Movement of the Mandala Retreat final Celebration. Photo: Tony Asimakopoulos
March, 2025
by Catherine Pawasarat Sensei
You can’t put a pin in spiritual awakening. The fact of the matter is, there’s a difference between enlightenment in the 4th or 19th century, and the 21st century. There’s a difference between awakening last year, and this year, even between yesterday and today. And we want a 21st century awakening. This is where Integral Evolution comes in.
– Catherine Pawasarat Sensei
My partner and teacher, Qapel (Acharya Doug Duncan), started teaching about Integral Spirituality as early as the 1990s. He declared in 2024 before he died we are no longer merely Buddhists – we are Integral Evolutionists. He considered this the fifth turning of the wheel of Dharma: Theravada, Mahayana, Yogācāra, Vajryayana, and now, Integral. Qapel understood that we need to incorporate the Integral map in order to have a contemporary awakening. A 21st-century awakening.
What sets Integral apart?
Integral living is about evolution. It’s about the courageous unfolding of our potential. It is an approach built on the best available science and research, drawing together insights from all facets of human learning: psychology, business, aesthetics, and beyond. What makes it truly transformative is its honesty about its own imperfection—an acknowledgment that our evolution is an ongoing process.
Why Is Integral Essential?
In the early 2000s, I was with Qapel in Berkeley, California. He was teaching there. As Buddhism began to flourish in North America, Northern California became one of its key hubs. By 2003, Buddhist teachings had been around for 30 to 40 years, and during one of Qapel’s teachings, a room of about 50 people gathered to listen.
After his talk, one man courageously raised his hand and asked, “I’ve been practicing Buddhism for decades. Why am I not awakened yet?” It was a poignant and essential question.
Qapel explained that many of us use Buddhism and meditation simply as ways to enhance our lives. The teachings and practice make the difficult things tolerable and add a certain shine to our existence. Yet, without a true renunciation—a genuine surrender—the practices merely enhance the life we already want to live rather than transforming it. Without letting go of our ego attachments, there isn’t enough energy to push us over the dam into true awakening.
Qapel believed that an Integral understanding offers the tools needed to let go and channel that energy effectively. This approach not only supports personal awakening but also creates the conditions that make awakening meaningful. After all, awakening might be an internal experience. But isn’t the purpose of awakening to benefit others? On our path, it’s not merely about individual liberation—it’s about the Bodhisattva vow, the commitment to alleviating suffering and supporting the unfolding of others.
Integral Spirituality provides a profound and practical structure for this work, especially in this pivotal time in planetary history. We can use Integral Spirituality as a tool to help us to understand that our spiritual lives and the material world are not separate. In fact, our teacher, Namgyal Rinpoche, taught that there’s no difference between the spiritual and the material.
Our planet is communicating, loud and clear, that humanity needs to do things differently.
But how? Spiritual awakening and Integral form a beautiful marriage in answering that question, and supporting our needed transformation.
“You can do this mapping for yourself as an individual, and then you can do it for your communities.“
The Stages of Our Evolutionary Journey
Integral Evolution is a dynamic tapestry woven from several essential threads that Ken Wilber offered and others have expanded:
- Waking Up: It begins with a shift from the external to the internal—a transition that calls us to explore altered states of consciousness through meditation. Yet, awakening is not merely about blissful retreat; it is about inviting these inner experiences to enliven our everyday lives and support us to be of true service in this world.
- Growing Up: Our journey unfolds along developmental lines—from the raw, instinctual stages of infancy to the nuanced, mature expressions of self and morality. Each stage of growth, from the impulsive to the reflective, challenges us to overcome our old patterns and embrace higher levels of understanding.
- Cleaning Up: Integral work involves facing our shadows, the unhealed wounds of our past that still dictate our responses. By doing the deep, often painful work of shadow integration, we clear the way for genuine transformation.
- Showing Up & Opening Up: True evolution demands that we share our insights with the world. Whether it’s stepping into community practices or exploring multiple intelligences—kinesthetic, ecological, aesthetic—we learn that vulnerability and authenticity pave the way for collective healing.
- F*cking Up: Yes, mistakes are inevitable. But each failure is a call to learn, to recalibrate, and to keep moving forward. In embracing our errors, we learn how to learn, and foster the resilience that is essential for real growth.
So, we’re looking at Integral as an opportunity and tool for manifesting and growing as a Bodhisattva in 2025 and beyond. In Integral, some of the tools we work with are:
- The Four Quadrants: I, WE, IT, ITS. The Integral paradigm is about manifesting as an integrated human being; part of this is showing up in a balanced way in all four integral quadrants. The intimate “I” of our inner consciousness, the “it” of the external measurable world, the “we” of shared community, and the “its” of collective structures and systems.
- Lines of Development: These are about growing up. When we talk about growing up, this is progressing through stages of many diverse areas of development such as cognitive ability, values, self-identity, world view, maturity of faith, and so on.
Every being and organization has competencies we lean on. Then there are areas we’re not so comfortable with. These more unconscious aspects we might call “holes” in our mandala. You can do this mapping for yourself as an individual, and then you can do it for your communities. You will begin to have insight on why people and situations interplay in certain ways. You can begin to get creative about how you’d like to round out your mandala and strengthen the whole. Doing this work moves things beyond the personal. It’s all about growing up so that our waking up is more meaningful, useful and beneficial. Doing it collaboratively means that we can actually make a difference in the world.
Beyond the Cushion: A Collaborative Quest for Transformation
Many of us have experienced the paradox of profound inner realizations that seem to vanish when we return to daily life. Meditation is not a magical escape or a painkiller; it is a tool for bringing the radiant insights of the cushion into the messy, beautiful reality of the world. When we allow our inner awakening to inform every action—whether in our personal relationships or our collective endeavors—we start to see that the spiritual and the material are, in fact, one and the same.
Integral Evolution is not a solitary endeavor. It is a co-creation—a vibrant, evolving sangha where each member contributes to the collective energy. At Planet Dharma and Clear Sky we’ve built a community rich in lived experience. Together, we experiment, challenge, and support one another, creating a field of transformation that ripples outward. This collaborative spirit is especially vital in these turbulent times, where humanity stands at a crossroads and the need for new ways of living has never been more urgent.
The Call to Collective Awakening
As we navigate the challenges of our planetary history and the reality that we face together today as an Earth, Integral Evolution offers not only a personal path to awakening but also a blueprint for collective renewal. It reminds us that our individual transformation has the power to raise the bar for all beings, igniting a joyful, compassionate, and wise community. Through discipline, perseverance, and the willingness to let go of old attachments, we set in motion a process that is as profound as it is necessary.
When enough awakened beings come together it creates a powerful vortex of energy—a blessed Buddha field. Those who enter can feel that something is profoundly different. The bar is raised and people meet that bar. It’s a joyful bar, a wise bar, a compassionate bar.
In embracing Integral Evolution, we answer a deep, resounding question: How can we make our inner light shine brightly enough to transform the world around us?
May your quest be joyful, and push the edges of what is known. Welcome to the adventure of Integral Evolution.
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Free AstroDharma Resources
Free AstroDharma Resources
- AstroDharma Reference Chart (Handy printable guide)
- The 3 Most Important Parts of Your Chart (Video)
- AstroDharma and Relationships (Video)
How We Use AstroDharma
At our meditation centre, we use Western astrology alongside Buddhist philosophy and meditation practice. This helps our students transform their challenges more effectively.
There are five key aspects of AstroDharma study:
1. Understand how to read your own astrological birth chart.
2. Harness and develop its positive elements wisely.
3. Recognize and overcome elements that may be out-of-balance.
4. Use this knowledge to redirect your energy into more effective patterns of living.
5. Use meditation and ideally work with teachers and a spiritual community to go deeper and fully investigate and liberate the subtle patterns and conditioning.
Teacher Bio
Since the early 2000s Catherine has provided dharma training and taught the path of awakening to hundreds of students, together with Doug Duncan Sensei and on her own. In addition to Astrology and Buddhist philosophy and their applications to daily life, Catherine also draws on generative living (a.k.a. sustainability) and the arts.
Catherine is from a lineage of spiritual awakening that values the best of Eastern and Western philosophy. Her partner Doug Duncan Sensei and their teacher Namgyal Rinpoche excel in teaching both methods. This is an ideal training for Westerners, and an evolution of traditional teachings for the modern seeker.
In addition to Planet Dharma and Clear Sky, her website GionFestival.org shares her ground-breaking work on the spiritual traditions and sustainability of Kyoto’s 1100-year-old Gion Festival.
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