Browse Schedule by Category: Retreats / Online Courses

Loading Events

« All Events

  • This event has passed.

Path of Ecstasy – Following your Bliss: Online Course

June 4, 2018 - June 25, 2018

The Path of Ecstasy: Following your Bliss

Online Course: June 4 – 25, 2018

Would you like to experience more bliss, more joy in your life? It’s easy to say “Follow your bliss,” but how do we actually do that? Especially when it doesn’t feel so blissy?

This online course is designed to help you learn how. Or if you already know how, to get more skilled at it. Imagine your life with robust, resilient bliss.

Join Doug and Catherine Sensei for the second online course they are offering in 2018, the Year of Joy. The third course on Sex and Relationships takes place in October 2018.

Studying Bliss and Joy with Wisdom Traditions and Science

How do you follow your bliss? Fortunately there are many resources available to us in these exciting times. Western science is beginning to understand and articulate what meditators have known and experienced for millennia. Since this is the Year of Joy, we’d like more (all!) of us to cultivate more joy. To this end, this online course looks at the interface of consciousness and bliss in various frameworks.

brain-waves-bliss

Catherine Sensei having her brain waves measured in various states at the Institute of Noetic Science’s lab in Petaluma, CA.

Every wisdom tradition documents different experiences of transcendental, unitive bliss. In order to experience bliss, first we must establish abiding calm. As meditators we know this from our own experience, and from the teachings themselves.

In these classes we’ll look at what we know about these experiences from wisdom traditions. We’ll also discuss what contemporary science is adding to our understanding. The better we understand bliss and joy, the more likely we are to be able to experience them.

According to wisdom traditions as well as science, personal change involves consciousness. This online course is designed to help our first-hand embodied experience and intellectual understanding come together and support one another.

The desired outcome? More joy, and higher bliss. Though it’s not possible to awaken from a state of bliss, bliss can springboard us into deeper insights. From this space we can experience the moment of enlightenment. And from greater states of awakening, we can be brighter, further-reaching beacons of light for all beings in these challenging times.  

This course is open to all experience levels.

 

“The mind’s integration made visible is loving kindness & compassion.”

~  Author/neurobiologist Dan Siegel, ALIA 2014.

Course Details:

Online classes will take place live on Monday evenings (June 4th, 11th, 18th & 25th) from 7:30 to 9pm (MDT). Recordings will also be available for one week if you can’t attend live.

(Year of Joy participants also have access to a Master Class with the teachers on Saturdays June 9, 16, 23, and 30 at 3-4pm MT, and a weekend Flash Retreat at home.)  

Week 1, Mon. June 4: The Body – Our Six Senses.

Meditations on the senses, our first link to the world both inside and outside, constitute some of the oldest meditations known to humankind. How can we use the senses as a path to liberative bliss?

Week 2, Mon. June 11: Feelings – The Jhanas (Meditative Absorptions)

If we can’t awaken from a state of bliss–only from insight–then how can we use it for spiritual breakthroughs? The roadmap of the states of highest blisses, known as the jhanas, can help us get serious about bliss.

Week 3, Mon. June 18: The Mind – A Look at Modern Neuroscience

What’s happening to your brain when different states arise, in meditation and in daily life? What do mirror neurons have to do with a sense of self and other? How is all this affected by the chemistry in the brain?

Week 4, Mon. June 25: Life in the world: Making it Blissful

What do the jhanas (blissful, absorptive meditative states), brainwaves and hormones have in common? How do they affect us and our states differently? How do insights about bliss lead to wisdom, the highest bliss?

 

About the Teachers:

Doug Duncan Catherine Pawasarat Clear Sky Center

We encourage everyone to find the “teacher within” that we can be. But, for almost everyone, we need to apprentice before we can master. Doug Duncan and Catherine Pawasarat apprenticed in the teachings of awakening for decades with their teachers. Between them they have been teaching for more than 30 years.

Their explorations and teachings are guided by four principles: spiritual growth, social connectivity, economic sustainability and environmental integrity.

Doug & Catherine teach from various wisdom traditions – including buddhadharma, Western Mysteries, modern science, art and nature – based on broad interests and a non-judgemental approach. We’ve lived and worked overseas for many years, and a planetary outlook is important to us. So is humour! Read more: Full Bios.

[tmls category=”20″ layout=”tmls_slider” style=”style2″ image_size=”large_image” image_radius=”large_radius” text_font_family=”” text_font_color=”#000000″ text_font_size=”16px” name_font_family=”” name_font_color=”#000000″ neme_font_size=”14px” neme_font_weight=”normal” position_font_family=”” position_font_color=”#777777″ position_font_size=”12px” order_by=”rand” order=”DESC” auto_play=”true” transitioneffect=”crossfade” pause_on_hover=”false” next_prev_visibility=”tmls_visible” next_prev_radius=”large_radius” next_prev_position=”” next_prev_bgcolor=”#F5F5F5″ next_prev_arrowscolor=”tmls_lightgrayarrows” scroll_duration=”500″ pause_duration=”9000″ ratingstars=”enabled” ratingstarssize=”16px” ratingstarscolor=”#F47E00″ ]

 

Ready to Follow Your Bliss? Register Now:

  • Dāna (Generosity Based Teaching)

Doug & Catherine are teaching this online course via the ancient tradition of Dāna (generosity), an offering from them to the attendees. It is considered of supreme value to your life and thus “beyond price” so it is expected that the student will be equally generous and support the teaching and the teachers by making an offering.

While no offering is too small, also no offering is too great. The giver benefits by offering as much as they can, given the individual’s circumstances. Along with compassion, generosity is considered the root of spiritual progress and, according to the ancients, therefore the root of our success in daily life as well.

Find out more about how you can practice Dāna. We invite you to offer Dāna when you register.

  • Registration Form

Please register using the form below. Please note that our registration platform (Eventbrite) uses the term “donation” rather than dāna. Dāna is different from donation. If this is new to you, please read the above section on dāna to learn more about the difference.

For previous participants of Planet Dharma online courses: please note we’ve simplified the registration process.  Now simply register ONCE for all four classes.  The courses are now purely dāna based without a course fee.  Note that your dāna offering now is to cover ALL four classes.

Sign up here to be notified about any retreat updates and Planet Dharma news.

Details

Start:
June 4, 2018
End:
June 25, 2018
Event Category: