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.
How does meditation help create the conditions for empowerment? In my thinking, our inner power is best cultivated in the soil of freedom, safety and understanding. Tonight’s meditation will tap into techniques that boost those qualities in our experience, first individually then collectively.
More Info
The tension between the opposite poles of despair and empowerment makes each experience possible. In other words, we can’t fully experience empowerment unless we also experience its shadow – despair. Inspired by the work of ecophilosopher Joanna Macy, we’ll look at the way despair and empowerment work together to facilitate each other into being.
More Info
What does (dis)empowerment feel like in the body, what triggers it, subdues it, allows it? How can we allow ourselves to experience power without the power-over, or power-under? We will explore this through an embodied contemplation
More Info
a day of meditation, nature and movement exploration at a beautiful farm just outside of Toronto
More Info
In this sit, we’ll drop in and seek a comfortable exploration of a growing edge, the periphery of our understanding of something. Can we find that sweet spot, the place bridging the known and the unknown and empower ourselves through expanding our awareness? We will practice inviting a level of curiosity, closer proximity, and ‘oh’pening to our experiences (and their emotions) that we tend to distance ourselves from.
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
Tonight we will invite ourselves to let go – simplify our attention, drop some of the countless balls of my multiple To-Do lists (and maybe never pick them up again!) in the name of empowering engagement, fulfillment, relief, and connection.
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