our evolution

Kyra Shaughnessy
Career/Pathway Review
Gaia University
January, 2010

CONSCIOUS EVOLUTION: Journeying towards my self

First off I need to say that as a born and raised self-directed learner, and as a result of the worldview/path passed down to me, I have learned to experience every moment of my life as rich in learning and personal growth. Most of the things I’ve learned I was never “taught”. My whole life appears to me as an interconnected web, woven with the life force of all else that is.
By exploring a few “patterns” or  streams of learning I hope to share a snapshot of “who” I am and “why”. However it is clear to me that this document will remain forever incomplete. Any written summary of life can only impart the instant in which it was imprinted on the page. This is, therefore, a glimpse of who I am today, with no guarantees on what may change tomorrow, in both my perceptions of/reflection on the past or in my present manifestation of self.

Rainbow Warriors
I am an earth activist. I am a song created anew each day. I dedicate myself to transformation.
My life’s learning journey began in Pointe-Claire, Montreal, my easy birth speaking volumes to an enthusiasm for life that has been deepening ever since. My name, ”Kyra,” was taken from the name of a rainbow goddess in a Native American myth, and has suited me well throughout my journey.

I am blessed to have been present at the births of many different beings, including my youngest brother who was born in our bathtub. Witnessing a birth or a death is one of the most fundamentally altering experiences possible. It is a tragedy that some cultures have cultivated fear and disconnection from these two crucial points of transition. Taboos on birth and death only “makes sense” in a world where matter and femininity are threats to the current systems of oppression. More on that later.

Both of my parents are practitioners of different blends of alternative medicine. I have been attending non-traditional therapy sessions, guided meditations, nature-based healing retreats and ceremonies of all sorts since before birth. I learned early on to be a good listener, to be compassionate and to know that the way people act is informed by their past experiences (both in this life and others) and socio-cultural contexts.

Life on Heartroot Farm: Holistic Immersion

We moved to the Eastern townships of Quebec when I was about three. I started speaking French and am fluently bilingual.
My parents found a magical 240 acres of maple forest and fields in Audet, Quebec. After my fathers departure early on, we named it Heartroot Farm. The house was a shack with no running water, no electricity and no insulation in a place where winters drop to –40 celsius. Living with the bare minimum is relatively easy and “normal” to me, which brought me into conflict with social “norms” at various points along my way. I am grateful for this early learning in the joys of simple living.

Living on the farm my parents would hold therapy retreats and many different kinds of ceremonies and rituals. I have been participating in my mother’s sweat lodge ceremonies for as long as I can remember. The sweat lodge is a powerful tool for holistic healing and has been a large part of my journey of self-discovery.

In addition to the people care side of things, we grew up producing maple syrup, various fruits and veggies, and hay for our animals from our land.

The predominant spiritual influences in my life growing up were along the lines of Tibetan Buddhist, Amerindian and Druidic. My mother was raised near native reserves in Manitoba and passed on a deep appreciation, respect and awareness of interconnection with all beings. Her parents were one of few “interracial” couples in the 1950’s, and she carried on the tradition in marrying my anglo-saxon father

As fate would have it, we ended up being the only non-white, non-catholic, non-francophone, home-schooled family in the region of Quebec where we moved. I have spent a few years mulling over “belonging,” and have a strong identification with “difference,” minority rights and social justice.

My mixed ethnic background has been made patently obvious to me in every single place I have ever been. People approach me on the street weekly and ask to know my heritage. This has been both a blessing and a challenge in my life. I’ve learned that it is possible to connect with anyone on some level if ones heart is open enough.

Some practical things I learned on the farm; plant recognition, herbology, the medicine wheel, oriental diagnostics, meditation, yoga, animal husbandry, tea ceremony, sweat lodge ceremony, wild-crafting; how to make maple syrup, fire-building, wood-splitting, talk to animals; fixing fences, French, Spanish; how to make paper and candles and soap and yogurt and bread; cooking (for lots of people), gardening, the importance of faith and prayer (and skepticism for religious institutions), singing, chanting, silence, stillness, an appreciation of the cycles of life, social responsibility, politics, history…the list goes on.
The number of situations where one needs to use “creative thinking” living in “the middle of nowhere” are endless.

When I was about seven years old my father left my mother and moved to Costa Rica. While I am certain that his leaving was the best thing for all involved, I am still confronted with reverberations of that lack of father-relationship in my life.

My parent’s divorce was long and painful. When my father remarried without telling us I wrote him an angry letter explaining my feelings of betrayal. He replied that he didn’t want to speak to me anymore.This lasted quite a few years, until I decided to take the steps to reconnect.

In my home/un-schooling years I learned to love learning. I started reading and writing by the age of three. I was fascinated with geography, music, culture and science fiction in particular. Star Trek played a huge role in deepening my vocabulary and understanding of psychology, science, pacifism and romance. Life was full of interesting people from all over the world with diverse backgrounds, many of whom enjoyed telling stories, drawing, or being chased around the farm by me and my brothers. I became accustomed to passing knowledge on to people, irrespective of age. I was, and am still, often unaware of all that I learned through living the way we did.
Without television or computers or city lights to numb our senses our imaginations had free range. We participated in all the farm and healing work taking place.
After the departure of my dad I also took on a lot of the responsibility in the house and in teaching my two younger brothers reading, writing and math, etc.

Healing the Feminine Principle

Heartroot Farm (La Ferme Racine du Coeur) is a center for planetary transformation through conscious evolution. One of the main things I learned in my upbringing on Heartroot Farm is a particular understanding of the current state of the world.
My own abbreviated take on it is as follows.
The evolution of humanity is moving us towards non-duality. The current state of the world is the result of an imbalance in the “masculine” and “feminine” principles of life. Humanity has, over the past centuries, evolved into an extremist left-brain/masculine state. Chinese medicine, among other ancient and “modern” integrative models, provides a long list of the various aspects of the dual energies we describe as masculine and feminine

Heaven/ Earth

Spirituality /Sexuality

Light/ Dark

Mind /Body

Father/ Mother

Work/ Home

Thought/ Emotions

The list goes on…

Our role as “conscious evolvers” is to to heal the dualities that dance within every aspect of our lives, and to carry this healing with us in the world through our intentions and our actions. There are more and more people from all disciplines coming to similar conclusions. The division of science and spirituality, so convenient to proponents of the current system, is crumbling.

My tool in communicating these truths to people has been song, music and poetry for the most part. Music in particular, I believe, has some of the strongest potential for crossing cultural and linguistic barriers. I began my work as a poet/singer with a strong satirical/political bent. Since then I have been intentionally becoming less and less angry, and this is reflected in the softer tones of my artwork.

Performance & Formal Education: The Ongoing Voyage

Music has played a huge role in my learning life. I began singing at a very early age, through chanting in meditations and in personal expression through song. My ear developed as one of my most effective learning tools.

When I was thirteen my violin teacher recommended me to a friend who ran an opera company in Wolfville , Nova Scotia. For two years I spent my summers there working as stagehand and chorus member in two full-scale opera’s. This was my first experience singing on stage. It allowed me to begin seeing my value as a person who is reliable, innovative, motivated, open-minded, determined and who works well with others…

At about this time my brother and I both decided we wanted to attend school. I was interested in learning about the experience of the majority but schools in the Eastern Townships were not an option. At the same time my mother began working in Montreal half time as a way to support Heartroot Farm and family. We moved back into the city (keeping the farm) and I began attending M.I.N.D. (Moving in New Directions) High School, a small alternative school. I was shocked at how easy the subject matter was once I got into “the system”. I was astonished at the levels of apathy, lack of communication and discomfort between age groups that I saw, as well as the amount of pure, avoidable drama that went on. The fact that I was happy and didn’t feel attracted to drugs or alcohol, partying or anorexia was strange to many teenagers. I was ever more grateful for my education on the farm.

At M.I.N.D. I met my first mentor- Sherine Boctor. An amazing teacher, she loved my enthusiasm and was a major influence in my continued efforts in writing. At M.I.N.D. I was encouraged to begin my performance “career” through regular coffeehouses. I graduated after two years with multiple “highest grade” awards, a Lieutenant Governors award for community involvement and the role of Valedictorian.

At the same time as beginning school I joined Leave Out ViolencE (LOVE), a youth photojournalism project. Through LOVE I learned how to develop black and white photography and gained an outlet for my poetry and writing through their twice-yearly newspaper. I began public speaking and performance on issues of violence at conferences and in schools across the province. After a couple of years I became a volunteer photography teaching assistant. I attended and ran workshops at their leadership camp with youth from across Canada for five years.

Through LOVE I met the first man to act as a father to me, Myron Weekes. This thoroughly changed my life and perception of self-worth.
I gained my first employment as a performer when I was recommended to the CBC for their National Poetry SLAM. At fifteen I became the youngest person to perform in this event.
I began performing my spoken word poetry regularly in coffeeshops and larger venues in addition to my work with LOVE. Over the next couple of years I was hired by the CBC again, then by the NFB (National Film Board) to write a piece for a documentary on Teen Stress (XS STRESS: Teens Take Control). I was frequently on the top ten list for Montreal spoken word artists. The next year I starred in an independent Montreal film called “The Point.”

My poetry was my main outlet for frustration with socio-political injustice and the mistreatment of the earth.
While I received nothing but positive feedback and support from others I maintained a pretty heavy critique of myself. It took a few years before I could be satisfied with my own performances.

During this time I was also heavily involved in Breakdancing. I performed with a breakdancing troupe for a while, but ultimately realized that I could not stand the macho culture that accompanied the dance. After three years of breaking I decided that respecting my body was more important than proving my strength, something which had been ingrained in me through my brothers and the culture of rural Quebec.

I then went on to Swing dancing, which I practiced for three years. Swing dancing was a wonderful dance through which to observe my tendencies towards needing to control. I was confronted with my own internalized prejudices against the typically feminine roles of passivity, receptivity, etc and pushed to explore expressions of play and joy with other people.

During my years at M.I.N.D. I started teaching myself guitar. I quickly began writing my own songs and incorporating them into my performances. Performance is an endless learning experience- each new venue or presentation brings up many layers of personal reflection.

It is only in recent years that I have begun to accept myself as an “artist”. I believe that every person is an artist in some aspect of their lives. Art as I experience it is essentially the manifestation and representation of love. As such, art is by definition related to positive social change and/or a strengthening of the fabric of interconnection. When I create pieces that are critical of the current system it is out of a love for life that this system is destroying. When the voice that comes up is one of rage, the challenge is to keep myself connected to the underlying understanding of the interdependence of all things.

After graduating from M.I.N.D. I went to Dawson College to the North South Studies program. The program included a one-month field trip to Nicaragua where my father, who I hadn’t seen in five years at that point, lived.

NS was an incredibly transformative experience for me. While still disillusioned by the offensively low expectations teachers had of students, I had managed to find myself the one alternative program in the whole school. The administration was continuously trying to shut NS down, which proved to me that I was in the right place. It is through NS that I came to understand the history of colonialism/capitalism, the interplay of political spheres, the role of world governments in the destruction of life and all the complexities that come with dissociating ourselves from the realities of interconnection.

The trip to Nicaragua broke my heart and sewed it together with humility. The joy and generosity of the people in this country so torn by political strife grounded in me the knowledge that I needed to find ways to change the world without being consumed by anger. The fact that some of the students in my group did not drastically change their ways after this trip was incomprehensible to me and made me see what a complex path lay ahead.Reconnecting with my dad was a huge step on my path to healing. We now have an ongoing friendship through letter-writing and email.

At Dawson I became involved in an alternative branch called the New School that taught required courses from a humanistic approach. Through the group-led classes that included “band” sessions, where we were able to work through emotional issues in our lives, I came to have a much better understanding of people’s perceptions of me. I became aware of my tendency to give too much of myself, and a resistance to setting my own boundaries.

Dawson was highly validating in an academic sense. My writer’s brain was in love with long hours of typing and the satisfaction of red pen commentary.

However, in my four years of “education” it became clear to me that schools teach many people to dislike learning. Sitting for long hours in fluorescent-lit rooms is an astonishing ignorance of self. The apathy of the majority of students is in no way natural to them or me.

On the Road Again…

After graduation from Dawson I organized a cross-country tour with two female artist friends from Montreal. This was a huge undertaking and an exhausting adventure. After my return from Central America it was wonderful to find that North America is not as devoid of heart and soul as I had feared. The positive reception of my work in places as diverse as punk rock basement shows, elders poetry societies and local-yokel bars was validating and encouraging. It allowed me to push myself to the boundaries of what I thought possible of myself as a performer and in-denial artist. It also allowed me to realize that constant traveling was not in line with the needs of my body. I have avoided large-scale touring since.

On the voyage across Canada my friend’s partner mentioned to me The School for Designing a Society (SDaS). I was particularly interested that they seemed to combine ecological design with social change art. I had been feeling a need to deepen my connections to earth work in spaces that were not steeped in family history and to push my performance in new directions. I knew that moving out of my family home would allow me to grow in lots of new directions.

I spent the winter working at my mother’s boutique and workshop center, SEVA, in order to raise the funds to go. I have always been able to acquire the money or worktrade what I need to do what I want, but still have the imprint of growing up with a lot of financial difficulty.

Permaculture, Design & Desire.

I attended the summer school of SDaS at the Gesundheit! Institute(G!) in West Virginia. This was where I was first introduced to clowning as an organized practice.

The SDaS approach was in sharp contrast to the love-centered G! environment as well as my upbringing of earth-based, heart/body oriented learning. It was hyper-intellectual,politicized and language based. I found the material interesting but felt that it was skimmed over far too quickly in the one-month session. I was intrigued enough, and needing to move away from Montreal enough, and interested in a certain young man who was the SDaS organizer enough, to pack myself off to Illinois.

The year 2007/8 was one of exponential growth.
Moving to Urbana, Illinois I got involved in my second serious romantic relationship. The complexities of that relationship led to heartache, healing, and a wellspring of self-discovery.

Around this time I began producing a zine on sexualization as a way of working through an intense period of sexual harassment. As a touch positive person I felt it important to create space for dialogue around intimacy, sexuality,etc. This project is ongoing and has been a wonderful tool for processing in my life and has allowed me to deepen many relationships.

This was my first move away. I found it both challenging and exciting to observe myself through the process of leaving Montreal, friends, family and art community where I was known.
I moved in to a co-op house with 7 other people, many of whom did not have any drive or experience in living collectively. The co-op had a large Permaculture garden. I dove into gardening and permaculture immediately, attending weekly “knowledge shares” on permaculture topics throughout the winter months. I began interning in four or five permaculture inspired gardens around town.

The SDaS classes were a struggle for me. There was a clear emphasis on pushing people to the edge of their comfort zones, but I felt there was not enough space for the necessary healing and “people care”. The most useful parts of my experience with SDaS was in feeling that this group of people was willing to engage with me in active reflection on the minute details of language and social interactions that I see as crucial to social transformation. SDaS also put a huge emphasis on desire as the motivator for design. I was given lots of time and space to practice articulating my desires so as to accurately design for the world I want to see. For this I am eternally grateful, as knowing my desires had been a huge block before.

The co-op where I lived was not a stable first move. There was a constant changeover of people, and the permanent elements were all going through various levels of extreme mental health issues. I learned a lot about my own boundaries in taking care of people.

I left Urbana in May 2008 to go to Starhawk’s Earth Activist Training (EAT) at Manzanita Village in California. I made many lasting connections through EAT, and was glad to learn about permaculture in a more structured way. I returned to Montreal where I moved in with friends and began volunteer work as a member of a collective kitchen and dining co-op, MUCS (the Montreal Urban Community Sustainment Project). Processing from my year in Urbana was difficult and beautiful.

After being turned back at the U.S. border when trying to go visit my partner, my grandfather dying and ex-housemate committing suicide, I dove into constant activity to avoid depression. I was working for a website called Ecospace as a writer, in the Leave Out Violenceoffice, as a secretary for an elderly friend, volunteering at MUCS, performing, running a radio show at McGill University…feeling overwhelmed. The excess of computer related work made for intense health problems for many months.

In October 2008 I went to Findhorn for their Ecovillage Design Training of Trainers program. I left Montreal feeling lost, that I might wander around Europe for a while until I was called…somewhere! Instead, I left the EDE knowing that what I wanted was to be grounded in community and go back to land where I had been raised. At Findhorn I was able to explore my “spirituality” outside of my mothers sphere of influence. I discovered more deeply my strength in group song-leading, facilitation and mediation. With the 30 other participants in the EDE I lived the experience of a functional, holistic, non-hierarchical community. This was by far one of the most intense, inspiring experiences I’ve had.

I came back to Montreal knowing that I had to work with my mother to nurture Heartroot Farm. The circle completing itself. I spent the winter designing, planning and organizing, the summer living on the farm and running programs and caretaking. It was a year of undoing many well-intentioned changes to the farm landscape that had happened in our absence. A practice in patience and being.

I also began organizing and facilitating a year-long urban sustainability and permaculture course in Montreal. The Montreal Permaculture Guild was born. We are currently running a variety of permaculture activites in Montreal.

I am feeling very grounded in my life here and ready to embark on a next step of focused action-learning. Things never cease to expand

Long Term Goals & Visions

My main vision for myself is to live in a way that holistically reflects conscious evolution and facilitates the transition to this type of life for others.I believe Heartroot Farm is a place I will be working with for many years to come.

The long-term vision for Heartroot Farm is to continue to enhance our ability to serve humanity and the earth as a center of conscious evolution. Part of this work, one under-emphasized in many spiritually oriented healing centers, involves coming back into our bodies. Re-learning how to inhabit our selves respectfully and joyfully is essential to personal and social transformation.
We are also working towards complete self-sufficiency and a positive ecological footprint. This will involve more people living on the land with us, temporarily or in more permanent ways. Folded within these two main visions are the more tangible manifestations

Food Sovereignty & ReSkilling
There will be large “permaculture”-based gardens and greenhouses that will serve as our main source of food for the inhabitants and as an educational resource for visitors. Beekeeping and animal husbandry will add to the fullness of these systems and to the production of honey, candles, milk products, eggs, etc.Reforestation of the area with all but eradicated native hardwood trees also figures in to our long-term plans.
Beautiful, ecologically designed, locally sourced homes and workshop spaces will be constructed for use by the community and to demonstrate “what’s possible” even in near-tundra Quebec.

We plan to eventually have different residents and community members of Heartroot Farm who can teach “lost skills” such as blacksmithing, stonemasonry, spinning, sustainable forestry, etc., as well as building and gardening/farming and wildcrafting methods, wilderness survival, old-fashioned maple syrup production and other arts.

All of these activities will add to the auto-financing of Heartroot Farm (until the monetary system collapses completely or we make our way out of it). They will also be done in a way that challenges the paradigm where living off the land is seen as misery and hardship, and in which these types of projects are implemented in ways damaging to the body.

Energy
In order to be completely self-sufficient we need to create some alternative energy systems on our land. We are aiming to eventually have dual wind and solar systems up and providing all our energy needs. Combined with passive solar construction and the possibility of wood heating in all our spaces during wintertime we could easily be off grid.

There’s Music in the Air
The vision and energy of Heartroot Farm has attracted artists of all walks since its initiation. Over the coming years we hope to make intentional artistry more of a focus, through artists retreats and mentorship programs. Heartroot Farm will be a place for artists to come and find the space and time they need to let themselves connect and create. We hope to become a local hub for artist collaborations and gatherings.
Eventually I want Heartroot to be the base for the majority of my art work. The idea of the local, non-traveling artist is one that appeals to. Creating a context where I can feel fulfilled, challenged and appreciated in my art without having to fly across the globe and go against my personal values in harmfully (both to the earth and my body) traveling long distances would be ideal!

Transition
We also wish to create a center for birthing and dying. Guiding people through these two critical points of transition we see as being of utmost importance in transforming human culture. Current social taboos on birth and death can be connected back to the manufactured fear of things connected to the feminine principle (birth being one the of the most palpable representations of this).

Community/Family
All of the above include many people, be they visitors or permanent caretakers of Heartroot. I definitely desire to find myself with a grounding and joyful partnership with someone who can work and live with me on Heartroot Farm, though I’ve been avoiding this in myself for some time. I feel ready to accept a loving partnership into my life.

Next Steps:

The next steps on our horizon are manifold and involve many more steps than I will enumerate here. Basically we need to convert our old house into a dormitory space for people to live in. This involves a lot of repairs and some modifications, as well as the construction of a whole new building that will be my mothers personal home. Designs are underway for both of these to be implemented in the spring.

We also need to complete the extension on our house, that will become our main workshop and kitchen space for workshops and guests, and will also include more winterized sleeping space.

This year we’ll also begin setting up more gardens around the house and barn, which is our current workshop/housing space. Leading up to that we have a lot of designing to do, as well as fundraising, ordering seeds if needed and potentially germinating some things before spring. There is plenty of natural perennial growth to work with and we’re hoping to lean towards forest gardening. One of the gardens will also be a walking labyrinth.

In addition to all this hands on stuff we’re working on a lot of outreach material, including a new website and some pamphlets describing our mission and advertising workshops. The running of all our workshops is a whole other story.

For me personally my next steps include getting a drivers license, so as to be less dependent on other people for transportation (long term goal is to convert a car to not use fuel). As well I need to create a nest space for myself, both to have refuge when we are full up with people during workshops and to be composing my music and writing.

On the music front I am in the process of recording a second cd, and this will require some planning around how I wish to share my music. A big next step for me will be sitting down with myself and deciding on some concrete (perhaps even methodical!) ways of archiving information on my performance/composition work and steps towards implementing them.

A Final Word (or Two):

The process of writing this review has been one of deep reflection. Above all it has reminded me of how reality is what we create. I underline once again the choices made in what has been said and what has remained unspoken. My choices at any other period would have been different. I am confronted with the desire to adjust constantly to shifting perceptions, to implore you to experience nothing of your life, or mine, as static… At the same time I am reminded of my own difficulty in accepting the perfection of the present. My final feelings are ones of both joy and incompletion…and, emerging as I type, the knowledge that one day I will no longer believe that feeling “incomplete” is a necessary byproduct of existence.

* I Invite you to explore the rest of this blog/website. You can hear some of my spoken word and music here, and read in depth descriptions of many of the events described above by searching through my blog.

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