AWAKENING YOUR TRUE PURPOSE THROUGH MINDFULNESS PRACTICE

AN EIGHT WEEK COURSE WITH THE OPTION OF A RESIDENTIAL RETREAT IN THE ABERDARES OLD GROWTH FOREST 28-30 OCTOBER 2022.
COURSE COMMENCES SAT 24 SEPTEMBER 2022

Sessions Two Hours on Saturday mornings at Kanga Studio, Loresho, with a silent day retreat on the weekend of 12th November. The final session will be on 19th November at Kanga Studio which closes the course.

The nature retreat is optional and not included in the course fee. The silent day retreat at Kanga is included.

For details please see the web page: NATURE RETREATS.

Facilitated by David Beatty
This course introduces both formal and informal practices established in the Foundations of Mindfulness Course. While these practices are fundamental to establishing mindfulness the course encompasses a broader perspective, not limited to simply reducing stress, but to awakening the heart-mind towards liberation from the roots of egoic suffering, the downward spiral of negative processing, and which brings the realization that enables us to find meaning in life.

Mindfulness in its foundational form is aimed at liberation from conflictual states and from identification with the limited forms of social, cultural and historically determined signifiers that veil the true nature of the awakened self. The practices are aimed at establishing a sound foundation for re-appraising our lives, finding a sense of common ground in community, and aligning our
deepest humanity towards taking appropriate steps towards shifting, inwardly and outwardly, both attitudes and structures in society to meet the extreme challenges we face locally and globally. While the aim is to explore the human problematic at the deepest personal level that does not mean that the practices we engage with cannot be enjoyable, or even joyous, as we give ourselves the opportunity to share our concerns in the open space of a loving community.

Some of the things you will learn on the course:

 How the practice of mindfulness can be directly applied to simple everyday tasks, such as eating, and address the addiction cycle.
 The ethical basis as an important component of mindfulness practice, not as a set of rules but in terms of relationship, and the psychology of intentions and their consequences.
 The crucial differences between empathy and compassion.
 The importance of embodiment: bringing mindfulness into your relationship with your body.
 The importance of Feeling Tone., and the relationship between thought and feeling.
 How the brain constructs your experience, the neurobiology and psychology of pain and fear. Cognition and reversing the negative
spiral of parasitic processing.
 Understanding impermanence and the role this plays in developing insight.
 Mindfulness in relation to illness, ageing and death.
 The course will finish by exploring how mindfulness and insight can help us meet a world subject to disruption and assist us in engendering non-linear responses as a way of nurturing Radical Hope in the face of uncertainty.

Join us for this intensive course to rediscover your sources of true creativity and common humanity, and to awaken to your true nature, which is the source of meaning and purpose in life. The sessions of formal and informal practice will be a preparation for the optional retreat held over two days at the Aberdares Forest Retreat Centre. There we can deepen our practice with silent immersion in the natural environs of an old growth forest. Participants who do not opt for the two day nature retreat will still have the silent day on 12 th November within the course, and for the weekend 29 th October will be given home practice assignments before completing the course during November.