“Home is where I want to be,
But I guess I’m already there” -Talking Heads
For a long time I was an envious academic.
While I enjoyed learning and being of service in the field of higher education, there was always a part of me dissatisfied and uncomfortable. I would experience envy at conferences when someone spoke about mindfulness or consciousness or anything to do with contemplative education. “Why can’t I do something interesting like that?” I would think, which amuses me now, because of course, I was always free to do so.
Over the past several years I’ve been working with the concepts of alignment and authenticity, closing the gaps between my inner and outer realities. For me, the Creative Bridges conference marked a moment when my professional persona merged with my “non-work” persona, when my “educator” persona merged with my “spiritual” persona.
It was also a homecoming to the UK, where I lived, studied, and worked for 10 years. I have deep genetic, family, professional, and personal roots in the west country and spend a portion of each year near Bath and Bristol, nurturing my friendships and my relationship with the green rolling hills. In so many ways, the Eurotas conference in Oxford was the ideal place to debut my new professional path in transpersonal psychology and psychedelics.
But what is remaining for me, as the weeks slip by since we gathered, are the relationships: connecting in person with my peers and teachers from the Alef Trust, meeting researchers whose work I’ve read for years, hugging people I’ve spent hours with on screens. Eurotas 2024 was a coming home to my people, my tribe.
The conference truly was a creative bridge for me, connecting my past with my future and my external being with my inner being. There is no more envy because I have come home to who I have always wanted to become, and to who I have always been.
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