Antwan Linton Penn

 
 
 
I need to be with others in their creative process just as much as I need time alone and just as much as I need to transcend. When these things are in balance, I am most authentically connected to the source and to the creative expression that emerges.
— Antwan Penn

Antwan Linton Penn (he/him) joined us as a PhD student in Vedic Science, wishing to explore creative process and the craft of poetry more in-depth before finishing his dissertation. He instantly bonded with our students and was thrilled with the transformational power of our residencies. Antwan may join us for future residencies and classes as well. We love having him as our student!

BIO
Over the past 20-plus years, Antwan Linton Penn has devoted his life to finding happiness, healing from trauma, and growing in consciousness. Antwan is a visionary, a meditation teacher, a poet, a lover of life, and one of the most loving, self-expressed, authentic, compassionate, and sought-after people, just for being himself. Antwan was fascinated with travel, spirituality, and human potential from an early age. He has completed a BA and MA in Maharishi Vedic Science and an MBA in Human Resource Management with concentrations in Leadership and certification in Conflict Resolution. Antwan is now pursuing a Ph.D. in Maharishi Vedic Science. Before his mother's passing, Antwan took care of her intermittently while she was in convalescent care. He spent over a year traveling the world, taking his courses online, doing what he calls "Travel Therapy" as part of the grieving process. Antwan currently resides in Newark, New Jersey, his hometown, and assists on projects that inspire him.

Antwan has provided mentorship, guidance, consultation, and advice in think tanks and community service organizations on the journey of expanding consciousness and authentic self-expression. In 2002 Antwan founded Yosher 3476 Inc, an enterprise he began as an effort to heal himself and inspire that healing in the world. On that self-care journey, he has assisted in teaching Transcendental Meditation (TM) to 390 at-risk youth in the NYC area by implementing The Quiet Time program sponsored by the David Lynch Foundation. Antwan has hosted a podcast with two of his friends called "The Daily Drop of Love," which highlights the idea of expanding love and consciousness through the lens of different traditions. He has spoken in many panel discussions about personal development, mediation, meditation, and consciousness. 

Antwan has been recognized through acknowledgments, awards, and honors for Outstanding Performance at the Change Begins Within Benefit Concert for assisting in the success of the Quiet Time Meditation Program. Antwan is the recipient of the Maharishi Award, "given to the graduating student who has displayed continued dedication to knowledge of the Science of Creative Intelligence and the field of Maharishi Vedic Science." Antwan was honored with the Maharishi Award for the Area of Celebrations and Fulfillment, which is "presented to a community member whose life shines as an example and a demonstration to all of what is possible when Natural Law favors one's life."

Now that I have poetry, my loneliness is not so lonely. I now think of loneliness as a lack of intimacy within myself, as opposed to being triggered by externally situations. And now even though I can be lonely I always have a source of intimacy, and that sort of intimacy is the relationship that poetry has opened up between myself and I. There’s more self-compassion here. More self-love here. And more self-respect here. My relationship with time and timing has also shifted and changed. It’s weird how time once was its own thing, and now time is somehow wrapped in poetry. Everything I look at has some relationship to poetry and I guess that’s because everything we look at and experience is an act of creativity. Even the negative, destructive things.
— Antwan Penn

There's a freshness re-emerging, even in this rough and rugged environment. I remember those first days, those fresh days of new love, first times. Somehow the feeling of that has reawakened since this course. There's an alert and empathic novelty to life and every experience. This awareness moves me through life. Awareness was always there; it's just that it had become overshadowed by the silence in my throat, the growth of stress, the weeds of generational trauma, systemic disappointment, hurt, heartbreak, loneliness, and grief.

But now, freshness and the sweetness of this blossoming discovery of poetry restores, inspires, and ignites wildfires in my chest. This kind doesn't consume; it doesn't burn; it just shines. And although challenges are still present, they are no longer predominant or cast a shadow on my experience.

- Antwan Penn

My time in the MFA has given me greater access to joy, consciousness, and clarity. The expansion of and culturing of myself as a poet through craft and the knowledge and technologies of consciousness allows for better listening to what consciousness is doing or how It wants to lead and how it wants to express through me. This is my highest goal: to be a receptive vessel from where creativity can effortlessly flow into the world. That is being achieved during my time in the MFA.
— Antwan Penn