Evolving Integral Community
Latest news: Catherine Sensei and Clear Sky Sangha are an active part of the Integral global community, and will be presenting and attending at this year’s Integral Conference of North America (ICON) May 28-31! We warmly encourage anyone interested in exploring this evolving edge of spiritual teachings with us to come join – contact duncan@clearskycenter.org to inquire about joining us and our special affiliate code.
Living in a spiritual community creates endless opportunities to wake up, grow up, clean up, show up and find our edges. Our founding teachers, Qapel and Catherine Sensei, began teaching and experimenting with Integral frameworks over fifteen years ago, at Clear Sky, and through their online international teaching platform Planet Dharma.
This is the adventure we have been on—learning and leaning in with our community as we build a retreat center for spiritual awakening and compassionate service in the world. Our centre and community serve as a living laboratory to explore, evolve, and mature into integrated awakening beings.
What is Integral, and why does it matter?
Integral is a framework for a 21st-century awakening, inclusive enough to hold both our individual spiritual and human growth, as well as the vital social, ecological and economic work our planet needs. Meditation – which falls under what Integral calls Waking Up – is essential. But this alone isn’t enough. Integral also asks us to Grow Up – to mature through genuine developmental stages. To Clean Up – to face our shadows and unhealed wounds. And to Show Up – to bring our practice into the world.
Our late teacher Qapel declared himself an Integral Evolutionist. He considered that integrating Buddhism and meditation with the wider Integral lens was the future of truly whole-life spiritual practice – a framework capable of both holding the full complexity of human awakening and showing up to take action to help our planet and society.
Catherine Sensei at the Integral Europe Conference in 2025, speaking on Clear Sky’s journey on waking up, growing up, cleaning up, and showing up.
Whole-life spiritual practice and conscious community
At Clear Sky, this isn’t an add-on or an experiment. It’s foundational. We practice meditation and work on relationships. We care about community and ecology. We take organizational health as seriously as inner development. We choose both a deep spiritual life and an engaged life in the world.
Our work together in community is deeply transformative. We bring diverse people and perspectives together to illuminate both our strengths and blind spots as we walk our unique paths of awakening—alone and together—in service of others.
Integral 21st Century Awakening – Find Out More
Below is an article created from a class that Catherine Sensei gave — a clear and compelling introduction to Integral. She covers what Integral is, why it matters, and how it connects to our practice and our times. If you’ve ever wondered what “Integral” really means, this is the place to start.
Below is Qapel’s final public teaching, given at Clear Sky’s 20th anniversary celebration just two weeks before his passing. In it he traces the five turnings of the wheel of Dharma — and makes the case for why Integral is the next one. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand where our lineage is heading.
AQAL: The Four Quadrants in Action
When you spend time with us in conscious community, you’ll experience how we integrate AQAL (all quadrants and all lines) into daily life so that every moment becomes an opportunity to lean in, practice, and evolve.
Interior Individual Development
Collective Community Development
Observable Individual Growth
Systems and Structures
Integrating Shadow and Growth
All of this is a humbling path of learning, and we embrace “failing forward” with grace as we integrate our stumbles and become of greater service in the world.
This integration may show up most clearly in our immersive training program, the three month intensive, where daily work becomes a spiritual practice.
For more on our approach to shadow work see this article on our Planet Dharma site on the unconscious forces in the psyche: money, sexuality, and power (control).
Integrating Dharma and Career
The integration of our livelihoods and careers, with our spiritual awakening, is a key exploration for us. Integral provides an excellent framework for us to do this. As practitioners, we bring a wide range of personal experience to support holistic ways of living including:
- Environmental journalism
- Team building and organizational consulting
- Money coaching
- Fortune 500 business expertise
- Counseling
- Integral coaching
- Somatic therapy
- Entrepreneurship
- Permaculture and sustainable living
- Farm-to-table culinary arts
- Film making
- Tech industry experience
Our Invitation
Whether you’re drawn to meditation and awakening, to the Integral framework as a map for our times, or simply to the question of what genuine community looks like in practice, you are welcome to connect with us. Clear Sky exists as a living answer to these questions, imperfect and evolving, grounded in the Rocky Mountains and in decades of practice together.
If something on this page has resonated, we warmly invite you to come and explore. Visit us for a retreat, join an online program, or simply reach out. This path is richer walked with others.