An opportunity for retreat work at Clear Sky Centre: Take advantage of private meditation cabins to learn to better understand your own and thus others' minds and hearts. To use others' realization to further your own, and vice versa, see the group retreats elsewhere in this schedule. Participating in "awakening in action" through living and working in awakening community is another option, as part of the Clear Sky Experience.

Reclaim the personal power that’s every human’s birthright by growing mindfulness habits, thereby liberating your finest qualities and decreasing obstacles to your best manifestations in the world. Together we explore receptive and active exercises, solo and in small groups, supplying useful tools for practice throughout the year in both daily and exceptional situations. Connect three times daily to hear teachings and play with creative visualization, movement, meditation, speech/writing and artistic exercises. Become empowered to unveil mindful ease via the different senses and various parts of the brain. Rediscover your strengths and develop your weaker areas. Cultivate a more balanced, holistic life full of the natural pleasures of relationships, work, humour and joy. For more details and registration information, please refer to the Hollyhock course page. Learn more about Hollyhock here. New on the Hollyhock website, our article "Spiritual Healing".

Are you longing for a greater sense of the mystical in your life? It awaits us, as part of the human birthright of awakening. This four-week retreat from December 19 addresses four stages of the mystical life, and may be attended in its entirety or for particular stages: 1) Building an Unassailable Spiritual Aspiration (Dec 20 – 26) Like any stable creation, our spiritual life needs to be built on a strong and sound foundation. During this stage we lay or strengthen the groundwork for the fundamentals of the spiritual life. Highlights include teachings and meditations on impermanence and the preciousness of this human birth, as well as cornerstones of spiritual aspiration such as generosity and others means of generating merit. 2) Abiding with the Divine (Dec 27 – Jan 2) Compassion and loving kindness are two of the indescribably precious “divine abidings,” where fully awakened beings spend all their time! We go in depth to craft our practice of building, maintaining and growing these prized assets, so that we spend more and more of our time there. This stage also reveals how we can continue to fertilize their growth while we go about our daily lives, a crucial component to the virtual monastery. 3) Catalyzing Growth Through Universal Archetypes (Jan 3- Jan 9) We all live by creating and sustaining images and appearances – we have to appear somehow! This stage examines a variety of historical archetypes of how we humans have modeled ourselves around the world and over […]

The Hero's Journey This popular retreat offers a powerful mythical journey experience. Accepting the challenge of the Hero’s Journey will leave you with a healthier, strengthened ego – one more fully integrated with the ‘shadow’ and thus accessing more energy and less susceptible to stress. Introducing the shadow What do we mean by ‘shadow’? Our shadow aspects are the unconscious patterns and views that affect our behavior, decisions and intentions to the extent that we’re not acting consciously for the benefit of ourselves or others. For most of us, the ego is locked in a continual struggle with the shadow: it determines whether we like or dislike people, situations and things, without realizing why or being conscious of our responses. In terms of lifetime patterns, we may be undermining our relationships, blocking our growth, and limiting our spiritual unfoldment and thus our ability to benefit others. Or: we can choose to take a look at what’s really going on under the surface. Negative emotions like anxiety and depression are rooted in the ego’s need to ‘object’-ify our experience. We attempt to cling to things. Since all things have an impermanent nature, this inevitably leads to struggle and dissatisfaction. Once we commit to the challenge to release the energy locked in there, imagine the fountain of energy that becomes available to us then! Enter the Hero In this retreat, support your inner hero or heroine to undertake a courageous journey through the archetypes. The aim: not to destroy the shadow, but […]

Probably the most important work to do in this lifetime in relationship to getting in contact with how you were made, shaped and formed… By doing the retreat you’re bringing that which was unconscious into the conscious mind - which is hugely important for your liberation.  -- Doug Duncan & Catherine Pawasarat All of our tendencies and potentialities come from the womb experience. It literally shapes and forms us - before we were conscious. The exercises and practices in this retreat will bring these patterns to consciousness, and only then can you be liberated from them. This retreat will be taught by Doug Duncan and Catherine Pawasarat at Clear Sky Meditation Center. The retreat will include individual and group exercises and meditations. It will be a challenging topic, suited to those looking for a liberating experience. Hear more about the retreat from teachers Doug Duncan and Catherine Pawasarat: https://youtu.be/C7Z6B4-p_F8 What others have said about this retreat: Can you imagine what gems of insight await you? Course prerequisites:  Completion of the Online Course, A Year of Dharmic Astrology. Recommended reading: The Womb, Karma and Transcendence by Namgyal Rinpoche, available from Bodhi Publishing Image credit: Top image is a painting by Sonam Senge, from the cover of the book "The Womb Karma and Transcendence" by Namgyal Rinpoche.