Vast Sky: Enlightenment in Boulder in August

• Imagine the opportunity to spend a weekend with three of the most enlightened thinkers of our time.
• Imagine that the time was organized with talks, sessions, and multiple opportunities to awaken your full potential and embrace the world's problems and joys.
• Imagine being in Boulder, Colorado in August for this amazing experience.

If you can picture something wonderful along those lines, consider attending Vast Sky's summer seminar at the Boulder Integral Institute. Some of the most well known experts in the of human consciousness are coming together in August to explore "Enlightenment and the Western Mind" - and you are invited to spend that weekend with Ken Wilber, Bernie Glassman, Roshi, Dennis Genpo Merzel, Roshi, Bill Harris and Dr. Kamie Buddemeier.

The sponsoring organization is Vast Sky, what can only be described as a sort of "think tank" for human consciousness and Zen process, their mission: "to raise the consciousness of the human race to a level that is better equipped to compassionately confront the complex problems we face today: war, famine, and ecological decay." Their website, still in development, will provide information, techniques and maps to help people live life more fully, more peacefully, and more in tandem with others. While each of these participants is amazing in his own right, three are the founders of Vast Sky: Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi is a well known Zen master whose aim is to make it relevant and accessible to Western hearts and minds. The core of his teaching is the unshakeable certainty that everyone, regardless of their socioeconomic, cultural, or religious background, can instantly awaken to their true nature. An ordained monk since the 1970s, he developed Big Mind Big Heart, a special new way to discover, experience and appreciate life, with a focus on working out the kinks, the stuck places, and the unhealthy patterns that keep us down. Bernie Glassman is a rocket scientist (no joke) and Roshi/Sensei who has used both skills to develop compassionate business models. He founded the Greyston Foundation in Yonkers, New York, whose mission was to free people from the cycle of poverty and public dependence. Its main outlet was a bakery, which quickly became a leading model for social enterprise by hiring from the local community (a “first-come, first-serve” hiring policy regardless of work history); training and promoting from within; offering living wages, health benefits, and direct participation in the profitability of the company. More recently Bernie developed the Zen Peacemaker Order, an international, interfaith organization dedicated to the cause of peace and social justice. To train others in the skills of spiritually-based social enterprise and peacemaking he also began the Maezumi Institute, a spiritual center Western Massachusetts. Ken Wilber, theorist and inventor of Integral Theory who has written more than 25 books, is probably most widely known for his book, A Brief History of Everything. The founder of the Integral Institute, Wilber is focused on helping cultivate research and cultivation of leadership of complex, global issues facing humanity in the 21st century, and in particular, those issues that can only be solved with a comprehensive approach to the complex interdependencies that tend to characterize these issues.

The events begin on Friday night at the beautiful Boulder Integral Institute, shifting on Saturday to the Westin Hotel. Start out with a three hour seminar on unlocking your integral perspective, finding a new worldspace of insight, connection and effectiveness. And if you're up for it afterwards, there's a live show and party with the Twisted Mystic, Stuart Davis, appropriately headlines as "Sex, God, and Rock and Roll." The Westin Hotel has a special rate for Vast Sky participants. Allow your mind and body to gain some sustainable energy while basking in some of the most beautiful mountains in the United States.