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Dharma in the Stars: Integrating Saturn

Online or In-Person | March 21-23, 2025

“Astrology allows us to identify our unique challenges and strengths as individuals in order to more fully embody and live our spiritual awakening.

“Dharma empowers us to transcend our challenges, leverage our strengths and reduce the suffering within ourselves and those around us.”

-Catherine Pawasarat Sensei

As spiritual explorers, we want breakthroughs. We want liberation, freedom, and the ability to manifest our most profound vision for this lifetime. And ironically, the only way to bring these spiritual aspirations to fruition—and to break away from our timeworn, “stuck” patterns—is to embrace discipline, which builds the supporting structures for breakthrough. Astrologically, this means working with Saturn. Join Catherine Sensei, a wisdom teacher who has developed AstroDharma as a tool for transformation, in a weekend ripe for life-altering insights.

As spiritual explorers, we can lean on the idealized notion of being a “free spirit.” This aspiration can lead to chafing around boundaries and authority, two of the hallmarks of Saturn. It’s easy to project these qualities onto someone or something else, as our disowned shadow. Integrating these qualities in ourselves is key to true spiritual growth. Drawing on AstroDharma as a resource can help us get there. 

Historically, Saturn was associated with the Grim Reaper or Father Time, and it’s still known as the Lord of Karma. Wherever we have Saturn in our natal astrological chart, we are likely to experience restrictions or obstacles. Integrating our Saturn involves learning to dismantle these constraints, and upcycling the resources thereby acquired as foundations upon which to build the rest of our lives. In this way, we begin to participate in the conscious shaping of our karma.

The planet Saturn is the doorway to working consciously with more transpersonal and universal energies. After all, it is the gatekeeper from the personal inner planets to the transpersonal or generational outer planets. In AstroDharma, the outer planets—Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto—offer the transformative energy we need for breakthroughs, through their mighty forces of revolution, dissolution, and destruction, respectively. Accessing and working consciously with these powerful energies requires discipline and self-mastery: in other words, integration (vs. projection) of Saturn. An untrained, undisciplined warrior cannot navigate these stormy forces of change. Instead, karmic tempests repeatedly knock us sideways. Saturn’s authority and responsibility are the keys to breaking through the locks of our conditioned karma to our greater potential—and rising to the challenge of our total transformation.

Silent retreats BC

 This course for you if:

  • You’d like to study an astrological Dharmic framework for spiritual understanding with a wisdom teacher in the Namgyal lineage.
  • You’d like to explore where you fall subject to projections—those aspects of yourself which have been forced into the unconscious, thus cast onto others—and learn to own them as a more integrated human being.
  • You’d like to transform challenges in your life by leveraging unseen strengths and talents.
  • You’d like greater clues into the particular shapings of gestating in your mother’s womb, and how your womb experience is impacting your life.
  • You’d like insights into how you can best connect with awakening states of unity.
  • You want to understand the patterns of others, as well as your own, to be a more skilled and compassionate being in the world.

In other words, we must integrate Saturn to become what we truly want to be.

In AstroDharma, we refer to our North Node as our “Dharma,” our Dharmic path. Learning to manifest our North Node is the most challenging path we can undertake because it involves swimming upstream against the heavy current of our South Node’s familiar and habitual Karma. However, we cannot work with our North Node, our true potential, unless we work with Saturn.

Mastery requires incredible discipline. An Olympic figure skater lands that quadruple axle on the ice because they’ve invested thousands of training hours towards achieving this potential. 

Over the course, we will show you how to examine your natal chart, and look at participants’ charts together, focusing on Saturn, its ruler, Capricorn, and the associated 10th house. We also encourage you to bring burning questions arising from your life—particularly related to challenges around blocks and authority themes—so we can study how they show up in your chart astrolodharmically. Think about specific questions which will be of particular benefit to you, and which will help you towards being of benefit to others.

For those attending in person, Catherine Sensei will lead us in somatic AstroDharma mandalas to embody our Saturn together. These mandalas can be a compelling, visceral experience.

What You’ll Learn: 

  • A review of AstroDharma and how it is unique.
  • How to examine and map your own astrological natal chart’s placements, particularly Saturn, its ruler, Capricorn, and the related 10th house.
  • What happens with Saturn, Capricorn, and the 10th house? Why are they considered difficult? How can we access their potential wisdom and mastery?
  • Tools for recognizing and working with reality as it is, mapping karma and potential. 
  • How to work with obstacles, authority, and discipline, toward the growth of your greater potential.

About AstroDharma

“AstroDharma” is what Catherine Pawasarat Sensei calls her unique synthesis of Buddhist teachings on spiritual awakening (Dharma) and transpersonal Western astrology, based on the teachings of Carl Jung.

These two powerful tools help us better understand ourselves and the patterns we manifest in our lives. The more we know about ourselves, the more choices we have. Then, we can make better choices so that we may lead healthier, better-integrated lives. Furthermore, we can also more deeply understand the patterns of those around us, and support the potential in others, which is key to Buddhist practitioners’ bodhisattva vow.

Saturn relates to what we’d like to manifest in the world, the areas of life we’d like to master and teach to others. It’s a rare and significant achievement to integrate both external authority and our inner tyrant into self-discipline and skilled judgment. Working with our Saturn, over time and with conscious effort, we gradually learn to take responsibility for shaping our own karma. This is easier said than done.

Meet the Teacher - Catherine Sensei

Awakening Community and Tarot Retreat

Catherine Pawasarat

Catherine Pawasarat Sensei is a contemporary Dharma teacher, attendant, consort, co-teacher via Planet Dharma and co-founder of Clear Sky Retreat Center. In addition to Buddhist philosophy and its applications to daily life, Catherine also draws on generative living and universal spiritual tools including transpersonal astrology and Japanese arts.

Acariya Doug Duncan since 1998 in an intensive spiritual apprenticeship that is rare in the modern West. She received lay ordination from Namgyal Rinpoche in 2003.

Course Details

Time and Location

This weekend retreat will be led by Catherine Pawasarat Sensei at Clear Sky Meditation Center in Eastern BC. This course is offered online or in-person.

Schedule / Class Times: For onsite retreatants, please arrive in good time for orientation at 5 pm Mountain Time on the Friday. The first class will be at 7 pm Mountain Time. The retreat will formally end at 3 pm Mountain Time on the Sunday. Classes will be 60-90 mins in duration, with classes in the morning and evening and possibly the afternoon each day (Mountain Time) – the exact schedule to be confirmed. Please ensure you are available for the whole weekend to focus on the course material and attend classes live.

Online participants are expected to attend classes live.  We will arrange class times to be comfortable for most time zones. However we understand that some class times might occur after midnight in some regions, if this is the case for you, please let us know when you register.  Then we can provide a recording so you can catch up on that particular class.

What Does the Course Cost?

In-Person Participants: 1) dāna to the Teacher plus 2) accomodation and meal costs for your stay Clear Sky Meditation Centre.

Online Participants: 1) dāna to the Teacher  2) online administration fee of $150 CAD.

Keen practitioner pricing: 10% savings on all fees available until September 13th, 2024.

Important: The last day to register is one week prior to the retreat start date. Please register early.

Questions?

If you have questions about the retreat, please contact the Clear Sky Retreat Manager at 250-429-3929  (phone) or at bookings@clearskycenter.org (email).

About Clear Sky

Located in the BC rocky mountains, we offer over 300-acres to deepen your practice and reconnect with nature. 

Founded by Qapel Doug Duncan and Catherine Pawasarat Sensei, we are home to students from around the globe who are dedicated to co-creating a supportive and innovative space for awakening in our modern world.

In adherence with our quadruple bottom line, we source our food as local and organic as possible.

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW on how to get here, what to bring and what to expect. 

Clear Sky Meditation Centre sanctuary

Locally-grown organic food

Breathing Meditation and Tarot Retreat

Supportive meditation guidance

Stunning bedroom views

Bonus Gift for Course Participants

Online AstroDharma Course INCLUDED

Catherine Sensei also offers an online Intro to AstroDharma course which you will be able to access at the end of this course. This will help you continue your studies.

Planet Dharma- Intro to AstroDharma

FAQs

You may have come across this elsewhere in the form of “pay from the heart”. Dāna is a Sanskrit term meaning “generosity”. With dāna, we give as a mutual exchange of generosity. It’s our joy to offer this course, and we trust you’ll match our time, energy, and passion by giving an amount of money that feels good and healthy to both you and us.

The dharma has been built on generosity. No-one is excluded for lack of funds but it is also extremely beneficial to give as much as you are able

Typically people give in a range of $120-$500 USD for a course. 

As we’re committed to ensuring everyone has access to the Dharma, please feel comfortable to give less if you are not financially secure.  Another form of giving dāna is to offer service, and if you are interested in providing support in a non-financial way, we invite you to contact us. 

Conversely, if you are financially secure, we invite you to generate merit by providing more financial support to the Triple Gem. Contributions like these make the difference in supporting our teachers, teachings, and center.

Learn more about the practice of dāna here.

In a traditional model of in-person teachings, a retreat center or urban meditation center invites teachers to visit. In these cases the centers have infrastructure and organization costs to cover, which might be covered by an admin fee. For the teaching itself, dāna to the teachers is offered in a bowl. This honors both the sustainability of the teachers, and of the supporting center.

We’ve tried to recreate this approach online. The teachers’ time and the teaching themselves are offered on the basis of dāna, separate to the admin fee. With our dāna offering we are making a direct gift of generosity to the teachers to support their teachings and livelihood.

The admin fee* goes to support the infrastructure and organization necessary to support them to teach. As anyone with an online business will know, it can be surprising the costs of setting up a good infrastructure to support effective teaching and connection online. The admin fee changes based on date of registration.

*We also do not wish to exclude anyone from the Teachings, so if you are not currently in a financial position to afford the admin fee, please contact the course Registrar via registrar@planetdharma.com so we can support you to attend.

Below are a few of the work and benefits that your admin fee payment is supporting:

  • high speed internet (to allow interviews and classes on-line)
  • online class systems (Zoom)
  • registration / admin systems (Eventbrite, Basecamp)
  • communication systems to keep everyone informed, share connection details, teachings and other resources (Mailchimp)
  • online storage (for example, Dropbox, to allow us to let students watch recordings, and to store and share selected teachings in other forms such as podcasts and video later, and Amazon cloud)
  • quality sound, video and editing equipment (both for live teachings and to provide good enough quality for later sharing as podcasts and video). We are regularly updating our equipment to improve your user experience.
  • online calendar booking system to allow students to book interviews
  • website hosting and maintenance for sharing upcoming courses, teachings, blogs and other resources.

We welcome any questions. May all our efforts be sustainable, abundant and for the benefit of all beings!

Specific times may change – this is a rough guide (MST)

6:30 – 7:30 AM: Walk &/or Personal Practice
7:30 – 8:15 AM: Breakfast: Prepare, eat, clean up
8:15 – 8:45 AM: Walk &/or Personal Practice
9:00 – 10:00 AM: Class with Teachers
10:00 – 10:30 AM: Walk
10:30 – 11:30 AM: Group Practice led by Sangha
11:30 – 12:30 PM: Personal Practice
12:30 – 1:30 PM: Lunch: Prepare, eat, clean up
1:30 – 3:00 PM: Personal Practice
3:00 – 4:00 PM: Group Practice led by Sangha
4:00 – 5:30 PM: Personal Practice
5:30 – 7:00 PM: Dinner: prepare, eat, clean up
7:00 – 7:30 PM: Walk &/or Personal Practice
7:30 – 8:30 PM: Group Practice and Q & A with Teachers
8:30 – Beyond: Personal Practice & bed

We recognize and respect plant medicine as an important part of some people’s spiritual paths. 

Please note, the meditation practice on this retreat is very powerful. Consuming mind-altering substances will detract from your experience and could cause negative side-effects. 

We ask that you refrain from microdosing or consuming mind-altering substances during this retreat and in the days immediately following it. 

We aim to make our retreats as accessible as possible. 

As a centre run entirely by Karma Yoga (selfless service), retreat fees only cover food, accommodation and the equipment required to offer them online. We do not have paid staff. 

The teachings themselves are offered on the basis of Dāna (pay-from-the-heart). 

For some, this is still a barrier of entry.

If you are seeking financial assistance to attend a retreat, please complete a Scholarship Application form.

Orange flowers in field at meditation retreat center