Transcending the I

What is our never-ending focus on working hard to achieve the "good life" getting us? America, once the healthiest nation on earth, now ranks 27th - below all European nations and many third world countries. In her book, Transcending the I, Carol Grojean invites us to join her profound journey into her experience of self as she "woke up" from her way of living through external, socialized definition. Her journey began one day when, while exploring the dissatisfaction of her life, she participated in a workshop with a friend. Sitting on the floor in a circle, everyone was asked the question, "What do you pretend?" Her answer surprised her and sent her on a journey to redefine who she truly is. "I pretend that getting up every morning and getting ready for work, the kids off to school, followed by 10+ hours sitting at a desk or in meetings, inside four walls not even aware of the weather outside let alone life, arguing for some reason or another and thinking that whatever the subject is, it is the end of the world if I don't get my way, then coming home late, usually too late for dinner with the family, and plopping on the couch in front of the TV with a big glass of wine to decompress so I can sleep - I pretend this is a meaningful life." While subjective well-being can be hard to define and even harder to measure, the 2017 World Happiness Report continues to demonstrate, year after year, that measures of happiness such as economic, social, and health are important to everyone, yet nothing is as important as mental health, or eudaimonia, that sense of meaning and purpose in one's life. It appears that after 20 years in a large corporation, Carol had found herself senior in an organization and earning a healthy income, but unfulfilled in purpose and meaning. Feeling there should be something more to life than long hours, little time for family or friends, and full of meaningless things attempting to satiate her growing discontent, Carol took a leap-of-faith into the world of academia to better understand the modern society she came from. The focus of Transcending the I as Carol's Ph. D. research was to leverage autoethnography (using yourself as a mirror of the larger culture you are studying) not only as a method of inquiry but also as a catalyst for experiencing transformational change within one person's psyche through research outcomes focused on answering the question: How can the experiences of contemplative silence, mindful awareness, and indigenous ceremony facilitate transformational learning in support of human growth towards wholeness and interdependence? Through journaling, introspection, and storytelling, Carol approached inquiry and analysis as a ceremony by which to reveal habits and patterns of my her of being which mirrored the larger culture she researched. Transcending the I is Carol's story.