Illness as an Accelerator of Spiritual Intelligence and Awakening

Illness or caregiving can be part of your spiritual practice and path. Using the Integral map, we’ll use the very difficulties that illness magnifies as the place to bring our attention and our practice.

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Learn to accelerate the spiritual intelligence that illness allows us to access

Actionable Information

6 modules packed with helpful ideas, questions, and practices.

Meaningful Interaction

6 live Zoom calls which feature both teaching and discussion, recorded and archived on the site. Be apart of a supportive group of participants to share with and learn from.

Useful Resources

Multiple materials including PDF downloads, links to helpful resources and in depth videos. PLUS access a special bonus course: The Six Skills Of Meditation.

Our 6-week live, virtual course, focuses on illness as a path to deep spiritual growth. Using Ken Wilber’s Integral map, we look at how this growth occurs and how the experience of illness can offer a direct route to a less painful, more expanded view of your existence, regardless of your health status.

We tend to think of tragedy and loss as experiences that close us off from spirit, or we believe that chronic illness is an impediment to our spiritual development. The truth is, illness can be a direct route to spiritual growth.

Some people are thrust into spiritual awakening by their illness, experiencing sudden states of expansion through the intensity of their physical experience or their grief. Others come to rely on a spiritual practice to help open them to a broader understanding and context for their illness experience. Others see the dilemmas of illness as koans which can help them awaken.

This Course Will Help You:

Understand spiritual intelligence and the process of spiritual awakening
Learn practices to help you to develop your spiritual self
Cultivate the capacity to view chronic illness or caregiving as a path to awakening, rather than a burden to be endured
Hear other people’s experiences to both normalize and inspire your own path

This Course Is For:

People who want to grow and develop their spiritual intelligence and awareness
People who wonder about the meaning of illness, why it’s happening, and what the purpose of illness and suffering is
People who want to validate and understand the spiritual growth they have experienced in living with chronic illness
People who want to mine the spiritual depths revealed by illness

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Pay what you can afford. No one will be turned away for financial reasons.

Course Overview

Week 1: The Koan; Two Vectors of Spiritual Development

Week 2: Spirituality and the Body

Week 3: Spirituality and the Psyche

Week 4: The Spiritual Line: Self Awareness and Self Mastery

Week 5: The Spiritual Line: Universal Awareness and Presence

Week 6: Awareness and Awakening

Your Instructor

Dr. Lynn Royster Fuentes

Lynn is a college instructor, educational course designer, and a mediator with a BA, MA, JD, and PhD. An experienced classroom and online instructor, she has designed and taught courses in transpersonal psychology, writing, planning, chronic illness, and conflict management at DePaul University, where she also founded and directed the Chronic Illness Initiative, a program to help students with chronic illness obtain a degree.

A devoted student of Ken Wilber and integral philosophy, she has published integrally oriented essays and articles on conflict resolution and illness management and weaves integral ideas into her course design and teaching. She follows an integral life practice of physical, psychological, meditative, and cognitive development.

Lynn has volunteered in many capacities – with battered women, people in the recovery community, and people with chronic illness – and served on the board of the Solve ME/CFS Association of America for many years. Despite her study of many disciplines, Lynn regards her greatest learning as long-term caregiver for severely ill family members.

FAQs

Do I have to do all of the courses? Or, do them in order?

What if I can’t attend the live calls?

Who are these courses for?

Testimonials

Wendy

And Lynn – simply wow! Thanks for being such a pioneer and putting such an educational and heart-full class together for our benefit. I will read and re-read your handouts as I continue to live with this chronic illness. Your work is a blessing and a deep comfort to me. It is good to be understood and to have partners on this journey. So thank you for showing up on my computer – I will never forget you!

Liz Taylor

As a person struggling with a chronic condition, I find the world isn’t often interested in hearing about my challenges when they come back again and again. But being able to hear from, respond to and talk live with others who share that experience gave me a sense of being seen and heard in such a healing way. Never have I felt so connected to so many new friends in such a deep and meaningful way.

Heather

Lynn has created a way of seeing our experience of illness that empowers and enlivens. Being part of her course let’s me know I’m part of a greater whole where my challenges are shared. I can feel connected, seen and heard. Even the difficult stuff is allowed.

Brent

I can’t count the blessings and benefits these courses have been for me. When I was first looking for a sponsor in AA, it was suggested that I look for a man “that had something I wanted”. Don’t worry, I have a sponsor – but that’s the feel I get from you.

You have a wonderful presence – kind, wise and humble. I’m not the best book learner/reader – I’m more experiential. This has been a great experience in learning Integral theory and practice.

Thank you! Deep bow of gratitude.

Susan Schuurmans

The course has prodded me out of my comfort zones, humbled me when I see the challenges others face, invited me into a valuable self-assessing of myself, and challenged me to engage once again with the Integral model, this time grittily working on my understanding of myself and where I can grow into further ways to work with great consciousness with this dis-ease. Lynn teaches from a place of being a person still learning after all these years in the territory of illness and caretaking and shares as a companion on this challenging journey how she finds the perspective of Integral is useful when living with illness.

Laria

This course is wonderfully thought provoking and has so many valuable tools I hope to keep revisiting it again and again to further contemplate all that you have given us.

Using Illness as an Accelerator of Spiritual Intelligence and Awakening is part 5 of our 6-part Koan of Illness series..

Each of our live, 6-week, stand-alone courses addresses a part of the illness experience and is designed both for people suffering from chronic illness and caregivers. You can begin with any of the courses, pick and choose, or do them all

More Info about KOI Courses