Lisa Cairns came to nondual teaching out of the radical-nonduality stream associated with Tony Parsons and The Open Secret. After her own recognition she began holding meetings and retreats, first in the United Kingdom and then increasingly across Europe and the United States. Her teaching style is unusually direct and unusually warm at the same time. She speaks in plain conversational English, sits on the floor with the people in front of her, and refuses, with great patience, every move the seeking mind makes to keep itself in business.
The pointing she returns to is that there is only this, the immediate aliveness of what is happening, with nothing else needed. The seeker’s project is a maintained tension that disguises the simplicity of the case. Recognition is not an event in time, it is the seeing through of the assumption that there must be such an event. This is it. There is nothing missing. Nothing is happening to anyone.
Her work is mostly available through her own video recordings and residential retreats. She has been less prolific in print than some of the other teachers in the modern nondual stream, which is consistent with the strand of teaching she carries.
Where to start
- The official site — retreat schedule, video archive, and meeting listings.
- YouTube interviews and meetings — the easiest way to meet her voice; multiple long-form recordings are circulating, including conversations on Iain McNay’s Conscious TV.
