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Graduate Members' Seminars 2020

The 2019 Graduate series brought us interactive science, the machinery of memory, Indigenous history and illuminated minds! This year we look forward to bringing you another range of topics and presenters. The seminars are designed for current members who have completed or are attending Level 4. The aim of these seminars is to provide a forum whereby members can explore ways of thinking about and integrating meditation into life; fully and consciously.

2020 Seminar Series

Seminar One: A simple model to understand the meditating mind: it will improve your meditation.  Presenter: Ian Nuberg
Friday 28 February, 5.45 pm– 7.15 pm

Seminar Two: Presenter: Marelle Wilson – talking about pain, neuroscience and meditation
Friday 8 May, 5.45 pm– 7.15 pm
More details coming soon

Seminar Three: Presenter: Mark Tatyzo – talking about dream yoga, lucid dreaming, his experience of this and some tips!
Friday 28 August, 5.45 pm– 7.15 pm
More details coming soon

Seminar Four: A three woman perspective of meditation and practice
Friday 6 November, 5.45 pm– 7.15 pm
More details coming soon

Seminar One

A simple model to understand the meditating mind: it will improve your meditation. 

Presenter: Ian Nuberg

Friday 28 February, 2020
5.45 pm–7.15 pm
Lifeflow Studio

Following on from Ian’s 2019 Ten Stages of Meditation talk …

Distractions and dullness are conditions that beset all meditators and can be difficult to deal with. The first step to mindfully intercept and deflect distractions and dullness is to have a good understanding of how they arise, and what to do about it. In this seminar we will discuss a simple model of how the meditating mind works. We examine the relationship between the unconscious and conscious mind; and within the conscious mind, the five sensory sub-minds. We will see how distractions and dullness arise from a lack of unification of these sub-minds and how this can be corrected during meditation. We will also see how this mind system constructs the enduring sense of a separate self in space and time. This information is drawn from The Mind Illuminated (Culadasa 2017) which was used in a previous seminar on Ten Stages of Meditation. It doesn’t matter if you missed the earlier seminar.  

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Seminar Two

Sub-Total Recall: The machinery of misremembering

Guest Presenter: Matthew Welsh

Friday 10 May, 2019
5.45 pm–7.15 pm
Lifeflow Studio

Our memories are amazing things. They allow us to recall facts and events from decades past and serve as a fundamental part of our daily lives – underpinning our skills, relationships and even identities. Given this, we (understandably) trust our memories over most other sources of information, tending to view them as the equivalent of video cameras in our heads – capturing verbatim records of what we see and hear.

Unfortunately, this is not how memory works. Psychological research into memory and related aspects of cognition has demonstrated a variety of unexpected effects that shed light on how the machinery of memory actually works and the implications of this for how much we can trust our memories.

In this talk, we’ll discuss a small number of these memory-related biases, focussing on how availability and confirmation biases affect the information we gather from the environment and how hindsight and outcome biases alter our memories of things that have already happened – creating false memories.  Presenter Matthew Welsh is a Senior Research Fellow in Decision Making within the University of Adelaide.

sub-total recall matthew walsh
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Seminar Three

Ten Stages of Meditation

Presenter: Ian Nuberg

Friday 30 August, 2019
5.45 pm–7.15 pm
Lifeflow Studio

Have you ever felt ‘stuck’ in your meditation practice? You faithfully practice every day (or not!), yet you feel you are not making any progress. If your Tantra feels dry and your Insight work yields no insight, then it is likely that you have not developed a stable practice in calm and concentration. This session will discuss the 10 stages of meditation to develop concentration, calm abiding and equanimity. It follows a traditional Buddhist explanation of the process as presented in The Mind Illuminated (Culadasa 2017).  This will help you to identify at what stage you may normally gravitate to in your own practice. From here we can discuss several tweaks to your practice that will help towards achieving some of the higher states. These states are conducive to Insight and luscious Tantric experiences.
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Seminar Four

An Indigenous History Walk

Presenter: Robyn Walden

Friday 8 November, 2019
5.45 pm–7.15 pm
East & South Parklands, City

In 2017 we finished the seminar series with this walk and it is back again by popular demand! Robyn Walden has been researching the Indigenous history of the East Adelaide area and devised a short walking tour suitable for interstate and overseas visitors. Great for locals too! Join Robyn as she leads us through sections of the East and South Parklands (Pakapakanthi, Tuthangga and Wita Wirra). The aim of the walk is to give participants an experience of connecting with Kaurna land, through imagination, cultural history and direct contact with the landscape. As this will be the last seminar for the year we will conclude with an evening meal at a local restaurant.

Seminar Fees

Single session ticket $25

Single session ticket conc $20

2020 series ticket (4 sessions) $80

2020 series ticket (4 sessions) conc $60

Concession rate is available to full time students, Health Care card holders and Pensioner Concession cards. Please present your concession card at the first class.

Prerequisites: These sessions are open to current members who have completed or are attending Level 4.

Single session

Any seminar

Purchase single session 
ticket for any seminar $25

Purchase single session conc
ticket for any seminar $20

2020 series ticket

All 4 sessions

Purchase 2020 series ticket
4 sessions $80

Purchase 2020 series ticket
4 sessions conc $60

more . . .

Discover more about membership ...

Discover more about membership ...

If you are looking to go further with meditation then membership is for you. Enjoy benefits including 10% discount on all courses and retreats, borrowing rights to our library, members only classes, retreats and more.
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Member's retreats

Member's retreats

Members’ retreats build on what is covered in our public retreats and then take the practises to a much more advanced level.
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Member's classes

Member's classes

Members-only classes, seminars and Advanced Meditations give you the opportunity to meet other members and explore topics in meditation that may not normally be covered at our city courses.
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