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Integral Spirituality II: Mapping 21st Century Awakening

February 12, 2023 - March 12, 2023

Integral Spirituality II

Mapping 21st Century Awakening | Online Course

February 12 – March 12, 2023

Join us for Integral Spirituality II – a participatory workshop series with a NEW FORMAT from previous online courses.

Whether or not you’ve heard of Integral Spirituality, perhaps you’re realizing that being in a good state isn’t enough.  For compassionate action we also need to work on our stages of development for how we show up in the world.

Our aim is to share our latest work mapping key areas of spiritual growth – and to work together co-creating the next iteration.

OverviewRegistration

Integral Spirituality II: Mapping 21st Century Awakening

Applying Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory to modern spiritual practice.

Once we understand the theory of Integral Spirituality – and the importance of developing our stages as well as our states – what next?  How do we apply that directly in our lives in a way most relevant for meditators and spiritual seekers?

This four week interactive and participatory workshop is to share our explorations and co-creations for an invaluable integral spirituality map for Dharma practice and 21st century awakening. Both for our individual journeys, and for those of us who teach or help others, a map of the territory of spiritual growth reveals the work to be done for unfoldment.

In this course, we’ll share insightful and fascinating pieces of the maps we’ve created so far, and draw on group wisdom to further explore. 

What are the key areas of growth for Dharma practitioners to develop outside of meditation?  There are many fascinating areas to explore – to name but a few: 

  • Common stages of spiritual unfoldment
  • Dana and relationship to money
  • Integration of action, career and Dharma
  • Interpersonal development and sexual relationship
  • Level of maturity how we relate to Sangha
  • Stages of growth of Sangha / community health 
  • Steps on the journey from guru to group guru

Picking some of these themes to work with, we’ll explore some of the typical stages of growth and development, and work together to enrich these.  What are the patterns of growth in ourselves and others?  How can we support others to grow?  These are the kind of questions we’ll dig into together.

 

integral theory spirituality

Note: this workshop series assumes a working knowledge of integral spirituality. If you missed our October 2022 online course series on Integral Spirituality, you can still join but we recommend you familiarize yourself with Ken Wilber’s ‘Integral Spirituality’ and the concepts of spiral dynamics, beforehand.

States and Stages: Why Study Integral Spirituality?

“We don’t think full liberation is possible any more without an understanding and an integration of the stages”

–Qapel and Sensei

Meditation is essential – but there are parts of us, such as, how we show up with others, that aren’t touched by this alone. Meditation can help us get in a good state but doesn’t necessarily lead us to higher stages of maturity. Stages reflect hard-won growth of understanding, emotional and social range and depth, integration and functionality in the world, and incorporation and transformation of the shadow. Without transformative work that touches every part of our lives, our spiritual growth and our capacity for compassion is incomplete.

Only by working on our stages, in parallel to developing a clear radiant meditative state, can we truly blossom on our spiritual paths.  This means learning how to recognize how stages are ingrained in the subtleties of our lives, bodies, language and behaviors, so that we can highlight the areas for development. Ultimately the stages work presented in integral spirituality helps us find the strength and wisdom we need to flourish in difficult times, to be of service to the world.

Integral spirituality is a comprehensive approach of transformation working with body, mind, spirit and shadow. Planet Dharma’s training path consisting of the 4 pillars of karma yoga/meditation-in-action, study (of Dharma, science, psychology, etc), meditation, and shadow – embodies this integral approach.

Qapel and Sensei’s 30+ combined years of training work with students shows the great power of this work of developing stages, both for deepening a student’s Dharma practice, as well as their functionality and flourishing in life.

Course Learning Goals

  • Learn our latest working mapping 21st century awakening around key areas of transformation in your work, money, relationships, intimacy/sex, the shadow, and other areas of life.
  • Work together to co-create a framework for integrating your meditation/spiritual practice with your everyday life.
  • Deepen your knowledge of  how to skilfully combine traditional wisdom teachings with the latest discoveries in science and psychology, to foster a well rounded spiritual practice suited for the complexities of the 21st century.
  • Explore and share real-life examples of the integral path of spiritual training and learn how to place these on our evolving map

Ken Wilber & Integral Spirituality

Video: The Fourth Turning (Integral Spirituality and Integral Buddhism)

Ken Wilber, the founder of integral theory, describes the ‘fourth turning of the wheel’ for the world’s great spiritual traditions, including Buddhism.

Wilber describes the need to make a new spirituality – one that transcends and includes the old traditions, while also adding new material. These new additions should be compatible with the old, but brings paths like Buddhism up to date in the modern and post-modern world.

Recommended Reading:  Integral Spirituality

 

Course Schedule

February 12th  – March 12th, 2023

All Integral Teachings will be on Sundays

with a new format of two 90 minute sessions per week

  1. Sunday Feb 12th: Class 9-10:30am, Workshop 3-4:30pm MST
  2. Sunday Feb 19th: Class 9-10:30am, Workshop 3-4:30pmMST
  3. Sunday Feb 26th: Class 9-10:30am, Workshop 3-4:30pm MST
  4. Sunday March 5th: Class 9-10:30am, Workshop 3-4:30pm MST

The formal and participatory teachings for this course will occur on four Sundays. There will be a formal class in the morning (9-10:30am MT), followed by personal time for reflection and study and then a participatory workshop in the afternoon (3-4:30pm).

Flash Retreat Weekend: March 11-12th

To deepen and integrate your experience, the final weekend during the course will be a Flash Retreat (Saturday and Sunday, March 11-12th). This can be done at home, or together with us at Clear Sky Meditation Centre, in Eastern British Columbia.

During the flash retreat you will focus on reflection, investigation and study of the integral content. Formal class/workshop times will also be held at 9:30-10:30am, 11-12pm and 2-3pm Mountain Time.

NOTE: There is just one course registration which includes all classes, workshops and the flash retreat.

Early birds get the worm!

We wish to support early registration with early-bird admin fee rates. See Course Details section below.

Meet the Teachers

Catherine Pawasarat
Catherine Pawasarat
Doug Duncan
Doug Duncan
Doug Duncan and Catherine Pawasarat are Dharma and meditation teachers who founded Clear Sky Meditation Centre, BC, Canada.

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.

Meditation retreat sangha community
Planet Dharma- Venerable Namgyal Rinpoche

Why We Study Integral Spirituality

We use and study integral theory and spirituality because it is our lineage’s mandate to take the teachings of awakening to new places.

Namgyal Rinpoche was known for incorporating innovative and diverse teachings of awakening, and we continue to do so – whether from traditional Buddhism, western mysteries, psychology, science and even business management.

We aim to co-create a universalist and 21st-century framework for international students of Dharma. Planet Dharma’s four pillars and five principles for bringing depth practice into every aspect of life – embodies a very integral approach. Our home meditation center, Clear Sky, is a living lab for integrating the spiritual path into every aspect of life: community, shadow work, and functionality. In short, integral spirituality is not a textbook to us, but something we are actively embodying every day.

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Case Study on States and Stages - Duncan Cryle

Much of my life I’ve been a nice guy on the surface, and aggressively competitive underneath. On one hand, I wouldn’t like to hold people accountable or get into conflict. And on the other hand I would roll over people to get what I wanted.  Working with the Teachers and inside the melting pot of sangha at our meditation centre, I eventually hit a point where this ego strategy simply stopped working.

Despite having a strong meditation practice and experiencing clear meditative ‘states’ I had to finally witness these blind ‘stages’. I started to see the huge cost this was having to me and others. This was immensely healing as I began to see how these unseen ‘stage’ related patterns drove so many unhelpful and unhappy patterns in my life.

Course Details

Time and Location

Each of the four weekly Sunday morning classes in this online course will be video streamed live from 9am-10:30am Mountain Time. The recording will be available for one week after each class. There will also be a Sunday participatory workshop from 3-4:30 pm Mountain time.

Finally, to deepen your experiential learning, a Flash Retreat will be held on March 11-12th, 2023. You can attend this retreat online at home, or come for a residential retreat at Clear Sky Centre.

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.

Early Bird Admin Fees: Register four + weeks prior: $80 | Register two to four weeks prior: $100 | Register less than two weeks prior: $120.

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.

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!

 

Integral Spirituality II mapping 21st century awakening online course
integral spirituality retreat

The inaugural Integral Spirituality Flash Retreat in November 2022 – students at Clear Sky Centre in a study group discussing integral theory.

Sangha - Online Classes
Bat Fung

This kind of Dharma is much needed, practical and insightful. It is something we need in our modern society where everyone is trying to get ahead of others. Learning with Qapel and Sensei helps me see clearly, lead genuinely and be more willing to step into the unknown, to serve others and to learn.

Bat Fung
Jonathan Clifford

Qapel and Sensei teach in a light but profound way – taking us on a brilliant journey of understanding with guile and humour.
Male and female perspectives help balance with differing approaches. Explaining a complex but genius system that holds all life understanding from religion, science, psychotherapy and wisdom traditions is not easy. I think Ken Wilber would have enjoyed it. 

Jonathan Clifford
Shiatsu, Qigong & Meditation Teacher