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Bonney Meyer
Level 3 Teacher, Lotus Circle Core Group, Planning Committee
Bonney Meyer, R.N. is a dancer, author, teacher and intuitive counselor. Her passion for dance as a vehicle for “earthing” divine energy has inspired her to explore a variety of spiritual traditions and dance forms. She has studied with teachers from all over the world to learn temple and mask dances of Bali and Nepal; earth dances of Africa, the Balkans and the Middle-East; Sacred Circle Dance and Ritual Dance.
She has taught and performed Sacred and Goddess Dances for almost thirty years, all over the US, in Peru and Bali through such organizations as Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine, NLP Training Seminars, Universities and Tantric Workshops.
While studying Temple Dance in Bali in 1991 Bonney met a woman who had just learned the Mandala Dance created by Prema Dasara to the Tibetan Buddhist meditation of “The Twenty-One Praises of Tara.” “Electricity of knowing coursed through my body and I knew I was about to embark on something special,” she said. In 1992 Bonney invited Prema to teach the dance in the San Francisco Bay Area, where it has been an annual event ever since. After an offering of the Tara Dance to the community, a Tibetan man approached her and said, “Thank you…you are Tara.”
She took refuge with Lama Kunga Rinpoche of Ewam Choden Buddhist Center in Kensington, California in 1993.
Bonney is the director and choreographer for the Sacred Dance troupe, “The Lotus Circle Dancers” and lives in Sebastopol, California where she maintains a private practice as a Life Coach for people in transition and offers classes in dance, life skills and wisdom teachings.
Bonney can be reached at (707) 887-2210, through her website www.lifeskills-universal.com, or by emailing bonneym@sonic.net.
Why I dance Tara:
We are entering an "ERA OF GREAT CHANGE", where we have more choices now than ever before and with all change it is a blessing to have a benevolent guide. TARA, the female Buddha of Wisdom, Compassion and Power is such a guide who supports us in making choices that are in alignment with the highest and best qualities within us, for ourselves and others. Her deep commitment to helping us inspires the integration of Her twenty-one qualities: Serene Peace, Compassion, Invincible Courage, Sublime Intelligence, Distributor of Wealth, Radiant Health, to name a few.
The magic of this dance prayer cannot be contained in words—it is to be experienced by each dancer and those who witness it. It is something that one is called to by a deep yearning of the Soul. Everyone comes for a different reason: sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious. We dance for peace, healing, love, clarity, joy, abundance, enlightenment and much more.
Participating in this dance brings forth our true nature, the beauty within. Each is given the opportunity to walk through a gateway of transformation where we face the challenges and darkness within us. The mystery unfolds as we dance fear into love, anger into peace, despair into hope, confusion into wisdom, sadness into joy, pain into healing, doubt into faith and sloth into right action. This is the alchemy of "The 21 Praises of Tara.”
The vehicle of Tara's Mandala dance has given me a way of becoming that which I desire to be: a divine being in an earthly body, skillfully participating in the Cosmic Dance of change and evolution step by step. May the blessings of Tara pour down on all who whisper Her name.
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Karen Metta Fleischer
Level 3 Teacher, Lotus Circle Core Group, Planning Committee
Karen is a practitioner of the Healing Arts, a Licensed Vocational Nurse, Postpartum Doula/Twin Specialist, Body Worker, Second Degree Reiki practioner, as well as a High Priestess and co-founder of The Circle of the Rose--Rosa Mandala. Karen holds a Bachelor’s Business Degree from the University of San Francisco in Organizational Behavior.
After a thirteen-year corporate career as a nurse case manager, trainer and facilitator, Karen Founded Metta Doula Service, which provides birth and postpartum services.
A co-founder of the Tara Lotus Circle, she has led the public ritual offering of the 21 Praises of Tara Mandala on six occasions and has danced the sacred Mandala over 40 times in the last 14 years. Karen participated in two Tara Dhatu international pilgrimages of peace to India and Nepal in 1998 and 2001. She attended many of the thirteen annual Tara Dhatu Teacher Training Dance Retreats on Maui and Kauai.
Karen’s dance experience includes training and classes with Bay Area dance teachers: Bonney Meyer, Dhyanis, Carolina Nericcio, Amy Luna Mandarino, Shukria, and Sandhya, and international teachers: Prajwal R. Vajracharya, Prema Dasara, Anahata Iradah, Rhea of Greece, Ardella Nathanael, Laura Shannon, and Elizabeth Artemis Mourat. Karen is co-founder and member of Rosa Mandala Sacred Dance Troupe.
Karen took refuge in the Buddha Dharma with His Eminence the Ninth Khalkha Jetsun Dhampa, Jampal Namdrol Chokye Gyalsten in 1998, while on pilgrimage, during a 21 Tara Empowerment and teaching. She later took refuge with Lama Kunga Thartse Rinpoche, resident Lama of Ewam Choden Tibetan Buddhist Center, where she is an ongoing student. She has also received teachings in retreat and empowerments from H.H Sakya Trizin, H.H. 17th Gyalwang Karmapa Ogyen Drodul Trinley Dorje, H.E. Jetsun Kusho Chime Luding, that include Chakrasamvara, Nairatma, Vajra Yogini, 21, Green, White, Gold, Red, Blue/Black Tara, and many other tantric deities.
Contact Karen at (510) 525-2560 (evenings only) or email karenmetta@aol.com.
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Marie Elena Gaspari
Level 3 Teacher, Lotus Circle Core Group, Planning Committee
Marie Elena Gaspari is a gifted Teacher of Metaphysics and a High Priestess and Ritual Leader of the Sacred Feminine Mysteries. She is a published author and an award-winning poet. She teaches Sacred Dance and is a Reiki Master. Marie Elena holds a Master’s Degree from Naropa University and a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her background includes fifteen years as an educator, group facilitator, counselor, and administrator in the field of Human Services.
Marie Elena is the founder of Moonflower Creations and the Circle of the Rose Wisdom School. Through these organizations, she offers programs in Ritual Arts, Intuitive Arts, Writing, Astrology, Tarot, Rite-of- Passage, and Sacred Dance.
A co-founder of the Tara Lotus Circle, Marie Elena has danced in twenty-two Tara Mandala Dances since her first dance with Prema Dasara in 1994. She attended the annual Tara Dhatu Teacher Training Retreat in Hawaii in 1996 and participated in Tara Dhatu’s 2001 International Tara Dance Peace Pilgrimage to Dharamsala, India, and Kathmandu, Nepal.
Marie Elena’s dance experience includes studies with Bay Area teachers Bonney Meyer, Shukria, Mahea Uchiyama, Sharifa, Susan Child, Luisa Teish, Amy Luna, and the late Jaimie Miller. Her international dance teachers include Prajwal R. Vajracharya, Prema Dasara, Anahata Iradah, Ardella Nathanael, Laura Shannon, and Elizabeth Artemis Mourat.
Marie Elena’s introduction to Tibetan Buddhism began with a Nyingma teaching in 1992. She received the Death Phowa from His Eminence Chadud Tolku Rinpoche in 1994. In 1998, she took refuge with Lama Kunga Thartse Rinpoche of the Ewam Choden Tibetan Buddhist Center. She continues to be a student of Lama Kunga Thartse Rinpoche.
Marie Elena’s Tibetan Buddhist teachings and empowerments include Chakrasamvara from H. H. Sakya Trizin and White Tara from H. H. 17th Gyalwang Karmapa Ogyen Drodul Trinley Dorje. She received Vajra Nairatma, Naropa Vajra Yogini, Mahakala Panjara, and the Twenty-One Praises of Tara from H. E. Jetsun Kusho Chime Luding. From Lama Kunga Thartse Rinpoche she received many empowerments including Green, Red, Gold, White, and Blue/Black Tara empowerments.
Marie can be reached at (510) 964-9178, MarieGaspari@sbcglobal.net or at www.MoonflowerCreations.org or www.sewingwithmarie.weebly.com.
Why I dance Tara:
The hand of Tara,
The Lotus Born One
falls upon me
And now,
in a brilliant, spiraling,
mandala of light,
I am dancing open
the heart of the universe
one laughing, golden, step
at a time
Marie Elena 2009
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Debra Ursula Jacobson
Level 0 Student Teacher, Planning Committee
Ursula is a writer, gardener, organizer and cat rescuer living in Sonoma County, California. She embarked on her wide-ranging spiritual journey at around age 12 when her very straight grandmother uncharacteristically gave her a ouija board and a set of pulp pamphlets entitled “The Gypsy Witch Fortune Teller.”
When living in the Missouri Ozarks in her 20’s—at the time a place lacking in many options for esoteric schools—she read any and every book she could find about spirituality—including Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, Yogananda, Jess Stern, Joan Grant, Edgar Cayce, Jane Roberts, Carlos Castaneda, Aldous Huxley, Madame Blavatsky, Dan Millman, and Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs, along with The Kybalion, the I Ching, many Buddhist texts and The New Tarot for the Aquarian Age.
Many years later, after moving to California, she was talking to a friend who said he studied with a Tibetan Buddhist teacher. After she commented that Buddhism seemed “kind of cold,” he said, “Really? I find it liberating.” Intrigued, she eventually met Fritz Smith, a crazy wisdom householder monk. Impressed by his clarity and the clarity of the teachings, she asked to become his student and remained so until his death a few years later.
A few months before Fritz died, Ursula saw a flyer for the Tara Mandala Dance. She couldn’t attend that time, but saved the flyer anyway, somehow knowing that it was something she didn’t want to forget about.
In 1995, a year after Mr. Smith passed away, Ursula was invited to attend an event in Ukiah where Lama Kunga of Ewam Choden was giving the Medicine Buddha and Gold Tara empowerments. Meeting Lama Kunga seemed like finding a lost friend, and he gave Ursula a Tibetan name which he said meant “Compassionate Tara.” Hmm, there was that Tara again. It wasn’t long before Prema Dasara and her Mandala Dance workshop were going to be at Isis Oasis in Geyserville. Finding it overwhelming but wonderful and transforming, she was hooked and since then has attended 9 workshops, studied the dance with Bonney Meyer, and participated in offering the Mandala at a nursing home in Danville in 2008. She has also received many other Tara empowerments from Lama Kunga.
Ursula can be reached at de_jacob@msn.com
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Tara Lotus Circle is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization
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