TENDING THE FIRES: Eros, Dharma, and Forging a Path in Destabilising Times

A non residential weekend of practice and teachings in London with Adam Lobel and Catherine McGee June 21st and 22nd 2025

Fire can be both gorgeous and terrible—a symbol for sacredness, yet also an image for the flames of greed, hatred, and delusion.  While we see a world on fire and hear the call of the Buddha to extinguish the flames, we also know that the fires of love and of creative imagination are among our most incredible, compelling, and needed gifts.

An alchemical maxim says: She who masters the fire, masters the work.

What ways of practising can orient us to sanity while meeting the intensity of the times? What ways of being can draw upon the depths we know and intuit while doing justice to our love for the world?

What ways of looking can transmute fires of suffering into initiations?

This weekend Adam and Catherine will reflect on how they are grappling with these questions and invite us into practices to deepen our own inquiries.   They will draw upon four ways of looking :  1. Early Buddhist teachings as articulated through the 'ways of looking' approaches of Rob Burbea. 2. Buddhist Tantra, a tradition that works with intensities alchemically. 3. Soulmaking Dharma in which our relationship with loving desire—‘Eros’—is seen as a key factor in restoring and expanding senses of sacredness. 4. The Four Fields, a contemporary ecological and social teaching on the embodiment of awakening. Together, these offer a multidimensional investigation drawing from the wellsprings of our traditions.

Join us this summer solstice, when the sun is at its greatest strength to tend the inner and outer fires with care, interest, and passion.

Whether you are someone for whom fires are burning like a bonfire, or have burned out and turned to ash, or someone who doesn’t relate to or see much fire in themselves, whatever relationship you have to fire, you are welcome. This weekend we will work with alchemical images and mysticisms of sacred fire to help us tend the flames of our times. You are invited into the “forge” of a living inquiry to learn together.

There will be periods of guided and silent contemplation, shared inquiries with the sangha, reflections from the teachers, and periods being together in both silence and conviviality.

This weekend is suitable for anyone who has a well established meditation practice.

Maestros

Catherine McGee has been teaching Insight meditation In Europe and the US since 1999. She has long been associated with Gaia House, an Insight Meditation centre in Devon, and is a member of their teacher council. It was at Gaia House that she developed a creative friendship with Rob Burbea  and from 2014 she collaborated closely with him in forming and shaping A Soulmaking Dharma until his death in 2020.   Catherine teaches yearly at theInsight Meditation Society  in Barre Massachusetts and the  Barre Centre for Buddhist Studies and is a guiding teacher for OneEarth Sangha- (oneearthsangha.org) a virtual EcoDharma centre supporting a global community in the Path of Engaged Practice.

Adam Lobel, Ph.D, practices at the threshold of ecologies, Buddhist-inspired meditation and philosophy, and psycho-social political change. His work in the world weaves these practices together in a teaching called theFour Fields. Adam is a scholar-practitioner of philosophy and religion, focusing on Dzogchen Tibetan Buddhism and contemporary theory. A professor of Ecopsychology at the Falk School of Sustainability and a Focusing professional, he is curious about cultural therapeutics. He runs an ecological consulting organization called 4F Regeneration, teaches in the Ecosattva Training, is a Guiding Teacher for One Earth Sangha, a GreenFaith fellow, and is active in ecological justice movements. Adam teaches a critical style of contemplative training that seeks to avoid enclosure in neoliberal mindfulness while disclosing effortless awareness. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his family where he protects lands from the petrochemical industry. For more on Adam’s practices: www.releasement.org

Timings

Cost for the weekend and Dana offering to the teachers

The early bird registration fee of £65 is available until two weeks prior, after which time the fee will be £75. The teachers are not receiving any payment from Shambala for their work and teachings this weekend and one benefit is that this has enabled us to keep the cost as low as possible. The reason for this is that Catherine, as many teachers in her tradition, lives completely dependent on ‘dana’ as a way of life. This means that she is entirely reliant on the voluntary offerings of others for her livelihood, to pay her bills and all the usual expenses,  and receives no other income. Adam has generously agreed to offer the course in this spirit this weekend as well. So, at the end of the course you will be invited to join in this beautiful tradition and make dana offerings to the teachers.

A concession fee of £35 is available, and a sponors fee of £100 is offered to help support the concession fee places.

Please contact [email protected] to arrange a concession or sponor fee.