Portals to Awakening
Explore time-honored meditations
with Jonathan Gustin
Do you long to connect with a deeper stillness and peace?
Are you a seeker on the awakening path?
Do you want to learn some of the most time-honored non-dual approaches to meditation, drawn from the wisest spiritual traditions?
We invite you to explore with us some of the most subtle and impactful meditation practices available to humanity, all towards one aim:
direct mystical experience
Awakening is already present. You couldn’t be ‘closer’ to it than you are now. That said, sages from myriad traditions across millennia have advocated for meditation as an indispensable practice through which enlightenment may be revealed.
Each session will feature a stand-alone meditation drawn from a specific tradition.
Spring 2024 Schedule
All of these stand-alone meditation gatherings are 90 minutes,
10:30am-12pm PT
Sunday June 2
Scroll down to read a description of each of these meditations.
Register For the Meditation Gatherings:
(Please check your Promotions/Updates folders to receive our follow-up emails)
Sign up above, and you will receive the zoom link for all the meditation gatherings. Attend as many of these gatherings as you’d like. Do try to join us live. Even though there will be recordings sent to you…the transmission is more palpable LIVE.
At the end of each gathering, a donation will be requested. Suggested donation for each gathering you attend is $20. Note: These are “no pay-wall” gathering. That means that nobody turned away for lack of funds.
Time-Honored Meditations
Each session features a
stand-alone Meditation
Self-Inquiry or Atma Vichara
(Ramana Maharshi -
Advaita Vedanta)
Ramana Maharshi’s principle instruction is Atma Vichara “Self Inquiry.” He wrote: “The ‘I’-thought is the first to arise in the mind. When the inquiry ‘Who am I?’ is persistently pursued, all other thoughts get destroyed and finally the ‘I’-thought itself vanishes, leaving the supreme non-dual Self alone.”
Pointing Out Instructions
or Dzogchen
(From Tibetan Buddhism)
Dzogchen is a lineage of the Tibetan Buddhism tradition, sometimes translated as “Great Perfection”. Dzogchen asks us to look for what is looking and come to know that there isn’t any “I” doing the looking. With practice, the capacity to recognize the freedom of centerless consciousness in all circumstances, becomes permanent.
I AM Meditation
(Nisargadatta Maharaj -
Inchegeri Sampradaya)
‘I Am’ meditation was made famous in the 20th century by the Indian teacher Nisargadatta Maharaj. The practice is deceptively simple and clear: to rest in the felt sense of I AM, until the dawning of this realization: “...that you are the timeless spaceless witness itself.”
JUST SITTING OR SHIKANTAZA
(DOGEN ZENJI - ZEN)
Just Sitting is a Zen practice developed by Dogen Zenji, the founder of the Soto School. Just Sitting doesn’t aim to arrive at any specific spiritual goal. Rather, we are invited to pour our whole being into our body so that we may simply ‘abide’ naturally, through the portal of a specific posture.
TRUE MEDITATION
(FROM ADYASHANTI -
ZEN & ADVAITA VEDANTA)
Adyashanti has a background in both Zen and Advaita Vedanta. In the first part of Adya’s True Meditation, he invites us to “see what would happen if you were to allow everything to be exactly as it is.” In the second part, Adya invites us to approach the question “What am I?” from the experience of the totality of our being.
LOVING WHAT IS OR THE WORK
(FROM BYRON KATIE)
Byron Katie discovered a form of Self-Inquiry she named “The Work”. She teaches that suffering is caused by believing our stressful thoughts. Through her unique writing practice of self-inquiry, Katie provides us access to a different, less-known capacity of the mind that can end suffering.
WEAVING FORM AND FORMLESS
OR TANTRA
(FROM KASHMIR SHAIVISM)
Tantra is an attitude, the attitude of inclusion: wherein every thought and feeling, every particle of your body and the universe, is seen as being made of Divine Energy (Shakti) which is non-separate from Divine Consciousness (Shiva). Distinct from practices of exclusion, which aim at the experience of formless Spirit, Tantric meditation instructs us to weave the core experience of Spirit into embodiment.
PERENNIAL MEDITATION
(FROM J. GUSTIN)
Perennial Meditation is a distillation of the traditional meditations above. It is a distillation of the heart of nondual meditation. Perennial comes from Greek perennis, and refers to the perspective that all of the world's mystical traditions share a single deep core.
Each LIVE meeting will feature:
a talk by Jonathan
guided meditations
(possible) breakout groups to connect with co-participants
time for Q&A
What: Portals to Awakening: Fall 2023 Meditation Gatherings
When: Every other Sunday, starting Oct 1st, 10:30am - 12:00pm PT.
Where: Zoom
Teacher: Jonathan Gustin
Cost: By Donation. (Suggested Donation is $20 per gathering.)
Questions: Please contact Katherine, Associate Director at PGI, at khaigcello@gmail.com
Want to Donate Now?
Jonathan Gustin, M.A, MFT, is a purpose guide, psychotherapist, and meditation teacher in private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 27 years. Jonathan is the founder and lead teacher of the Purpose Guides Institute and Green Sangha. He has taught purpose discovery at San Quentin Prison and also serves as adjunct faculty at John F. Kennedy University. His three main Non-Duality teachers are Adyashanti, Rupert Spira and John Prendergast.