Registration | Blue Heron Circle

The Practice Mandala: A 6-month Exploration of Entry Points Into Beingness

Most contemplative traditions or lineages have a sequence of practices, progressively evolving us in our awakening. For some people, that textbook sequence might work without flaw, but for most of us our path is less reliable and we have to let life present our unique path. 

Rather than a progressive list of “preliminaries” to “advanced” practices, we happen upon various aspects of the practice mandala.

Whatever we happen upon first is, by definition, our personal preliminary. And an aspect we encounter years later might prompt a deepening we had not previously accessed.  But that doesn’t make the first one less valuable than the last.

It is the whole mandala that supports a comprehensive self-realization.

All contemplative practices/instructions are an attempt to find an entry point into beingness/true nature (contact with what is beyond or below or outside of the thinking mind). In essence, we are looking to discover how not to be run by the identified mind. 

The Practice Mandala is a collection of ways to prompt that experience, deepen it, and ultimately to reside in it.

Practices are aiming to do one of four things: protect the mind from itself, observe the nature of mind, challenge the beliefs in the mind, or put the mind down.

Because we all have different karmas, proclivities, and experiences, our entry points will vary, our defenses will vary, the timeliness of instructions/invitations will vary, what supports deepening or insight will vary, what needs development will vary, what is already established will vary.

As always, our teaching aims to empower you to discover and honor your unique path. In that spirit, we will take 6 months to move around the mandala, touching each aspect over and over, letting each one deepen in conversation with the others. 

The large categories on the mandala that we will weave through are: Concentration, Insight, Inquiry and Love. 

The categories are not hard boundaries - they blend and inform each other. 

This is not a beginning course… it is not advanced either. It is a cyclical revisiting of all the natural entry points to beingness. They may be old friends or new invitations. You may have mastered them or avoided them. Together we will touch them again, letting them teach us afresh.

Blue Heron Schedule + Enrollment

The Practice Mandala will run on Sundays from February 2 - July 27, 2025 during our weekly group (Blue Heron Circle).

Live sessions are always on Sundays at 10:00-11:30am PT (excluding a few holidays).

You may attend sessions live or listen to the recordings during the week at your leisure.

To enroll, simply register for Blue Heron Circle below. The cost is $60 USD/month. If you don’t want to continue after “The Practice Mandala” concludes, you can simply cancel your membership.

As the teaching will build on itself, we will be closing the group after February 2 (so no new folks until August). If you are enrolled and for some reason you want to cancel before the end of the six months, you are free to do that.

About The Blue Heron Community

The Blue Heron community has a consistent group of about 160 folks from a bunch of different countries. About half attend live, with the other half participating via recording. 

All group members can interact with us via email with practice questions/reports.

Live sessions are done online using Zoom and include guided practice, Q & A, formal teaching, and suggested practice assignments.

About Blue Heron Circle

Blue Heron Circle is a practice community that exists to support the process of living more and more from true nature - of living more and more as ourselves.

Becoming ourselves is essentially a process of de-conditioning. It is the great unwinding. This unwinding is basically a two-step movement.

One the one hand, we find what is actually reliable in us. We find what is beyond the conditioned mind. Beyond all the ways we we’re dysfunctionally programmed to cope, survive and act. We first taste - and then eventually abide in - an inner knowing that actually knows what is correct for us in any given moment or situation.

This inner guidance system is discovered through awareness. Through the repeated willingness to ground, observe and quietly wait for the truth that manifests in our Being. Through the ongoing cultivation of a deep, profound inner listening. As this process catches fire, all forms of resistance in life decrease.

At the same time, the conditioned mind’s control over the system (and the collective) is vast and multifaceted. The de-conditioning process is thus also a grand tour through all the gross and subtle wounds, fixations, control mechanisms, justifications, compensations, survival strategies and energetic “stuff” that has been accumulated over the course of our journey (and at the transpersonal level, everyone’s journey).

This tour is not some excavation process that we “manage.” Our role in it is to completely meet and honor what simply appears - the continual, incomprehensible flow of moment-by-moment experience (arising & passing).

In this intimate meeting, this surrendered knowing, there lies the possibility of transformation. A great healing. An honoring of all the parts that were confused and hurt. All of them are welcomed home. All of them are slowly and completely alchemized and unburdened by the Self in its role as the inner parent.

Unwinding is an incredibly subtle and multifaceted art that benefits enormously from support and selective outside input. It is also a highly individualized process, which makes creating supportive group environments for it challenging.

In this group, the following points are emphasized:

• Absolutely all teachings and instructions are provisional. The first question to ask in any teaching environment is: “Is this for me right now?” The answer is “yes,” “no,” or “I don’t know.” We never just swallow it. Our eye is always on the ball. On what is showing up for us in our process now. In what life is asking us to attend to. This knowing is never abandoned in favor of “what the other says is important.”

• As our process unfolds, we inquire. Inquiry - the process of turning “what we don’t know” (our developmental edge) into a potent, alive question - is a core facet of how we teach. Good inquiries provide a “center of gravity” to the process of psychospiritual unfolding. When an inquiry has been properly formulated and “lived with,” the correct answer is guaranteed.

• There is a continually deepening love affair with presence-awareness. Awareness is both the method of awakening and the fruit. It is the aspect of Being that can observe the conditioned mind in minute detail as well as the part that exists with no reference to anything in the personality structure whatsoever. As we live more and more from this part, our capacities for enjoyment and appreciation are radically expanded. A freedom dawns that cannot be named or spoken. At the same time, the sense that we have to be “perfect” and “do it right” gets flushed. We are, more and more, naturally ourselves.

The easiest way to find out whether this group is for you is simply to participate in it for a month.

If you don’t want to keep going, you can cancel via email or the website. While the group does have a consistent community, we welcome people to come & go from the group as they like. Monthly commitments are in place primarily to give stability and continuity to the group container and to avoid the continuous energetic “resets” that are often needed when using the drop-in class format.