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
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)
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 30-minutes of interactive discussion ending with breakout rooms (8:30 – 9pm)
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.
“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.
What I call “the rock face” is the very edge of your constructed reality. It’s where sense meets non-sense, where the rational comingles with the magical. In this meditation we’ll go down the metaphysical mineshaft in search of the rock face within.
More Info
Be mindful …and do nothing. Cultivate change …and accept things as they are. Make diligent effort …and let go completely. Wait. What? Meditation instructions can be paradoxical and confusing. Am I doing “non doing” right?
Come to Mosaic Yoga on Saturday September 10th for an in-person (woot!) chance to clear it all up …or get more confused. Probably both.
When we try to let go of something (usually emotional), we can actively push it away, and that pushing is actually a contraction, resulting in us holding on to it more tightly. Join us as we explore the paradoxes of change, letting go, effort, and ease.
More Info
a day of meditation, nature and movement exploration at a beautiful farm just outside of Toronto
More Info
In today’s meditation we’ll do something different — we’ll cultivate a breath and body that is simultaneously energetic and calm. In this exploration, we see how these seemingly paradoxically opposite aspects are not only compatible, but actually support each other and are necessary for each other!
More Info
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.
More Info
You could say meditation helps us become a better somebody: Level One. But there are further more paradoxical levels, where you begin to get the sense that the someone aware of these life shenanigans isn’t quite the someone you thought was aware in the first place. Someone seems more like a no one, a big empty aware space: Level Two. Level Three is: “wait, not just empty, also full – full of everybody!” Someone and no one and everyone, all at once.
More Info
An interactive online meditation event to practice together the inner work of racial justice in a time of change and uncertainty. Join mindfulness teacher, law professor, and storyteller Rhonda V. Magee for reflections and practices on the links between embodied mindfulness and compassion practices and working to disrupt bias and bring about anti-oppressive social change.
More Info