I finally begin the process of adding my voluminous life’s work to this site. P.S. Not every entry is formatted perfectly. But so what? I’m 83. How much time do I have left? (January, 2026).
Stay tuned. — A.K.
Collections of essays with a certain theme
Ann Kreilkamp / Posted 2 months ago / 11:25 am
Ann Kreilkamp / Posted 2 months ago / 11:22 am
Ann Kreilkamp / Posted 2 months ago / 11:21 am
Nature & Animals
Excerpt:
“We are entering the upper inner granite gorge of the Grand Canyon, we are to travel 300 miles down a gradient of 2,200 feet into the Mother, this river her cleft; the gorge which holds it and above us, the eerie tawny pink folds and crevasses of canyonlands her
secret inner anatomy.”
Ann Kreilkamp / 1 min read
Nature & Animals
Excerpt:
“Something in me” directed my eyes to look up, exactly into the doe’s eyes. Her gentleness has seeped into me. So has her matter-of-factness. She and the geese are both “doing their thing”.
She chews; they rest. Both species belong. Do I?”
Ann Kreilkamp / 1 min read
Peace, Community
Excerpt:
“I seek to understand how communities work and don't work, their tendency to become either too structured or to degenerate into chaos. I am also fascinated with the underlying invisible but very real dynamics which give each community its unique identity.”
Ann Kreilkamp / 1 min read
Peace, Community
Excerpt:
“I begin by placing a point in the middle of the page, symbolizing earth, as a heavenly body. I trace concentric circles around it: the planets, their orbits, as spheres of influence, dimensions of understanding. Our task on earth, I say, is to expand our consciousness, attune to larger and larger space/time fields.”
Ann Kreilkamp / 1 min read
Peace, Community
Excerpt:
“I often practice this sort of witnessing of my experience, as a sort of controlled schizophrenia . . . To develop the fair witness within is to gradually dismantle the automatic mechanical internal program. It’s to learn how to think for oneself.”
Ann Kreilkamp / 1 min read
Peace, Community
Excerpt:
“I remember the day that I stood at my sink, peeling carrots, and actually quieting myself enough internally to notice a subtle current of anxiety running through my nervous system. This was the very first time I had ever stilled my mind enough to notice it!”
Ann Kreilkamp / 1 min read
“Ann, explorer and witness to psychic,
synchronistic, astrological and psychological links between inner psyche, outer reality and
invisible realms, portrays a marriage that continued after death to encompass these realms
and their differences. A remarkable narrative.”
— Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., Jungian analyst, well-known author
and speaker.
This book invites the reader into the rich inner journey of a woman whose husband died of a heart attack and left her, bereft and alone, in a brand new town. Unlike many who suffer sudden, unimaginable loss, Kreilkamp, 60, did not fall into depression. She describes, in detail, her “year of conscious grieving” during which she formally attended to new widowhood as a precious and short-lived mine of information and inner expansion. Interweaving the many dimensions—visible and invisible, literal and spiritual—to which she was privy during the initial stages of her mourning process, she shares both poignant remembrances and the shocking transformations that moved her and moved through her like squalls.
This Vast Being plunges the reader into the dynamics of a difficult marriage that gradually evolved into a union of equals and opened both their hearts. And it reveals the complex inner reality of Jeffrey Joel, a mostly submerged Renaissance Man who, post-death, presented unusual phenomena to demonstrate his existence in a realm that she sensed only a hair-breath from ours; who continued to impart his wisdom after he died and, to her surprise and delight, who invited her into a deeper intimacy than he could afford while embodied.
This Vast Being invites the reader into certain interior spaces of which most of us are not normally aware, and to explore them. As we open to this vast being inside us, we access an expansive awareness that transforms what appears as irreplaceable loss into a magnificent cache of hidden significance. In so doing, this book creates a down-to-earth and unusually inclusive template for human healing.
Finally, This Vast Being gathers journal writings from the first year after my husband Jeff died into book chapters that hopefully, may assist, console, and even illuminate others who are undergoing the profound inner process that accompanies the death of a loved one.
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