GAIA MANDALA

GLOBAL HEALING COMMUNITY

Sublime Mother Gaia Online Retreat
August 28-31, 2025
Registration Information

The Sublime Mother Gaia is summoning us to wake up.
To discover Her in us.

You are invited to form a living breathing connection to Her
And to your own True Nature, True Source, with each breath and every step. We will light a candle
Offer fruit and flowers.
Feed Her as She feeds us.
We will practice to invoke Her presence. Alive and well in our very lives.

She is the very source of Life. Sometimes fierce, sometimes calm, always available. She embodies the diverse, wild, creative, healing forces for the regeneration of Life.

For embodied change.

In this retreat, you are invited to meet us in an online temple and take time off to unplug and reclaim your relationship to your own inner wisdom, your true nature, which is not separate from Mother Gaia. We will practice slowing down, sitting with the breath, walking on the Earth, create space for the joy of being alive and the grief for the all-pervasive suffering in our world. Our open hearts and sharing in community are medicine. We will enter a conducive ceremonial atmosphere to receive the transmission of the Sadhana of the Sublime Mother Gaia, which arose from Cynthia’s deep practice of the more traditional Sadhana of the Tibetan female deity known as Tara.

The composition of the practice involves the setting of motivation, invocation of Mother Earth, making offerings to her, visualization, mantra-recitation of the Gaia Mantra and directing the generated energy of healing, awakening and transformation to oneself and beyond. We will study the text of the Sadhana deeply and there will be space for experienced practitioners to bring forth questions to deepen their understanding as well. It is powerful to practice in community and invoke the presence of the Earth herself with collective intention for healing, regeneration, wisdom and awakening.

Cynthia brought the Gaia Sadhana into the world for the first time at the cave hermitage of Charok, Nepal in 2018

RETREAT DETAILS

DATES: August 28-31, 2025

SESSIONS: We will gather for 3 hours each day (Thursday Aug 28 to Sunday Aug 31)

TIMES: 8am-11am Pacific time / 9am-12pm Mountain time / 11 am-2pm Eastern time / 5pm-8pm CET.

COST: Retreat payment is on a sliding scale between $200-$450 and $108 for returning practitioners. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. If you need a reduced price, please don’t hesitate to send an email to Rick Jansen: rick@earthtreasurevase.org briefly describing your situation, your motivation to participate and what you are able to contribute. Here at the Gaia Mandala Global Healing Community, we are committed to making our courses accessible regardless of financial circumstances. However, we ask that if you are able to register at the higher end of the sliding scale, please do so, as your financial support is essential to our continuation as an organization and all funds go towards paying all our staff and teachers a fair, livable wage. Thank you!

SPIRIT OF THE RETREAT: This is a live retreat. Full attendance is required. There will be no recordings. You are invited to enter an online temple as if you are attending in person. We recommend organizing your life so you can take full advantage of this time. Slow down and unplug as much as you can in-between sessions as well, as to really make these four days a retreat for yourself as best as you can.

After attending the retreat and learning the practice, you will be welcomed into a monthly practice group. Feeding the spirit of Mother Gaia regularly, you may feel her grow and guide you to new ground. Are you hearing the summons? Gaia is calling you to your True Home, your True Source, your True Nature. The circle awaits your presence!

QUESTIONS:  Contact Rick Jansen: rick@earthtreasurevase.org

RETREAT TEACHERS:

Cynthia Jurs is the founder of the Earth Treasure Vase Global Healing Project and the Gaia Mandala Community, and author of Summoned by the Earth; Becoming a Holy Vessel for Healing Our World.  She received transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh as a Dharma Teacher in the Order of Interbeing and was given the title of honorary lama in the Tibetan tradition by Ngawang Tsultrim Zangpo Rinpoche. Inspired by years of pilgrimage into diverse communities and ecosystems to bring healing to the Earth through the practice of the Earth Treasure Vases, today Cynthia is forging a new path of dharma in service to Gaia rooted in the feminine, honoring indigenous traditions, and teaching an embodied sacred activism devoted to collective awakening. Cynthia received the Sadhana of the Sublime Mother Gaia after praying to her chosen diety, Tara, to help her form a direct connection with Gaia. Today, Mother Gaia has become her source of refuge. She lives at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico where she is often found walking in the wilderness or gardening with her husband. For more info check out: www.GaiaMandala.net  or www.SummonedbytheEarth.org

Rick Jansen was born in the Netherlands, and lives in France near Plum Village, the practice center of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. Rick’s spiritual path began in 2013 in Nepal where he met his first teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche. He carries a deep connection to both the Vajrayana teachings of Tibetan Buddhism and the Plum Village Tradition. In 2025, he joined the Order of Interbeing. Rick works as a teacher and facilitator in the Gaia Mandala Global Healing Community, and after stewarding an Earth Treasure Vase for Tibet and now for the Andes, he is supporting other ETV Stewards in this practice. Rick also assists the School of Lost Borders as a Rites of Passage-Vision Fast guide enacting his own vision to support primarily young adults seeking their authentic path. He is passionate about the transformation and healing needed to wake up to the deeper interconnected reality of our lives and to find ones true calling in service to, what hopefully is, the Great Turning.

Registration is now closed.

Introduction to the practice of the Sublime Mother Gaia (previously Tara Gaia)

This is a conversation between Cynthia Jurs and David Nicol in 2020 offering background information about the practice of the Sublime Mother Gaia, which at that time was called Tara Gaia. Over the years the practice has evolved into what it is now, but this conversation still gives helpful and insightful information about how the practice came into being, what it involves and how it is relevant to our times. We share it for those of you who may want to understand more about this practice before registering.

“Since our mind’s essential nature is unconditioned primordial wisdom awareness, as we awaken to this awareness within ourselves and claim our true nature, we bring it into our lives, to Earth, because we are Earth. Merging the light of pure awareness and the ground of our being within the glorious matrix of life, we arrive, ever more present, to offer ourselves in service to all beings. We do not need to seek an enlightened, transcendent source of refuge outside of ourselves. Bringing our direct insight and spiritual experience to Earth is the next evolutionary step of humanity—to wake up as One with Gaia and with all life. The opportunity now is not about transcending. It is about embodying.”

                  ~ Cynthia Jurs, Summoned by the Earth; Becoming a Holy Vessel for Healing Our World

What Gaia Mandala Community Members have to say:

 “My experience of this practice is that it can be a direct way to form a personal and intimate relationship with the spiritual dimension of Mother Earth. I have been with this practice now for four years and love how it brings me into a place of connection and prayer. The practice is a way for me to ”speak” with the Earth, to share my own struggles, intentions and aspirations with her and to receive her blessing and guidance in seen and unseen ways. For me, this practice is a significant support in my life and in my ever-deepening relationship with Mother Nature.”

— Rick Jansen

“The Mother Gaia practice was the portal. And it has been so transformative. The minute I heard Cynthia speaking the opening verses, I knew I had come home.”

— Liza Jane Alexander

“I feel I receive the ability to envision the healing of the old system thanks to the Sublime Mother Gaia practice and Earth Treasure Vase practice. We have to learn how to be in the void with confidence and trust so that the light can emerge from within. And for me, the practice is the core essence that can help us and the collective to transition, because it doesn’t happen outside. It can only happen from inside out.’’

— Valeria Mohani

“Personally, the Mother Gaia mantra practice is a source of stamina and refuge and strength in order to carry out a pilgrimage or steward a vase. I instinctively reached for the mantra in places where we were gathering around the vase, as a refilling of myself—I needed it so much to ride through certain tough spaces.’’

—Julieann Brams

For the benefit of all beings we offer this retreat!