Rabbit Hole

This Monday, not only will we practice acceptance – yes, this here right now is your actual life – we will also explore the possibility that your mind is completely bonkers and out of sync with reality. We will explore this in a fun way, that is, making good-natured fun of the mind.

You could say meditation helps us become a better somebody. 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. There’s no explaining it really, but there is … experiencing it – sort of. This Monday, we head on down the rabbit hole together.

This Monday, we share self-regulation strategies and tap into the creativity of the community. For the meditation, we explore two sides of being human: the caregiver, who manages conditions based on what you need in the moment, and the warrior, who trains to be OK regardless of conditions in the moment. Let’s explore!

It’s Waking Up month at the CEC. When I feel I’m losing my centre, I step back to ground. Presence is ground, awareness is ground. Ground of my Being, and very likely the  ground of yours too. For me, today, waking up is our human capacity to live in, and from, ground. This Monday, let’s explore this together.

On this last Monday of 2021, we make powerful resolutions to improve ourselves, from new dietary and exercise regimens, to important practice protocols and virtuous personal intentions, to say nothing of ….er… and … uh … That sounds like a lot of work. Fuck it.

Come join me at the Consciousness Explorers Club virtual Hallowe’en meditation retreat October 29-31, 2021! There will be ghouls. There will be hungry ghosts. There will be a magical mystery DJ for our Saturday night dance party. Oh and each of these will be offered in the form of meditations. 

This Monday, we channel our inner two year old, and Pepper our Practice with aPPPPreciation. Then, for the grand finale, we’ll appreciate ourselves, by gathering any remaining self-consciousness into our loving arms, and slow-dancing the night away.

The Consciousness Explorers Club is now online! So if you’ve from out of town and have always been curious about what the CEC gets up to every Monday night, now’s your chance to find out. In this guided meditation, we use our imaginations to open up the space between our unchanging awareness – what some contemplatives call our “True Self” – and our ever-changing thoughts and feelings and body sensations.

The CEC’s virtual summer “Meditate – Celebrate – Activate” retreat happens August 6-8, 2021. This retreat is unique for the way it builds on mindfulness and meditation practices, taking insights from the cushion and applying them immediately to interactive community good-times.

The Consciousness Explorers Club is now online … If you’ve from out of town and have always been curious about what the CEC gets up to every Monday night, now’s your chance to find out. This Monday, we will explore how words open us, challenge us, offer insights and perhaps even healing. 

The Consciousness Explorers Club is now online … If you’ve from out of town and have always been curious about what the CEC gets up to every Monday night, now’s your chance to find out. In this guided meditation, we’ll be taking a luxurious boundary-dissolving plunge into the Mother Sea. 

The Consciousness Explorers Club is now online! So if you’ve from out of town and have always been curious about what the CEC gets up to every Monday night, now’s your chance to find out. In this guided meditation – one of my favourites – we’ll put on our field naturalist binoculars, and tip toe into the dark forest of the mind, looking and listening for local wildlife.

The Consciousness Explorers Club is now online! So if you’ve from out of town and have always been curious about what the CEC gets up to every Monday night, now’s your chance to find out. In this meditation, we are going to allow ourselves to be utterly defeated. It will be a race to the bottom, as each of us attempts to out-defeat the other.

The Consciousness Explorers Club is now online! So if you’ve from out of town and have always been curious about what the CEC gets up to every Monday night, now’s your chance to find out. In this meditation, we explore vertical time. We slip down, between our worries, and we reset.

The Consciousness Explorers Club is now online! So if you’ve from out of town and have always been curious about what the CEC gets up to every Monday night, now’s your chance to find out. In this meditation, we explore the life-changing magic of self-compassion.

The Consciousness Explorers Club is now online! So if you’ve from out of town and have always been curious about what the CEC gets up to every Monday night, now’s your chance to find out. This Monday night Jeff will lead a practice around The Really Big Mystery of Emptiness = Form and Form = Emptiness.

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!

Something mysterious and beautiful happens when we do nothing together. It seems to makes space for a particular kind of intimacy that – as per the theme of this month – we can call devotion. This Monday, we explore.

Hello Exploded Brains! My own exploded brain wishes to communicate with you, but (on account of said explosion) I find myself unable to summon the necessary resources. Fortunately, like all of us, I have a strange nature-given capacity to un-plode myself. Call it focus, call it absorption.

LOCATION: Mosaic Yoga Studio, 225 Sterling Rd, Toronto THEME: Story and Mystery MEDITATION: Thirty-Five Minutes to Armageddon INTERACTIVE: We Survived! And so it was that on a dark September night, after a gruelling trip in from the hamlet of Guelph, a man appeared at the studio doorway. “I am your facilitator this evening,”  he said, “and I […]