Meditation Sits
*During the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re meeting online every Monday at 7:30pm EST
CEC Monday Night Zoom Room: https://zoom.us/j/799184864, passcode = 00000 (five zeros)
Many people, especially busy urban dwellers, feel overwhelmed and undernourished. They struggle alone with their challenges and are only rarely able to discuss – let alone practice – deep matters of belonging and connection and embodiment.
The vision of The Consciousness Explorers Club (CEC) is to provide a fun and accessible venue where people can discuss these things as they emerge from perspective-altering spiritual and psychological and social practices. Our members go on mind-body adventures – together and independently – and then share their insights and discoveries and inspiration with the community.
Details
So: We meet in Toronto almost every Monday night. Starting at 7:30pm sharp and finishing by 9:30pm.
With calls for social distancing to curb the spread of COVID-19, CEC is offering virtual meditation sits and discussions via Zoom for the foreseeable future. Please join us Mondays at 7:30pm(EST) to meditate in community and cultivate some connection in these physically distant times. If you live outside of Toronto and have always wanted to check out CEC, now’s your chance!
CEC Monday Night Zoom Room: https://zoom.us/j/799184864, passcode = 00000 (five zeros)
The usual location is Mosaic Yoga, 225 Sterling Road in Unit 23 (click the link for directions).
Cost is $10-20 sliding scale, or PWYC. The CEC is a nonprofit – funds go to pay teachers and support the costs of programming. For online sits, the CEC gratefully accepts donations via e-transfer (within Canada) or Paypal, sent to consciousnessexplorersclub@gmail.com. You can also sign up to be a monthly supporter via our Patreon page.
For this month’s offerings, read our current newsletter.
What do we do?
The evening rolls out in two parts:
- Part one is 35-minutes of sitting meditation practice (from 7:30 – 8:30pm)
- Part two is 45-minutes of interactive practice, play and discussion (8:30 – 9:30pm)
In the first part, we experiment with different solo meditations, from restful absorption to creative visualizations, mindfulness-style noting (of various mind-body components), loving-kindness, sound meditations, choiceless awareness and many others. You don’t need to follow any of these techniques if you don’t want to – some people prefer to stay with their tried-and-true regular practice.
In the second part, we engage in different interactive practices, from partner noting to mixed-tape music sessions to theatrical craft projects to self-inquiry to Gestalt boundary exercises to any number of other combinations we make up in the CEC laboratory, as per our mandate to use arts and culture to explore issues related to personal growth. These are like playful investigations into different corners of human social reality, which we then discuss with great gusto. The idea is to create a bridge between the cushion and the street, to take our practice insights and actually try to apply them to real-life situations.
“A wise teacher, and a wise center, needs to offer a whole range of skillful practices, because people come along at different stages of their inner development, with different temperaments, and with different sets of problems.” -Jack Kornfield
The CEC is passionately nonsectarian – both humanistic and contemplative traditions are represented. That said, we do have an uber-meditation consultant: the Buddhist teacher Shinzen Young.
If you are interested in our schedule of explorations, sign up for our mailing list to receive our monthly newsletter.
Jeff Warren
President, The Consciousness Explorers Club
Contact us: consciousnessexplorersclub@gmail.com
NOTE: Meditation is a compliment but not a substitute for professional psychological and medical health care. There are risks in any psychological or spiritual method. Those risks increase for people who are experiencing significant distress or dysfunction. Please inquire if you are unsure whether or not meditation is appropriate for your situation.
This meditation will tap into the aspects of animal, vegetable and mineral embedded within to help us connect to all matter and all that matters.
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For this sit, themed on interconnection, we are going to call off the search. Fully. Aimlessness. Just sitting. No effort. No looking, only finding.
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We will explore the weaving, interconnected nature of the body, the breath, and the mind. We will explore the separation, or perhaps lack thereof, of the little bits of potentials that await to be “awared of”. From there we might build a more intricate blanket….or perhaps not. Come with curiosity. No experience
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Tonight we will practice the loving affirmation of everything in our experience, and see if allowing it all to come and go freely – including thoughts and feelings of separateness – might reveal a taste of deep inter-connection of ‘all beings’.
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Join CEC for monthly outdoor meditations with the sunset and other human beings this summer! Bring your own cushion/blanket and we’ll sit together at a safe distance.
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Let’s come together and remember the universal web that we’re part of, ask ourselves why we forget, and connect on the topic of connection.
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We’re dipping our toes back into indoor in person meditation at our Mosaic Yoga Studio home!
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a day of meditation, nature and movement exploration at a beautiful farm just outside of Toronto
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