How did you get involved in Consciousness Studies to begin with?

I did the foundation year, and Dennis came and lectured for a week, and it was a very brief course when he came, but he really had the essence of working on yourself, and on developing a spiritual practice. He brought the spirit, or the possibility of having a spiritual life as a reality that comes into your daily life. And my first interest in anthroposophy was very much related to that. My first book was How to Know Higher Worlds, so I had that curiosity about the spirit.

What stood out for you the most in Consciousness Studies?

I thought that I would develop that spiritual practice and that somehow I would find a way to have the spirit come into my life, and I didn't. But I found a way to find myself. The time to look at myself, the possibility of looking at myself, who I really am, which anyway is completely in process, but just the possibility of having that as something that I can do, and finding in that and in the daily whatever of life that that is where the spiritual life is. It's not like this light that is going to strike me and then I'll be glowing with the spirit, but it is about being able to perceive myself and what is happening, and to change within.

In terms of your work in the community, how has Consciousness Studies affected you?

Well I am starting to work in a Waldorf school as an after care teacher, but something that I got from Dennis is the fact that I do believe that to work in a community you need to work on yourself. And once you do the work, the focus and attention that you put on yourself you share naturally with the community. So practically my work is working with children and learning with them. Then there is this other aspect that is being part of an anthroposophical community and working on myself.

Sow has being in Consciousness Studies helped you with your present job?

It has helped in the way that Dennis helped me prepare myself to meet life in a different way. To meet challenges, to meet my own limitation and to put them into a bigger and different context, in which there is not only outcome, but also a willingness to meet what is coming to me, including my fears, my failures, and my weaknesses. I really have little experience with children, and my first approach at the beginning, because of who I am, was that I needed to be really good. I thought to myself that I cannot fail and I need to know how to do this, and slowly, by being with the feelings that were living within me I started to move towards 'I'm not supposed to know it because I have never done it.' It is a process of doing it and of being there and of allowing myself to be there as someone that doesn't know and that is trying. And to be able to live in that situation and make it my present, my reality.

How has the experience that you had in Consciousness Studies affected your inner life?

One of the things, which is a little strange to say, is that it gave me the right to have time and attention for what happens within, and to have that be a real part of my life, not just something on the side like people who go to Tarot readers to get answers to their questions, but to be able to have a deep inner life. That my life is not only how I perform in the world, but is also what is in my biography within, my motivation within. It has also opened my inner life to be a part of a bigger inner life.

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

I cannot just say that it is the best thing that I have ever done in my life, because that would not describe it. I don't know how to describe it. I can say something about the possibility to look at yourself and your life and the essence of it, with a group of people. It's like to really be human with a group of people, to talk and be into life and what is life, and to allow yourself to have the time and the energy to look at it. We live life without looking at life, at least that was my experience before. Also it was wonderful to have a teacher that I highly respected and trusted, who was giving from his own experience. It was so different from any other lecturing that I had had previously. It was a living conversation with a teacher who is in fact always teaching differently. Every time Consciousness Studies is different because we all change and he changes, and his teaching is different.