.
Inspired to
explore your
spiritual nature?
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Inspired to explore
your spiritual nature?
“When we are no longer locked into a rigid adherence to position and point of view, learning can be fun and light-hearted. Then every new vista becomes a playing field of opportunity.”
KAREN JOHNSON - Co-Founder of the Diamond Approach
If you are longing for a supportive community committed to learning, joining a retreat group at Diamond Approach Australia might be precisely what you are looking for.
Our retreat groups are the primary vehicle for ongoing development on the Diamond Approach path, serving to guide and encourage your spiritual journey.
If you are in touch with what A.H. Almaas calls “the enlightenment drive” – the drive to realise your spiritual nature to the fullest extent in endlessly unfolding ways – then the learning you will experience in an ongoing retreat group will benefit you.
Interested in joining an ongoing retreat group?
A shared journey of spirit!
The teaching is taught in open-ended retreat groups committed to long-term inquiry, guided by our teachers who have extensive training.
After an initial open period, ongoing retreat groups close and stop accepting new members. The closing of the group fosters a stable, committed, supportive learning community that continues to share the unfolding path of this teaching.
Through an ongoing retreat group you will discover:
- A step-by-step, gradual path of awakening that clarifies and expands your consciousness
- Spiritual practices that help you become more present and aware
- Qualities of presence that realise your potential and bring you fulfilment
- What it means to love the truth for its own sake
- Skills for practicing open and open-ended inquiry
- How this teaching differs from spiritual paths that focus on transcendence
- How to be in the world but not of the world
- How to defend against inner-judge attacks that constrain your self-acceptance and compassion
- An experiential understanding of how your individual soul grows and evolves.
What are you likely to experience on this journey of discovery?
- Aliveness: Awakening to new dimensions of joy and contentment
- Subtle Sensing: Embodying varied aspects of presence with awareness
- Inquiry: Refining your capacity for ongoing discovery and new insights
- Guidance: Seeing and undoing common obstacles to experience more freedom
- Direct Experience: Living in the moment without shame and judgement
- Presence: Experiencing the mystery of your spiritual nature.
FAQs about ongoing retreat groups
If you are becoming interested in joining an ongoing retreat group, and want more detailed information, read our responses to some frequently asked questions.
Each retreat has a theme related to a core teaching of the Diamond Approach. The sequence of these teachings follows the Diamond Approach path. The same teaching is provided to all students no matter where they live in the world.
In all its group meetings Diamond Approach Australia uses an experiential approach that includes talks, spiritual practices (e.g. inquiry, meditation and awareness), experiential exercises, large group discussion and personal exploration. Usually a retreat day commences at 9.30am and concludes at 5.30pm. The day is divided into two, three-hour sessions with a 90-minute break for lunch. Each session starts with a meditation practice followed by a specific teaching related to the theme of the retreat.
Students deepen their personal inquiry through experiential exercises, usually in pairs or triads, before re-joining the large group to process what has emerged in response to the teaching.
There are three Sydney-based retreats each year that you commit to attend in person. Retreats are held in January, June and October and total 13 days (i.e. usually two five-day retreats and one three-day retreat). In addition, between each retreat there are small group meetings organised in your area or online.
Deepening your inquiry process is supported through individual sessions with your private teacher. You are also encouraged to develop individual meditation, awareness and inquiry practices. These practices are viewed as essential for you to really learn and integrate the spiritual realisations possible on this path. So, making time for individual practice daily is important.
There are fees for each aspect of participating in the Diamond Approach Australia process. The fees include payments for: i) three Diamond Approach Australia retreats and six interim small group meetings (approximately $2,600 per year GST inclusive): ii) monthly individual teacher sessions ($160 per session); iii) membership fees for the Ridhwan Foundation (sliding scale between $80-$160 per year), and the Diamond Approach Australia Student Association ($10 per year).
Fees are kept as low as possible and are mostly less than other comparable self-development experiences. Expenses associated with travel, accommodation and food are not included in Diamond Approach Australia fees and are the only additional costs that you would incur.
Our students make only an inner commitment to their participation in Diamond Approach Australia and the Diamond Approach, so you are not required to sign a contract of any kind with Diamond Approach Australia.
People of all nationalities, races, cultures, ethnicities, creeds, generations, sexes, genders, abilities and sexualities may participate at any level of Diamond Approach Australia and the Ridhwan School. The Diamond Approach teaching on totality appreciates differences in these areas of human experience and encourages openness to understanding diversity more deeply, including examining our unconscious biases in these areas. As a spiritual community and learning centre Diamond Approach Australia is non-discriminatory and actively supports inclusiveness in offering this path.
As part of our vision, we recognise the effects of power and privilege that arise in relation to our differences, and that these effects may be individual, interpersonal and systemic as well as visible and invisible. We seek to reduce these dynamics in individual teacher sessions, interpersonal relationships and group teachings. We also seek to express this vision in the organisational structures, policies, procedures, and functioning of Diamond Approach Australia. As with the Diamond Approach itself, this vision is growing and evolving, and we understand the need for an active and ongoing engagement with it.
How to join an ongoing retreat group
Joining an ongoing retreat group involves completing the same application process required for starting individual sessions with a Diamond Approach teacher.
Step 1:
Complete a comprehensive and confidential questionnaire which will be forwarded to one of the teachers working with the ongoing group.Step 2:
Participate in a personal interview (usually conducted by telephone or video call) with one of the teachers working with the ongoing group.
This two-step application process may occur at different times for different people. For example, some people complete the application process when they start working with a teacher and before attending their first ongoing group retreat, while other people complete the application process after attending a couple of retreats and when they start individual sessions with a teacher.
Usually, attending one-off retreats and working with a teacher precedes joining an ongoing retreat group. However, we are open to responding to your unique way of joining an ongoing retreat group. You can discuss your pathway with Anna, our New Enquiries Coordinator.
Our new ongoing retreat group (DAA8) is open and welcoming students - it will close in October 2024
Would you like to join our new ongoing retreat group?
This group will close to new participants after the retreat in October 2024. This means the October retreat will be the last opportunity to join DAA8. We estimate that the next group will formally open in about 2027.
To find out more, register your interest or apply to join the group contact Anna – our New Enquiries Coordinator, and she will support you through the process.
Upcoming DAA8 retreats
These online and in-person retreats provide an opportunity for you to get a taste of the teaching and a sense of what it is like being in an ongoing retreat group.
Event Details
Embrace the Liberating Spaciousness of Your True Nature Our lives are busy. The world is crowded. There’s no room, in our schedule, in the day.
Event Details
Embrace the Liberating Spaciousness of Your True Nature
Our lives are busy. The world is crowded. There’s no room, in our schedule, in the day. Even the planet seems a bit squeezy. We’re in a tight spot! These kinds of feelings are symptoms of our disconnection from the spaciousness of our natural state – the clean, clear, unfettered sky-like quality of our true nature.
We can all reconnect with this sacred freedom. To walk through that open door, we just need to shed our old ideas about who we are, leave them on the floor like yesterday’s clothes, and breathe a sigh of relief.
As A.H. Almaas writes “If a person can experience space, then essence will manifest spontaneously, one aspect following another. The aspect of space is, just like any other essential aspect, related to a sector of the personality. Dealing with this sector, which has to do with self-image, will easily precipitate the experience of space. This in turn will activate the descending force, essence, in its various aspects.” (The Elixir of Enlightenment, pp 40-41)
Join us for “Space and Freedom,” a DAA online retreat designed to help you shed the weight of self-images and embrace the liberating spaciousness of your true nature.
Retreat Focus:
✨ Self-Discovery: Explore the fundamental question – Who and what am I if I am not my self-images? Gain insights into the nature of your mind and consciousness, and how inner spaciousness relates to personal freedom.
🌌 Natural Spaciousness: Experience the serene, sky-like quality of your true nature. Learn how to find and maintain spaciousness, even in the midst of life’s chaos.
🛤️ Progress on the Path: Understand the significance of feeling “spacey” and how to work with it to navigate the spiritual path in a way that is grounded and harmonious.
🎭 Role of Self-Images: Delve into the role of self-images in ego development and adult identity. Learn how to navigate and work with self-images on your spiritual path.
🌈 Who Should Attend:
– Individuals seeking to align their lives with who they really are
– Anyone curious about joining the ongoing group DAA8. This group will close to new participants after the retreat in October 2024. This means the October retreat will be the last opportunity to join this group. We estimate that the next ongoing group will formally open in about 2027.
📅 Event Details:
🌿 Teaching Team: Ashley Wain, Frances Haynes, Jane Armytage and Grant Trewenack
🗓️ Date: 10 – 12 May 2024, plus three follow up meetings at 4 – 6 weeks intervals (dates to be confirmed). Orientation for first time students on Tuesday 7 May 6pm – 8pm.
🕒 Time: 9.00am – 5.00pm with a 2 hour break for lunch
📍 Venue: Online
Retreat Fee is $715 covering the 3 day retreat fee and two to three additional 3-hour follow up meetings held online.
This three-day retreat uses an experiential approach that includes teacher talks and spiritual practices such as open-ended inquiry, meditation and awareness practices.
Teaching sessions generally start with meditation followed by a specific teaching related to the theme of the retreat. You will have the opportunity to deepen your personal exploration through experiential exercises, usually in pairs or triads and sometimes in a small group, before re-joining the large group to process what has emerged in response to the teaching.
Each retreat day is divided into two, three-hour sessions with a 2-hour break for lunch.
Time
10 (Friday) 9:00 am – 12 (Sunday) 5:00 pm(GMT+10:00)
RSVP Now
Please click YES below to register your place!
Please let us know if you can make it to the event.
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2024fri11oct(oct 11)9:30 amtue15(oct 15)5:30 pmPeace and PowerFive Day Retreat
Event Details
Discover the Potent Stillness in the Depth of Your Own Being Do you long to be quiet inside yourself? Do you ever wonder about what
Event Details
Discover the Potent Stillness in the Depth of Your Own Being
Do you long to be quiet inside yourself? Do you ever wonder about what personal power really is? Have you felt a sense of beauty and magic open up inside for a moment and wanted more?
Join us for a transformative journey at our “Peace and Power” 5-day retreat. This immersive experience invites you to explore true inner peace and the nature of power. We’ll look at how peace and power are our nature and our birthright, how these qualities get blocked, and how they can be rediscovered and integrated into our life now. Along the way, we will understand how hatred and hostility can be transformed.
As A.H.Almaas writes “Peace: It is not an emotional state or merely the absence of conflict; it is rather the presence of stillness, which is an aspect of Essence. It is the Presence of Being as absolute stillness and calmness. This stillness is not experienced as dull or vague, but as an exquisitely alive kind of consciousness. Peace involves the cessation of the torturous ego activity, with its hopes, and desires, efforts and resistances. That is why it is often equated with ego death. Peace is actually both death and life in the same consciousness.
Pearl Beyond Price, pg. 313
Retreat Focus:
This retreat offers a deep exploration of peace and power, guiding you to uncover your own inner peace and harness your true inner power, with the potential for profound personal transformation.
What Participants Can Expect:
- Learn transformative practices to turn hatred and hostility into inner peace and power
- Cultivate the power to be yourself
- Gain a deep understanding of the barriers to inner peace and discover how inner turmoil can evolve into stillness
- Develop the ability to work with and transform negative inner emotions and obsessive thinking
- Understand how peace and power are innate qualities of our being and explore the disconnection that occurred in childhood
- Identify and liberate oneself from childhood adaptations that hinder knowing and living one’s own power and peace
🌈 Who Should Attend:
- Individuals seeking to discover their true inner power and peace
- Anyone curious about joining the ongoing group DAA8.
This group will close to new participants after this retreat. This means participating in this retreat will be the last opportunity to join this group. We estimate that the next ongoing group will formally open after 2027.
📅 Event Details:
🌿 Teaching Team: Anne Laney, Ashley Wain, Frances Haynes, Grant Trewenack, Ian Cox, Jane Armytage and Renee Redd
🗓️ Date: 11 – 15 October 2024, plus three follow up meetings at 4 – 6 weeks intervals (dates to be confirmed). Orientation for first time students on Tuesday 8 October 6pm – 8pm.
🕒 Time: Each retreat day is divided into two, three-hour sessions with a 2-hour break for lunch. Start and end times to be confirmed.
📍 Venue: St Hilda’s College, University of Melbourne, Victoria
The Diamond Approach teaching is an in person teaching. You are encouraged to participate in this retreat in person with the group. Online attendance may be offered in special circumstances. Contact Anna East (anna@diamondapproachaustralia.com) about online attendance inquiries. The Retreat Fee is to be confirmed.
This five-day retreat uses an experiential approach that includes teacher talks and spiritual practices such as open-ended inquiry, meditation and awareness practices.
Teaching sessions generally start with meditation followed by a specific teaching related to the theme of the retreat. You will have the opportunity to deepen your personal exploration through experiential exercises, usually in pairs or triads and sometimes in a small group, before re-joining the large group to process what has emerged in response to the teaching.
Each retreat day is divided into two, three-hour sessions with a 2-hour break for lunch.
Time
11 (Friday) 9:30 am – 15 (Tuesday) 5:30 pm(GMT+11:00)
Location
St Hilda's College, University of Melbourne
RSVP Now
Please click YES below to register your place!
Please let us know if you can make it to the event.
Yes
OpenSpaces Still Available
Can not make it to this event?Change my RSVP
2024 Retreat schedule for DAA8
May 10 – 12, 2024 (3 day retreat)
Online ONLY
October 11 – 15, 2024 (5-day retreat)
TBD
Have you seen our upcoming events section? There are a number of free webinars throughout the year, with DAA Teachers, offering mini Diamond Approach teachings. Take a look!
Do you need more information before taking your next step?
Contact Anna – our New Enquiries Coordinator, and she will answer your questions and provide you with information about how you could become involved in a way that works for you.