Why in general did you come to Consciousness Studies? What brought you here?

I was at a point in my life where I could see the decisions I had made--I had made some pretty big changes in my path, externally, concerning things I wanted to go into--and I had just started a program of studying music which felt right, and I knew that's what I wanted to continue with. But I also knew that Consciousness Studies was something that I had wanted to do for five or so years, and I did not want to continue my studies in music until I had done it, because I knew that it held certain techniques and possibly ways that would help be better manage my inner life with the ongoing demands that my external world was bringing.

You said you had been wanting to do it for five years--how did you hear about it?

I met Dennis at the Steiner Institute in Maine in the early 90's, and periodically over the years I met him again there, because I went five times. So we had dinner and conversations, and I heard numerous lectures, and it left this mark in my mind.  Every time I would meet with him he would answer, or point the way towards answers to key questions--or rephrase the question, which is what it is all about. So that was always tucked away in the back of my mind, and when I wrestled with leaving a certain area of study that I had been with to move into music, which is really what I have always loved and had pretty significant fear about, I just felt an opening. I was not certain that the school that I am studying at in Virginia is where I wanted to study music, but it just happened to be there and I happened to be there, so I plugged in. But I thought, well if I take a year off and do this, and kind of clamber with my inner shadows, then maybe I'll have a little bit more balanced way when I continue with the study--and those are my plans after this.

Before you came here were you engaged in a spiritual path?

Yes, trying to--anthroposophy. I had been doing the main exercise for a couple of years, probably longer than that. Then I took a break from that because of... everything he just said today--my will was lost in the exercise. It was just by rote. The mantras were just kind of emptily repeated. So that had been a frustration for a while, for over a year, and I had tried to do other things. I had been working with the backward review for a number of years, and sometimes sit down for half an hour and do it really thoroughly, and sometimes whiz through it in two minutes.

Do you feel that being here you are getting effective tools for self-development and spiritual development?

Yeah. Already I am trying to do these outside of class. Hopefully that is going to get more steady as I kind of carve out my day, because there is a lot going on. But yeah, I like the work with the picture, and I really like the work with the button and this whole idea of soul breathing makes a lot of sense to me, and I really feel like that will be a nice (and it already is) a nice thing to start my days with. It gives me a little bit of flexibility too, so I don't really feel locked into one mantra. I know also that if something gets stale that I'll go and do a different exercise. That's how I'm going to be--but the soul breathing is going to help that. And what he gave today with 'peace' was really excellent. The feeling of it coming back to you with a call and response.

Do you feel that the tools are tools that leave you free?

My gut says absolutely, but I'm trying to figure out how to comment on it. I think I feel like they leave me free with his guided comments about them... I mean maybe if I was just given the exercises and I wasn't really told "okay when this happens..." and "take note of this..." I would probably slip more into, for example, in the open gaze of the button, I can see two buttons sometimes, and I'm going to sleep, and my brain stem is going into the pineal and that whole big gigantic explanation that he gave that blew my mind, and that's not leaving me awake--to know what is really coming and is this true. And I wouldn't really know that if the question hadn't been asked and he hadn't commented on it. I would have thought "oh cool I'm seeing two buttons--groovy is this what's supposed to happened?" That's just one really concrete example that I can think of. I don't personally have, at least not yet, too much trouble--or rather I don't feel like I have the tendency to fly away. My struggle is more the opposite: to get out, to solve. So I'm not probably dealing with some of the perilous doom that comes when you are way out there and you are meeting all kinds of stuff that you don't know what it is. That's a huge question--does it leave you free. I think that hearing Dennis lecture over the years really left that mark--it's like I could go study at any yogic ashram and do sitting meditation for hours, but I really feel myself in the modern world, and I don't really think--I don't really know that it is healthy for me to go and take a year off my life and do nothing but sit and meditate, and I really hear Steiner when he talks about how you do not have to change your external world, just carve out little bits of time every day, and you can do this, and no one really has to know. You are not going to seem a completely different person to anyone, but you will feel these subtle changes.

Are there some things that have stood out for you about Consciousness Studies?

What has really amazed me, first off, is that I have done some training in rhythmical massage, and I have been involved in my own self-diagnosis for my own health for a number of years, and I had gotten to the point where I really wanted to look more at the organs, and I had no idea that when I took this course we would even be talking about the organs. So when I first came and I saw the first block I was just amazed--so all I can do is just thank my angel and know that this is right on.

Is there something you are working with right now from Consciousness Studies?

More with the self diagnosis and diagnosis for a member of my family who suffers pretty intensely with obsessive compulsive disorder--I'm trying to figure out this relationship of the imaginations of the organs and really trying to hold onto really specific techniques of working backwards through a form to try to give that to this person so they can work with it. I'm just trying to get a picture of what is going on with me, because yeah, I have a few swirling diagnoses from other practitioners, and then my own feeling about it: well what this acupuncturist said feels pretty right on, and what this other doctor says feels like it is not--and just trying to put that into some kind of order that I can work with. I'm trying to work with sound, because I've made this decision to go into music, and I have been looking at the therapeutic value of singing, so I am curious about combining all that I am getting with the imaginations of the organs with different sounds of the organs--it is pretty amazing.

How do you feel about the exercises?

I think it is true that the more you work with 'peace' in the beginning the less peace you have, and I think it is also necessary to engage in that mantra for at least fifteen minutes if not longer, to really begin to feel a kind of in-synch happening. What we got today was really helpful to me, concerning the mantra. The button stuff just gets more and more interesting to me, with the addition of the brainstem and turning the whole focus of solve and coagula inside. It does really compel me to want to go and look through books and check out the skeleton and what the brain stem looks like and what does it do. So I think the exercises are great and I also agree that they are not really meditation at this point--they are working up to that. And that makes sense to me.

Have you had any insights into yourself that have been prompted by Consciousness Studies?

Sure, yeah I am looking big time at my double. Yeah. Everyday. It's amazing--I have gotten to the point where the witness is really strong. I've always kind of felt that, because I have always had a propensity to write, keep journals and write poems and things. There is a certain quality of the witness that has to be there to do that. It's just amazing to go through just anything in the course of the day and all the conversations you have with people, and all of a sudden your double leaps out an puts a thought in your mind that is a competitive thought or a comparison though, or a 'this is not me' thought, a block somehow, just to be aware of it. I think the greatest thing though that has helped me with the tendency to engage in self-loathing, is to really being to see people's actions and my own as evidence of Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings working through the human being, so that this position of blaming and judging can be dissolved. That is very liberating and helpful.

Do you have any frustrations with class or things being brought in class?

I think I am a little frustrated at my own--this is a little double--I'm frustrated at my own lack of being able to really 'get it'--I just want to get it all down. At the same time I am frustrated at my desire to get it all down, because he talks about that. It's almost like I can see something coming to me from the future which will allow me to let go of that and just kind of doodle, like he was talking about. Right now I'm not able to because I don't plan on being here after this course, and I just know that this is my chance to get it. It's just interesting. Sometimes I can just feel the need to just exhale, and he is going full force and I'm just like "I can't go there" and these little snippets of things come in and I'll go throughout my day and all of a sudden I'll remember key phrases like "heart-vision" and I am like "oh I didn't write that down, oh, okay well I remember". I feel a little frustrated with third period, because I don't' have any training in the visual arts, and so it really brings up the 'you suck' voice, and I have to really work at quieting that and really going into a much more humble place and saying hey I know it is not my life's path to be a landscape drawer, and to ask what can I see in doing this and what is this really serving. So always pushing me to be at the higher ebb, but the double is strong and subtle.

If you could change one thing about Consciousness Studies what would it be?

I don't know. Maybe after--this may be kind of difficult to do--but I like starting with the exercises, and I guess if I could change one thing, we would do them for longer, or--I don't know if it is so necessary--somewhere in the morning I would like to do, not even for very long, just fifteen minutes--some eurythmy. Just in the beginning, to be here. Just to move with everybody. But I'm not disappointed that that doesn't happen, I mean it's not a big thing. Or it would be cool to do some singing in the morning. But that's a personal thing, I don't know.

In general what does it feel like to be in Consciousness Studies? How does it fit into your life in a higher sense?

Intense. That's a word. Just intense. How it fits into my world as a whole is that I am trying to boil down--like everyday I am trying to boil down to what did I get or what was being shared, or what came, today. I'm also really engaged in that, in trying to then take that through the day, and see how there is streaming or a progression or a building each week. A lot of what I am doing here, which I'm bringing with me, is this ordering of my days, and it is good, because it is always easier for me to do that when I have an external--'you have to go to class' kind of a thing because it sets up 'this is what I am doing for this time and this is what I am doing for this time'. But the sun-moon rhythm, the waking sleeping is a big one. I don't know, I am hoping that I can turn it, and Consciousness Studies is an effort to turn that.