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.
For the meditation, we are going to tune it, first inwards, the rise and fall of our inner harmonies, then outwards to what harmonics the planet meters towards us, then just sit as that listening thing that is simultaneously player and audience, always has been, always will be. In the interactive, we are going to lie down, listen with our whole bodies, shake into the shapes of the sea that surrounds and makes us.
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In the (relative) silence and stillness of meditation, we can catch a break from the distracting busy of our everyday lives, tune into ourselves and just be. That’ll be the spirit of tonight’s sit, noticing how freedom from the habitual helps us recharge and reflect. In part two, we’ll explore who we’d be at our most free, embodying our inner superheroes and rockstars.
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Tonight we’re going to practice greeting our inner talk with curiosity and kindness, seeing how focused inner listening can fuel our practice and foster a loving relationship with our mental experience. Then, in part 2, musician and educator, Doug Friesen will lead us in some sound and listening exercises and games.
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Tonight a guided practice that invites us to listen to our inner dialogue, employ our inner giraffe-ness (this will make more sense in the class…. SO COME JOIN US!!), and attempt to find valuable messages and insights hiding in the realm that exists behind the dialogue we are hearing. After the break we’ll share thoughts about common communication stoppers.
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What if you were already exactly where you needed to be? In this way, we practice our own “enlightenment,” moment by moment. Then, after we practice knowing there is no where to go, we will mill around with each other in a confused way, looking for the holiday party we are already at. Now that’s freedom!
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