What brought you to Consciousness Studies?

I came to the college thinking about heading for teacher training, and I started with foundation year. The personal experience that I was bringing with me, my background, was one of very intense extra-sensory work that was natural to me, that I grew up with. I came with this sensitivity, or whatever you want to call it, and I was looking for colleagues, and I got to the college and I started hearing that that was atavistic and that it was not helpful, etc. etc., and it was very confusing to me. So halfway through the year I went to Dennis and said "Dennis, this is happening, and I don't understand it, and I'm thinking about doing your class next year--would that be the right place for me?" And he said "Yes". So that was my entrée in to the thing.

How did you come to being at the school to begin with?

Well, in about 1985 or so, before my daughter was in school, I had a friend who came here, and he acquired a partner while he was in foundation year, and he stayed while she went through teacher training. I would go and visit them, and they would give me little tidbits of things. I had already been a part of, earlier in my life, something called the Church of Cosmic Origin, this school of thought that was something that was founded and run by a woman who was a channel. So a lot of the concepts were not new to me, but there were a lot of intriguing, interesting things that whetted my interest. I wasn't thinking in terms of wanting to go here, because I already knew what I thought about life. So then another friend of mine helped me realize that it was important enough to move to another place where I could have my daughter in school, and I did that, and ultimately a few years later I decided that I wanted to explore the teaching, so I came here.

What about Consciousness Studies was most memorable for you?

That's a hard one, because there is a lot of retrospect in anything that I might say. I'd say that at this point in my life, at this moment, that the most memorable thing was probably the sense of freeing, the sense of being freed from some very challenging things that were holding me. I gained courage. That's one thing. There was also a group of friends that have stayed with me.

What do you do now in the community--what is your work?

I am in transition. I have moved to Fair Oaks. I have been teaching the last year--I am a trained Waldorf teacher and I have taught some, not a whole lot, but I have moved here just in the last couple of days and I am going to be the new housing coordinator at the college.

How has your experience in Consciousness Studies affected the way you view yourself in interaction with the rest of the world?

The ways of working with the spiritual world started me on a path of integration that is just now beginning to culminate in a certain way. So I guess that there are a couple of ways of looking at it. Consciousness Studies has given me the tools and the inspiration and a way of thinking that has allowed me to move through some very difficult difficult stuff, and come to a point of beginning to turn myself inside out, so to speak. But it also has been a key of foundational importance in terms of my interactions with other people, and how I work with that. The meditative life is something that I've always had in some sort of practice of one kind or another, but this particular way of working with it has been very practically helpful in working though daily interactions with people. Also, just the whole concept of letting go. Dennis came to Denver when I was there a few years ago, and he reminded me about the importance of being with the nothing and just letting go. So I work with that all the time. Just when I am walking around or when something is coming towards me or when I notice there is something that I want to hold on to.

How has your experience in Consciousness Studies affected your inner life?

All of those things that I just said, and I guess what I could say is that it has brought me a way of organizing my inner life in a certain way so that it is more useful to me. But it is also this integration thing--it is really key for me, because I live on the periphery, I've always lived on the periphery, and I don' t have a hard time getting out, I have a hard time coming in. So my practice has been to peel off layer after layer after layer of what is the work and asking the question "how can I be in?" And that has manifested in lots of different ways, and it has been a progression. And it is still continuing to be a progression, but right now I am kind of at a turning point. Development of inner space has been my goal in life. How do I create inner space that I feel comfortable living in and working out of? How can I be in and look out through my eyes as opposed to looking in from the periphery?

If you had to describe Consciousness Studies briefly, what would you say?

I would say that the thing that Dennis has worked up and continues to evolve as he goes through his changes is a key practical tool for the possibility of life in the future. Really--literally. A way for someone to connect who is living on the planet doing whatever they are doing and still wake up and not feel totally alienated. I've just seen the most diverse people come into this program and go "Oh, I can do this." And they take one little piece of it, because he presents it in such a panorama of possibilities. So he opens up all those doors. There are so many ways, and each person, in a certain way, becomes a new door. It is definitely one piece of the hope for the future. It is especially wonderful seeing young people coming in and really being interested.