Boulder, CO

Hi everybody,

Today, Olivia and I arrived in Crestone, the quietest place on earth. We’re staying at a bed and breakfast in a sustainably designed straw bale house and are being hosted by a wonderful woman named Joann. We haven’t seen much of the town besides the eerie White Eagle retreat center. We might camp if it stops raining, or camp even if it doesn't.

I was just sitting out on the porch, in the dark night, in the silence, looking out over the vast valley bordered by the snow-topped mountains. Crestone is a void. My mind-chatter is far too obsolete in it.

So, I've been keeping a much more extensive, private journal for this trip. Below are just some excerpts. Some are obviously geared toward blog readers while stories like the one about Gustav are taken directly from my journal without much edits. Enjoy!

Gustav Greets Us for Breakfast in Boulder

Breakfast. Granola with bananas and strawberries, no milk. A grey morning sky, slightly cold. Olivia and I, still in our socks. We were mindfully munching with our legs folded in our chairs, when above me I heard pattering. I looked up to the top of one of three walls that enclosed this tiny patio. Two black beady eyes reciprocated - a jittery squirrel. Moving back and forth along the fence, but unusually interested in me for a squirrel. He had some sentience and concentration to him. There was a degree of recognition in his gaze. These are humans. They are eating.
I tilted my head back and baby talked to him, “Hey squirrely-burly. Hello! Hello there!” I was squishing my lips together, blowing kisses, Olivia laughing. A great leaping laugh, a gasp, a silence (she’s laughing so hard she isn’t breathing in), a gasp, another burst aloud.
I keep baby-talking, “Hello there! Hi! Have you come for breakfast? Is it breakfast time?” The squirrel’s eye contact hardly broke. “Olivia get the camera and some nuts.” She came back. I grabbed an almond. And gently, ever so slowly, reached it out to the squirrel. He would occasionally run away a couple feet, then turn back around still interested.
“Yes, yes. We couldn’t hurt you. We’re just vegans. It’s time for your breakfast. Time for nuts. Come, come Gustav. It’s time for your morning almond.” The name just came out and stuck.
Gustav slowly approached me, then grabbed the almond and quickly shot into his mouth. He continued to glare at me, then dropped the nut back into his hand. Gustav nibbled like a hummingbird beats his wings. His bites were minisicule, but an almond could only occupy him for a good fifteen seconds. I fed him pumpkin seeds, then more almonds, then more pumpkin seeds. “Yes, Gustav. We are friends. You are hungry.” Occasionally he would take the seed and run out of sight, only to return a minute later.
Olivia was over-joyed, flashing pics with her camera phone. She only fed Gustav once or twice and left the rest to me. We eventually had to go inside because Gustav had no self-discipline, courtesy, or lack of appetite. Never estimate an animal’s greed in the face of abundance. Scarcity the concept is not scarcity the reality.

Noah
It turns out that my host's housemate, Noah, is also from Kansas City. He just graduated from Naropa as an undergrad but stayed in a lot of Zen monasteries before then. It also turns out that he went to my high school, Rockhurst. It also turns out he had a lot of the same teachers, Tony Severino, Don Ramsey, Andrew Hagedorn. Weird.

Boulder and Naropa
Boulder finished off quite nice. I could see myself living there although the place is far too white and upper-class. Somebody said that it’s 98% white! Yeesh. It’s also got a lot of suburban, mall development.

Yet, it’s very liberal and fun. Not to mention the air is so fresh and crisp. The most outstanding feature is of course the mountains, who tower like white-hair grandfathers over the whole city. There’s a great deal of comfort in being surrounded by such obviously old geography. One feels small. You forget that when you’re surrounded by annual corn/soy fields that humans seem to have ‘under control’. I don't miss Indiana . . .

Anyway, I really clicked with the people at Naropa - a lot of liberal, creative, independent crunchies interested in Buddhism. “Crunchy” is a term Olivia taught me. It’s apparently derived from the term “granola crunching”, which refers to the unusual amount of granola eaten by a certain American, liberal demographic, which I seem to be apart of.

As an institution, Naropa fascinates me. Started in 1974 by the eccentric, but extremely popular Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa, it seems to have morphed and evolved every few years to meet the relentless spiritual/political progressivism and idealism of its community. Although Naropa adopts a lot of the traditional liberal arts university model, it’s also grounded in the rather ungrounded ideals of the American counter-culture and Buddhist-inspired psychology – both areas which have been constantly evolving in expression, particularly throughout the 20th century. More details at naropa.edu.

I had the pleasure of taking official tours, meeting with an admissions counselor, and talking with people from the graduate programs in Religious Studies, Transpersonal Psychology, and Contemplative Psychotherapy. All programs are deeply inspired by Chogyam Trungpa’s teachings and require various degrees of meditation and retreats as requirements. The people from each department were very careful to say that one doesn’t have to be a Buddhist to join these programs, nor follow the Shambala teachings (Trungpa’s lineage). However, specific concentrations like the Religious Studies concentration in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and the Contemplative Psychotherapy draw considerably from Trungpa. I or anybody else going into these programs would want to read Trungpa’s work and be interested in investigating his teachings more before entering.

The overarching goal for Naropa, however, is “contemplative education”. The following page gives a much better explanation that I could type up: http://www.naropa.edu/conted/conted_primer.cfm . All in all, the goal is to integrate those aspects of awareness and knowledge gleaned from meditation and Eastern religious traditions generally, like Buddhism, with the traditional benefits of a Western liberal arts education. Depending on their program, undergrads and graduate students are asked to maintain a regular meditation practice and to attend retreats. However, Noah had the excellent point that a lot of the ideals are retained from a traditional liberal arts education, where one’s studies about the outside world are complimented with reflection and introspection about their value and relevance for one’s own life. Naropa tries to revive and revise that spirit.

Although I am a Religious Studies major now, I was most interested in their graduate psychology programs, by far the most popular at Naropa (I think someone said there are more graduate psychology students than total undergraduate students. Naropa is 400 something undergrad, 600 something graduate). A lot of the programs are modeled off a “help the helper” scheme, where the individual student undergoes all kinds of exercises, workshops, retreats, reflections, meditations, conversations, etc. to work out their own psychology so that they are prepared to handle those of their clients in a clinical setting. Those I asked seem to agree that the psych programs were “pressure cookers” intended to test and provoke, break down and build back up a student so that they are ready to be with others throughout all kinds of confusions, traumas, and transitions.

The transpersonal psychology programs (I think they were clinical, wilderness therapy, and art therapy) are drawing from a new movement in psychology built on the religious mysticism, contemplative experience, and deep psychology that aims to bring their client into union and harmony with the non-dual ground of reality. The methods and fields taught within the program vary wildly, and I’m not familiar with a lot of them. Nonetheless, the goal appeals to me a lot. Can the clinical psychotherapy setting be a space for one to come into deep spiritual experience? To unite with all reality? It's a bit different than Freud . . .

I’ll update more later as the Crestone adventure evolves. Thanks for reading.