Who Am I?

Currently, I am a PhD candidate at CIIS in Women's Spirituality. I left the world of tech and entered the world of academia in 2020 hoping to one day become a teacher. I applied to attend California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and began exploring the world of academia and psychedelics while also studying critical feminist and indigenous scholarship.

This blend of critical theory along side transpersonal, post-humanist, intuitive, and spiritual ways of knowing has set the stage for a research project on plant-based psychedelically prompted spiritual experiences and Christianity. I am opening an inquiry about how Christian psychedelic meaning making can translate into community healing, reparation, and social justice. Embedded in this inquiry is an exploration of Christian domination and an acknowledgement of a US colonial history of oppression. I hope to answer the question: how does one enmeshed in a culture of Christianity, that has elements of domination, learn to be aware of and actively seek to prevent domination from framing new mystical meaning once again?

This inquiry also leads me to the area of teaching that I am particularly interested in, critical thinking and psychedelics. How does intuition, non-local states of mind, and transpersonal knowing inform critical discussions today? And what actually is psychedelic discernment?

At CIIS I have focused my attention on developing specific pedagogical skills to teach a critical thinking class and to teach academic writing. I did this because I believe learning to think and write is the most liberatory thing I can contribute in this moment.