We start our journey with an introduction to the unique attributes of the modern day spiritual seeker – that’s you!  What are the challenges, strengths, talents and weaknesses for a 21st century person on this journey? Discover how and why we must walk a spiritual path that takes us beyond the meditation cushion, liberating all aspects of life via the intellect, sensing, intuition and feeling functions.

In class one, we will cover one of four important pillars of our spiritual training methodology – the intellect. In other words, how are you learning, studying and looking? Could you do so more deeply?  Applying your intellect means to examine your world more closely.  Are you actually paying attention or just sleepwalking through life?  

Wherever we have assumptions, mental models and fixed views, we have room to engage our intellect and go deeper.        It might just catapult us into a new way of looking, being, and experiencing – and that means more awakening.

In this class we ask how well you are really ‘doing? With a focus on the ‘do’ we’ll learn how to fully engage the sensing function. In the doing, the act of service, are you fully present with the experience itself?  Are you aware of your movements, the colour, the tactility, the sounds and smells of every moment?  

Karma yoga, or service, helps one live with increasing generosity.  It is about doing what needs to be done in the moment and practicing compassionate communication with the people you are with. It takes our practice beyond the meditation cushion and into a lived, real world experience.  It helps us embrace community, and contribute to something beyond ourselves — rather than just paying ‘lip-service’ to an idealised, intellectualised view of what we think community might be. 

Ultimately, we stretch our comfort zones to become more than our limited views of ourselves.

In week three, we dive into meditation, an indispensable practice of the intuitive function. Meditation is about attentiveness, concentration, calm, bliss and insight.  It may take the form of traditional buddhist meditation practices (tranquility meditations, insight practice, rituals and arising yoga) or, it might take the shape of meditations from the Western Mystical traditions (star group, creative visualisation and prayer). 

By studying with experienced meditation guides, the path of meditation is safer, more stable and reliable.  Immersing yourself with teachers in retreat settings becomes extremely powerful and liberative.  And at the same time, we also train to meditate on the fly, in our day-to-day activities.  

Meditation takes us below the ‘surface waves’ of our mind, and into the still waters below, where we can finally experience the unitive mind. This is a relief for our typically isolated ego views.  By learning to surrender in meditation, we realise we are one with everything and everyone.  It can’t get much better than that, can it?

To wrap up this series, we take you into the realms of the feeling function, via Therapy and integrating the ‘shadow’.  Shadow work integrates the ‘taboo’ aspects of the psyche, the parts of ourselves that we don’t want to look at, that we are afraid of, or have rejected.  Spiritual practice often focuses on re-discovering the light. With shadow work, we do the important work of bringing the light into the dark. 

On the spiritual path, the Teachers and community of practitioners supportively hold up a mirror for you to see the unconscious forces in your being.  

What are those unconscious forces?  Common themes in our collective shadow, relate to money, sex and power. If the spiritual path is about surrendering to the unitive state, can you surrender your feelings of power and control? Can you surrender your beliefs about sex? Can you surrender the security your ego ties to money? Or, at least, can you see how hard it is to surrender your views about these things?  By seeing the block, walls and the fixedity of the ego’s attitudes to certain taboo areas, we become more conscious and freer.

And, it is through shadow work, that we learn what a “good friend” actually means… don’t you wonder?