How would you live if you had real courage, if you had the strength to be truthful with yourself? What would your life be like if you were connected to your natural boldness, your inherent confidence, your true aliveness?

The spiritual journey can be one of excitement, independence and adventure, a thrilling discovery of our capacities.

The quality of our nature that opens this possibility is essential strength, which gives us the sense “I can” — I can be it, I can make it, I can live it.

In this three day online retreat we will look at reconnecting with the fiery force of our natural boldness and strength, through questioning our old assumptions and exploring our conditioning.

We will learn to open up our anger and aggression in healthy ways. As we contact our essential strength, it helps us to engage the world and the inner journey with daring, vitality and passion. 

From your experience of participating in this retreat you may understand how:

• Turning inward and inquiring into where you are in this moment can reconnect you to your inner strength
• Engaging experientially with anger and aggression can open them up and transform them
• Challenging your assumptions about strength can liberate you from prior conditioning that limits you now
• You can meet the challenges of life with an adventurous spirit

This three day online retreat uses an experiential approach that includes teacher talks and spiritual practices such as open-end inquiry, meditation and awareness practices.

Teaching sessions generally start with a meditation practice 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.

The day is divided into two, three-hour sessions with a 1&1/2-hour break for lunch.

EVENT DETAILS
Teachers: Andreas Mouskos and Frances Haynes (Learn more about our teachers)

Dates: 28 – 30 March 2025
Cost: $385 (inc GST)
Location: Online

Open to: General public and current Diamond Approach students. If you are a current DAA student, you are eligible for a discount on the retreat fee, please contact Alicia Savelloni at alicia@diamondapproachaustralia.com to register your interest to attend. 

Liberating Joy on the Journey and in Daily Life

What brings you joy? What causes your unhappiness? Have you wondered if joy is the result of external conditions, or is it actually a natural state? And if it is a natural state, how come we aren’t happy all the time?

In this two day online retreat, we will explore essential joy—what we call ‘the yellow Latifa’. We will dive into what blocks it for us, and what opens it up.

Essential joy is the sunny radiance of our heart.

Most often, however, we adapt to our upbringing and the conditions of life by shutting down our innate playfulness, delight and curiosity.

As we explore these internalised ideas, to see where they come from, and whether they have any real basis, they tend to loosen, and make available the joyfulness of our being, our innate happiness.

We will look at these ideas to see what’s true, and see if we can let go of misconceptions and judgements, so we can open to the naturally occurring phenomenon of happiness.

It’s true that the spiritual journey is a sometimes arduous undertaking, and sometimes a thrilling adventure, which requires steadfastness, discipline, and courage.

And it’s also play—delightful, light-hearted play.

The yellow Latifa makes it fun.

From your experience of participating in this retreat you may:

• see how you shut down your playfulness, curiosity and delight
• release the patterns that block your heart’s capacity to experience the joy of your being
• reconnect to the innate human quality of curiosity that has been squashed through conditioning and beliefs
• recognize how you can access your natural happiness even in times of great stress and strife
• understand that the closer we get to reality, to authenticity, to the truth, the happier we feel

This two-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 90 minute break for lunch.

EVENT DETAILS
Teachers: Jean Berwick and Grant Trewenack

Dates: 3 – 4 May 2025, (2-day on-line retreat)
Cost: $330 (inc GST)
Online

Open to: General public and current Diamond Approach students. If you are a current DAA student, you are eligible for a discount on the retreat fee, please contact Alicia Savelloni at alicia@diamondapproachaustralia.com to register your interest to attend. 

Integrating the inner foundation of confidence, persistence and ease

How would it be to live your life with an honest-to-goodness confidence in yourself? To be able to persist through the ups and downs of life, and and remain steadfast in face of difficulty?

This is possible when essential will is available.

Essential will – the natural will of our deepest nature – is quite different from what we usually experience or think of as will. It is not ‘willpower’ or ‘iron will’–ideas which implying hardening, effort and control.

Discovering and developing true will can give us the confidence to respond to reality in a direct, grounded and realistic way, that is not rigid or forced.
True will brings an easeful determination rather than hardness. It is an unshakeable inner support for being who we really are.

In this three day online retreat, we will look at the obstacles to true will, how we became disconnected from it, and how our current patterns continue to disconnect us.
By exploring these patterns with openness, curiosity and compassion, we can understand and release them, making way for the presence of will, our essential will, to arise within us.

By participating in this retreat , you have the opportunity to gain:

• an understanding of how you block your true will
•  a clearer sense of what essential will is
•  a greater capacity for persistence and determination
• more confidence, resilience and inner solidity
• a greater capacity to stay the course in life and on the spiritual journey

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.

EVENT DETAILS
Teachers: Ian Cox and Laurie Wattell

Dates: 15 – 17 August 2025, (3-day on-line retreat)
Cost: $385 (inc GST)
Online

Open to: General public and current Diamond Approach students. If you are a current DAA student, you are eligible for a discount on the retreat fee, please contact Alicia Savelloni at alicia@diamondapproachaustralia.com to register your interest to attend.