Ann Kreilkamp –
received her PhD in Philosophy from Boston University in 1972 and has lived and roamed as a “rogue philosopher” ever since. Actually, her rogue status began in graduate school when she woke up during her first LSD trip to realize that the history of western philosophy at least since Descartes has served as a mirror to the yet ongoing cultural split between mind and body (and body includes Earth). We are still indoctrinated to view not only our own bodies, but Nature herself, as a machine, which, when anything goes wrong, needs to be fixed, by outside experts.
In this fake, virtual, simulated world, all “problems,” which, once we name and frame them in language, including now, AI and algorithms, can then be “solved.”
Where is there room for Mystery here? For a holistic understanding of, immersion in, all and everything?
Ann’s first and only academic position, in 1972-73 as a full time teacher at the experimental New College of California, then only one year old when she arrived, ended in disaster, when she was fired after one year as “too experimental” for that experimental college.
From then on, her rogue status now official, she began to study astrology, then a taboo topic for especially those with doctorates in philosophy!
Beginning in 1976, her reputation as a professional astrologer grew locally (first in Jackson Hole, Wyoming), and elsewhere (through her travels, teaching, conference presentations, and published works).
Meanwhile, she was also investigating the works of Jung, doing “inner child” work with “Orphan Annie,” served as a columnist in newspapers in several locations, and between 1976 and 2001 founded and ran three small community magazines to gather together those with common interests.
• First, in her home town of Twin Falls Idaho, “OpenSpace” gathered the other contrarians in that conservative religious town to give them uncensored room to speak (1976-79). This publication made a big impression at the time.
• The second, Heartland, during the years of Reagan’s MX Missile program in Wyoming, networked peace activists throughout the intermountain west (1983-85).
• And the third, Crone Chronicles: A Journal of Conscious Aging (1989 – 2001), aimed to activate the archetype of the Crone and inspired a still ongoing annual gathering, Crones Counsel
In the meantime, she also married and divorced three times: the first a ’50s marriage to a now deceased Harvard architect/inventor, which produced two sons, now in their mid-50s; the second a wonderful, life-changing two year marriage to her high school boyfriend (they remain good friends); and the third, one long strange nomadic year with a physically ill and psychically scarred “black beret” veteran, the experience of which taught her that she could NOT “change his mind, heal his body and save his soul.”
Her fourth marriage, to an introverted mathematician, polymath and polyglot Jeff Joel, 1990 through 2003 when he died of a heart attack, is memorialized in a book drawn from her journals from that first grieving year, while alone in a new town (Bloomington Indiana, where he had wanted to attend Indiana University law school only to die of a heart attack after one semester): This Vast Being: A Voyage through Grief and Exaltation.
Beginning in her 50s, Ann began to travel abroad, finally, a life long dream for a double Sagittarian: foreign adventures included England, Scandinavia, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Thailand, India, Tibet, Honduras, Peru, Mongolia and her favorite, Siberia.
When Jeff died, Ann found herself alone, at 60, having just moved with Jeff from Jackson Hole, where they lived in a mongolian yurt surrounded by wild nature, to a typical suburban home in Bloomington, Indiana. What would she do with the rest of her life? Would she stay or go?
She chose to stay, and over the years, with the help of Jeff’s legacy, inspired the gradual emergence of a tiny paradise in the middle of Bloomington’s Green Acres Neighborhood. Green Acres Permaculture Village resulted as one way to put into grounded practice growing food cooperatively via principles she learned from the permaculture design course, while intentionally focusing holistically on integrating personal, social, and spiritual permaculture.
Way back in her mid-20s, when she first “woke up” (during a near-death experience in the hospital), she decided to view her entire life as an experiment. Looking back after more than a half century, she now recognizes her life’s journey as an experiment in learning how to dynamically integrate the opposites, at every level (conscious/unconscious, body/ mind, self/other, community/neighborhood, town/gown, capitalism/socialism, etc.).This practice, of embracing paradox by not only tolerating ambiguity, but by becoming consciously aware, in a detached manner, of the constantly pulsing space between any two poles is, she feels, utterly necessary if we humans are to evolve beyond “identification” (with one pole) as GOOD and “projection” (of the other pole) AS EVIL.
This dynamic Jungian practice of learning how to continuously integrate the opposites, is she feels, the key for humanity to shift from fear, hatred, hostility, war — on both each other and the planet as a whole — into an active, vibrant, continuously regenerating peaceful cooperation with the whole of Nature.
Peace is not the (temporary) Absence of War.
Peace is the Pulsing Power of Presence.
