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

I took Consciousness Studies in '89-'90 when it was in the clay room down at the Sacramento Waldorf school, and was in the first group that petitioned Rudolf Steiner College to have Dennis come on campus and start teaching. I was also in the first class from '90-'91, 'and again in 91-'92, and '92-'93. I was hooked. For four years I worked with Dennis here, through Foundation Year to Teacher Education. During the times I worked at the Raphael Pharmacy I was directly applying what I learned in Consciousness Studies at the pharmacy: observation of nature and metamorphosis of plants, gathering the plants, and putting them through the different processes into making remedies, assisting the pharmacist. It was magical and alchemical and really a wonderful practical learning experience.

What led you to Consciousness Studies in the first place?

I have always been an artist and have been professionally so for twenty seven years or more, and I just knew intuitively that Consciousness Studies was the way I needed to go. I just follow my nose, my sense, and intuition. This process - of bringing spirit into matter (manifesting), and lifting matter (substance) into spirit - is one that I've always lived with as an artist, so it was natural for me to know, and want, to go that way. I just knew it was part of my destiny, and sure enough, one day in the color block, Dennis happened to mention that if he had his wish, he would go and study color and light and darkness with Liane Collot d'Herbois. And my ears just perked up. I knew THIS was for ME. Now, after 10 years of training in Collot Painting Therapy I have a diploma from the Netherlands and am the first and only American, living and working in the USA, to receive a diploma from the Medical Section of the Goetheanum in Switzerland. Since '89, every year I've worked with Dennis at least once or twice, either by joining him for a retreat wherever he is, or with the doctors and therapists in Ann Arbor in November. For the last 8 years we have done that and hope to again this coming year. For the last few years I've been teaching along with him at the same conferences. I keep up with the dude as best I can.

In your experience of Consciousness Studies did anything in particular stick out?

I just keep going back to color, because color is my thing--I'm a colorist if I have to define myself further, besides being an artist. When Dennis was talking about color way back then in that block, he would come to a pause in the middle of a sentence and I could finish the sentence for him. He would ask questions and I'd have my hand up. So it was a sign for me that really, this is my direction. And the Collot work is all about light and darkness, and color within that as a foundation. And while anthroposophy is all behind that, Steiner's work and Goethe's work, it is a deepening of all of the things that Dennis is talking about. And now I'm working with the medical end of it. That's what the painting therapy work encompasses, in direct application. So again, I feel that I am directly applying everything that I learned. The strength of my ability to work in that way is because I have a very important meditative practice. It's not to say that my practice is good--it's pitiful--but I keep doing it. When I don't do it, I fall apart and/or drift into nothingness or depression and inactivity. The basis of my meditation is a color meditation, and then the backward-review at night. So those two ends, in the morning and in the evening, that sustains me, and when I don't do it, it doesn't work. In the last 11 years I have been doing the color meditation nearly every day, and since '89 have been working with the colors of the day, so 14 or 15 years there, and it just works. Thank God!

Your work in the world then seems like it has been quite affected by Consciousness Studies.

It has come full-circle again and again. I worked with color in graduate and undergraduate school, I have a Masters and Bachelors in Fine Art, so color was my process then, and still is. I have come full-circle and continue to deepen the work, both in my inner life as well as in the outer world. My intuitive functioning in the outer world has been tremedously strengthened. I can still hope for more of that in my inner work, eh?

In reference to your inner life, what in particular did you get from Consciousness Studies?

The meditative sentences forming and unforming, all the observation of nature exercises, the metamorphosis of plants--those are the things I work with the most, and of course anything that has to do with the color meditations. Something else I got, and continue to get, from Dennis, is affirmation/confirmation, and an understanding of myself and my path, both inner and outer. And patience for myself and a trusting in myself and my connection to the Spiritual World.

One of the most powerful examples of this inner and outer relationship came from a dream sequence. I dreamed of looking through several kaleidescopes with a black cloth over my head. Then several months passed and I was at a meditation retreat with Dennis. Someone brought in their private collection of kaleidescopes in for everyone to look at. When it was my turn, I got under the black cloth and looked at all the colors and then heard classical music in the background and I knew I'd dreamed my self there. I went running to Dennis and asked him what it was all about. He said that for someone who works with color so much as I do, that I have strengthened my feeling life. And the feeling life is the only thing that can live in the past, present and future, all at the same time. With this understanding, I might be able to cultivate such things for inner and outer development for myself, and to be able to share it with others. Think of the possibilites for those who are differently abled.

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

It's a gift. It's a real gift. It's a deepening of all the work that I have done, and continue to do and strive to do. I've only scratched the surface of what it can be. It's a structure and form that fits for me. It's not something that I can explain in simple terms. It includes many different things. It's a way of life, for me. It's something that I can apply to and supports everything else that I do. The program gives you the tools to do that. Then you learn how to use them or how to change them, or how one fits better than another at any given time, and how to help other people with it. That's what I've learned. And to also teach that. I teach painting and drawing and Consciousness Studies when I can. I don't teach the Consciousness Studies work to younger children, though I do use the meditative and some color exercises with patients/clients of all ages. I work both with children and adults, as a Visual Arts teacher and painting teacher, and as a Collot Painting Therapist, mostly in Waldorf schools all over the USA. When you have more interest in what I do currently, please go look at my website at http://www.lovingcolor.org. And thanks for the opportunity to be interviewed about one of my favorite experiences in life!