Welcome Krishna Das' return and the debut
of the Awakening Art Project in the Grove.
The Woodstock Center for Awakening is dedicated to the exploration of awakening in all its forms and to be an event-driven intersection where people and groups may find each other, learn together, and thrive through building community. Each August, we gather for three days where sacred traditions meet contemporary thought and healing, and where our individual awakening ripples into collective transformation.
But we're more than a festival. We're a year-round center for practice, dialogue, and action in service of awakening.
Kirtan from regional groups, including Krishna Das; rock & roll's instigation toward liberation; a sacred-sound chamber and baths; varieties of yoga and Qigong; ecstatic dance; and opening circles that call to the elements and directions to instigate an inner music that together may call our collective presence into realization.
Delving into awakening as it may intersect with so much of what we do, we host talks on such topics, among others, as ecology, indigenous knowledge, the arts, non-duality, the Woman Warrior, the supernatural, community dinner that cut to the essence of things from such lights, among others, as Robert Thurman, HeatherAsh Amara, Peter Blum and Ira Schepetin.
Through community gatherings dedicated through dialogue to finding the common ground and solutions among us and through our special actions, such as donating a thousand-and-one Thanksgiving meals to immigrant families through our relationship with the Ulster Immigrant Defense Network, we seek to increase connection and support among us locally and regionally. Awakening includes action: Love all, serve all, feed all.
The Festival is three days. The work continues all year.
Gatherings for practice, dialogue, and shared exploration. No prerequisites. Just show up.
Tables of 5–6. A carefully crafted prompt. Connection through the simple act of breaking bread together. Reweaving our common humanity one gathering at a time.
Locating the pith of our human awakening in the phrase "non-dual," these talks arise across traditions and lineages, utilizing speech and dialogue to cut to the essence of what we are and plumb what happens when we take to heart "we are not what we think."
Deep listening without fixation and establishing systems to foster speech based on experience rather than generalization, we seek always to locate connection across the diverse groups and concerns of our local psychosm.
As opportunities arise, WOCA is committed to taking direct action in our community as it may relate to awakening in all its forms, including operations that address social justice, increase awareness of underserved populations and serve as vehicles for revelation and instigation.
Coming soon: a directory of all body workers, social activists, mystics, yogis, healers, poets, musicians, and artists—all types of wake-ward work—in the Woodstock area.