Waking Up Now:
A Weekend in Toronto with Joan Tollifson and Debbie McCubbin (June 12-14)
This weekend is about waking up from suffering, waking up from ideas and beliefs, waking up from the story of your life. It is about waking up to the present moment as it actually is, waking up to presence-awareness itself (your true nature), waking up to the birthless and deathless nature of reality (undivided wholeness). It is about discovering what really matters. You may attend all or any part of the weekend.
Friday Night: Exploring with Awareness: We are trained to think our way from problems to solutions, to seek and find answers to our questions. But maybe there is another way of looking and listening, with open awareness.
Saturday Morning: Exploring the Notion of Spiritual Path & Practice: Is There Anything to Do? Is Anything Not the Path? Some people say there is no path and no self to be on a path. Others say practice is very important. Who has it right? Do we need to practice or does everything happen by itself? What is practice anyway? Is it important to follow one particular path? Is tradition a help or a hinderance? Which practice or no-practice is right? What should we do, do we have a choice? And where are we trying to go?
Saturday Afternoon: Exploring the Self: Who Am I? Is there a self? What do people mean when they talk of no self? Is there someone at the helm steering the ship, thinking the thoughts, making the choices?
Sunday Afternoon: Exploring Addiction: We'll look at the whole phenomenon of desire and aversion, habit and compulsion, conditioning and entrancement -- in short, our human condition. By addiction, we don't just mean obvious ones such as drugs and alcohol, but any kind of habitual activity that feels like it is out of control and in some way a form of suffering. It could include anything from compulsively shopping and eating and surfing the web, to certain patterns of thinking (such as berating ourselves or others), to global warfare, oil consumption, and destruction of the environment. How do habits end? How do we wake up, how does change happen, what can we do, is there a choice? And is it possible that the very things that seem most troubling in our lives, personally and globally, may actually be gifts in disguise?
Location: Emmanuel Howard Park United Church, 214 Wright Avenue (at Roncesvalles), Toronto
Times: Friday evening 7:30 to 9:30; Saturday morning 10 to 12; Saturday afternoon 2 to 5; Sunday 1 to 5.
Cost: Friday evening $20; Saturday $75 for all day (or $40 for either half separately); Sunday $65; Entire weekend if paid in full on Friday evening: $145.
(If you can’t afford the cost, please come anyway and be as generous as you can)
Private meetings with Joan may be available on Friday and Sunday mornings. To find out more about those or to schedule a meeting, contact Debbie McCubbin at 905-821-7000, ext 221, or by email at <dmccubbin@rogers.com>.
Joan Tollifson is the author of Bare-Bones Meditation: Waking Up from the Story of My Life and Awake in the Heartland: the Ecstasy of What Is. She has an affinity with Zen, Advaita, radical nondualism, and non-traditional inquiry, but she belongs to no particular tradition or lineage. Joan lives in the United States, in southern Oregon, and has been holding meetings since 1996. Her website is www.joantollifson.com.
Debbie McCubbin is a member of a local Buddhist community in Toronto, where she is both a student and a teacher; she also feels a strong kinship with nondual teachings, in particular those of Adyashanti and Eckhart Tolle. Debbie is a mother of three (including two teenagers!) and a small-business owner in Mississauga. Her website is www.seeingclearly.net.
For more information about the event, contact Debbie McCubbin at 905-821-7000, ext 221, or by email at <dmccubbin@rogers.com>.