Goddard College

Tomorrow I am graduating from Goddard college in Plainfield Vermont. This is the the leading progressive higher education institution in America where they offer "emancipated" student-centered education. My final semester adviser, Dr Francis Charet sits on the board of trustees, heads the consciousness studies masters program and leads the school faculty. Dr. Charet tells me that Goddard employs a "holistic and integral" pedagogy and I look forward to asking him about academic resources to learn more about this unique school which has enabled me to study anything within my hearts desire.

Through Goddard I was able to study what my creative mind and searching heart desired to study: preventative and integrative medicine, world peace education, dialog, etc...

Goddard has treated me well - particularly since I also was able to attain 45 credits through "assessment of prior learning" for studies I had done on my own before arriving.


Thank you Goddard and everyone who has supported me through this obtaining a BA! Thank you Tom Pitkin for your vision in creating Goddard and Mark Schulman for being our bold president. Thanks to Francis and Ralph for asking me to humble myself, work on my ego and clarity this final semester. Finally, thanks to Baba Zak Kondo and Sarah Norton for being great advisers - and the team of Lucinda - Bobby for being there as the program directors. My peers? Amazing people!
Much love,
Jake Ritter, class of Fall '007

(Pictured above is the Clock Tower/Vermont Peace Academy building which is our school's logo).

I attended the perhaps historic, first Integral Education conference at the Whidbey Institute Organization this past week. The event was organized by Next Step Integral, IONS and Pacific Integral (google any of this for more info...).

I met over 60 incredible people including top students and teachers of the Integral Institute/Ken Wilber, heads of schools, Zen practitioners, academics, many teachers, many many learners working on graduate degrees, therapists, music educators, a number of people looking to open schools, someone working on education in developing countries out of Japan, a business consultant, a politician and lawyer who teaches high school, a dancer, visionaries, yogis, many meditation experts, healers, philosophers, practitioners of arts and science, followers of spiritual, scientific, personal, communal, sustainable, ecological and wholistic evolution through applying the AQAL map of Ken Wilber.

I find it energizing that Ken Wilber has received accolades from many leaders in congress in addition to Bill Clinton, Al Gore and even Karl Rove. Many other celebrities now too... it seems and people talk as though Integral Institute work is on the tip of becoming quite popular...

I look forward to further collaboration with Integral Next Step who organized this event. The slogan, "From Cradle to kosmos" is fun.

During this week, we danced to great world music, stretched, practiced experiential education and games evincing cutting-edge world and kosmocentric mind-body-spirit awakening reveltations, we played Frisbee, ate wonderful food, were entertained by a shaman, ran though sprinklers, went on hikes, met with leaders, worked with our shadow and god-nature, shared visions and accomplishments while establishing deep roots with others leaders in the emerging sustainable, integral education field.

Seeking to transcend the ego and limited cultural conceptions, I we were blessed to philosophize and practice some of the leading edge work in education and human endeavor?! Yes, clearly, I am glad I attended this event!

The island was magnificently beautiful as were the people and consciousness there. I look forward to connecting with the people there more, and means have been established for us to keep this line of communication wide open... The whole concept of integral studies deals with keeping oneself and others connected on subjective and objective levels while reaching higher levels of development.

NQA Conference

This past weekend I attended the National Qi Gong conference and had an amazing time, it was fabulous.

I learned that Minnesota is known as the land of the "10,000 lakes" because there is really more than that many around the twin cities! I just referred my new friend in Minn. to a Healing Tao instructor in the area who offers a nice, free, hour-long lecture/practice session on his website along with other resources.

The author of this valuable hour long teaching at the above link holds a degree in International Relations from U. of Wisconsin, Madison. (Interestingly, Bryan also has an account on the integral-minded networking site, Zaadz.com my space on this site is: http://onelove.zaadz.com and was turned on to Qi Gong in a similar way that I was, in a Zen-like fashion, at a concert!) .

At the NQA I was amazed by how much wisdom was present in one location. Literally, I feel my "inner light" shining amazingly high after networking with so many accomplished mind-body mediators, researchers, educators and compassionately wise ones this past week (at Whidbey Island)/weekend (at the NQA)! I got to attend classes with Jampa Mackenzie Stuart, Michael Winn, Solala Towler, and be surrounded by acupuncturists, shiatsu therapists, tantrics, holistic health and Chinese medicine leaders, ethicists, shamans, sages, dancers, doctors, psychologists, authors, warriors, many highly skilled martial artists, life saving doctors, accomplished meditators and zen practitioners, yogis, a massage school owner, the leaders of numerous holistic schools, many many master teachers, the entire NQA board of directors and even a celibate Christian monk psychologist, the producer of the below documentary who I learned is on the Board of Ed for the state of Hawaii and will be working with, people researching school reform, ordained Taoist priests, war veterans, Mark Johnson (see second post), great new friends at awisdomcenter.com and from all around the country, and the leader of the International Institute of Medical Qi Gong, Bernard Shannon...

I am glad to have networked with a couple people researching qi gong for our next generations. I connected these people with the International Institute for Peace Education which they were glad to learn about. The IIPE people, I know from 2 weeks ago, are looking for this sort of curriculum to help awaken peace consciousness in a whole dimension as people hunger for (bringing up grade/test performance, health, consciousness and bringing down school violence/depression)!

I highly recommend YOU/everyone looks into the NQA.ORG site to find a teacher from there, (also Universaltao.com, http://www.tao-garden.com/Inst/, the Qigong Alliance or the Qigong Institute). If you happen to attend next year's conference in Maryland, as I plan to, I gaurantee you WILL NOT be disappointed. In fact I guarantee you will be buzzing with joy as I am right now :). I hope to work out with the NQA about more extensive work-study/volunteer opportunities to get the teachings out online next year and to more people/also a student discount.

God speed!
Jake

Dancing Universe!

Last weekend I attended a "Yoga Trance Dance" teacher training at the Kripalu center for yogic and health studies in the Berkshire Mountains of MA. I had amazing time and met some rad people.

Native cultures, particularly African, most all use drumming and dance which led to/was enhanced by stretching... yoga. Our teacher, Shiva Rea, taught us that yoga and dance were never supposed to be separate! We got to experience this reality for three bliss filled, learning and growing days. Shiva holds a masters in World Culture and Performance from UCLA and her husband is a third generation doctor, acupuncturist and Ayurveda medicine (Indian meaning "Life Science") master teacher thus helping ground her teachings with much rare experience.

I feel Shiva is a great yogini and master dance teacher, mystic, perhaps a sage? I look forward to sharing my teacher status in this program with others! I also look forward to more training with her. Unique, as part of the 500 hour training in Prana (sanskrit for energy like chinese Qi) there is a Yoga Ed option for learning to/helping bring yoga into school curriculum to benefit many.

In this system, the music choices really help bring the yoga/dance flow into motion. I found it extremely fun, healing and secularly spiritual. I also found it quite educational to practice this amazing, sacred, tantric, illuminating and ancient world art!

Notably, Shiva talked about humans consciously evolving from our current Newtonian view of science toward a leap that is entering a Quantum, sacred understanding. I look forward to studying the "teacher's manual" from this course and learning more about the Lord of Dance (Shiva Nataraja) cosmology... I feel this is all INCREDIBLY enjoyable and benevolent stuff!

How did you feel about your education? I just got back from a 3 day conference at the United Nations with the International Inst. of Peace Education. I met a lot of stellar people and learned a whole lot... this is a FABULOUS, wholistic and universal sort of organization.. getting more so. Last year about 65 people attended this event and now over 400 partook! Part of that is due to it being the organizations 25th anniversary. I look forward to presenting there next year and helped present on Education for Global Sustainability with a colleague this year. The UN building in NYC has AMAZING spiritual artwork in it!
The big apple is quite a fun place! I look forward to returning with more time... here is a great link to the little-known UN mandated University for Peace...

Qigong: Ancient Healing for the 21st Century