Karen McAllister is a co-founding member and leader at Clear Sky Retreat Center, where she has lived year-round in a residential spiritual community since 2004. Trained by Clear Sky’s co-founders and spiritual teachers, Qapel and Catherine Sensei, she not only studies the map of integral theory but actively walks the territory, embodying its principles in daily practice.

Rooted in this lived experience, Karen, her teachers, and their community move together as a collective—helping both themselves and newer members move beyond an overemphasis on the “I” quadrant—developing the “we,” “its,” and “it” quadrants through collective practice, service, and financial maturity. As the community’s money coach and founder of The Mindful Money Coach, Karen works on both growing up—supporting vertical development into mature adulthood—and cleaning up, helping individuals integrate their financial shadow so they can resource their path rather than bypass it.

This work extends beyond Clear Sky to the wider international community through Qapel and Catherine Sensei’s Planet Dharma, where Karen supports seekers in bridging the gap between spiritual aspiration and financial engagement—making money a tool for awakening and meaningful impact.

For those ready to deepen their spiritual and financial maturity—sustaining both inner and outer evolution—she offers a lived pathway to wholeness.

U.S.-born Catherine Pawasarat practiced the ayahuasca sacrament in the 1990s, while working as a photojournalist specializing in environmental and human rights. For 20 years she lived in Kyoto, where she met Buddhist teacher Achariya Qapel in 1998. She trained daily with him in an intensive spiritual apprenticeship that’s rare in the modern West.

In 2004 Qapel and Cata co-founded the Clear Sky Retreat Center in British Columbia, Canada. There Cata has co-cultivated an innovative, generative organization with conscious community. Together Qapel and Cata have also taught virtually through Planet Dharma. Clear Sky and Planet Dharma have evolved as living labs supporting community movement through Integral stage development together, including experiments with group guru.

An expert in traditional Japanese culture, Cata advocates for the spiritually transformative and generative nature of Kyoto’s ancient Shinto Gion Festival. She also teaches about the unique roles of Women in Buddhism.