Integral Education: The CIIS Blog

Myths for the Cosmos

By MONICA MODY, author of "Travel & Risk" and two other chapbooks. Her first book, "Kala Pani," is forthcoming from 1913 Press. She is currently a PhD.candidate in East-West Psychology at CIIS

Here at the East-West Psychology program we are trying to find new ways to reconnect or bring into conversation dualities such as the self and the world, body and earth, psyche and spirit, art and scholarship, being and activism. We are interested in how myth and symbol and dreams work, and in their relationship to the healing of the planet, of the self.

The myths that live in our unconscious contain us and contain our world. This is why a project to re-enchant the self and the world requires re-enchanted myths: alive, vital, continually opening, in relationship.

As a poet, my task is to add to the repertoire of myths that can participate in this re-enchanting, healing, re-awakening. Through the last year, I wrote a sequence of myths attempting to do that. One of them is below. You can read some other myths from the sequence at Lantern Review and Pyrta.

"Don't be satisfied with the stories that come before you; unfold your own myth."

—Rumi

This poem first appeared on The The Poetry Journal as the poem of the week in November 2012.

 

Myth of Cosmos

It stands outside of myself, something round, flecked with spit, like a moon«
growing out of my nails, moon« of phenomenal lactescence.

 

I push my head into the roundess & a cloud« is my face
& I see particles of mist« floating away.

 

There’s nothing I can do or limb or crook of elbow, inutile
& something is growing under my tongue, a word, a love«

 

A deer falls from my eyes, rolls down my cheek, & I name
the cloud« with the overgrown tongue

 

& a brush of flowers falls on my face
to toe I’m blessed, blessing

 

painted on my nails my palms I d«ance, palm flashing thigh buckling
silvered belly stars.

EWP Chair Jorge Ferrer and EWP Students to Present at Upcoming Conference in Palo Alto

East-West Psychology Program Chair Jorge Ferrer will deliver the keynote speech at the upcoming Institute of Transpersonal Psychology PhD Symposium, "Leading Edge Research in Service to Community," on May 12, 2012, in Palo Alto, Calif. His speech is  titled, “Embodiment and the Heart of Participatory Spirituality.”

EWP doctoral candidate Zayin Cabot will present, “Evolution and the Poetics of Indigenous Participation: African and American Indian Modes of Participation"; and EWP doctoral student Samuel Malkemus will present, “The Clash of Instinct and Culture: Eros, Phobos and the Roots of Morality.”

Detailed descriptions of these three talks after the jump.

Profile of Professor Urusa Fahim, Department of Transformative Inquiry

By ZACK ROGOW, senior editor at CIIS. His writings include a recent book of poems, "My Mother and the Ceiling Dancers," from Kattywompus Press. 

Urusa Fahim brings to her teaching in the Transformative Leadership and Transformative Studies at CIIS an amazing variety of interests and experiences. She grew up in Bangladesh and Pakistan, and has studied or speaks six languages: English, Urdu, Arabic, French, Hindi, and Bengali. She earned a master’s degree in applied psychology at Punjab University, one of the leading centers of learning in South Asia. After graduating, she worked as a clinical psychologist both in private practice and in government-run hospitals in Pakistan, before taking a training in women’s leadership that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) offered.

“That workshop literally changed my career overnight,” she recalls. “I could see the application of concepts I was familiar with in a clinical context, how they could be used to train leaders and entrepreneurs.” By coincidence, the program leader was leaving right after Fahim took the training. Fahim applied to become the new director, and was accepted. She spent the next couple of years teaching women in Pakistan how to become managers, entrepreneurs, and trainers.

She attributes her ability to exercise authority and train future leaders partly to her mother. “My mother had the equivalent of a sixth grade education, but she headed a department in an international hotel. She always told me I could be anything I wanted. It wasn’t till later that I realized that not all girls were being given that same message. Understanding that was a factor in my wanting to train women leaders.”

Women’s Spirituality Thrives at CIIS

By ZACK ROGOW, senior editor at CIIS. His writings include a recent book of poems, "My Mother and the Ceiling Dancers," from Kattywompus Press. 

CIIS offers the only PhD program in the world in Women’s Spirituality. The program was established in 1992 and also features an MA degree. Both options include the possibility of taking half of the courses online, and both culminate in degrees in Philosophy and Religion, with a concentration in Women’s Spirituality. Current faculty in Women’s Spirituality include many of the founders and leading thinkers in the field: Carol P. Christ, Susan Griffin, Mara Lynn Keller, Charlene Spretnak, Starhawk, and Luisah Teish. Courses are organized in three areas: Women and World Religions; Feminist and Ecofeminist Philosophy and Activism; and Women’s Mysteries, Sacred Arts, and Healing.

Program Chair Arisika Razak describes some of the unique aspects of the Women’s Spirituality program at CIIS: “We have the ability not only to teach about the goddess and other sacred ancestors and female divinities but to take students to sites and create environments on campus where students can immerse themselves in their traditions.” Recent trips have included a visit to Ggantija on the island of Gozo in Malta, a temple in the shape of a woman’s body that is one of the  most ancient structures in Europe, dating back more than 5,500 years. “We actually got to touch The Sleeping Lady of Malta, a statue linked to woman-centered spirituality in the Neolithic Era, when we were in the Malta Museum,” Razak recalls. Other study tours have visited sites of significance to women’s spirituality in Turkey, Italy, Hawaii, and Greece.

The arts are an important component of the Women’s Spirituality program. “We are a rigorous academic program,” says Razak, “and we also have a strong artistic emphasis. We honor singing, dancing, movement, and the body.” A class taught by the Bay Area musician and composer Jennifer Berezan, for instance, culminates in a ritual concert that the students co-create, and in which they perform. Berezan invites a diverse array of world-class musicians and drummers to participate in this class.

Upwelling: Coming to Terms with Transition

By TERRANCE BRADFORD-MUHAMMAD, student in the Transformative Studies online PhD program. He is a student affairs professional whose research interests include the transformation of the U.S. higher education system, student retention, communication ethics, and progressive Islam.

I would describe myself as a moderately experienced reef tank enthusiast. For many years I have tried to perfect the art of building a reef, and for many years and with thousands of dollars I have learned the importance of keeping a tank clean. Arguably one of the best ways to do this is through the use of a protein skimmer. It is designed to remove organic compounds from the water before they break down into nitrogenous waste. This waste harms the reef and, if not removed, can ultimately kill it.

One year I decided to “go natural," heeding the advice of a master saltwater enthusiast who blogged that "protein skimming rids the water of vital minerals and nutrients the fish need in order to be healthy.” I took (what became) his useless advice, and just as soon as I removed the skimmer from the tank, my two beautiful (and mated) clown fish became sick and died. They were the first of many others: my live rock turned from the beautiful purple I once knew to a horrendous brown and white, several sensitive invertebrates shriveled up and were “lost at sea,” and I eventually began to fight "the war on algae" all over the tank—on the glass, on the rock, in the filter, and on my snails.

I was devastated. I had followed the directions as listed, and yet, my reef was destroyed. Not only had my creation been destroyed, my MONEY was lost and, as someone who purposefully makes sure the gas pump is empty before replacing it (by turning it upside down for the last few drops), the loss of this money was a financial crisis to me. I think I cried; no, I am sure I did. That hurt. A lot. I went through the five stages of grief like Sally Fields' character in "Steel Magnolias" after her daughter Shelby died. Sadly, there was no Ouiser Boudreaux  to hit. I never understood what I did wrong.

Just last week I arrived home from the Transformative Inquiry Department’s mandatory residential intensive for online students. We meet twice a year for new semester orientation, mentorship, teaching and learning and community building.

Jim Ryan: From Blue-Collar Wisconsin to Professor of Sanskrit

By ZACK ROGOW, senior editor at CIIS. His writings include a recent book of poems, "My Mother and the Ceiling Dancers," from Kattywompus Press. 

I spoke recently to Jim Ryan, professor and director of the Asian and Comparative Studies program at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). Ryan is a much-loved faculty member who teaches classes in Sanskrit and Indian religion.

“I grew up in the town of Wausau, Wisconsin,” says Ryan. “My parents both worked in factories, my dad in a papermill, and my mom in a plant that made small engines. Each of them spent thirty years on the line.”

In the mid 1960s, Ryan went to University of Wisconsin-Madison. “I had no intention then of studying Indian languages, but I heard that if you took Hindi, you could fulfill the language requirement all in one year. It was the first language course I’d ever taken. All I knew about India before that was Gandhi, who was a big influence on the peace movement during the Vietnam War and on the civil rights movement; the writer Tagore; and Ravi Shankar.”

Ryan excelled at Hindi, and by chance saw a poster for a junior year abroad in India. He was accepted to the program. When he travelled to India, it was the first airplane flight he’d ever taken. “I went to India,” he says, “and in a sense, I never came back.” He returned there several times to study Hindi,and Tamil, and to do research.

During his trips to India he became radicalized politically. “When I read the 'Communist Manifesto,'” Ryan recalls, “I said, ‘This is about me.’ And I looked at India—it was a case study in class oppression, with its caste system.”

When Ryan returned to the University of Wisconsin after his first trip, his advisor, George L. Hart III, said to him, “You don’t really know about India till you know Sanskrit.” Ryan devoted himself to studying the language, first in Wisconsin, and later at UC Berkeley, where he followed Professor Hart.

Residing in San Francisco in 1981 while finishing his PhD dissertation, Ryan did clerical work to support himself at Victoria’s Secret and Banana Republic. He was living near the Cultural Integration Fellowship, a center for East-West exchanges and the organization from which the Institute had grown, and he put up a notice there offering to teach Indian languages. When he went to check why no one had responded, a staff person directed him to California Institute of Asian Studies, the earlier name of CIIS. To his surprise, Ryan was hired to teach Sanskrit.

“I was working during the day filling orders for lingerie, and at night I was teaching Sanskrit,” he remembers. He has taught at CIIS ever since, and is now a full professor and one of the longest-serving faculty members.

During his time at CIIS, he has opened up to the spiritual side of his area of study. “I became a convert because no one tried to convert me,” Ryan explains. “If someone had told me, ‘You have to read 'The Life Divine' by Sri Aurobindo,’ I would have run away and never come back.”

He is proud to be listed as one of the “founding mothers” of the Women’s Spirituality program at CIIS, which started when Ryan chaired the Philosophy and Religion department. Ryan is renowned for his ability to intone the thousand names of the Hindu goddess Lalita in Sanskrit.

Even after thirty years, he still finds CIIS a stimulating place to teach: “Our strength in the Asian and Comparative Studies program is that we believe that practice in the tradition you study makes you a better scholar.”

Why should a student choose CIIS? “Because you will be taken account of as a whole person,” says Ryan, “including your spiritual aspirations and development. The students here are not student widgets. We give a place to the fuller narratives of people’s lives, allowing them to be fuller people.”

Why an Education in the Humanities Matters

By LYNNE H. ROFF, student in the Transformative Studies program, which is an online doctoral program. Lynn lives in Homer, Alaska.

Five days a week I read articles online in academic publications such as the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed. At least once a week there is an article proclaiming the futility of a doctoral degree in the humanities. These invariably cite the weak job market in higher education, the dwindling likelihood of any financial recompense for the expense of graduate study in the form of a meaningful career, and the questionable psychological stability of anyone undertaking such a course in today’s academic and economic climate. I have only to pick up a newspaper to observe the dearth of employment opportunities for many if not most individuals in our country today.

Everywhere it seems people are wondering what to do to improve their living conditions and the well-being of their families. Increasingly, higher education is pressed to justify programs that cannot be immediately associated with gainful employment and to quantify educational content in the anticipation of financial outcomes in an era in which the avenues for creative social expression and individual employment are changing with dizzying rapidity. What are we to do?

The earth is in need of people who have an understanding of their respective cultures, who have a sensitivity to the cultural heritage of others, and an appreciation for the complexity and interconnection of human society and the environmental concerns of our world. Societies are in need of people who can invent, motivate, and organize sustainable systems of agriculture, economy, and development. Organizations are in need of creative and visionary people who can invent solutions to ongoing problems because they perceive human interactions in new and productive ways.

Today’s problems will not yield to yesterday’s methods. These needs can only be satisfied by individuals whose educational preparation equips them for creative and transdisciplinary perspectives situated within a complex humanitarian context. I am proud to be a student in an organization that is on the leading edge of these educational endeavors. I am grateful to be afforded the opportunity to study in an environment that encourages interactive learning and innovative research, and to be aided in that pursuit by the assistance of an organization whose interests so complement my own.

Education is not about earning a living so much as it is about creating a life. Though there is a place for quantitative outcomes, these measurements cannot hope to capture the essence and depth of individual experience. Individuals who are educated in the humanities create opportunities for themselves and others that are innovative, advantageous, and rewarding within social, spiritual, and financial contexts. These attributes are not luxuries in today’s social climate. They are necessities for the development of human civilization.

When critics decry the humanities for placing awareness of those who have come before us and those who are inhabiting this planet with us ahead of job training, we must hold to these understandings in the knowledge that education in the humanities is the study of human beings, and there is no better preparation for the needs of today’s society and the future of our world.

Integral Ecology: PCC Professor Elizabeth Allison on the Spiritual Effects of Melting Glaciers

By BRYNN SAITO, poet, program coordinator for the Department of Writing, Consciousness, and Creative Inquiry, and instructor in the Bachelor or Arts Completion program

Most research on climate change examines its physical effects on the environment: the rate of rising sea levels, the pace of melting glaciers, and other measurable material shifts. Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness (PCC) faculty member Elizabeth Allison is intent on going deeper: “I’m interested in the spiritual and emotional impacts of climate change: What is the interior, human response?”  Dr. Allison’s research is part of the burgeoning field of religion and ecology, with PCC faculty currently offering several new courses in this area of study.

As Dr. Allison began reading journalistic accounts, she noticed that reporters often referred to melting glaciers as if they were living, breathing entities that once were “alive,” and now were “dying,” like “lepers, losing their parts.” Such personification underlies the intimate connection we form with our surroundings—it’s this connection that has propelled Allison’s past research on religion and environmental protection in Bhutan and Nepal.

“In Bhutan, Buddhists believe that deities inhabit different parts of the landscape—a grove of trees, mountaintop, a patch of forest, a bend in the river, for instance.  In those areas,” explains Allison, “there are certain restrictions and rules around what you can and cannot do to the land.” This is a striking example of conservation practices shaped by local religious beliefs.

Last October, Allison joined dozens of scholars in discussing such issues in Kathmandu, Nepal, as part of “Everyday Religion and Sustainable Environments in the Himalayas,” an exploratory initiative organized by The New School in New York City and funded by the Luce Foundation.  Scholars from Tibet, India, China, Bhutan, Nepal, and the U.S. gathered in this hot spot of cultural and biodiversity to pose research questions about what contributes to human and environmental sustainability, and to consider the role of religion and spirituality in environmental conservation.

Allison’s interest in melting glaciers extends from a similar question: What is the relation between environmental change and religious and/or spiritual perceptions?  What sorts of spiritual and philosophical quandaries does environmental displacement raise? In 2003, Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht coined the term “solastalgia”: a condition in which people feel dislocated and anxious in their home landscape due to material changes around them. “Solastalgia is a combination of solace and nostalgia,” says Allison.  “I’m doing preliminary research on three places where people have a spiritual connection to glaciers.  Local people in the Yunnan region of China, the Andes, and the Himalayas associate their deities with mountain glaciers.  I want to understand the consequences of glacial retreat for local religion and spirituality.”

“My desire is to have this sort of dialogue between religion and ecology be more present in public life. CIIS is the perfect place to begin this interdisciplinary dialogue.” Furthermore, Allison notes that “religion and spirituality have been largely left out of the analysis of environmental problems.” As her work at an environmental restoration NGO taught her, many activists can easily lose sight of the larger picture and experience burn out. “Many people have a spiritual affinity with nature, or at least a special place they’re nostalgic about, or want to preserve for their children,” says Allison. “It was this place or connection that brought them into environmental concern in the first place.  When the connection to a special place or plant or animal is lost, people lose their connection to something larger, and their motivation for environmental action. Surroundings matter.” If your surroundings begin to shift on a huge and irreversible scale, then preliminary research suggests the emotional effects may be even more prevalent.

Nonetheless, Allison remains hopeful: Environmental awareness and protective legislation have increased substantially over the last 50 years, and more universities continue to develop programs in environmental studies. “In PCC, we talk a lot about what Joanna Macy calls ‘The Great Turning,’ a large scale movement toward a more environmentally-sustainable and socially just future,” she explains. “We are fortunate to live in a time when people all over the world are working to bring about this vision of the future.”

Earth, Community, and Change

By Jessie Kostosky, Program Coordinator for the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness Programs

We know that we are not alone on Earth. Every day, we interact with others—friends, family, colleagues—but we know there is still more. If we look around and truly feel into our relationships, we can see them expand outward faster than a comet hurtling through the night sky.

When I stop to notice, I see that I include my neighbors in my relationships, but also my non-human pets and the talkative jays that visit outside my window. If I look outside of the two- and four-legged boundary, I see that some important beings in my life are the plants in my garden, as well as the redwood tree across the street. All of this continues to the micro- and macro- levels, where I see that I'm deeply related to the creatures that hold together the soil and work to make it healthier, as well as to the energy and power streaming down to me through the sun's electrons.

Am I in community with these other beings? I think so. Ecology, in a very real way, is community; I find myself already part of a web of interrelationships, spanning from the smallest microscopic creatures to the largest cycles of the planets and stars. On one level, community is not a choice, yet I can become increasingly more aware of it and decide to participate with it at a greater than surface level. I can be not simply aware of those "others," but I can relate to them in different ways. I can get to know them through histories where I find out about their past, or discussions and observation where we mutually probe each other’s inner worlds.

This is the part of being in community that is a choice: It is the decision to go deeper than the mundane and superficial in order to bring the "other" closer to oneself.

In the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program, we work to become closer to these so-called "others." We learn about them from varying approaches, and in doing so we learn more about ourselves. By placing ourselves in relation to other entities, our worldview shifts—we are more than the skin encapsulated ego, more than our names and histories. We are as large as our concept of community allows. I think when this happens, when I become a reflection of my understanding of community, an ethical shift occurs—I am now responsible to and for my expanded circle of relations.

This, to me, is one way that the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program is changing the world.