I remember vividly the scene in which I wrote my application for entry to the Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness program at CIIS. I sat at my desk in the small studio apartment I had rented for myself in the Fall of 2020, which served as the only respite from my family of 5 who were all at home working and schooling right on top of each other during the first year of the Covid pandemic. My children’s small rural school had just reopened for in-person instruction in out-door tents, only to be closed again for record-high AQI numbers. They could not allow the children outside. The sun was a burnt-red shadow, barely visible through the dense smokey haze from the California fires, and there was nowhere to drive to for respite. Restaurants were making an attempt to reopen in town, serving food on paper plates to cut down on dishwashing, as the coastal towns of Mendocino County had run out of water. Water was being brought in on trucks from over the hill. The scene was something out of a science fiction novel, or the dreary opening pages of the Lorax.
I was pursuing a transfer from John F. Kennedy University where I had begun my graduate studies in the Consciousness and Transformation program one year prior. My decision to return to school was vulnerable and tentative at that time, as I had just spent the better portion of 2 years recovering from adrenal blow-out from my previous career. The need to step back from an 80-hour work week, from a project that I had loved and invested in deeply, was still weighing on my heart as a painful failure. I was left with a feeling of being unable to fully trust my instincts or passions; perhaps the voice of inspiration I once relied upon was something to be skeptical of rather than chase whole-hog as I had before. The pursuit of higher education was a return to what had been my intention years ago upon completion of my undergraduate studies; an idea which I had tabled as a young single mother in need of a more immediate career track. Returning to school felt like a step that was small, but felt large, so I did so slowly and carefully, maintaining a part-time course load in order to ease myself in. Work, life, and family balance was my primary goal. Then, with the onset of the covid pandemic in the Spring of 2020, John F. Kennedy University announced that they would be closing their doors by the end of the year. The school had already been riddled with financial and administrative issues, and the shelter-in-place order that spring was the final straw for an already-wobbly institution. A national online-based university system was absorbing their programming, along with the teaching staff, so we were presented with an option to continue and graduate with a degree from National University Online. Instead, I took the opportunity to pursue a transfer to CIIS into the Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness program, the program I had my sights on for a PhD track. PCC as a program is one that bridges the internal transformation of the individual with the external transformation of our world, a view spanning the microcosm and macrocosm, and that is where I wanted to be. I found myself at personal transition internally, while the greater reasons for planetary change had never been so readily apparent.
It was clear to me in my first week in Intro to PCC that I had found a program that was even better suited to my interests than before. The Consciousness and Transformation program was within the school of psychology program at JFK, and while this made for a fascinating track of study, my true academic interests lie in broadening my philosophical foundations in order to engage with the big questions that face our age. My undergraduate work was in feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz and I began to feel the threads of this work make their way back into my thinking and influence my choice of coursework. I had the privilege of studying with the brilliant thinkers Donna Haraway and Karen Barad, under whose influence I turned my attention towards feminist science studies and ecofeminism. In my culminating project under Barad I was exploring questions of nature vs. culture and natural vs. artificial, specifically how fictional virtual worlds have an impact on multicultural identity formations and relationships between human and nonhuman entities in the “real” world. These transdisciplinary themes also run through the heart of PCC and I found myself reengaging with and expanding upon the questions and interests I had only just begun to scratch the surface on in my undergraduate work.
It was also in that first semester that my thinking turned toward an interest in storytelling and narrative as a medium for planetary change. I had entered the program familiar with Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme’s Universe Story, inspired by their writing of a modern myth that synthesizes what science can tell us of the origins of our universe with a re-enchanting vision of our place within it. My children attend a Montessori school which teaches the evolution of our universe through the Great Lessons, as Maria Montessori insisted that the learning of humanity’s origins take the form of a cosmic narrative, rather than a dry history of dates and facts. What other than an engaging story would capture the imagination of my then-6-year old daughter enough to rush home to explain to me the difference between prokaryotes and eukaryotes with enlivened fascination? I myself shared this fascination alongside her, while pouring over the materials in Kerri Welch’s course on Modern Physics. In the broadest sense it was the participation in this enlivening mythology in partnership with scientific literacy which drew me to the PCC program in the first place, before I knew what specific direction I would want to focus my research on.
As I moved through my coursework, the class topics I was engaging with began to harmonize, with recurring themes shining through with each passing semester. In Jake Sherman’s course on The Book of Nature, my interest in the evolutionary history of myth and storytelling in human consciousness began to take shape, as I considered this recurring metaphor of how humans have “read” nature through poetry, scripture, and even in the more contemplative approaches to natural science as inspired by Goethe. The plurality of scientific methods and paradigms explored in Elizabeth Allison’s Science and Contested Knowledges further sparked questions in me in regards to the need for a multivocal account of humanity’s role in facing our planetary crisis. A deep engagement with both Robert Bellah and Charles Taylor’s historical accounts spanning from the paleolithic age all the way into the formation of modern selfhood has broadened my foundational understanding of the historical philosophical context of modern Western worldviews. Sherman’s course on Religious Metaphysics after Modernity turned my attention toward metaphysics and ethical philosophy, engaging with the big philosophical questions of being, of what we can know of reality, truth, and divinity. The ontogenetic and phylogenetic lenses upon these big questions - an instructive biological metaphor I have heard both Rick Tarnas and Jake Sherman use to describe PCC’s approach - is one I have come to appreciate, as I continue to learn the deep history of how human consciousness has evolved, alongside a careful and nuanced articulation of individual selfhood, ones spiritual and moral frameworks of understanding, and all this may serve to live in concert with our nonhuman kin upon this one planet that we have.
These are only highlights of the chorus of topics and thinkers that I have had the pleasure to engage with throughout my course of study. As I come to the completion of my masters coursework, I feel I have only just scratched the surface of this program, and wish to take my studies further. The questions I am left with are many, spanning topics within metaphysics, ethics, and ecology, while engaging with art, literature, and other mediums through which the creative imagination comes alive and initiates a change in belief and worldview. I want to explore further the permeable boundaries between fiction and real, the artificial and natural.
How does the imaginary effect the real? Is there an ontological difference? Can a fictional world sometimes tell us more about reality than, say, the news? In a secular age in the modern West, what role might mythology play? Major film franchises echo the stories of Greek Gods and a Christ-like “chosen one,” with fandoms who exhibit an almost religious following. How are we to make sense of that? Can it be harnessed for planetary change? Should it be? What about the multivocal expressions of story and myth and even scientific understanding across the world? Can a unified mythology for humanity to rally behind as a species even a be possibility? What about the cases where scientific paradigms are incompatible, where differing moral frameworks are incompatible? If one’s moral framework is at the very heart of our sense of selfhood, as Taylor explores, might storytelling be the bridge between otherwise irreconcilable or ineluctable differences between frameworks? What if story could facilitate multicultural dialogue pluralistic world with multiple modernities? In a time of planetary crisis, the role of artists, writers, and creative imagineers seems to me to be one critical avenue for opening the door to hearing one another, to cohabitation with our nonhuman kin, and to imagining new worlds into being.
As I have been contemplating these themes, on a personal level a slow and steady internal transformation has been taking place. Over the last two years during my coursework I have felt a quiet and gradual healing and refocusing of my attention on living a balanced life while pursuing what ignites my passions and interests. It has not taken the form of a flashy spiritual revelation or any singular ah hah moment - that I might have otherwise missed it without careful reflection. Engaging with this big questions and being in a learning community with like-minded classmates whom I have had the pleasure of thinking alongside was bound to have an effect, but nonetheless, I underestimated the impact. The result has been a gradual rehabilitation of my own trust in my inspiration and internal compass of where I wish to go next in life. The steady practice of daily reading and writing has brought an important structure back to my days. What began as something I did in the spare moments I had has turned into the primary focus of my attention in my days. I began my masters coursework with an inkling that I would continue onward to pursue a PhD, but with the intention that I would only do so if a fire was lit. Suffice it to say, a fire has been lit.
I remember vividly the scene in which I wrote my application for entry to the Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness program at CIIS. I sat at my desk in the small studio apartment I had rented for myself in the Fall of 2020, which served as the only respite from my family of 5 who were all at home working and schooling right on top of each other during the first year of the Covid pandemic. My children’s small rural school was reopening for in-person instruction in out-door tents, only to be closed again for record-high AQI numbers. They could not allow the children outside. The sun was a burnt-red shadow, barely visible through the dense smokey haze from the California fires, and there was nowhere to drive to for respite. Restaurants had tried to reopen in town, but serving only on paper plates, as the coastal towns of Mendocino County had run out of water. Water was being brought in on trucks from over the hill. The scene was something out of a science fiction novel, or the dreary opening pages of the Lorax.
I was pursuing a transfer from John F. Kennedy University where I had begun my graduate studies in the Consciousness and Transformation program one year prior. My decision to return to school was vulnerable and tentative at that time, as I had just spent the better portion of 2 years recovering from adrenal blow-out from my previous career. The need to step back from an 80-hour work week, from a project that I had loved and invested in deeply, was still weighing on my heart as a painful failure. I was left with a feeling of being unable to fully trust my instincts or passions, that perhaps the voice of inspiration was something to be skeptical of rather than chase whole-hog as I had before. The pursuit of higher education was a return to what had been my intention all those years ago upon completion of my undergraduate studies; an idea which I had tabled as a young single mother in need of a more immediate career track. Returning to school felt like a step that was at once small and large, so I did so slowly and carefully, maintaining a part-time course load in order to ease myself in. Work, life, and family balance was my primary goal. Then, with the onset of the covid pandemic in the Spring of 2020, JFK announced that they would be closing their doors by the end of the year. The school had already been riddled with financial and administrative issues, and the shelter-in-place order that spring was the final straw for an already-wobbly institution. A national online-based university system was absorbing their programming, along with the teaching staff, so we were presented with an option to continue and graduate with a degree from National University Online. Instead, I took the opportunity to pursue a transfer to CIIS into the Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness program, the program I had my sights on for a PhD track. One of the themes I see in this program, which drew me to it, is the attention which spans the microcosm and the macrocosm. I was in a personal moment of change, while the external world rages for change. The internal and external conditions were set. The reasons for planetary change had never been so readily apparent.
It was apparent to me from my first week in the “Intro to PCC” course that I had found a program that was even better suited to my interests than before. The Consciousness and Transformation program was within the school of psychology program at JFK, and while this made for a fascinating track of study, my true academic interests lie in broadening my philosophical foundations in order to engage with the big questions that face our age. My undergraduate work was in feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz and I began to feel the threads of this work make their way back into my thinking and influence my choice of coursework. I had the privilege of studying with the brilliant thinkers Donna Haraway and Karen Barad, under whose influence I turned my attention towards feminist science studies and ecofeminism. In my culminating project under Barad I was exploring questions of nature vs. culture and natural vs. artificial, specifically how fictional virtual worlds have an impact on multicultural identity formations and relationships between human and nonhuman entities in the “real” world. These transdisciplinary themes also run through the heart of PCC and I found myself reengaging with and expanding upon the questions and interests I had only just begun to scratch the surface on in my undergraduate work.
It was also in that first semester that my thinking turned toward an interest in storytelling and narrative as a medium for planetary change. I had entered the program familiar with Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme’s Universe Story, inspired by their writing of a modern myth that synthesizes what science can tell us of the origins of our universe with a re-enchanting vision of our place within it. My children attend a Montessori school which teaches the evolution of our universe through the Great Lessons, as Maria Montessori insisted that the learning of humanity’s origins take the form of a cosmic narrative, rather than a dry history of dates and facts. What other than an engaging story would capture the imagination of my then-6-year old daughter enough to rush home to explain to me the difference between prokaryotes and eukaryotes with enlivened fascination? I myself shared this fascination alongside them while pouring over the materials in Kerri Welch’s course on Modern Physics. In the broadest sense it was the participation in this enlivening mythology in partnership with scientific literacy which drew me to the PCC program in the first place, before I knew what specific direction I would want to focus my research on. This began to develop and form in that very first semester, as I deepened my knowledge in the
As I moved through my coursework, the class topics I was engaging with began to harmonize, with recurring themes beginning to shine through with each passing semester. In Jake Sherman’s course on The Book of Nature, my interest in the evolutionary history of myth and storytelling in human consciousness began to take shape, as I considered this recurring metaphor of how humans have “read” nature through poetry, scripture, and even in the more contemplative approaches to natural science as inspired by Goethe. The plurality of scientific methods and paradigms explored in Elizabeth Allison’s Science and Contested Knowledges further sparked questions in me in regards to the need for a multivocal account of humanity’s role in facing our planetary crisis. A deep engagement with both Robet Bellah and Charles Taylor’s historical accounts spanning from the paleolithic age all the way into the formation of modern selfhood has broadened my foundational understanding of where we are on the map, as their work contextualizes our contemporary Western paradigm. Along with these historical foundations, I noticed my interests began to gravitate towards questions in the complex field of metaphysics and ethical philosophy. Sherman’s course on Religious Metaphysics after Modernity returned my attention to the big philosophical questions of being, of what we can know of reality, truth, and divinity. I have heard both Jake Sherman and Rick Tarnas use the biological metaphor to describe PCC’s approach to these Ontogenetic and phylogenetic - I have heard both Sherman and Tarnas use the biology metaphor in this regard in PCC - a deep history of how we have come to evolve through human consciousness and alongside this, a careful and nuanced articulation of how selfhood and psychology plays out in the human, in concert with our nonhuman kin.
This is the chorus of topics and thinkers that have come together to bring life to what I wish to study further.
The difference between the real and imaginary. Artificial and natural? What can fiction tell us about reality? How can we consider literature as a contemplative practice that habituates us towards the good? If one’s moral framework is at the very heart of our sense of selfhood, as Taylor explores, might story be the bridge between otherwise irreconcilable or ineluctable differences between frameworks? Can story be a bridge between ethical frameworks within a pluriverse? How this has deep ethical roots which expose our moral frameworks, and as I hope to argue, can serve as a bridge between them. is there a way in which modern day story telling is supplementing a connection with the transcendent? Major film franchises echo the stories of Greek Gods and a Christ-like “chosen one,” with fandoms who exhibit an almost religious following. There is an almost religious fervor behind certain stories, how are we to make sense of that. What is it good to do and who is it good to be? The world of imagination and creation. during a dizzying time of personal and global shifts.
Meanwhile, on a personal level, a slow and steady internal transformation has been taking place over the last two years during my coursework. It has been quiet and gradual. It has not taken the form of a flashy spiritual revelation or any singular ah hah moment - that I might have otherwise missed it without careful reflection. Engaging with this big questions were bound to have both a The steady practice of daily reading and writing has brought an important structure back to my days. A rehabilitation of my own trust in my inspiration and internal compass of where I wish to go next in life. I began my masters coursework with an inkling that I would continue onward to pursue a PhD, but with the intention that I would only do so if a fire was lit. Suffice it to say, a fire has been lit.
Bringing this full circle - I have transformed inwardly. There is greater balance, structure, practice. What began as something I did in the spare moments I had has turned into the primary focus of my attention in my days.
