Meditation Sits
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.
The location is Mosaic Yoga, 225 Sterling Road in Unit 23 (click the link for directions).
Cost is $10-20 sliding scale. The CEC is a nonprofit – funds go to pay teachers and support the costs of programming.
For this month’s offerings scroll down, or 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: info@consciousnessexplorersclub.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.
With so many options, how do we choose? Once we do, how do we know whether to stay with it? And for how long? In this sit, we are going to find what works, and where, and in the interactive take it into motion, watch it disappear, and draw up an action plan to find it again.
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On this Monday of thanksgiving, we’ll practice cultivating gratitude and appreciation. From that place of inner abundance, we’ll check in with ourselves about how we want to give back and how practice and community can support our efforts.
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In the meditation we will explore how we hold ourselves in relationship to others, a solitary practice exploring interpersonal awakening. In the interactive portion, we will play with the subtle feeling of connecting to others and explore how feeling connected or disconnected from others impacts our lives.
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Tonight we’ll practice sitting with the uncomfortable parts of our experience, increasing our tolerance while maintaining compassionate boundaries. We’ll bring those skills to bear in the interactive session, as we explore our relationship to conflict and how to use it as a tool for growth.
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