Browse Schedule by Category: Retreats / Online Courses
Waking Up & Growing Up: Integral Buddhism
January 12, 2025 - February 2, 2025
Integral Evolution: Waking Up & Growing Up
Online Course | Four WeeksAlong with the work of waking up—cultivating an enlightened state—we also need to do the work of growing up. This means learning to integrate the clear state into the world through doing our shadow work, developing our communication, and doing all the critical development work to be a fully integrated human being. In this course we explore the elements of a fit and dynamic vehicle for 21st-century awakening, and beyond.
Waking Up and Growing Up
The stage of growing up that you are at is incredibly important because it will determine your waking up experience.
— Ken Wilber, Finding Radical Wholeness
As we go deeper into the 21st-century we are seeing a new turning of the Wheel of Dharma – a radical evolution of Buddhism and spiritual teachings. The last major evolution in Buddhist Dharma was more than 1,000 years ago with Vajrayana, the third turn of the wheel. Now with psychology, Integral spirituality, and science, something new is emerging.
In addition to awakening, “waking up,” we also need to work on growing up, both individually and collectively. How do we integrate our awakening state in our modern world? What do we need to do with our shadow? Which stages of human development do we need to be aware of, and work through? The days of meditating in a cave for decades are over. We have to grow up and integrate into the fold of an evolving global ecosystem that needs our commitment, together.
Join us for this trailblazing four-week course. Together we will explore the emerging elements of a fit and dynamic vehicle for 21st-century awakening, and beyond—a spiritual vehicle which must evolve as rapidly as evolution itself. We must learn how to keep up!
Integral Spirituality
Integral Spirituality was coined by Ken Wilber, an internationally acknowledged leader and the preeminent scholar of the Integral stages of human development. In his many books, he writes that traditional Buddhist teachings themselves suggest an ongoing evolution leading toward a more unified, holistic, and interconnected spirituality. He describes the ways in which the tradition has been open to the continuous unfolding and expansion of its own teachings, and he suggests possible paths toward an ever more Integral approach.
We agree!
In this course, we are excited to be taking this work forward and translating it practically, based on our lineage’s working experience of modern spiritual community.
Integral Spirituality by Wilber is a prerequisite read for the course. Please start by reading the Appendix as we have found it is clearer this way.
Why Grow up?
As spiritual seekers we might feel that waking up is enough – that experiencing absolute truth will solve all our problems and we will be bright shiney beings without problems or interpersonal issues. The thing is, we also live in the relative world. Spending time on cleaning up and growing up increases our range and freedom – it is how we can genuinely cultivate the art of living. How do we live in more integrated, generative way?
Application
This course will be about the application of integral so we can actually work with it and evolve with it. We know that the ‘map’ or theory is not the territory or real work, so we’ll use this course to keep it real and explore the terrain. Think of it as a virtual dharma trip as we travel some shared lands and keep the teaching real.
This also means shining light onto shadow aspects of our consciousnessess – what aren’t we seeing? How can we help each really meet our current stage of development and do the work required in that stage?
Working with the shadow
“It’s important that we are clear and honest: by its very nature, shadow work is not fun or pretty. It takes courage and fortitude to see parts of our being that are not like we wish them to be, and to dedicate one’s energy to transforming that.”
-Qapel & Sensei on Integrating the Shadow
Course Schedule
January 12 – Feb 2, 2025
Class Times (Mountain Time)
- Sunday January 12 – 9:30-11am
- Sunday January 19 – 9:30-11am
- Sunday January 26 – 9:30-11am
- Saturday & Sunday February 1-2 – 9:30am and 2:30pm (approx 60-90 min)
The formal and participatory teachings for this course will occur on Sundays with a Saturday-Sunday flash retreat on the fourth weekend. Class times are estimates and may change slightly.
We encourage you to connect with sangha outside of class times to discuss and deepen your learning of the material.
Flash Retreat Weekend: February 1-2
To deepen and integrate your experience, the final (fourth) weekend during the course will also be a Flash Retreat (Feb 1-2). This can be done at home, or with us at Clear Sky Meditation Centre, in Eastern British Columbia. We highly recommend clearing your schedule over the weekend to focus on the retreat. Formal group sessions will be held at these approximate times.
- Flash Retreat morning session: 9:30am MT
- Flash Retreat afternoon session: 2:30pm MT
- Sessions will be 60-90 mins in length.
Meet the Teachers
Catherine Pawasarat
Qapel Doug Duncan
Achariya Doug Duncan received lay ordination from Namgyal Rinpoche in 1978, and is a lineage holder in that teaching. Known for his direct, humourous and compassionate engagement with students, Doug embraces various traditions, contemporary psychology, and science, to mentor all beings to a more awakened state.
Catherine Pawasarat has trained daily with Acariya Doug Duncan since 1998 in an intensive spiritual apprenticeship that is rare in the modern West. She received lay ordination from Namgyal Rinpoche in 2003. In addition to Buddhist philosophy and its applications to daily life, Catherine also draws on generative living and the arts. With Doug she is co-founder of Clear Sky Retreat Center in the BC Rockies.
Course Details
Time and Location
Each of the weekly classes in this online course will be streamed live at 9:30-11am MST. We ask participants to attend live whenever possible. The recording of each class will be available for one week after each class. We encourage you to connect with sangha outside of class times to discuss and deepen your learning of the material.
The course culminates with a Flash Retreat on February 1-2, 2025, with formal group session times held at approx 9:30am and 2:30pm Mountain Time on Saturday and Sunday, with a 60-90 minute duration.
What Does the Course Cost?
This course is offered based on the unique combination of:
1) dāna, and
2) a $80-120 USD administrative fee:
- Register by December 15 2024: $80 USD
- Register by December 29 2024: $100 USD
- Register less than two weeks prior: $120 USD
Click on the tabs below to learn more:
You may have come across this elsewhere in the form of “pay from the heart.” Dāna is a Sanskrit term meaning “generosity.” With dāna, we give as a mutual exchange of generosity. It’s our joy to offer this course, and we trust you’ll match our time, energy, and passion by giving an amount of money that feels good and healthy to both you and us.
The dharma has been built on generosity. No one is excluded for lack of funds. However, it is also extremely beneficial to give as much as you are able.
Typically people give in a range of $120-$500 USD for a course.
As we’re committed to ensuring everyone has access to the Dharma, please feel comfortable to give less if you are not financially secure. Another form of giving dāna is to offer service, and if you are interested in providing support in a non-financial way, we invite you to contact us.
If you are financially secure, we invite you to generate merit by providing more financial support to the Triple Gem. Contributions like these make the difference in supporting our teachers, teachings, and center.
We're delighted to share that we created a short online course so that you can learn more about the practice of dāna here.
In a traditional model of in-person teachings, a retreat center or urban meditation center invites teachers to visit. In these cases the centers have infrastructure and organization costs to cover, which might be covered by an admin fee. For the teaching itself, dāna to the teachers is offered in a bowl. This honors both the sustainability of the teachers, and of the supporting center.
We’ve tried to recreate this approach online. The teachers’ time and the teaching themselves are offered on the basis of dāna, separate to the admin fee. With our dāna offering we are making a direct gift of generosity to the teachers to support their teachings and livelihood.
The admin fee* goes to support the infrastructure and organization necessary to support them to teach. As anyone with an online business will know, the costs of setting up good infrastructure to support effective teaching and connection online can be surprising.
Our admin fee changes based on the date of registration.
Register four + weeks prior: $80
Register two to four weeks prior: $100
Register less than two weeks prior: $120
*We also do not wish to exclude anyone from the Teachings, so if you are not currently in a financial position to afford the admin fee, please contact the course Registrar via [email protected] so we can support you to attend.
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Below are a few of the work and benefits that your admin fee payment is supporting:
- High speed internet (to allow interviews and classes on-line)
- Online class systems (Zoom)
- Registration / admin systems (Eventbrite, Basecamp)
- Communication systems to keep everyone informed, share connection details, teachings and other resources (Mailchimp)
- Online storage (for example, Dropbox, to allow us to let students watch recordings, and to store and share selected teachings in other forms such as podcasts and video later, and Amazon cloud)
- Quality sound, video and editing equipment (both for live teachings and to provide good enough quality for later sharing as podcasts and video). We are regularly updating our equipment to improve your user experience.
- Online calendar booking system to allow students to book interviews
- Website hosting and maintenance for sharing upcoming courses, teachings, blogs and other resources.
We welcome any questions. May all our efforts be sustainable, abundant and for the benefit of all beings!
