A Story of Awakening
It starts with the ultimate cosmic joke - a sort of escape room, but in real life. Place a radical environmentalist in the malls of New Jersey and see if she can escape. At first it seems cruel, but hindsight is 20/20, so they say, and the challenges and bits of stardust along the way make the journey an adventure of a lifetime.
Fireworks behind your eyes and whaling ships
The backlit breadcrumb trail led me to the age of 8, when I discovered that rubbing my fists against my eyes produced sparks of light, as if you were looking through a kaleidoscope. Doesn’t everyone do that? I loved the patterns and yellow light and the way it altered my perception. It made me curious. Around 16, my environmental awakening was in full force. I was reading E Magazine, learning about environmental justice (EJ for short), and donating to Greenpeace. The proverbial shit hit the fan one day when my mother found out I had been donating to some radical leftist group that was taking ships out to sea to save the whales (1). The donations ceased.
The most unlikely place for awakening
The second cosmic joke was growing up in a severely Catholic family as a covert hippie drawn to mysticism. Although Saint Francis and his “Brother Sun, Sister Moon” musings as well as the novel, The Perfect Joy of Saint Francis, fueled my compassion for the planet. Always a strategist at heart, I chose the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana as my first attempt at escape. My mother had placed a 6 hour radius on my college departure once she heard my plan to attend the University of California, Santa Cruz to be a scientific illustration major. Notre Dame was 12 hours away, and a “good Catholic school.” I knew she would say yes.
Being the good Catholic school it was, Notre Dame required religion classes my freshman year, and I chose the one that seemed most counterculture: The Gnostic Gospels (2). A few days into the class, I was hooked. “The Secret Book of John?!” I didn’t learn about this in Sunday sermons. The texts and readings spoke of light and a deep, profound experience of spirit, rather than dogma. It was right up my alley, and unbeknownst to me, the awakening had begun.
The following year, I saw the Tao De Ching in a bookstore in South Bend. If it wasn’t written by a Catholic saint, I was clueless. And yet, I was drawn to pick up the book and buy it. Upon reading verse 16 (3), my entire body started to resonate with the words on the page, and I felt light and tingly, and connected to the universe. I sat alone in my dorm room wondering what on earth I was experiencing, and told no one. It felt amazing and I was deeply curious.
Water towers and bird song
I was a fish out of water, so to speak, while at Notre Dame. When I attended an environmental club meeting, which mostly consisted of a few people sitting around talking about recycling, I realized I needed to take matters into my own hands. After a few months of fundraising at the various science departments, I brought a Greenpeace speaker to liven up the passive student body. A few days before his arrival I asked my hero “So, let me know when you are going to hang off the water tower and how I can help!” The response was, “Oh, we don’t do those types of stunts anymore. We will just give a powerpoint presentation.” Utterly disappointed, I stayed for the first ten minutes of the presentation, scowled, and went back to my dorm room.
As a biology major and aspiring conservation ecologist, I didn’t have much in common with all the pre-med students. I was told by my mentors that scientists don’t conduct “that kind of science” anymore. Focus on genetics! (note: Notre Dame now has a prestigious conservation biology department that would have served me well).
It wasn’t until sophomore year that a professor finally listened and asked me if I wanted to travel to Montana to study birds. “Hell yes!” was my response. He put me on a train to Great Falls, MT. When I stepped out I was shocked. Where were all the mountains I had expected?! Well, turns out they were north of Great Falls.
The experience was life changing. It was hard work and early mornings. My sheltered New Jersey upbringing had not prepared me for outdoor living and daily field work. But, the day that my mentor at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service told me to close my eyes and listen to the bird songs, my world changed. He said “Hear that? It is a savannah sparrow. And that one there, it’s a grasshopper sparrow.” As I listened to the symphony of bird song, my being exploded in light, and I felt connected to the earth in a way I had never experienced before. Turns out, my mentor, Steve Martin (the cosmic joke continues), had just come back from Cape May, New Jersey, where the bird migration is a renowned hot spot for birders around the world. I had just escaped the Garden State and it turned out to be a birding Mecca. Live and learn.
Compassion, guilt, and “The File”
I graduated Notre Dame in three and a half years. It wasn’t a great fit for me, so I escaped as soon as I could. My last conversation with my generally uninspired advisor went something like this: “How did you manage to get all the credits to graduate early?!” My response: “It might have been the University of Notre Dame Environmental Research Center course I took last summer.” His response: “Well, we are going to need to change those rules.” As a side note, I did know that Notre Dame had a unique opportunity to conduct ecological field research in the Land O’ Lakes region of the Upper Peninsula of Wisconsin, and that was my one guiding light and an incredible experience.
A month or so before my departure I received a call from the administration office at Notre Dame. They asked if I wanted to attend a conference on education the following year. I mentioned that I would be long gone living in Los Angeles with my boyfriend by that time (the escape was leading me further West!). I also asked why they called me, of all people? Their response floored me: “Oh, we have a file on you and know about all the environmental initiatives you started and your penchant for activism. It seems like you’d be the perfect fit for this conference.” They would fly me back. The file they had on their environmental rabble rouser could now be put to good use and officially closed.
Arriving back at Notre Dame as a graduate attending a thought-provoking conference with a bunch of students and professors from California was right up my alley. They encouraged us to share readings of meaning to us. And so I shared a passage from Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind that beautifully describes the experience of a drop of water re-entering a waterfall as it becomes one with the body of water it has always been a part of (4). I cried as I shared it and felt deeply heard and understood by the workshop participants. I also felt that it perfectly described my experience - always feeling a bit out of place, but deeply knowing that I am connected to a being much greater than my one little drop of water.
After reading the passage the Californians flocked to me. “How did someone like YOU end up HERE at this school?” they wanted to know. I laughed. The main professor asked if she could interview me and discover my “eco-story.” I was intrigued, so I agreed. And so my eco-story was born amidst tears and guilt. She asked probing questions about where my ecological passion stemmed from and my love of birds. As she listened deeply, I searched back in my mind and found the story I had never shared until that moment.
It started with Rocky 1, Rocky 2, and Rocky 3 - all parakeets named by my very hilarious older brother after the beloved film. My family didn’t do well with dogs or cats. Since my parents grew up in the Bronx, pet care was not a skillset that was learned. And, turns out that my brother and sister were deathly allergic to cats.
And so it was that I had a pair of finches after Rocky 1, 2, and 3 passed. I tended to them, observed them, and loved them. Until one day when a neighbor stopped by and saw the bird cage. He turned to me and said, “Monique, you of all people, I can’t believe you have birds in a cage!” I immediately became self conscious and internalized the guilt of a bird with wings that is not allowed to fly. The guilt grew over days and months. Every time I fed them, I couldn’t even look at them without an extraordinary feeling of sadness. They lived and thrived for years. Until one day, I couldn’t bear the guilt anymore, and I stopped taking care of them. When they died I buried them in a box in the yard and cried vowing never to cage a bird or being that is meant to fly.
The Cult
With my passion for birds taking full flight, I found my stride traveling around the world as an ornithologist finding nests and collecting demographic data for conservation studies. My “bird jobs” led me to Hawaii, Australia, and Southern California. That is where I met my first husband. I remember the day he said birding was like a meditation and that as you focused on the birds and finding their nests, your mind became still. I resonated with the truth of that experience and knew at that moment that I wanted to share my life with someone who was on my “Spiritual Earth Team.” And so we were married and had plans to travel to the highlands of Guatemala as a married couple in the Peace Corps. We would live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin until our gig started. About 3 months before our departure, he shared with me his fears about traveling to another country and getting sick. He struggled with fibromyalgia and experienced debilitating flare ups for no reason, like picking up a heavy bag of groceries.
The cosmic escape room had developed an interesting twist. Now I was trapped in the Midwest. I tried to make the best of it and found an environmental center on the Milwaukee River. This is where I met a good friend who also shared an interest in spirituality. She invited me to a Christian Mystical Order for a workshop on the Divine Feminine. Upon attending, it felt a lot like the gnosticism I had encountered at Notre Dame. There was talk of light, and physics, and universal truths. I enjoyed it, but didn’t resonate with the Mother Mary and Jesus pictures on the wall. Also, the clerical collars really triggered my severely Catholic upbringing trauma. But I thought my husband would love it, so I told him, “this isn’t for me, but I bet you would love it!” And he did. So much so that he got baptized three months later. I remember the moment I realized that I was either getting a divorce or trying this particular path to enlightenment. And so I joined what ended up being a cult of sorts.
The word “cult” has a powerfully negative connotation. And in the end, yes, this cult did end my marriage when I chose to leave both it and my husband at the same time. They were inextricably linked at that point, and I could see the writing on the wall. The ego of the teachers were gigantic. And as the Order grew, their grip on it and its students became tighter.
The forceful shove on my back to walk away from it all - my marriage and what had become my spiritual community - served me well. I spoke with my ex-husband a few months before his death in 2024 and he shared that after I left the Order, it spiraled into darkness. He said, “Monique, you got out just in time.” He died of a rare and aggressive cancer that year at the age of 49.
Life is full of paradoxes. And being a part of the Order was the biggest paradox of my life. While it was one of the most painful experiences I have endured, it also gave me a treasure that I hold within myself for eternity. As part of my training and meditation at the Order, my teachers who cursed me upon my departure were also the ones who lovingly brought me into my experience of Self-Realization: the light and sun within. And for that I am deeply grateful. I am also deeply skeptical of those in a position of power and light this lifetime.
Forgetting, and now remembering
And so I chose a form of mild amnesia. To briefly forget the sun, the radiance, and instead focus on raising my beautiful daughter, Sora. And this was 18 years of another kind of spiritual practice - to unconditionally love (and feed!). During this time, I had fully escaped my cosmic origin and moved back west to my heaven realm - Durango, Colorado. And what a journey it was! There were so many amazing projects and people I have had the honor of working with throughout this time in my environmental career. And, the awakening continues.
Through one of my conservation projects in Chama, NM I found a good friend and healer who introduced the breathwork to me. Years of toe dipping and resistance kept me somewhat connected and only partly committed. Recently, with my life energy freeing up at the age of 50, I have found a path back to the sun and a community of people who love without holding too tightly. It is through this work that I have chosen to remember again who I really am and why I am here. I have chosen to deeply listen and pay attention.
I am a radical spiritual activist for Planet Earth, and I invite you to join me on this journey. What is more counterculture than to love when the world is hating? To unify when the world is dividing, and to forgive when the world is blaming? My landing pad has always been Mother Earth and I will work to protect her until the day I become compost for her soil. Let the microorganisms thrive!
Author’s Note: This story was inspired by Rick Archer and his tenacity in sharing people’s awakening stories across the planet. You can listen to over 700 interviews at Buddha at the Gas Pump. Thank you Rick!
FOOTNOTES
(1) Greenpeace's Save the Whales campaign used non-violent direct action, demonstrations, and images of whales being killed to highlight the unnecessary and brutal hunting of whales. The campaign's efforts led to a global ban on commercial whaling in 1986.
(2) https://gnosticismexplained.org/the-gnostic-texts/
(3) Tao Te Ching – Verse 16
Empty your mind of all thoughts.
Let your heart be at peace.
Watch the turmoil of beings,
but contemplate their return.
Each separate being in the universe
returns to the common source.
Returning to the source is serenity.
If you don’t realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused,
kindhearted as a grandmother,
dignified as a king.
Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,
you can deal with whatever life brings you,
and when death comes, you are ready.
(translation by Stephen Mitchell, 1995)
(4) Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
Before we were born we had no feeling; we were one with the universe. This is called “mind-only,” or “essence of mind," or “big mind.” After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falling from the waterfall is separated by the wind and rocks, then we have feeling. You have difficulty because you have feeling. You attach to the feeling you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created. When you do not realize that you are one with the river, or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact we have no fear of death anymore, and we have no actual difficulty in our life.
― Shunryu Suzuki
