ASC.
Oscillations of neuronal activity (brainwaves) in different frequency ranges reflect the electrical code of cortical network dynamics and correlate with internal states of subjective consciousness. Gamma oscillations (35-100 Hz) are involved in key cortical computation by coordinating the activity among spatially distributed neural networks and binding spatiotemporal properties of cortical responses involved in behavior perception and cognition. Recent studies of Tibetan monks adept at compassionate meditation discovered a robust increase in Gamma power. Further studies reported increased Gamma in other meditative traditions.
EEG studies of entheogen induced visionary altered states of consciousness (ASC), viz. Ayahuasca and psilocybin also reported increased Gamma. Also, lucid dreaming correlates with increased Gamma and can be induced by tACS neurostimulation at 40 Hz. My own EEG research has revealed increased Gamma power induced by inhalation of DMT (both N,N-DMT and 5-MeO- DMT). I’ve also discovered increased Gamma power during Kundalini activations producing orgasmic states and bioenergetic healing states. Thus Gamma oscillations are emerging as a distinct EEG signature of ASC that correlate with the attainment of higher states of consciousness, compassion, love, happiness, flow states and positive emotional wellbeing.
Neil Theise MD is a practicing pathologist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he is Professor of Pathology and of Medicine. He is considered a thought leader in fields of liver diseases, liver stem cells, and adult stem cell plasticity. In recent years, interests in complexity theory applications to biology have led to novel insights regarding stem cell biology, non-Western models of the body, science-spirituality dialogue, and consciousness studies. With Menas Kafatos he is formulating a panpsychist approach to the relationship between consciousness and the universe. He is a Senior Student at the Village Zendo in NYC.
Hayes Ballroom
Everything is not a Thing: Inherent Compassion of a Self-Organizing Universe
Buddhism teaches the emptiness of inherent existence or, in other words, "everything is not a thing." Contemporary physics, chemistry and biology, seen through the simplifying lens of complexity theory (it sounds complex, but is actually simple) shows us that the non-dual realm is in complementarity with all of duality, that the presence/absence of boundaries, of separation, is dependent on perspective. "Wisdom" is seeing the world without delusion; science is one means to washing delusion from one's mind. In doing so, the inherent compassionate nature of the universe and of every being within and of that universe, therefore, as well, is revealed.
Sharp, frank, and fearless, that’s Buddhist psychologist, sex therapist, and author Dr. Cheryl Fraser. She is a sought after speaker with a rare combination of academic credibility, humor, and life-changing advice. A Fulbright Scholar, she’s conducted research to discover what makes love and sexual passion last a lifetime. Cheryl writes about relationships for publications including Mindful Magazine and Thrive Global. She is the author of the newly released Buddha’s Bedroom–The Mindful Loving Path to Sexual Passion and Lifelong Intimacy. She created the Become Passion online course for couples – and 8-week makeover for your love affair with weekly live coaching. As a Buddhist teacher, Cheryl has studied and practiced in both the Theravadan Vipassana and Tibetan Vajrayana traditions for 25 years. She is the guiding teacher for Island Dharma in Canada where she leads meditation classes and retreats.
Visit her at www.drcherylfraser.com to sign up for weekly free teachings on love, sex and mindfulness and at www.islanddharma.com
San Juan Bautista
Mindfulness, Love, and Sex: How to Bring Buddha into the Bedroom
What do mindfulness and sex have to do with each other? A lot. Buddhist theory and meditation have deep relevance to relationship and sex therapy. The intense eroticism of a new relationship is based on novelty. Sexual boredom often accompanies familiarity. But what if you could create novelty with the one you are with – using your mind? Move from a sense of disconnected separation to the bliss-union of awakened love? Buddha’s wisdom and new research converge when we apply meditation techniques to your relationship. Mindfulness has been shown to improve couples communication, conflict management, and increase sexual arousal, desire, and overall intimacy. It turns out great love—and great sex—are all in your head.
But what are the practical applications? Does mindfulness really help people have better relationships? The short answer is yes. Drawn from my new book Buddha’s Bedroom—The Mindful Loving Path to Sexual Passion and Lifelong Intimacy—foreword by Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman—this mini-workshop is designed to help participants apply Buddhist philosophy and mindfulness to romantic/sexual relationships.
Topics include:
· Don’t change your Mate, Change your Mind—How Right View can revitalize your love affair
· Never say “I’m Not in The Mood” ever again - Why you need to discriminate between physical arousal and mental desire—the two keys to the erotic engine—and use mindfulness to recreate the attraction and passion you used to have
· The difference between a climax orgasm and a tantric energy orgasm—How you can ride the sexual response cycle to sexual bliss
· The Seven Factors of Enlightened Sex
· From ME to WE to ONE – dissolving, non-self, and the act of making love beyond the body
Plus, join me at the New Harbinger booth for a book signing and Q and A .
Hayes Ballroom
The Enneagram: Nonduality and the Vulnerable Heart
The journey into authentic nondual experience usually entails an ongoing experience of paradox, and one of the great paradoxes of nondual teachings is the apparent dichotomy between the vast stillness and openness of our fundamental consciousness and the visceral sense of being here—embodied and open-hearted. It takes a while before many of us discover that the way to genuine nondual awareness is through deeply embodied presence. Without this, our realizations tend to turn into memories, and lead to various dissociative or detached positions that are actually ego defenses against suffering. Yet central to the original teachings of the Enneagram is the idea that our core suffering can be transformed by bring presence and compassion to it. Indeed, each of the nine points represent particular transformational pathways from the dense suffering of egoic existence into the embodied qualities the awakened heart. In this presentation, we will explore these nine transformations of the heart, and how they assist us in our capacity to actually live our realizations in our work, relationships, and daily lives.
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
The Fire Between Feminine and Masculine
The urge to unite draws us together like irresistible magnets and we push each other away with equal intensity. The absolute contains these polarities, which makes the dance juicy, fascinating and agonizing too. We have created a rift between women and men, between the masculine and feminine energy and it plays out on a grand scale across the world, in our relationships and within our own souls.
How do we bridge the gap and heal the wounds of centuries? How do we engage to bring forth understanding and deep connection? The crucible to real love is often found where we least expect it: in the separation between the feminine and masculine, within the knots we encounter in relationships and our own being. It asks us to stand in the fire with each other, to meet across the chasm through a new way of communicating and relating.
A call is resounding throughout the lands and hearts to come together in an enliving, liberating and authentic way so we can create a world, where love is given the prime seat in the space between us here and now.
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
Live Practice of Mindful Framing to Transform your Anxiety into Vital Energy
I will take you through an amazing visualization journey into your mind while teaching you the practice of Mindful Framing. You will learn a revolutionary approach to manage anxiety and stress through the creation of solid frames of mind leading to mental, emotional and physical wellbeing.
The five steps of Mindful Framing are ideally practiced in the morning, in a relaxed position, to visualize and focus on:
1. Recognizing your daily TRIGGERS OF ANXIETY while riding an imaginary bus
2. Leveraging your FIVE SENSES while experiencing virtual sensations
3. Connecting with MOTHER NATURE while traveling through a fictional landscape
4. Harmonizing your EMOTIONS with those of others while watching a symbolic “emotional tree”
5. Invigorating your immune system while exploring your ORGANISM with your “mind’s eye”
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.
SupremeRealityGuide Birinder Bhullar has been in a direct and personal relationship of love, faith, and surrender to Supreme Reality for many lives.
He was born and grew up in the foothills of the Himalayas. The Supreme Being revealed to him at the age of 6. It reawakened his journey of past lives.
He was in immersion within the Supreme Reality in his hermitage in the Himalayas. His family of spiritual seekers was with him.
As per the command of Supreme Being, they left to put people on the right path in life.
They call themselves the Supreme Reality Caravan and travel worldwide to reveal and guide.
www.mysticbirinder.com
San Martin
Entering the Path to Experience Supreme Reality: Path of the Heart
Love began Creation. Love organized Creation. Only through love, each Self can complete the journey through Creation to return to the Supreme Source—The Supreme Reality.
Being on a path is essential for the journey. I will share the Path of the Heart, which is my path and how to enter it.
Peta Morton is a Reiki and mindfulness teacher and a professional sensitive working with clients around the world. Following a life-threatening illness and a spontaneous series of profound awakening experiences and has been exploring the mystery of our humanity ever since through sound, music, vibration, cymatics, light and digital systems. Endlessly curious, she has delved into many types of vibrational medicine, energy psychology, philosophy, earth energies, alchemy, numerology and astrology in order to reach a deeper understanding of the human condition and the mind-emotion-body relationship. Peta is the author of Ancient Teachings for Modern Times: the way to a rich and deeply satisfying life, and a regular contributor and volunteer at SAND. Her short online documentaries The Geometry of Love and Imaging the Hidden Geometry of Reiki provide thought-provoking insights into the mechanics of consciousness and the effect of that which normally passes unseen and unheard upon the material world.
San Juan Bautista
The Geometry of Love
What does it mean to be a human being living harmoniously or dis-harmoniously within a complex and ever-changing network of countless other nested systems?
Who are you really? What are you? Your physical body is constructed from a variety of chemical elements, assembled in such a way as to form molecules, cells, blood, bones, organs, teeth, hair. It is constantly changing and renewing itself. You are not the same person you were even a few moments ago. You are made from the very same basic building blocks of life that permeate our entire galaxy, bound together in complex ways to form intricately detailed structures, yet you are so much more than the sum of your physical parts.
You are a collection of thoughts and experiences, and the information you have accumulated about them, a bundle of beliefs, memories and emotions. You are the stories you tell yourself. A master translator of frequency and vibration, you are a wondrous synthesizer of life. Your bodily instrument is a musical marvel, constantly generating a glorious spectrum of sound, both audible and inaudible, combining electrical signals of different frequencies. You are simultaneously a transmitter, receiver and interpreter of data, like some magnificent router. You are an array of ordered photons, particles and waves of light. Above all, you are a process, an integral part of life seeking to experience itself.
Join Peta to explore your True Nature through sound, rhythm, vibration, frequency, cymatics, geometry, astrology, alchemy and personal experience, as she playfully demonstrates how our minds and emotions really do affect our physical reality.
Guadalupe
Experiential: Gong Bath Meditation/Sacred Sound Healing
The auditory constructs of ‘sacred sound’ found within a Gong Bath™ will bend space and awaken that portion of the universal mind within you to deeper understandings of Self.
”To see a world in a grain of sand,
and a heaven in a wild flower,
hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
and eternity in an hour.”
The power of William Blake’s words resonate within this poly-tonal, multi-octave vibratory experience: Anticipate deepening insights into transcendent wisdom, compassion and miracles.
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
Panel - Sex, Money, Power, Trauma & Ethics in Spiritual Communities
Join us for a timely conversation exploring a new paradigm supporting psychological health for spiritual teachers, leaders, and communities. Many scandals, traumas, and the common psychological dysfunctions litter the modern spiritual and religious landscape. Instead of focusing on what went wrong, we believe we can learn from past mistakes and collectively focus on spiritual integrity, trauma, shadow work, embodiment, psychological growth, and ethics, in order to cultivate qualities that create healthy, mature spiritual teachers, students, and communities, as well as success and integrity on the path.
Let us together meet the challenging topics of sex, power, money, trauma, hierarchies, groupmind/groupthink, and spiritual bypassing in a supportive and proactive environment. Join us as we work to explore new models based on shared human values while honoring our spiritual nature.
Together we will examine:
• What qualities characterize a psychologically healthy teacher, student, and spiritual community?
• Is there a legitimate role for conventional therapy or other psychologically healing modalities on the spiritual path?
• How do new understandings of trauma research and healing impact our understanding of integrated psychospiritual growth?
• What defines a healthy teacher/student relationship? What is at play when a teacher consciously or unconsciously cultivates dependency in their students?
• What is group mind and group think within spiritual communities and how does it contribute to unhealthy behavior or cult-like tendencies?
• Does the contemporary spiritual community share clear, ethical practices and processes?
At the end of this explorative discussion, are we open to taking on the challenge to support change both within our personal lives and within our spiritual communities? Together we will mobilize to empower ourselves and each other to be the change we want to see within the current climate of contemporary spirituality.
Monterey Room
Knowledge is Different in Different Levels of Consciousness
Do we have free will? Is there even a “we” or is there no personal self? Is everything perfect just as it is or is or are there problems to be solved? Or is the solution to all problems the realization that there are no problems? Are we all already enlightened or do we have to “attain” enlightenment through years of practice? And how about practice? Does it reinforce the sense of a practicer—a personal self—or can it lead to liberation from the confinement by that sense? Are gurus passé, or should they still play a role in contemporary spirituality? Does non-duality—Oneness—imply that there are no degrees of spiritual evolution? Are all forms of life equally valuable?
All of these questions have been raised in interviews I’ve conducted, and usually not as questions. Popular spiritual teachers have asserted one or another position to the exclusion of its alternatives. I have usually responded with “yes but”. Nisargadatta Maharaj and others have emphasized the importance of culturing the ability to appreciate paradox—to accommodate contradictory viewpoints within a broader perspective. After all, Nature does this. Water can be a solid, a liquid, or a gas. Its components, hydrogen and oxygen, are both completely unlike H2O. They, in turn, bear no resemblance to their subatomic components. And so on. More fundamental levels of nature do not invalidate the more manifest forms and properties to which they give rise. Reality is different at different levels of Nature’s functioning, and likewise, knowledge is different in different levels of consciousness.
Brahman or God are said to be all-consuming—the repository of all relative realities, no matter how dissimilar. If we aspire to Brahman Consciousness or God Realization, should our perspective evolve to follow suit?
In addition to this topic, I will field any and all questions.
Monterey
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP — Moving from Social Discord to Harmony
This workshop will explore some of the key concepts and techniques in the HeartMath Institute’s Activating the Heart of Teams program. This innovative program combines leading heart-brain science with a tested skillset for real-life application so individuals can flourish, which is at the heart of harmonious and robust teams or groups of individuals in classrooms, boardrooms, families, communities and organizations.
As our world experiences dramatic change and the stress it is causing in societies, people from all cultures are looking for practical ways to expand their heart connections in their communities to affect social change through compassionate awareness and actions. When people learn how to connect more from the heart and interact more harmoniously, we can work toward creating the kind of world in which we all want to live—one of deeper caring, kindness, connection and cooperation.
This workshop will provide the science and practical skills for moving from discord to harmony, raising personal vibration, creating flow in non-flowing situations, and how we can make more meaningful connections with others. An important aspect of the program is the new group coherence technology that provides real-time feedback of a group’s collective heart coherence level.
In this workshop you will learn skills that lead to:
• Increased positive energy and bonding.
• More appreciation, care, kindness and cooperation among individuals.
• Better communication.
• Enhanced collective intuition for increasing creativity and finding solutions to problems.
• Decrease in social discord and adversarial interactions.
• Viewing things from a more inclusive perspective.
• Motivation and momentum to make something purposeful happen.
• Increased sense of well-being and appreciation of collective action.
• Fewer mistakes and errors.• Faster and more accurate decision-making.
• Shorter meeting times.
If you plan to attend this workshop please review and submit these Three Invitations (https://www.soulsign.com/open-human-heart/open-human-heart-agreement/)
Hayes Ballroom
Heartfelt Connectedness and Love: The Key to Getting In-Synch
As our world experiences dramatic change and polarizations, and we see the stress it is causing, people from all cultures are looking for practical ways to deepen heart connections in their communities and affect social change through compassionate awareness and actions. This presentation explores new research on group coherence and the importance of physiological synchronization in increasing group cooperation, collaboration, harmony and performance. The term coherence always implies harmonious relationships and connectedness between the various parts of a larger system. Social coherence can be achieved by the establishment of stable and harmonious relationships, between couples, within families, groups or people within larger organizations. A number of studies have shown that feelings of cooperation, trust, compassion and increased pro-social behaviors depend largely on the establishment of a spontaneous synchronization of physiological rhythms between group members. In order for physiological activity of individuals to synchronize, a signal of some type must convey information between them. The model that best fits the data from various studies is built on field theory and nonlocal information exchange where information about the entire group is simultaneously distributed to all of the group members, creating a “social hologram”. We have suggested that biologically generated magnetic fields may act as a carrier wave for information transfer between individuals and group members. The most commonly found factor that underlies our ability to get in-synch with our deeper self, others, and the rhythms of the Earth is heartfelt connectedness and love.
The SACRA Theater Troupe is the embodiment of what Zhen Dao (SACRA’s founder and director and the creator of the MogaDao practice tradition) calls “Immanence Theater.” In SACRA there are no costumes, props, sets, or furnishing. There are only the players’ bodies and the “Threshing Floor” or playing space, which is a naked rectangle measuring 20ft X 24ft. This minimalism serves a single purpose: the rediscovery of theater as a landscape for Aristotelian catharsis, or the revaluing of existence through enactments of abject vulnerability and tenderness. These enactments are not, however, “performances,” but rather experiences carried forth toward the sacrament of the audience. SACRA players sacrifice “roles” for reality, effectively revaluing performance as the essence of experience. Informed by rigorous training in all of the disciplines of the MogaDao tradition, SACRA combines elements of classical theater, ritual theater, qigong, martial arts, modern dance, and choral and sound emanations.
Hayes Ballroom
Eros, The Fugitive
EROS, THE FUGITIVE is a series of woven episodes depicting the endless reach for Eros, and the tenderness, longing, heartbreak, and salvation that that reach engenders. Through embodied allegories of care and fracture that are at once historical and immediately present, EROS, THE FUGITIVE is the visceral voice of human consciousness crying out for itself and the beyond-human world.
Swami Sarvapriyananda was appointed as Minister and Spiritual Leader of the Vedanta Society of New York in January 6, 2017.
Prior, he had served as assistant minister of the Vedanta Society of Southern California for 13 months, beginning in 2015.
Swami joined the Ramakrishna Math and Mission in 1994 and received Sannyas in 2004. Before being posted to the VSSC’s Hollywood Temple, Swami served as an acharya (teacher) of the monastic probationers training center at Belur Math. He has served the Ramakrishna Math and Mission in various capacities including being the Vice Principal of the Deoghar Vidyapith Higher Secondary School, Principal of the Shikshana Mandira Teacher Education College at Belur Math, and the first Registrar of the Vivekananda University at Belur Math.
Hayes Ballroom
Two Steps to the Not-Two: Exploring, Understanding and Applying Advaita Vedanta
Advaita Vedanta is the classic and paradigmatic school of nondual philosophy. Put simply, the essential teaching is 'The Absolute (Brahman) is the only reality, the world (jagat) is an appearance (of that nondual Absolute) and the sentient being (jiva) is none other than the nondual Absolute'—in Sanskrit 'Brahma Satyam, jagat mithya, jiva brahmaiva na para'. There is however, a secret to grasping this nondual teaching. The teaching is given in two steps—first, the well known 'neti, neti' 'not this, not this' leading to the realization of our spiritual nature and second, seeing that this newly discovered spiritual nature is nondual. Clarity about both steps is necessary to realize nonduality (Advaita). My talk will aim at achieving this clarity.
Hayes Ballroom
Dialogue - The Expression of Spirituality in Relationships
What constitutes the essence of a true relationship? And how is this related to our spiritual nature? We will explore the different ways spiritual teachings and traditions view relationship. And how relationship can be part of our practice, and at the same time enriched by our realization. An understanding not usually known by society and rarely discussed in spiritual teachings.
SEAN W. MURPHY is a formally recognized Zen teacher (Sensei) in the White Plum Lineage of Zen, as well as the recipient of a 2018 National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Creative Writing. The most recent edition of his One Bird, One Stone: 108 Contemporary Zen Stories (Hampton Roads 2013/St Martins 2002), won the 2014 International Book Award in the Eastern Religions category. He is also the author of three novels with Bantam Dell Books. His most recent, The Time of New Weather was named Best Novel in the 2009 National Press Women's Communication Awards, while his debut, The Hope Valley Hubcap King, won the Hemingway Award for a First Novel and was an American Booksellers Association BookSense 76 recommended book. He is also the author of a Pulitzer-nominated third novel, The Finished Man. His current novel, Wilson’s Way, won the 2014 Dana Award in the Novel, as well as the 2017 William Faulkner Wisdom Award for novel-in-progress. His essays, articles and short stories have been widely published and anthologized.
Monterey Room
Emptiness Means Togetherness: Zen and the Paradox of Relationship
Emptiness, Oneness, Interconnectedness—these are all common ways reality is described in Buddhism. Do they point to the same thing? Different things? If so, how many realities can there be? How do we hold the apparent paradox of no fixed self vs the obvious multiplicity of our relationships? How do we reconcile the indivisibility of the Absolute with the relative appearance of the 10,000 things? And, as the song goes, “What’s Love got to do with it?” Do the techniques offered by Zen practice present a means of answering such questions? Fortunately, in Zen ‘not knowing’ is a highly esteemed principle, and coming to know the great mystery deeply does not require explaining it. In this presentation we’ll apply our ‘Beginners Minds’ to exploring and clarifying these and other such questions, which have beguiled and frustrated human beings since our beginnings.
Selene Calloni Williams - a contemporary mystic who, through her books, videos and seminaries, has taught how to imagine and create a new reality to an incredible number of people. Her book "Mother Mantra, the ancient shamanic yoga of non-duality", published from Inner Traditions in USA and in several others languages, is a powerful tool for overcoming subconscious programming, releasing your fears, and spiritually fusing with divine joy. She is a psychologist, writer, documentarian and anthropologist. Her spiritual journey started in Sri Lanka where she met her first teacher who initiated her to Shamanic Yoga and where she practiced meditation in a Theravada Buddhist monastery. On her return to Europe, she encountered the psychoanalyst James Hillman, who introduced her to the world of archetypal psychology. Selene has refined the “symbolic - imaginal method” to serve personal growth. She has also spent many years in Siberia and Mongolia deepening her understanding of Shamanic traditions. She wrote several books and articles on Turko-Mongolian shamanism.
Hayes Ballroom
The Mother Mantra
The Mother Mantra belongs to the ancient tradition of shamanic yoga. It presents a practical, simple, yet incredibly powerful system to profoundly change the way we interpret our life, allowing us to acquire awareness and the ability to achieve our aims and our dreams. Even more than that, the Mother Mantra is the path to change a world, a journey towards freedom from social conditioning. If you feel that a revolutionary spiritual leader is waiting inside of you, the Mother Mantra is your most powerful tool to make it happen. As part of the tradition of shamanic yoga, the roots of the Mother Mantra are to be found in all the most ancient mystical traditions of the world. It is nowadays practiced by leading business and entrepreneurs all over the world and has been adopted by many schools of counselling, meditation and traditional yoga as a powerful and holistic tool that provides uncountable benefits for both the body and the mind. Its practices rely on fostering ecstasy—the state in which all shamans, artists, poets operate, the basis of all creativity and happiness.
The tradition of the Mother Mantra sees mystics as the bearers of a vital mission: the mission of returning the feeling of sacredness to a desacralized world. In this are the keys to a human life on earth that can sustain both itself and the rest of the planet. For our species faces challenges that do not require simple ecology, but deep ecology, a revolution in the value and cognitive systems on which our behaviour as a society are based. For such revolutionaries—be they mystics, shamans, poets, artists, geniuses or fools—the Mother Mantra is a concrete path to fulfilment, happiness, prosperity, for themselves and the cosmos.
Guadalupe
Experiential: Achieving Lasting Inspiration and Energy Through Shamanic Yoga
All the practices of shamanic yoga take place in a state of ecstasy. We must bear in mind that this condition belongs to us by nature; what we can do is increase our awareness of it. If we are to talk about shamanic yoga, then we must consider ecstasy as the founding stone of all practice, as the path that leads to becoming a shaman. To experience ecstasy, one needs to contemporarily undergo the “mother experience” and the “son experience”. The “mother experience” is achieved through the tools of visualisation, devotion, the defeat of fear through love. For the “son experience” we rely on the so-called “flowing sequences”. These are harmonious sequences of asana yoga postures followed by breathing exercises, specific mantras, mudras (that is, psychic gestures) and visualization exercises, such as the “psychic forest”. There are sequences able to cater to very different kinds of needs, such as to stimulate good sleep during the night, getting energized in the morning, turning anger or frustration into positive energy, or even constructing a healthy, harmonious relationship with food and the way we eat, or attaining the power of money. Mystics today must abandon the role attributed to them by organized religion and profoundly revolutionize all those symbols and myths according to which the majority of humans behave. As a powerful means of re-establishing a connection with our guide spirit, the invisible presence that is able to guide us to a life of prosperity and enlightenment, shamanic yoga is now practiced daily by many successful managers and businessmen.
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
How Come we aren't One yet? Or are we?: Phenomenology of Relationship
Relationship is typically defined as the way in which two or more concepts, objects or people are connected—or—the state of being connected. Internally, how we relate to our thoughts, feelings, and emotions as well as, externally, to people, places, things and events—images how much we experience peace and joy, spontaneity and warmth as well as worry, depression, and anxiety. Ah ha! Love, The Human Condition.
Let us dwell for a few moments on how to relate such that we experience and share peace and joy and actually love. How? Learning to engender the spirit of equanimity and not taking life as a personal event. How do we engender a equanimous perspective? How do we show-up in life with composure, calmness, levelheadedness, self-possession, self-control, even-temperedness, coolness, cool-headedness and presence of mind? How do we take life not as an impersonal event but as a non-personal event? How are we love?
Hint: let’s discuss the Human ego, the source of the so-called ten thousand tribulations. Let’s take a look at our delusions (false beliefs), illusions (false perceptions) and allusions (false stories about ourselves and life). Let’s unfold how we are the Eye of the Needle through which, with the thread of our intention, we do mend the fabric of our life. Let’s relate with conscious, awake awareness. Let’s just laugh and be merry, be quiet and still; it is all one in the same, is it not?
Seth Kostek, Ph.D., is currently the Vice President of Santa Clara Systems, and author of the forthcoming book, The Kostek Interpretation. Seth holds undergraduate and doctoral degrees respectively from Georgetown University and UC Berkeley. Through experiment, meditative practice, and extensive systematic studies of Consciousness his scientific insight into relativity, quantum physics, and black hole thermodynamic geometric information theory has lead to the unveiling that the Actuality of quantum spin angular momentum (ħ) is a description of Consciousness. ħ expressed in terms of Gibbs and Bekenstein-Hawking entropic equations, ћ = [ -4 Σ pᵢ ln pᵢ | s · m · kg · m s⁻² ], elucidates that the substance of the illusion of the finite content in Experience is Knowing the interference produced from the simultaneous abstraction and composition of complementary opposite limits within concepts as holographic interference information; thus, unifying science and Nonduality into a holistic model of Conscious Singularity.
For more information see https://sethkostek.com/
Madrone
Visual perception mediated by light traversing 4-dimensional spacetime continua is an illusion
Knowing images mediated by seeing light from existent physical objects is misinterpretation of perception. Expression of quantum spin angular momentum in terms of Gibbs and black hole thermodynamic entropy, suggesting that the substance of the content in experience is knowing the non-physical simultaneous abstraction and composition of complementary opposite limits within concepts as holographic interference information, is confirmed by experimental assay of image appearance. Contrary to the material physicalist theory of image production an unknown object produces knowing image without unknown-to-known object conversion; signifying that physical objects do not exist. Since experience is the knowing of content by consciousness, and the substance of content in experience is knowing conceptual limits made of knowing complementarity, the entirety of experience is a conscious singularity.
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.
Monterey Room
Relationship and Synchronicity in Quantum Physics
In the theory of quantum mechanics, it is experimentally established that things (or rather properties of things, such as mass or location) do not exist in and of themselves. Ingenious experiments testing “Bell’s inequalities” have convinced even die hard materialists that, without relationships and interactions, there are no material things. All the loopholes in these experiments have been closed, including a recent experiment that relied on starlight many thousands of light years away to decide the settings of the equipment, ensuring that human choice had nothing to do with the matter. What does all this mean? Theories of “relationality” makes exactly this claim. In this presentation, I report on the most recent work that I and others are doing on quantifying the theory of relational quantum mechanics. Using the beautiful mathematics of Fourier transforms, I will show that the “location” of an object is not a real thing. All that is specified by the laws of physics is a “trajectory” or path through space and time. It is only when two entities interact—what we call a measurement—that the idea of specific locations and times become real. These represent the time and place of the interaction, not of the things in and of themselves. Hence, from a quantifiable perspective in quantum physics, it appears that only relationships are real.
Prajna Ginty, MA–Modern Mystic Shamanic Practitioner, Hakomi Therapist, Meditation Teacher, and Spiritual Mentor.
Prajna has been practicing and training in non-dual mystical traditions, depth transpersonal psychology, and body-centered therapies for over thirty years. Raising two daughters with cerebral palsy shattered the illusion of her idealistic spirituality and catapulted her into a practice that accounts for all human experience. Her life illuminates the capacities of consciousness to engender healing as well as the necessity to heal trauma in all dimensions. Prajna’s professional training informs her understanding of neurology, the body-heart-brain, and the healing and integration of traumatic experiences into our fundamental wholeness. She provides a rare fusion of plant medicine, non-dual mysticism, meditative inquiry, and body-heart-brain somatic therapy. Prajna teaches internationally and has published numerous videos, blogs, articles and the best-selling book Edge of Grace, A Fierce Awakening to Love. She offers private sessions, an online embodiment practice, meditative inquiry meetings, mystical shamanic healing courses, and retreats.
www.AwakeningPrajna.com.
Madrone
Honoring the Intelligence of Master Plant Teachers to Inform our Collective Capacity to Heal and Reconnect
Western medicine (and often times spiritual awakening) has not been successful at addressing deeper issues of the human experience such as addiction, depression, anxiety, trauma, P.T.S.D, loneliness, isolation and inherited ancestral pain. These conditions are endemic in modern society and significantly impact how we relate to and celebrate every aspect of who we are. Trauma is stored in the brain and expresses itself through the body in all relationships. Indigenous Curanderos (doctors) refer to this as “soul sickness,” and for thousands of years have employed plant medicine to catalyze healing in both physical and spiritual dimensions.
Shamanism, like mysticism, is a sacred calling born from the deepest love and care. It is the hidden medicine our ancestors practiced that has since been atrociously suppressed and replaced by hierarchical, materialistic, and male-dominated allopathic medicine. As a species, we have never been more in need of redirection and most importantly reconnection. We are loudly being summoned to reestablish our relationship with the sacred feminine, address the missed experience of mothering each other, our planet and ourselves. I feel there is a deep yearning amidst us to learn to live in reverential reciprocity with all of existence.
In this session Prajna will highlight the responsible and respectful use of plant medicines particularly Ayahuasca, Huachuma and Mapacho (sacred tobacco). She will address the challenges and advantages of employing sacred ceremony (integrated with non-dual mysticism and various therapeutic processes) as a remedy for trauma and interpersonal and collective fragmentation. She will speak to the power of master plant teachers to facilitate reconnection with and integration of sacred wholeness. She will underline the importance of what she refers to as the open clinic as a means to engender deep healing on many levels—emotional, physical, interpersonal, psychic, spiritual, and collective.
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
San Jose
Experiential: 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 processes and exercises to sensitize the body in relationship to another, and explore ways to deepen into an understanding of the principles of intimacy.
Swami Brahmananda is manager of the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat on Paradise Island, Bahamas. He is a highly-regarded senior member of The International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centres, a non-profit organization named after Swami Sivananda. He is a long-time senior teacher of Sivananda Yoga Teacher Training Courses and Advanced Yoga Teacher Training Courses. He is a much-loved meditation teacher, and also teaches about karma yoga, bhakti yoga, raja yoga, and the sacred scriptures of the yoga tradition. His sense of humor and practical outlook makes ancient wisdom relatable and transformative for his students as they navigate the challenges of daily life.
San Martin
Devotion is the Mother of Wisdom: The Practice of Bhakti
Devotion is a way of relating that invites us to merge, to become fully absorbed, with the object of our devotion. When the object of our devotion is Source, or God, or Consciousness, we merge with this knowing, and we experience ourselves as One with it. Advaita Vedanta is the nondual teaching, and Yoga is the practice, that gives us a direct experience with the true nature of reality and of ourselves.
Join us for this exploration of Bhakti, the practice of Love and Devotion in the Yoga tradition. Explore the ever-deepening stages of awareness and how to remove the illusions that stand in our way from knowing ourselves as the divine. Learn how the practice of love and devotion is the mother of all wisdom, and brings us to the limitless happiness and freedom that we all seek.
Candace Cave, on the SAND registration staff (come say hello mornings at the reg desk), is a Senior Teacher & Teacher Trainer for Judith Blackstone’s Realization Process (RP). Realization Process allows each person to be their own guru of enlightenment. Candace doesn’t claim to be enlightened, but she is stable in her awakened embodied nondual experience because of RP. Candace first sought awakening via Yoga and TM in 1974 and evolved into teaching embodiment as she developed a somatic self-healing practice, Energy Tune-ups, in 1987. She is co-author, with Dr Zeb Lancaster, of BodyMind Boundaries for Beginners. Her nondual experiences first arose spontaneously during 27-years sailing 40,000 miles in a 35’ boat. Wholeness of being, supported by Realization Process, provides Candace a stable nondual experience she embodies even while settled on land. Candace teaches RP workshops, groups and individuals online, in Ashland, Oregon, and worldwide.
Lower Level Lobby
Nondual Embodiment: The Ground of Love
Nondual embodiment is a whole-body experience that awakens the most subtle dimension of your being, allowing your relationship with all of life to become disentangled yet intimately engaged and fully experienced.
When you inhabit the whole internal space of your body, including your subtle core, you uncover an infinite expanse of undivided, unchanging fundamental consciousness. This is an embodied, nondual experience of unbroken space pervading your body and the environment as a unity. When two people, or a group of people, attune to this fundamental consciousness together, they experience mutual transparency: a unified, single expanse of relational, nondual consciousness.
Nondual Embodiment via Realization Process supports meaningful and refined contact with another, from a deliciously subtle level beneath the surface of the body/mind. And unified wholeness supports us to receive and respond to others with less projection and less fear, from the ground of love.
Realization Process is a meditation method for direct experience of nondual awakening.
Realization Process is also an embodiment practice for personal and relational healing.
This poster presentation is supported with a brief experiential introduction to Realization Process and is offered in partnership with poster presenter Zeb Lancaster, PhD. You will feel how inhabiting the body is different from body awareness. You will have opportunity to uncover the experience of pervasive, unchanging unity, fundamental consciousness, and use nondual embodiment to explore mutual transparency and non-invasive relational contact. Learn to open your heart without leaving your body.
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
Experiential: Qigong for Awakening and Healing Self and Planet
The form of qigong I teach was created in 1989 by a Chinese man, Dr Ming Pang. He had been recognized as a genius at a young age. He studied with 19 grandmasters and he became a doctor of Chinese and Western medicine. Dr. Ming Pang did in-depth studies of Daoism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Quantum Physics. He integrated these into his theories, teachings and practices. D Pang’s form has successfully treated a wide range of illnesses, including my own 20-year struggle with Lyme disease.
In addition to physical healing, these practices have a profound effect on ego identity. Opening to the infinite timeless source of all existence gradually (or not so gradually) awakens us from 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 as embodied infinite love. The joy and peace experienced is independent of outer circumstances.
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. The session is for beginners and experienced practitioners alike. During our time together, we will merge our now expanded wide open hearts into one energy heart and activate a vision of awakening and healing for all of humanity, all sentient beings and Mother Earth herself. Please join me for this precious opportunity to contribute—to bring harmony into life through the love that is our shared being.
Hayes Ballroom
Opening Ceremony
Hayes Ballroom
Panel: Climate Crisis, Grief and Interbeing
While we might be here by divine appointment at this moment in time, we are also stepping into unchartered territories of existence, where the way of life as we know is at stake. Recent research suggests that human societies will experience disruptions to their basic functioning within less than ten years due to climate stress. As we sink deeper into the climate crises of our planet we also face deeper human question.
- What does it mean to be a human being on a spiritual path at these times of crises?
- How do we meet and learn from grief, anger, fear?
- How do we move from despair and overwhelm to awakening and imagination?
- What is conscious activism and justice informed by interbeing?
- Is radical transformation possible and what would it look like?
- How do we prepare for a future in which the only certainty is uncertainty?
- Can we still celebrate all that life is while accepting that our species might only be for a brief flash on the scale of cosmic time?
We will attempt to address some of these questions in our brief conversation.
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.
Monterey Room
An End to Upside Down Thinking
Mark Gober, author of “An End to Upside Down Thinking” and host of the podcast “Where Is My Mind?”, will be discussing 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 Dr. Eben Alexander, Dr. Dean Radin, Dr. Ervin Laszlo, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, actress Goldie Hawn, and others.
Mark is a Partner at a Silicon Valley strategy firm, a former Wall Street investment banker, and former Princeton University tennis team captain. He is also a Board member of The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS).
Hayes Ballroom
Opening Ceremony
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
Moduli Space and the Looking-Glass Relations of Grand Unified Theories of Mathematics : a Higgsino Relation to Love
The looking-glass relations of pure mathematics are among the most significant relations of which we are a part. Grand Unified Theories of Physics use mathematical relations called dualities to unify gravity with the Standard Model. One such duality is the powerful Homological Mirror Symmetry, which relates spaces with different topologies by reflection across their Hodge diamond. Grand Unified Theories of Mathematics use mathematical relations called isomorphisms and quasi-isomorphisms to relate number theory and geometry. One such quasi-isomorphism is the Local Langlands Correspondence, which is a conjectured GUT of global class field theory relating Galois groups and automorphic forms in a filtration series of powerful correspondences. These GUTs work in codimension-infinity moduli space, which is a “higher” geometric parameter space relating subsets across all scales. For instance, the power set of R2, the Euclidean xy plane, contains a copy of every book ever written and all books to be written in all futures, since it contains all subsets of points in R2. Thus, the power set is a magical moduli space!
Madrone
Photostimulation and Awareness
The use of specific bioresonance frequencies on particular points, allows to obtain a state of calm and relaxation that is useful to Western people to start meditative processes and awareness. In my speech I demonstrate how the use of bioresonance frequencies, in the range of visible light, induces an optimization of the parameters of emotional pressure, alignment of the chakras, better communication between the left and right hemispheres, measured through the GDV Bio-well, patent by prof. K. Korotkov, University of St. Petersburg. These are the indispensable conditions for starting a good process of personal and spiritual growth. Treatment with bioresonance frequencies is the starting point for aligning the informational, energetic and physical field in humans and when the three fields are aligned humans become powerful creators of their reality, coming into contact with the unified field.
Such a self-organization ability find its physical basis indeed in a Quantum Field Theory (QFT) interpretation of biological living matter which tells us that the electromagnetic dynamics are the fundamental actors to explicate the biological (and therefore also bio-chemical) phenomenology. As it has been shown since ‘80s the most consistent working hypothesis, to describe living dynamics is that “phase correlations” of some kind, i.e. coherence, play a decisive role in the description of biological matter and its activities. Coherence is the indispensable condition, in the micro as in the macro system, for a state of connection to the unified field.
Daniel Berkman is a San Francisco-based composer, multi-instrumentalist, electronic musician, live looper, producer, singer-songwriter, film and dance score composer and innovator of electro-acoustic music, specializing in the Gravikord and Kora (a 21-stringed West African harp). Daniel has several acclaimed albums to his credit ranging from modern Kora music, planetarium soundtracks, dance & film scores and IDM electronic music. In addition to Kora, Daniel specializes in other instruments of a peculiar nature, ranging from ancient to post modern such as the 18th Century Viola da Gamba, the Roland Handsonic electronic drum and Marxophone & Ukelin among many others. Daniel’s first musical composition, “Immergence” using LyraVR was debuted at the Institute For The Future (IFTF) in 2016 and is a continuation of his innovative approach to music, emerging technologies and philosophy. Daniel’s music can be heard at:
Hayes Terrace
Lunch - Music
Robert is a humble soul whose passion is in the arts of all dimensions. Robert came into the healing arts through a life-changing experience with western medicine and self-healing from an auto-immune disease in his early 20’s. Since then he has gone on to study many fields of wellness becoming a RYT, Reiki Practitioner & starting several wellness businesses. Also an Audio Engineering Graduate of SAE - Amsterdam, he has worked at world renowned FABRIC in London, UK, and some of the top recording studios in the United States yet he has always remained focused on the power of music to move us and touch the core of what we are as human beings. Having now hosted over 100+ workshops and performed at some of the top transformational festivals, wellness conferences, & yoga expo’s in the United States, Robert travels the country continuing to teach and share his passion for The Spirit of Sound.
San Jose
Experiential: The Spirit of Sound
A 90-min experiential workshop sharing ancient & modern insights on sounds influence on us as human beings. Involving the application of a variety of self-healing techniques to be directly experienced in a group environment. These techniques and tools are brought forth to create a sense of community and include exercises such as Breath-Work, Vocal Toning and an Open Sonic Meditation with Quartz Crystal/ Tibetan Singing Bowls, Gong, Chimes & other Harmonically Rich Sounds. Each tool is intended to guide us towards “Self-Empowerment”, as 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.
Known for her versatility and soulful expressiveness, Suellen Primost is a seasoned, conservatory trained cellist, an accomplished improviser, sound healer, composer and recording artist. She is constantly engaged in multimedia collaborations, classical and world music concerts, theatre and spoken word performances, sound healing and freelance recording projects. Suellen performs music spanning many genres: Classical, Celtic, Eastern European, North Indian Classical, Arabic, Latin, Jazz and Ambient. While based in NM, Suellen was principal cellist with The Taos Chamber Orchestra and co-founded Sedona’s first “Jazz on the Rocks” Festival. After moving to CA in 2002, she assumed first cello chair with the Bay Area Chamber Symphony and designed the original score for Herstories: “Bone Songs: Echoes of the Unknown Mother.” She also served 10 years as Music Director for Artship Ensemble, a premier San Francisco's dance theatre and created music for 11 Artship productions, performing with Artship in Belgrade and Prague.
www.reverbnation.com/suellenprimost
Patio
Reception music with Suellen Primost
San Juan Bautista
True Relationship: Creating Healing Connection with Nondual Psychotherapy
In the context of psychotherapy, the client-therapist connection and relationship are of utmost and fundamental importance. However, traditional psychology misses the mark in properly addressing this necessity by holding limited, incomplete, and dualistic therapeutic positions which further reinforce a duality of separation, and limit the transformative power of a true, undifferentiated therapeutic relationship.
In contrast, nondual-based psychotherapy offers the opportunity to dissolve personal and interpersonal dualities, heal from dualistic-based suffering, and give rise to a greater sense of connection to self, to life, and to reality. By creating a relationship based on mutuality within the sacred space of pure awareness, nondual psychotherapy reinforces the rediscovery of our true nature, diffuses the illusion of separation, and promotes healing through the powerful dynamic of true, authentic nondual connection with another human being.
Alexander Aris, MS, MA, is a practitioner of Process Work, also known as Process Oriented Psychology. Process Oriented Psychology is a school of transpersonal psychology and psycho-social facilitation with centers in over 20 countries around the world founded by Arnold Mindell, Ph.D., an MIT trained scientist and former analyst and training analyst at the Jung Institute of Zurich, bringing together depth psychology and new physics. Alex is a graduate of the Process Work Institute of Portland, Oregon, and also holds a BA in philosophy and an MS in mathematics. His special interests include the unification of physics and psychology through a new understanding of mathematics, ecopsychology, and ways in which sacred mathematics and a nondual psychophysics speak to new culture transformational paradigms. www.dreamingalive.net
Monterey Room
The Mathematics of Nonduality
The Mathematics of Nonduality visions a unified psychophysics bringing together physics and psychology through a new understanding of mathematics as both a universal archetypal system and a living process embodied at once in all of psyche and matter. We ‘look and see’ that mathematics is occurring, consciously and unconsciously, in all physical and psychical phenomena. From this perspective all matter is sentient and an embodied universal intelligence is the source of all psychophysical process. In this light the technical issues of incompleteness, undecidability, and indefinability, introduced by the mathematical theorems of Godel and others, and the ‘inexhaustibility of mathematics’ take on a new significance.
Extending the Lucas-Penrose view that Godel’s results imply that the human mind can not be reduced to digital computation, mathematical inexhaustibility becomes a ‘transuniversal’ principle not only of mathematics but also of physics and psychology that implies the existence of a corresponding inexhaustible ‘transuniversal’ psyche. Even in the kind of alternate universes, suggested by some of Stephen Hawking’s last work, in which the laws of physics are different from those of our own universe, inexhaustibility still remains a fundamental law, just as the principles of mathematics understood for what they actually are, must hold true of any possible universe. This psychophysical inexhaustibility is the ‘body and mind of God’.
From this point of view, the discovery of mathematical inexhaustibility is literally an event of cosmic significance and the contemporary ‘crisis’ in our understanding of the foundations of mathematics in the wake of Godel’s work is an intellectually historic moment. This may reflect the psychic and material crises we face as a global culture and we are invited to consider how coming to a new understanding of the nature of mathematics may inform the emerging new cultural paradigm in the face of our planetary crises.
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
Psychedelia: Reflections for a Possible Future
A spiritual journey into the heart of how we can remember who we are before it is too late. Psychedelia tells the story of a possible future for all of humanity. It will challenge each reader to redefine their concepts of who we are, where we come from and where we are going.
Dr. Warter takes the reader through three complete life journeys starting with a possible outcome of today’s planetary dilemma. The protagonist finds himself as Soul, learning lessons that he will need to learn through his next two incarnations. The book covers the gamut of birth, family relationships, growing up, love, intimacy and emotions. Dr. Warter will use the book to participants back to their own essence and life journeys in a powerful and meaningful way.
Sophie Whitney completed her M.A. in Psychology in Education at Teachers College Columbia University in New York City. She is currently pursuing her PhD in clinical psychology in which her research focuses on the process of integration post psychedelic, transformative, or non-ordinary state experiences. Sophie has worked for a center that provides psychedelic integration education and continuing care programs as well as a medically licensed wellness center that utilizes plant medicines for healing. Sophie loves co-leading mind-body-surf retreats, practicing yoga and meditation, drawing, hiking, snowboarding, surfing, swimming, spending time with family, and just generally spending as much time outdoors as possible. Sophie is passionate about utilizing her creativity and inspiration to spread the message of Interbeing for the betterment of the planet.
Lower Level Lobby
Nonduality Awareness and Animal Attitudes
There are at least two different senses of connectedness: the connectedness of all things, and the connectedness of all subjective experience. This differentiation is rooted in people’s innate tendency towards a dualistic distinction between mind and matter. Even if all physical things are believed to be connected, it is possible to believe mental experiences are fundamentally separate between individuals. Such separation is the basis from whi