Facing Death

Credit for the photo: Seyed Mostafa Zamani; poster by Grace Bubeck

Facing Death

Welcome to this event, may it serve in whatever way it can and is meant to!

NB: For those of you who've missed the live event, the links for watching the two sessions will now take you to the YouTube video. Enjoy!

Conversation with Joan Ruvinsky

TIME: 9.30 am Pacific, 12.30 pm Eastern, 5.30 pm UK, 6.30 pm Europe. (Check your local time HERE.)
LINK for watching the full conversation on YouTube. This link will go 'LIVE' a few minutes before the set time, and it will open a new window so that you can go back to this one if you need to. If you find that it doesn't, please try refreshing or reloading this page.
For a little 3 min taster from the very end of the conversation watch Joan's message of Love to all of us --> The link to the full conversation will be posted above.

Round table, with Grace Bubeck Jane Duncan Rogers, Nishkala Jenney, and Susanne Marie

TIME: 10.30 am Pacific, 1.30 pm Eastern, 6.30 pm UK, 7.30 pm Europe. (Check your local time HERE.)

LINKS FOR PARTICIPATING LIVE IN THIS EVENT:
*** NB: The links for the YouTube page and the Google hangout will only be 'live' a few minutes before we start! ***

YouTube link for watching the live broadcast: >> CLICK HERE.
To join the Google hangout to ask a question live or contribute in some other way: >> CLICK HERE. If you would just like to watch, please watch on the YouTube page, click the link above.
To see all the ways you can participate live: >> CLICK HERE.
For instructions how to join us live on the Google hangout: >> CLICK HERE.

Please consider making a donation towards the cost of offering these free events.
Heartfelt thanks!

This is an occasion to inquire into what is still a taboo topic in our Western societies, from a non-dual perspective:

In a pre-recorded session, Grace Bubeck spoke to Joan Ruvinsky, a non-dual spiritual teacher who has terminal cancer and is facing death in a very real and imminent way (Joan's energy was too unpredictable for her to be available at a set time).
In the round table following this conversation (with Grace Bubeck, Jane Duncan Rogers, Nishkala Jenney, and Susanne Marie), we'll be sharing and inquiring into the experience of accompanying and losing loved ones and facing death ourselves.

Want to find out more about the background to this event? Read my blog on it.

This is a free event, and there is no need to register. For technical reasons, the links to the two sessions can only be posted on the day of the event, in the minutes leading up to the session. Just come back to this page (the
event page), and you will find the links underneath the listing of two sessions. If you can't participate live, the Youtube videos from the two sessions will be available afterwards. You'll find the links on this page.

Teachers

Joan Ruvinsky had the extraordinary privilege of sitting with Jean Klein from 1989 until his death ten years later. Until recently she has been offering satsang, and body and breath sensing in the Kashmir Yoga tradition in Montreal and at retreats around Canada and the US. During the spring of 2014, the diagnosis of State 4 terminal cancer was met with radical joy and continues to be a source of inspiration for her teaching, profoundly affirming the incontrovertible truth of the teachings. pathlessyoga.com. Joan's teacher bio: CLICK HERE.

Grace Bubeck: I've lived through cancer twice. The second time put the very real possibility of death on the 'inner agenda'. In my nightly encounters with fear and panic, I surrendered into Life and Love over and over, no matter what would happen. Somehow, the heart just kept opening, and this 'terminal' surrender keeps deepening over time. There is a profound embrace and trust of Life and how it plays out, knowing that the body will die and this is not who I am. www.gracebubeck.com. Grace's general bio: CLICK HERE.

Jane Duncan Rogers' first brush with death came in 2011 as she watched her husband dying in hospital. At the point of his death she lost all interest in his body, as it was so clearly not who he was , or had been. Contemplation on this over the next few weeks, and pondering what it is/was in her own body that made her alive, propelled her on a journey through grieving, ending with the publication of her book Gifted By Grief: A True Story of Cancer, Loss and Rebirth. It was what happened in the Rebirth that allowed Jane to say she was grateful for her husband's death. Jane works now with individuals, groups and small businesses affected by loss, helping them find meaning, purpose and a new lease of life. www.giftedbygrief.com.

Nishkala Jenney: Death can be an opportunity like no other to inquire and open to who we are. The passing of my husband, dearest friend and teacher propelled me into deep communion with him, with Heart, and with silence for several years. Such an exquisitely tender time -- so alive with feeling, with beauty, and the wonder of this precious, fragile life… death invoking re-birth. As Presence lived as the heart of our togetherness, it was so clearly evident with his leaving form, that this Presence goes nowhere. Nishkala shares Yin–Rest, a yoga of opening to our receptive nature as unconditional presence. She also offers space for nourishing conversation in her role as coach at a corporation in Central New York.

Susanne Marie: I have found death to be an intimate portal leading me into a deeper understanding of myself, life, and the beyond. Immediately following the death of my brother Daniel 14 years ago, I journeyed with him as his spirit disintegrated over time. This was a spontaneous process that led me to a deep and profound awakening into the emptiness of Being. Shortly after Daniel died, my father passed, which I was blessed to witness. This event propelled me deeper into emptiness and later led to an opening into Unity Consciousness. This past year has been difficult for me in regards to my health where I have come face to face with my own mortality. What this current experience is teaching me is a deeper understanding that we truly are spirit inhabiting these bodies for a short while. www.transformationthroughpresence.org. Susanne Marie's teacher bio: CLICK HERE.

A Poem

I held you in my arms
as you passed from this world
but you never passed
and you were never of this world.

I never for one moment
felt the loss of your presence,
for I never felt the loss of my own.
Yet only one presence remains.

One.

I held you in my arms
as you passed from this world
but you never passed
and you were never of this world.

Jeff Foster

Thank you to NIshkala for sending it!