Your NameVeronica Anderson
Email Addressvero@veronica.earth
Cohort AssignmentHybrid In-Person/Online with Intensive in Costa Rica, Winter-Spring 2024/2025
1. What do you see as your primary work at this stage of your life?

Embodiment -- becoming a living role model of everything I've studied and practiced for the last 17 years about how to build a better world from the inside out: Mindfulness, Architecture, Unity, Transformation, Regeneration.

I am developing the practice of Deep Design, designing inner architectures for creating regenerative cultures of care, starting with the communities immediately around me. This is the time of looking back on the first 30 years of my life to set the tone and pace for the next 30 years. I find myself called to teaching as the next stage of my learning and evolution, the one thing I have in greatest abundance appears to be wisdom, in addition to empathy and compassion, so I am learning the best ways to draw forth understanding in those I would "educate" or learn alongside.

2. What role do you see as yours to play?

I am constantly being invited to catalyze transformation in healing ways and I am accepting that role from life. This often requires me to be the one who speaks into the unseen and what is hidden, taking on perspectives which are out of the ordinary. For example, my neurodivergent brain and nervous system give me a unique take on the human experience which is more feminine, sensorial, and receptive, so I find myself in the minority of humans who operate from this place as a general rule and I often play the role of educator for how to rest and listen instead of think and do. This places me in a position of getting to the root of problems and patterns, my sensitivity and experience wisdom makes me highly attuned to the unconscious dynamics at play, and at my best I am a fearless truthteller. I am creative, playful, and open-hearted which brings the vitalizing energy of possibility to groups and gatherings. I have very high developmental potential and am a "deep-feeler" which makes me a safe space and often a willing container for group processes or individuals going through transformation. Sometimes the mere presence of this container is enough to catalyze transformation through the experience of safety in skillful holding.

3. What goals or aims do you have in regard to the above?

Stay humble, get quiet, learn to listen more deeply, take care of myself more fully, honor my needs, set and maintain good boundaries.

Establish a regenerative business model which values the soft skills and radical gifts I have which capitalism has devalued and marginalized.

Keep my heart open, be patient, practice tolerance for those with different struggles, stay close to my higher power as a guide, surrender control.

4. Where do you feel your next arenas for personal growth are?

Learning to love and care for myself, reestablishing my own value and worth as intrinsic and not based on external validation.
Building the capacity to be present with my own creative life force and efficiently channel that in my body.

5. And for professional growth?

Collaborating with mentors and peers within the mental/doing space of projects, budgets and timelines while honoring my neurodivergence, unique gifts and special needs.
Learning to work with my intelligence instead of against it.

6. What have you invested in to get you where you are?

My spiritual practice/relationship with the Earth, God and my True Self
My physical/emotional/mental health and well-being
My education in the formal academic system
My education in an informal, experiential context
My education in an informal, mentorship context
My entrepreneurial skills as a business owner and leader
My communities and network of colleagues and peers
My body of work as a thought leader
My craft as an artist
My home and sense of place in Costa Rica
My career as an architect

7. What fields of learning and which thinkers have been important in your life?

Thich Nhat Hanh, Mindfulness and Zen
Anuttara Yoga, Traditional Nondual Tantra Bhakti Yoga
Peter Levine, Somatic Experiencing
Pete Walker, CPTSD Healing
David Treleaven, Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness
Thomas Hübl, Healing Collective Trauma
Jan Gehl, Cities for People
Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language
Jane Jacobs, Death & Life of Cities
Starhawk, (Social) Permaculture
Ian McHarg, Design With Nature
Bill Miller, Geodesign
Jenine Benyus, Biomimicry
Tim Beatley, Biophilic Cities

8. Can you frame your philosophy or cosmology of life? What role(s) do humans play in it?

Yes. My heart is at the center of a sphere which represents all of life. It is the portal to access above (God - source consciousness) and below (Self - individual experience) as well as the horizontal plane which represents all manifest reality. Unmanifest energy is constantly moving into and out of being through my heart via the agency of prayer (need and desire). Living in my heart activates the regenerative abundance of the system to flow freely, as I acknowledge the many parts of self which make up "me," the universe (God/All That Is) responds. There is only one human I can control in the system, it is I, and the universe moves in "others" to come towards me and meet my needs and desires. The only thing I can do in the system is stay present to the dynamic flow of the moment by observing (tending to) my needs, feelings, and desires. This is achieved through communication with the self in its individual aspect (parts) and in its universal aspect (Higher Self). Those two polarities can be seen as the top and bottom of a toroidal field with the heart in the center as the zero point.

Date CreatedNovember 19, 2024