top of page

Self Love : A Path to Awakening, Healing, & Embodiment

A 7 Module Online Course

Course Outline 

(more details below)

Modules 1 & 2

Witnessing and Developing Spaciousness around our experience as a act of Self Love


Module 1 - Noticing Awareness as distinct from our arising experience, & Feeling the felt sense of Presence in our body and heart


Module 2 - Allowing everything to be as it is, developing unconditional acceptance of 'what is', & choosing to be the Witness of our changing experience

Modules 3 & 4

Feeling our Emotional and Somatic Experience & Opening to the Felt Sense of Loving Presence as a act of Self Love 

Module 3 - Opening to emotions and sensations more deeply, being the Feeling Witness, Love coming back for Itself, & sending Loving Presence to ourselves

Module 4 - What thought is being believed right now?,letting go of contractions, being patient and gentle with ourselves, & embodying Oneness & qualities of Loving Presence

 

 

Module 7

 

Integration Session &

Other Helpful Resources

Modules 5 & 6

Forgiving Ourselves and Releasing our Core Beliefs and Contractions as an act of Self Love


Module 5 - Letting go of control, releasing our past, feeling core beliefs in our bodies, seeing emotions as energy, & releasing our core holding patterns as self-forgiveness


Module 6 - Choosing to be a Loving Presence, navigating the energy flows of life and relationships, deepening in Presence, & 'am I devoted to Love or fear right now'?

bgImage

In this Course You Will Receive 

4 - 2+hr Satsang Session recordingsincludes an opening talk related to each week’s content, and numerous dialogues, questions, and explorations with the course participants.

 

3 Satsang Talks recordings - These talks were created specifically for this course, to more deeply explore the course’s themes, expand upon the rationale and use of the practices offered in the course, and address common questions, challenges, and problem areas that people can experience on their awakening and embodiment journey, and in their spiritual practice.

 

A 6 Guided Meditation Series Each module contains a 15-20 min guided meditation specifically created as a practice to compliment this course. Each guided meditation in this series will build upon the previous ones’s instructions, each one deepening and expanding your practice. Several helpful practices and techniques are added onto a simple, foundational body and breath-centered meditation practice. More subtle invitations and pointers are added in a step-wise fashion, giving you the time to integrate the practice before the next meditation. Although each meditation can be used on its own, this series of meditations was created with people in mind who would like to develop an ongoing practice

 

7 Guided Meditation for everyday life - these guided meditations guide you more deeply into your body, help you recognize different qualities of Presence, and support you in being with your experience in a more open and detached way.

 

7 Embodiment Practices & Presence Reminders - These invitations were created for this course as a way to bring your practice of Presence into your everyday life. They include simple and helpful mindfulness techniques that can be practiced throughout your day, and which usually only require the time it takes to have 3 deep breaths.

 

7 Self-Care & 7 Self-Love Practices These simple self-love and self-care lifestyle and contemplative practices are offered to help support your inner exploration, your psychological health, and your overall well being. You're invited to add these practices to your ongoing self-love & self-care toolkit.

 

7 Inquiry & Creativity ExercisesThese practices are offered as invitations to deepen your inquiry and exploration through writing, creative expression, or movement

 

7 Helpful Psycho-Spiritual Practices These simple and helpful practices and techniques are offered as helpful supports in the context of your awakening and embodiment journey. These technique introductions are intended to give you an experiential taste of the practices right away.

 

An Extensive 'Be Good to Yourself' list - This list contains a wide range of suggested activities and invitations that you can do for yourself to deepen in your practice of self-love, self-care, and of being good, kind, and gentle with yourself. You're invited to add to the list over the duration of the course.

Course fee - $97 USD -  Can be combined with Private Session work with Greg. 

                                                     50% off course fee with the purchase of a 3, 5, or 10 session package

bgImage

"Your course far exceeded any expectations I had! The resources you provided covered so many areas and provided so many venues for inquiry and exploration and growth. It truly is a life changing course. Thank you for the intro into so many more self practices I have only heard of before. I look forward to exploring them more in the near future and finding new practices that work well for me. You are an inspirational teacher. Your authenticity and passion for this work shines through. Thank you again for creating and guiding us on such a life impacting journey."

- Course Participant, Victoria, BC

bgImage

Course Overview and Invitation

Dear Friends


I'd like to invite you to join me in my latest online offering ‘Exploring Self Love as a Path to Awakening, Healing, & Embodiment’. The intention of this online course is to explore themes related to Unconditional Love and self-love from the Awakened, Non-dual perspective, and to address the usefulness of a Self-Love practice, both before awakening to our True Nature, as well as during the Embodiment and Integration process that follows.


The practice of self-love is often associated with psychological or new age practices geared towards developing a 'better sense of me’, while the Direct Path and the teachings of Non-duality encourage us to directly transcend our egoic self, and awaken to the reality that our individual self and identity are ultimately a conceptual illusion. So how can we reconcile the Non-Dual realization of No-self, with the more 'dualistic' practice of self-love? This online course is offered as an opportunity for us to engage, explore, and inquire into this and many other related questions.

bgImage

Reconciling No-self with Self-Love

Many people on a spiritual path approach their spirituality from the standpoint that the ego and our True Nature are two completely separate perspectives. On one level its clear that they are different, both conceptually and experientially. We can clearly recognize and feel the difference between being caught in the contractions and feelings of suffering that arise when we are gripped by our conditioning, and the unbounded freedom, joy, and unconditional Love & Presence that we feel when we experience our True Nature.


From the standpoint of our True Nature, being caught in the egoic mind and our conditioned emotional patterns is the root cause of endless suffering, seeking, and confusion. From the standpoint of our egoic self, which constantly feels a sense of incompleteness, unworthiness, and separation, the only thing that seems possible to do is continually chase all the experiences and things that we want, and to avoid and protect ourselves from all the experiences and things that we don’t want. Our egoic self is never satisfied or at peace for very long, while our True Nature is eternally at peace, content, and fulfilled. It would appear that these two perspectives are diametrically opposed, and would always be at odds with each other.


But if an experience of our True Nature reveals that everything is one undivided Wholeness, and that the essence of our True Nature is Unconditional Love, Presence, and Oneness, then how can our individual self be separate from this Wholeness? From this standpoint, the question that could even arise is 'Why wouldn't we love our own self, our body-mind, and all of our conditioning?' And if self-love isn’t present within us right now, why wouldn't we do everything we could to restore this natural and essential condition of our Deepest Nature?" Experiencing our True Nature does reveal that there is no individual self, but it also simultaneously reveals that there is only One, all inclusive Self Essence which manifests as everything. And despite surface appearances, its actually in constant and intimate union with all its often contradictory manifestations.


As such, it's always and unconditionally Loving all parts of Itself, including all other apparent selves, and all parts of our own self and conditioning. If you've directly experienced and tasted this Realization for even a moment, you've felt the truth of this beyond concept or belief. The lived reality however is that even most people who've directly experienced their True Nature will continue to cycle between feeling connected to this sense of Oneness and Wholeness at certain times, then find themselves being gripped by contraction, suffering, and feelings of separation at other times. I've seen that this condition is so common that it could be described as being a normal and natural part of the Embodiment and Integration process which follows a spiritual awakening. As paradoxical as it may initially seem, this situation also reveals that egoic and Awakened Consciousness can quite easily co-exist with each other. 

bgImage

A Unique & Inclusive Perspective

One of the unique aspects of my Non-dual flavored offerings is my openness to welcome whatever arises for people, especially related to one's core contractions and wounds, both before and after spiritual awakening. Part of this openness comes from my own background in psychology, but a large part of it stems from having met with hundreds of people over the years, many who have had powerful awakening experiences, and discovering that many of these people continue to deal with issues related to their upbringing, past conditioning, and traumas.


So rather than simply pointing out the core misunderstandings that are at the root of all our psychological suffering, I've recognized that it’s also very useful to give Space, time and unconditional Love to the wounded parts of ourselves, and that doing so is how these parts can fully heal and be let go of. Although Clarity and Insight will always be helpful in moving beyond our suffering and conditioning, bringing simple Compassion, Love, Acceptance, and Forgiveness to all parts of our individual self is also needed in order to heal from our past wounds, and to more deeply embody and integrate our spiritual realizations into our everyday lives and relationships.


As our spiritual experience deepens and reveals more nuanced levels of Wholeness, we recognize that our individual self is nothing more than a collective composite of conditioned perspectives and emotions, core beliefs, and energetic paradigms. We also recognize that our individual healing is also simultaneously a healing for the entire collective human consciousness (feel free to substitute the word 'self' with 'body', as the body will continue to be here even after the self has fallen away). From this vantage point, not only is loving and healing our individual self and body necessary for our own evolution and freedom, it also turns out to be the highest service that we can offer the rest of humanity. 


The spiritual teacher Adyashanti beautifully shares the essence of this perspective when he said “The biggest embrace of love you’ll ever make is to embrace yourself completely. Then you’ll realize you’ve just embraced the whole universe, and everything and everybody in it”. Rumi shares this perspective another way by saying “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it”. The Buddha recognized this perspective in his own way when he said “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection”. And of course it's easy to see how Christ’s entire life and teaching could simply be summed up by his invitation to “Love each other, as I have loved you”.


The premise of this course is built upon recognizing Self-Love in this way, and ultimately invites you to see that waking up and staying awake is not only the greatest act of self-love that we can give to ourselves, it's also the greatest Service and Love that we can offer the rest of the world. Because the essence of our True Nature is Love, the only thing that separates self-love from Self-Love is our perception of our own sense of self, and our connection to all things.

bgImage

Developing a Spiritual Practice

Although having a meditation practice isn’t a prerequisite, this course offers the opportunity for you to develop one if you choose. Neuroscience has revealed that it takes about 21 days to develop and set down the neural pathways needed for a new skill, so this course would offer more than two 21 day cycles of practice. The course materials and practices would offer encouragement to help develop a meditation practice groove in your nervous system. To support this, each modules includes a 15-20 min guided meditation which includes and integrates several simple practices that I have found to be helpful for people during the 10 years that I've offered Satsang, and from over 15 years of a committed, daily practice.


The essential components of the guided meditations include a simple guided body scan and relaxation practice, a simple grounding and releasing technique, and a simple breath meditation technique. These guided meditations integrate elements from a wide range of useful techniques including Buddhist Vipassana meditation, research from the HeartMath Institute, Yoga Nidra, Chi Gong, body centered psychotherapy, Energy Psychology, Mindfulness Training, and several other time honored meditation traditions. This simple meditation practice will then be used as a jump off point to open up and inquire into our experience more deeply and intimately, and gently shift our attention back towards our True Nature.


A wide range of Direct Path pointers will be used, including traditional Self Inquiry, various Non-Dual teachings, and several heart, body, and somatic based invitations. Although every guided meditation will eventually invite people to simply rest and abide as Loving Presence, the initial meditations will focus more upon body and breath awareness, and directly connecting to the felt sense of our body. Later meditations will continue to develop these core techniques, but will also focus on exploring other simple inquiry, releasing, and experiential techniques. The overall invitation of the practices are focused upon gently shifting our attention back towards our True Nature, but also bringing attention to areas of our experience that may need to be embraced, integrated, healed, and let go of.


I've specifically kept the practices simple and easy, and accessible to everyone, regardless of their experience with meditation and spirituality, yet helpful to those who are already awake. The focus is on integrating the intuitive essence of these helpful techniques through the portal of the felt sense of the body. Many other invitations and practices will be added as the course progresses which build upon your expanding ability to access an internal resource of peace, stillness, and equanimity. The practice is invited to become more relaxed, fluid, and effortless over time, and encourages more subtle shifts and adjustments of your experience that allow more easeful access to your True Nature.

bgImage

Support for Embodying your Practice

Beyond offering a simple meditation practice that can be done for a few minutes each day, I also invite you to bring this overall practice into your daily life. I've included many simple techniques and invitations into the guided meditations that can easily be brought into your everyday life as simple awareness breaks and reminders. When it comes to spiritual practice, I'm drawn towards techniques that are simple, quick, and can easily be integrated into your existing practice, yet can also be used on their own. I'm also drawn towards practices that can be brought into and integrated into our everyday life situation, as touch points to remind us to return to our True Nature throughout our day.


Having a holistic and integrated practice like this can be a great help in your attempt to bring your deepest spiritual insights and realizations into your everyday life and relationships. These types of simple invitations are included in both the guided meditations, as well as in the daily ‘embodiment practices’ inviting to be done throughout your day. I've personally practiced and received benefit from everything that I've offered in this course, so will be practicing and walking along side you. I understand that you have a very busy and engaged life, and so have chosen practices that can be done in only minutes a day. But for those who have more time and would like to use this experience as an opportunity to deepen in your experience of True Nature, this course offers many resources for you to explore in greater depth.


I warmly invite you into this course on Self-Love, and wish you all the best on your journey towards Awakening and healing.


With Love and Blessings

Greg

bottom of page