.
Inspired to
explore your
spiritual nature?
.
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 ($2,600 per year GST inclusive): ii) monthly individual teacher sessions ($130 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 Skype) 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 Rosanna, our Manager.
A new ongoing retreat group (DAA8) is opening in October 2021
The new group will begin with a three-day face-to-face retreat in Sydney on 22-24 October 2021.
Do you want to join our new ongoing retreat group?
To find out more, register your interest or apply to join the group contact Rosanna – our Manager, and she will support you through the process.
Upcoming DAA8 retreats
These face-to-face 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
Every journey requires preparation. We gather our tools and resources and begin to read the maps that can assist us. We build an awareness of the pitfalls and blind alleys
Event Details
Every journey requires preparation. We gather our tools and resources and begin to read the maps that can assist us. We build an awareness of the pitfalls and blind alleys we may face. As we step onto the path of the Diamond Approach, we are introduced to some of the magical allies that will support us, the qualities of essence.
“What is essence?”, you might ask. It is what is most real in you, and it is what, through the journey, you come to know and live.
In this first DAA8 3-day retreat we will step on to the path, begin learning how to navigate the terrain, and meet some of our fellow travelers on the journey. We’d love to have you join us.
DAA has planned this retreat to be the first face-to-face retreat after the restrictions of COVID-19. Should it not be possible to proceed as planned, a retreat will be offered online for these dates and the start of the DAA8 group will be delayed until January 2022.
We will keep you informed about any change to the planned start of our new group. Please be mindful of making any airline or accommodation bookings that are fully refundable just in case it is not possible to proceed with our plan for an in-person event.
Cost: To be advised.
Time
22 (Friday) 9:00 am – 24 (Sunday) 5:00 pm AEDT
Location
Online – Australian residents only
Online via Zoom
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Please click YES below to register your place!
Please let us know if you can make it to the event.
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OpenSpaces Still Available
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2022 Retreat schedule for DAA8
February 4-6, 2022 (3-day retreat)
June 10-12, 2022 (3-day retreat)
September 7-11, 2022 (5-day retreat)
Retreats you can do now while you wait for our new group (DAA8) to open in October 2021
Becoming involved in an ongoing retreat group is dependent on a new group being available for you to join. In the time between the close of one group and the opening of another, there are many ways you can engage with the teaching at Diamond Approach Australia.
Our one-off, face-to-face retreats provide an opportunity to get a taste of the teaching in the lead up to joining a new group.
You are welcome to come along to one or more of our one-off retreats even if you have no intention of joining an ongoing group and doing sessions with a teacher.
Event Details
What is it to be human in a world that seems complex, messy, bewildering, full of competing perspectives and voices? How can we know what is true? One thing we need is
Event Details
What is it to be human in a world that seems complex, messy, bewildering, full of competing perspectives and voices?
How can we know what is true?
One thing we need is to be in direct contact with our immediate experience.
The Diamond Approach is a path for discovering and nurturing what is real in us, for the development of the essence of our humanity.
Being Human is the first part of a three-part series of teaching introducing the Diamond Path. Each part of the series is a stand-alone retreat and does not depend on doing the other two parts.
Join us for two days of experiential learning into discovering what is true for you.
COST: $220 AUD (inc. GST)
Time
23 (Saturday) 9:00 am – 24 (Sunday) 5:00 pm AEDT
Location
Online – Australian residents only
Online via Zoom
RSVP to event
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
Event Details
Do you sometimes feel that you are standing on shaky ground? Is it a struggle for you to do what you know is needed? Everyone is looking for solid ground. When your
Event Details
Do you sometimes feel that you are standing on shaky ground? Is it a struggle for you to do what you know is needed?
Everyone is looking for solid ground.
When your foundations get shaky and your centre wobbles, do you find yourself feeling foggy or confused and unable to find your footing? Or perhaps you try to compulsively control your experience through seeking a firm foundation in fixed positions, endless efforting, or procrastination.
All these struggles point to a need for real Will, the radical inner reality that enables you to find your true ground in the immediacy of the moment. With true Will, you develop the capacity to respond flexibly; you become decisive, resilient and unshakeably real.
Will gives you the determination and persistence needed to traverse the inner journey and live a real life.
Join us for this experiential teaching on finding your true inner support.
The retreat is open to the public as an introduction to the Diamond Approach path, and to students in ongoing retreat groups who have not yet had this teaching or would like to receive it anew.
Cost: $330 (inc. GST).
Time
12 (Friday) 9:00 am – 14 (Sunday) 5:30 pm
Location
Online – Australian residents only
Online via Zoom
RSVP to event
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
Event Details
Our experience is all we know. It includes our thoughts, feelings, sensations, recognitions, intuitions, as well as our inner conflicts. What can guide us through our experience, to sift the real
Event Details
Our experience is all we know. It includes our thoughts, feelings, sensations, recognitions, intuitions, as well as our inner conflicts.
What can guide us through our experience, to sift the real from the unreal, and the significant from the trivial?
In the Diamond Approach path, we open to our immediate experience with curiosity and compassion. We welcome whatever is arising within us in a friendly way. And as we do this our experience opens to reveal deep patterns within us that eventually loosen and dissolve. Over time our consciousness is transformed into a living expression of what we truly are.
Befriending Your Experience is the second retreat of a three-part series of teaching introducing the Diamond Path. Each part of the series is a stand-alone retreat and does not depend on doing the other two parts.
Join us for two days of experiential learning into befriending whatever is going on for you.
COST: $220 AUD (inc. GST)
Time
29 (Saturday) 9:00 am – 30 (Sunday) 5:00 pm AEST
Location
Online – Australian, New Zealand and Pacific region residents only
Online via Zoom
RSVP to event
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
Event Details
What opens the door to what is most real in us? How do we arrive at who and what we truly are? In the Diamond Approach path our primary practice is
Event Details
What opens the door to what is most real in us? How do we arrive at who and what we truly are?
In the Diamond Approach path our primary practice is called ‘Inquiry’, an open, open-ended, kind and curious exploration of our experience, fuelled by love.
We can begin with whatever is there in our everyday life – even if it seems mundane. If we open to our experience, and engage it, our experience will usher us deeper into the magic and the mystery of reality.
Engaging Your Experience is the third retreat of a three-part series of teaching introducing the Diamond Path. Each part of the series is a stand-alone retreat and does not depend on doing the other two parts.
Join us for two-days of experiential learning into engaging with the practice of inquiry.
Join us for two days of experiential learning into befriending whatever is going on for you.
COST: $220 AUD (inc. GST)
Time
14 (Saturday) 9:00 am – 15 (Sunday) 5:00 pm AEST
Location
Online – Australian, New Zealand and Pacific region residents only
Online via Zoom
RSVP to event
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
Event Details
Every journey requires preparation. We gather our tools and resources and begin to read the maps that can assist us. We build an awareness of the pitfalls and blind alleys
Event Details
Every journey requires preparation. We gather our tools and resources and begin to read the maps that can assist us. We build an awareness of the pitfalls and blind alleys we may face. As we step onto the path of the Diamond Approach, we are introduced to some of the magical allies that will support us, the qualities of essence.
“What is essence?”, you might ask. It is what is most real in you, and it is what, through the journey, you come to know and live.
In this first DAA8 3-day retreat we will step on to the path, begin learning how to navigate the terrain, and meet some of our fellow travelers on the journey. We’d love to have you join us.
DAA has planned this retreat to be the first face-to-face retreat after the restrictions of COVID-19. Should it not be possible to proceed as planned, a retreat will be offered online for these dates and the start of the DAA8 group will be delayed until January 2022.
We will keep you informed about any change to the planned start of our new group. Please be mindful of making any airline or accommodation bookings that are fully refundable just in case it is not possible to proceed with our plan for an in-person event.
Cost: To be advised.
Time
22 (Friday) 9:00 am – 24 (Sunday) 5:00 pm AEDT
Location
Online – Australian residents only
Online via Zoom
RSVP to event
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
One-off, face-to-face retreats in a group setting give you a taste of the teaching and a chance to “try on” our method of inquiry, meditation and awareness.
Waiting for our next ongoing retreat group to start meeting?
While you wait you could do a one-off retreat, register for an online course, do a free webinar, or start individual teacher sessions.