From: Cullen Kowalski <wakeup@samsarahouse.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2013 2:16 AM
Subject: Why you should be at Samsara House 2023 this Saturday..
Have you read this Wikipedia entry? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting
Twenty-six additional shootings have occurred in other elementary schools, high schools and universities across America since that horrific day one year ago this Saturday, and there is no sign this rampant gun violence will change next year. The change must come from us, we must experiment with new ways of being, and we must start right now..
The workshop being offered this Saturday at Samsara House 2023 is a groundbreaking effort to save humanity from the grips of mindless gun violence. Handgun Yoga is an engaging hands-on workshop for men, women and students that will take us to the edge of our being and teach us how to be the change we desperately wish to see in the world. Upon completion of this workshop, we start to create ripple effects in the world by our new thoughts, actions, and speech.
A New Way Forward for humanity is being proposed, and it can start here in Washington D.C., with you.. Register Now! https://handgunyoga1.eventbrite.com
Ubuntu!
In Washington DC, on the anniversary of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary, there is only one event designed to build peace, love and understanding--as far as we know. A new way forward for humanity is being proposed.
Samsara House 2023 is hosting a 4-hour Workshop on a Tantric approach to gun violence. (See Draft Agenda below)
Elements from Waking Down in Mutuality are incorporated including meditation on The Core Wound and exercises in finding and welcoming paradox, intuiting a larger container, 6-Step Recognition Yoga and Becoming Fear rather than reacting to it. The skills of Mutual listening, holding tension, voicing strong emotions and avoiding "either/or" solutions in an atmosphere of respect are all desperately needed in a working Democracy. They seem to be missing in Washington. If these skills can be taught to a handful of people we are already breaking the logjam of inaction and political stalemate at its root source. And we are bringing the magic of Waking Down in Mutuality to our larger society.
We hope you can attend and help bring Consciousness to the topic of mindless gun violence. If you cannot join us in person, we sincerely ask for your blessings on this groundbreaking effort. Please forward this message to your friends and family too.
Read on-line instead: https://handgunyoga1.eventbrite.com
Handgun Yoga : A Way to End Mindless Gun Violence on the Anniversary of Sandy Hook
A model to Shift Global Consciousness for Pacifists, Social Activists, Meditators, Lightworkers and Anybody Else Hungry for leading change
Saturday, December 14th, 10:00AM – 3:00PM
Address: 36 R Street NW (approx. half-block from Big Bear Café)
Telephone: 202-505-0735 (iPhone)
e-mail & Google Calendar: wakeup@samsarahouse.org
Sign-up here: http://handgunyoga1.eventbrite.com
Cost: $40 at the door | $16 Online | $4 Students (At least a buck goes to Samsara House 2023 *)
The Event:
In commemoration of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting of December 14th 2012, Samsara House 2023 invites you to participate in the first of a series of dialogues which humanity desperately needs to have.
Using logic to change the firearms culture of America is like trying to use a screwdriver to slice roast beef. It’s simply the wrong tool for the job.
Jim Cox, Reiki Master/Teacher, Distant Healing Network Volunteer, lifelong Tantric Kundalini Yoga meditator, and NRA Firearms Instructor guides participants through a series of koan-like meditative inquiries for understanding the root causes of gun violence at their non-rational, non-logical source. Most of us have deeply ambivalent feelings about guns; few of us have any understanding of how guns actually work, who buys them, who uses them, why and how often. Through lecture, discussion, personal reflection and hands-on experience you'll begin to understand firearms in America in a radically different way. Once learned, the method of inquiry employed (seeking paradox, pairing of opposites, embodied exploration, radical inclusion and transcendence) can be applied to other seemingly intractable problems in personal growth and societal evolution.
The Sanskrit root of the word yoga literally means “yoke” or “unite” and can refer to the uniting of mind, breath and body to achieve higher states of consciousness. In its outward or active form, Handgun Yoga can refer to the gross physical practices that teach coherence of mind, body and breath. This form of Handgun Yoga is therefore a martial art similar to Zen Archery. In its inner or receptive form, Handgun Yoga refers to the Tantric Yoga practice of finding harmony and balance through the inclusion of opposites in ourselves; in 21st Century America we can employ handguns in a safe manner to intentionally provoke feelings such as powerlessness or fear of death. Once a feeling (such as fear) has been explored and made conscious we can include and embrace that feeling to become free from its unconscious stranglehold over us.
Taking both inner and outer senses at once, Handgun Yoga is the radical inclusion of handguns for their eventual individual and societal transcendence.
Working together we can discover and untangle the knots that seemingly divide us as we attempt to weave together a new fabric of society, one where guns are no longer needed or desired.
The 4-hour class provides no easy answers to the problem of gun violence. But we cannot hope to solve the problem before understanding it, and understanding requires a broader view than politicians and special interests can provide us. We the people must be the ones to consciously solve a problem of our own unconscious creation.
Jim Cox is one of the first Concealed Carry Instructors licensed by the Commonwealth of Kentucky, as well as a Reiki Master/Teacher and a lifelong meditator in a non-dual Tantric Kundalini Yoga tradition. Over the past 17 years he has taught deadly force to thousands of students while simultaneously healing thousands more as a volunteer in the worldwide Distant Healing Network. He is both an NRA Life Member as well as an avid practitioner of Waking Down in Mutuality, embodying the paradoxes he brings to the classroom. Jim is 51 and the father of 3 girls.
Send e-mail to wakeup@samsarahouse.org to contact Jim for details.
DRAFT AGENDA
Handgun Yoga: Feminine Keys to awakening Humanity from this collective nightmare of Gun Violence
-or-
Spiritual Transcendence is No Excuse for Non Doing
Minute of Silence and Opening Prayers
Honoring the Dead, Including our Ancestors
Welcoming All Beings Who Wish Us Peace
Why Handgun Yoga
Quan Yin told me to put down my gun. Then gave me permission to take it up again.
The Tears of this NRA Instructor on the Anniversaries of Trayvon Martin and Sandy Hook.
Feelings are Facts: Building a Sacred Container for Emotions
Eye Contact, Whole Body Listening without Fixing or Defending
Class Survey 1: Political Brinksmanship, Guns, and the Impending Zombie Apocalypse
Survey 1 Results: The Fundamental difference between Meditators and Gun Owners
Intro, Overview, Creating an Agenda of Mutuality in/by/through Mutuality
Brief Introduction to Your Instructor: My Known Biases and Blind Spots
Lean In and Doubt Everything I Tell You
Skillful Discrimination and NVC: Toeing the Line between Known and Unknown
Brief Intro (Each Participant): Your Needs, Goals and Expectations for This Class
Revised, Mutual Agenda and 3-Word Check-In (all)
Tantra Yoga - All Things in Moderation. Including Moderation.
Paradoxes, Oxymorons, Opposites, Complementary Pairs and Implied Containers
Escaping the Prison of Duality, Returning to Visit
The Limits of Language in Describing Subtle States of Consciousness
Drinking from the Well of Chaos and Uncertainty - Without Drowning
(Exercise) Grounding/Centering Techniques that address fear at its universal source
Harnessing Body and Breath to Still the Mind
Om Mudra. Fist Mudra. Belly Breathing, upper chest breathing
Tapping the Creative Power of the Universal Core Tension
WHY all creative answers spring from the Unknown
Guided Meditation Exercise: Being an Anthropologist from Venus (apologies to Oliver Sacks)
Detached Feeling, Impersonal Subjectivity, Experiments in Consciousness
Thinking, Feeling, Sensing, Intuiting, Knowing -- and knowing the difference
Starting Here and Now, in The Body.
Seeking Chaos at the Edges of Uncertainty
(Individual Exercise:) Radical Doubt; Awareness vs. Objects of Awareness
A Disclaimer on Depression
The Gift of Fear: Welcoming Your Inner Dignitaries
Gut Instinct, the Other Brain you didn’t know you had
Using Imagination to Locate Feelings in the Body without getting lost in your head
Feelings with and without Thoughts, Words or Pictures attached
Encountering Fear and Anger as Pure Energetic Signatures
Waiting it out.
“6-Step Recognition Yoga (™)” - an Intro to the work of Linda Groves-Bonder
(see Resources page for more)
(Individual Exercise:) Locating What Wants to Be Known Now
(BREAK)
How to Stop Participating in The Culture of Fear
The Medicalization of Birth and Death
How Binary Logic is in fact Drama, and how Conflict benefits Politicians, not People
Gun Culture and Language All Around Us - Are You Triggered?
TV and Movie myths about guns
Uncomfortable Facts about Guns in America
How Many Guns?
Gun Deaths, Accidental and Intentional, by Age, Race and Gender (Census Bureau Data)
Kids Killing Kids, Adults Killing Themselves
Not on the Evening News: the Decline in Violent Crime and the Epidemic of Suicide
The Peaceful Use of Deadly Force: BJS, NVS, Kleck and Lott
The War on Drugs
Militarization of drug smugglers: Welcome sign of border enforcement
Drug-related Homicides and Suicides
Violence in Our Genes
You can Vote your way into Slavery, but you can’t Vote your way back out
Why “They” say the 2nd Amendment is a “God-Given Right”
Males as Genetically Damaged Females (AKA Females as superior Males)
Geniuses, Psychopaths, and the genetic need for variation
The possible purposes of within-species male-male aggression
The Shadow of Female Aggression - Infanticide in the UK
Male Archetype Wanted for LTR
Sensitive Bad-Ass, Married Cowboy or Virtuous Samurai, only
What Women Want.
What Men Think Women Think They Want.
(BREAK)
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* Samsara House 2023’s strategy is to exemplify a gift-economy over the current market economy, one that values giving over having. While all events cost at least one dollar to cover our utilities, any additional contribution you make will go towards periodically giving half back to a socially responsible organization or cause in the community in need that you also help identify. Going together as a river, we build a thriving community of communities and pave the way for a new world. Samsara House 2023 was founded by Cullen Kowalski at his DC row house in Bloomingdale, New Washington, D.C. and is dynamically governed by Holacracy.
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. ~ Buckminster Fuller
Be the change you wish to see in the world. ~ Gandhi
Have these folks considered an editor?
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