Y'dig?

http://www.vimeo.com/user5485311/videos/sort:oldest

John Noyce is an Australian academic who has written four books on spiritual matters. He is a great scholar and I say that as someone who has bought and read each of his books.

This video library is really worth checking out – I’ve just watched the interview Shri Mataji did with journalists in Calcutta in 1986.

Mohammed, Sarah Frank and Geoffrey, came to Nicole’s Family Group today at West End High. Everyone present meditated deeply, a wonderfully blissful meditation. Afterwards, Angela said she went for a job interview and as she was sitting in the waiting area beforehand, she was feeling nervous so she tried meditating by putting her attention at the top of her head. She said it didn’t work completely, but it did some good, and she was offered the job – which she turned down because she didn’t like the boss at all. (Takes some courage to do this, for most people will take a job and regret at leisure if they’re working for a tyrant). Ariel said the school played its first competitive rugby match, a high school against a college team, Stoneybrook CUNY, and West End beat them 10 – 5. Ariel scored the first touchdown!

Mohammed spoke articulately and at length about his meditation experiences and began by saying that the meditation we’d just had wasn’t long enough for him. He’s really a most remarkable young man and clearly highly influential amongst his peers.

Overall, there’s an extraordinary change that’s come over these students, and remarked on by Nicole herself. When I first met them, they were generally indifferent, even antipathetic, and certainly uninterested in most things to do with school. Now, that’s all changed, they don’t even  physically look like the same students anymore.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Went to Charlie Maciejewski’s class at Kurt Hahn.  He’d said:I just wanted to confirm with you for tomorrow’s mediation class from 9:00-9:45A.M.  Just come to room 246 as we may not have access to room 227 (I am going to check now).  Students will ask you the questions below along with some others that they generated:

1. What does it mean to live a balanced life?

2. What role does the mind play in our physical health?

3. How can I live a balanced life if western culture does not always promote it?

These are our guiding questions for the week.  I imagined that after they took some notes on the questions they would practice meditation with you.

all the best,

Charlie.

It  seemed to work really well, the students asked their questions I gave the answers and Trevor Moses was there and we spoke about his  experiences of meditation. Charlie said later, “I really like your open and honest responses to our guiding questions. The work in getting students to reach moments of thoughtless awareness is important as they navigate  the many negative messages they get from society, friends and from within their own cultures. I was particularly moved by the words you spoke as you moved us through our energy centers, it helped me recognize some of the stress and emotion I’ve been carrying the past couple of months.”

Please see the remarkable video that Charlie produced from his Explore Week Fall 2010: Balance: Mind, Body, & Spirit; http://vimeo.com/17451675

Tonight in Manhattan, at the West 34 Street, Mohamed, the student previously known to me as Mo came to the public program. I think this is the first time a student from  a high school has attended a public program. Mohammed is an amazing young man, Lioudmila thinks he was born realized, and the vibrations suggest that. Let’s hope he makes something of this.

Wednesday, December 1, 2o10

At Aviation, Margarita Voto came along, she’s kindly offered to go there weekly with the wonderfully inspiring Ms Rodas. Kevin S  was there is always and we were joined by Rhonda who works in the school counseling department. She is an extraordinary woman, one with rare insights into her own life. She was very stressed and after just a few minutes of meditation she was visibly relaxed, calm and ready for the testing day ahead. Erica said later that Rhonda will be a megaphone for us. And Kevin came up with the terrific tag line for Sahaja Meditation,

“You get the aroma of rejuvenation and relaxation.”

Thursday,  December 2, 2010

Went to Ms. Mac’s class in Fordhams Arts.  Joshua, Chastity and later, Jacob arrived for the breakfast club meditation.  Lioudmila led the meditation, which was deep in and  Erica was talking about her forthcoming health fair, trying to start an after school meditation program and then spontaneously she asked if we might come to her next class, which she said was the most difficult group of pupils she has. The results were astonishing, within five minutes most were in deep meditation and afterwards Erica said we’ll definitely go in there every week and that Mrs. Mirton, the teacher was quite amazed for it’s really difficult to get that particular class quiet. She said, “I was thrilled that they were so cooperative and that many of them enjoyed it. It made me think to myself…why wasn’t I doing this sooner!!? Well, it’s definitely something I want to continue with that class and I’m sure they wouldn’t mind either. I think this is the start of great things with this group of kids.”

Jeff Raum reported from CA. In two hours about 60 people got their realization. 10 of them were teachers. One teacher said, “I’m 55 years old and I’ve tried other meditations, but this is the first time I was able to sit with my eyes closed and become quiet inside. Really, this is special.” Some of the students were very interested as well.

Friday, , December 3, 2010

The health fair today in Kurt Hahn was probably the most challenging and difficult that we have ever attended. The vibrations of some of the students were terrible, significant groups of them couldn’t meditate and, as is so often the case, we were, quite reasonably if you think about it, at the wrong end of the room. Imagine the scene, you’re a student, you walk into the school gym and lots of your buddies are having fun. There’s boxing. Alvin Chan, HealthCorps coordinator from Newark, New Jersey,  who’s quite short,  slim and elegant, with great moves, is taking on all comers and hardly any of them, irrespective of size,  managed to lay a glove on him. There’s hip-hop, karaoke, there are stalls with free goodies, badges, drinks and  healthy food. At the other end of the gym, there’s the school psychologist sitting at her stall full of leaflets on worthy subjects, AIDS prevention, sexual well-being, depression, stress etc. and hardly anyone goes there.  There’s exercise mats with Erica Rodas, HealthCorps coordinator from Aviation high school in Queens New York, willing to demonstrate push-ups, sit ups and other torturous activities. Hardly anyone goes there. And in the middle of these two stalls is Sahaja Meditation. We have some really nice posters designed by Harrison, one of the triplets who regularly attend Ms. Fishstrom’s   breakfast meditation class  ( the other two are Garrison and Peterson!).  And during the course of the health fair, around 60 students experience Sahaja Meditation, plus two  women police officers, (like most New York high schools here there is an established and substantial police presence). These two ladies were noticeably stressed and they found the experience of meditation immediately rewarding and they left with beaming smiles on their faces.

Compared to the adjacent stalls, we did really well but compared to the stalls and activities described above, what we achieved, from one viewpoint leaves room for considerable improvement.

We watched Rob Roberts at his stall. Rob is the education director of HealthCorps and he had attended the health fair in California the day before and mentioned what a lovely man Jeff Raum is!  At Rob’s stall, students could make Get Well Soon cards and it was a hive of activity with students clearly enjoying themselves and probably several hundred visited Rob’s stall in the course of the health fair. Naturally, during the quiet moments on our stall which were too many, one naturally thought of what we might do to make visiting us Sahaja Meditation stall attractive, enjoyable and fun? Please, can anyone think of something?

Lioudmila thought of something which we’ll try out. Do remember those mood stones from the 70s? You put your finger on a stone, if you’re stressed it turns black, if you’re happy it’s green and if you’re in the middle it some other color. We could try a Stressometer?  A student comes to our stall, puts his or her finger on the stone and of course the results on a card. The student meditates for five minutes, again tries to test and again records the results on the card.

There must be better ideas please, whoever is reading this send in some suggestions.

One  young girl, probably no more than 13 was brought over to the stall by Sarah Fishstrom. She had absolutely the worst vibrations we’d  ever encountered in a public high school. Her face was very beautiful but her physical demeanor, the way she walked, betrayed what was going on inside and she found the meditation impossible. A group of young men, about eight of them, came, but couldn’t meditate. One of them, a young man with fancy headgear sitting beside me said, “I’m cooked”. I asked several people what it meant, apparently it could mean many things, but the most likely explanation is that he was saying he was high on drugs. None of his seven buddies could meditate and it looked like he couldn’t either but after some gentle words of encouragement he did. I whispered in his ear, “No matter what you show to those around you, it’s obvious to me you are a really good young man, you know what’s right and what’s wrong.” He smiled in acknowledgment and later came back by alone and meditated again for a good 1 or0 minutes.  A huge young student, probably 14 or so,  maybe  250 pounds or more in weight, with a terrifyingly unattractive face came and tried to meditate. He had a big scar on one side of his face and another on his neck, he looked as though he’d been thoroughly brutalized. But he meditated beautifully and Lioudmila said something to him gently, along the lines of “I can see your a really special young man” and when he spoke the phenomenal innocence in his voice showed a completely different aspect of him that his physical body obscured.  He experienced a deep, profound meditation.

Frankly, we can talk about the terrible things that are going on in the world right now, corruption in Afghanistan, terrible things in the Middle East, the seemingly unsolvable problems of Africa, Iraq, Haiti etc. etc. But a visit to East Flatbush in Brooklyn would convince even the most  skeptical observer that we are living  here in the United States of America in  and age which will come to be seen and understood to be a new version of the Dark Ages. Beautiful  and innocent young children are living in such misery, in such hopelessness and their plight largely ignored by those in authority, helped only by the amazing teachers and guidance counselors such as you find here. It’s also hard not to see that these young students are our family, they are our nephews and nieces, brothers and sisters and that there has to be a way to break  out of the vicious circles they are living in. We know that children growing up in difficult environments are likely to perpetrate and perpetuate these environments on their own offspring. I am convinced that the easiest, most effective way to bring about fundamental change is through Sahaja Meditation in these schools.

Trevor Moses is 15 tomorrow. He is a beacon of shining light, just like Sofia, Malcolm and the other students who regularly meditate and influence others in their everyday activities. The change in Trevor and the others, the true self-confidence, self-respect and dignity with which they comport themselves is a clear example of what regular Sahaja Meditation can  and does achieve. Trevor wrote after participating in Charlie’s class above, “ Thanks for doing what you do best, for turning up here week after week, giving us your time and helping us live stress-free lives. Thank you for letting me pass on to others the state of meditation. You’ll see me every Friday,  I’ll make sure of that.”

Rob Roberts and I were discussing what effect do events such as this house in real terms. It’s good to consider such matters, are they a waste of time? Do they achieve anything tangible? :In my view they do just as the impact of water on a stone, the results may not be immediately discernible but in time great valleys carved between the hardest  the hardest of rocks. When a large body of students are clearly enjoying themselves that’s probably when their most open to new possibilities, and here, they’re seeing amazing groups of young people, Alvin Chan, the boxer, Calvin Lambert who radiates power dignity and energy, who told me he’s been accepted into three medical schools so far, Hannah Cohen, Orly Ninyo, Erica Rodas and the extraordinary Sarah Fishstrom,  must have an impact, and more of than words, lessons, classes–who wouldn’t want to look like them, to live like them, to be like them? Actions speak louder than words and the combination of these wonderful young people and a loving caring staff led from the front by Matt Brown the principal,  must have an enduring effect on all those who experience it.

I came out of this health fair completely exhausted, it’s rare that I feel so drained but it was an emotional roller coaster, at times depressing, thought-provoking but ultimately joyful and uplifting.

Met someone this week who finds and effective meditation focussing on the end of her nose. Maybe. Since no one has adequately or accurately defined meditation, maybe anything goes? But why would one want to meditate there, when there is a solid reason for meditating at the top of the head, the integration point for all the subtle centers in the body, and where true “yoga” occurs, the meeting point of our own divine energy and the divine energy of the cosmos, the place where so many find they can meditate in thoughtless awareness?

Trevor Moses, the first USA high school student to lead a Sahaja Mediation class in a public high school, told me that his headmaster called him into see him and gave him a copy of the letter Sir CP Srivastava had sent, in which he congratulated Trevor and sent the blessings of his wife, Shri Mataji, on this auspicious event. The headmaster said he had brought honor to himself and to the school.

Today, in the same school, a student called Malcolm, (14),who came to the USA from Guyana just a couple of months ago and who regularly attends the weekly, breakfast Sahaja Meditation class, quite spontaneously asked if he could lead the meditation today! And so he did. He began quite well, but then lost track, so I occupied the empty chair beside him, and with whispers in his ear, guided him, where necessary, through the remainder of the meditation. He did really well and we all meditated beautifully in thoughtless awareness.

His school takes great pride in developing certain qualities in students, e.g. perseverance, respect, courage, etc and we spent a bit of time discussing where these qualities are located within our subtle energy system, and we went on to talk about which problems within the subtle system would lead to, for example, racism – i.e. a lack of innocence, fear in the center of the heart, a lack of self respect within oneself leading to an inability to respect others and to enjoy our common shared humanity.

In a noisy and boisterous class in a public high school in north Manhattan, the teacher, Ms P, is pleasantly surprised at how her students mostly settle quickly and easily into deep meditation and they now look forward to the Sahaja Meditation sessions in her class. I cannot recollect being greeted by cheers in any school before!

And in a school in Harlem where a few of the students just can’t focus their attention sufficiently to meditate, and instead, spend most of their time in class crashed out, arms spreadeagled across their desks, I tried something different. The normally sleep ones stood behind the students who can meditate well, and were taught how to feel the subtle energy of themselves and the student they were working on. The simple theory was that if they were standing upright, they couldn’t fall asleep. It seemed to work, although time will tell. Watch this space.

However in the same school, one student, Malik has completely turned around. His grades are up, his attendance much improved, he’s more respectful of himself and others, and most the other students are saying how much they enjoy the meditation.

And here are some journal entries from a school in the Bronx:

·       “I feel more relaxed than [I did] this morning.  I am in a calm mood and relieved of the stress I was feeling.  I like how it relaxes me.”

·       “I think we’re learning about meditation to help us improve our self esteem, choices, habits, health.  It is important.”

·       “After meditation I felt more relaxed and peaceful.  My mood is the same, however free.  I don’t know how to explain it.  My favorite part about meditation would be the quietness and silence.”

·       “I have [only] been in this class for 15 minutes and I feel better already. . . When I’m mad about something I would like to meditate.”

Sahaja Meditation is cool!

Within the first five minutes of meditating with the students at West Side High, I felt relieved of all the pre-existing exhaustion within me. The environment where we were giving realization that morning was what most yogis would consider the least conducive for meditating – students were running and dancing around our stall and music was blasting in the surrounding areas. There would be the periodic random scream or popping balloon. But when I began to meditate with the students, I realized that we were all able to enter that state of silent meditation as easily as if we were at home before our altars. In fact, it even felt a little easier.

The hour or so that we spent meditating with the students at West Side High was so enjoyable. I loved observing and listening to the comments from each of the students, and seeing many of their faces relieved and satisfied after they got their realization. What amazed me was how sensitive many of the students already were to their own vibrations and how quite a few of them expressed a genuine interest in meditation, even though this event was a mandatory health program in their school. A few students were so moved by their experience that they said they would come to the weekly meditation meetings on 34^th street. One memorable student – a spirited young black man, who had a do-rag around his head and sagging pants – was so enthusiastic about his experience, that he immediately brought his friend to our stall. Another young woman who got her realization opened up her eyes and said “Wow. I needed this.” She mentioned how much emotional turmoil she faces in her life and how she will start meditating regularly to overcome that.

The method by which we gave realization to these students was even simpler than I expected it would be. All that we asked the students to do was to bring their attention to a few parts of their body, which were referred to by ‘normal’ terms – the center of your chest, the center of your forehead, etc. There was no waving of hands, no saying affirmations out loud, no confusing words. And no explanation needed to be given before we all meditated. Whenever I felt a catch in anyone, I would simply put my attention on their catch and silently say the respective mantra to remove it. (I found myself often saying the mantra for center heart.) Everything was so simple, yet effective. I was amazed at how strongly I could feel the students centers in my own Sahasrara and hands and how easily the kundalini in others would rise.

As I walked out of the high school, I already started assessing how I could change my approach to giving realization to people, especially at the weekly meetings that are held at my university during the school year. My experience at the HealthCorps event gave me faith in a fact that I often forget – realization can be given anywhere, to anyone, and in any situation. That too, in the most simplest of ways. All pre-existing ideas that I had about how to ‘effectively’ give realization, what meditative environment to create, and the types of people who will take more easily to meditation were dissolved after going to this Health Corps event.

Right after the Health Fair I had to go back to work for five hours. For the first time in weeks, I felt as if nothing in this draining city and in my workplace could bring me down. I was so energized by meditating with those students that during the course of the day, I felt my kundalini magnetically being drawn to my Sahasrara numerous times.

“There are these peculiar faculties of the psyche that aren’t entirely confined to space and time; you can have dreams or visions of the future, you can see around corners and such things. Only ignorance denies these facts, you know; it’s quite evident that they do exist and have existed always. Now these facts show that the psyche, in part at least, is not dependent upon these confinements. And then what? When the psyche if not under that obligation to live in time and space alone, and obviously it doesn’t, then to that extent the psyche is not subjected to those laws, and that means a practical continuation of life, of a sort of psychical existence beyond time and space.” Carl Jung

Robert Fisk: The innocent became the guilty, the guilty innocent

Something new was happening. These were hard men. There was no way of negotiating with them

Wednesday, 16 June 2010

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-innocent-became-the-guilty-the-guilty-innocent-2001678.html

We knew the First Battalion, the Parachute Regiment. “Tough” was the word we reporters used if the soldiers were beating up rioters.

Brutal was the word we should have used. But sometime towards the end of 1971, I think we all realised that the Parachute Regiment was being prepared for some pretty nasty confrontations. They were the hard men, the reserve battalion at Palace Barracks, Holywood, a boring seaside town on the south side of Belfast Lough, a unit that spent most of its time waiting for trouble.

Shortly before Bloody Sunday, I’d seen them confronting a crowd of angry Protestants just off the Shankill Road. The “Prods” had blocked the street, set fire to some tyres; they were protesting at the lack of security. So the local British battalion in the Ardoyne called up the reserves and the first thing we saw was an Army “Pig” – a big armored vehicle with a wide-bodied snout over the engine – come roaring round the corner, knocking a youth clean off the road on to the pavement. It drove straight into the burning tyres and the paratroopers jumped out of the back with wooden cudgels and got to work on the street lads.

There were howls of rage and curses from the Brits and eventually the Prods cleared off and the soldiers of 1 Para stood in the street looking bored. Then a door opened and out came a man in his fifties. A Belfast Protestant, hair greying, he sort of hobbled on to the street as if he’d been hurt badly years ago and he walked right up to a group of Paras and plunged his hand into his pocket. He brought out an old Army red beret with a metal badge of parachute wings fixed to it and a tatty old regimental tie.

The soldiers watched him, bemused. Then he began to tear the beret to pieces, right there in front of the soldiers, and ripped up the tie. The man was shouting ‘Bastards, bastards,” over and over again at them and he dropped the ruined beret and tie at his feet and stomped on them. The soldiers laughed. And the man kept shouting “bastards” and he was crying and then he shouted at the soldiers: “I was at Arnhem.”

What had happened to the Parachute Regiment? A week before Bloody Sunday, John Hume, the MP for Foyle, encountered a far more disturbing demonstration of power by the same regiment. There was a nationalist demonstration on the beaches of north Derry and the Paras had turned up and beaten the demonstrators and a Para officer walked up to Hume and – in a very English public school accent – threatened him. “I realised something new was happening,” Hume was to tell me years later. “Some decision had been taken by the military. I was very worried about this. These were very hard men. There was no way of negotiating with them.”

Could we have guessed what this meant? Or the libels that British journalism was to commit against the dead of Bloody Sunday in the coming weeks? As usual – and for Derry, read Fallujah or Gaza or any Afghan village where civilians get in the way – the innocent became the guilty and the guilty became the innocent. “Bordering on the reckless” – Widgery’s whining description of the British Army rabble that fatally shot 14 Catholics in the Bogside – was the only real half-truth to emerge from his disgracefully short and lazy report.

They are old now, those soldiers, the same age in 1972 as those they killed in Derry. I was on The Times – the glorious, pre-Murdoch Times – and I was not in Derry on the day. But for years I went there as I go back, still, to the scene of Middle East massacres. In 1997, home from Beirut, I was again prowling around Derry. Was anything left? In the wall of a ground-floor apartment in Glenfada Flats, I found two bullet holes from Bloody Sunday, two gashes in the cheap stucco and cement to remind the Catholics of the Bogside of the power of a self-loading rifle.

“There’s another hole round the corner in Chamberlain Street,” a young man told me. “Would you like to see it?” Cruelly, I told him I’d seen enough bullet holes in the Middle East and the Balkans these past 22 years. “But do people know about Bloody Sunday in Beirut?” the man asked. No, I said. Not a soul there knew – or cared – what happened here. So all the man said was: “Jesus Christ!” It is a name much invoked on the Derry memorials.

The most dramatic of these is a simple granite cross erected to the memory of the 14 “murdered by British paratroopers on Bloody Sunday 30 January 1972″. Beside it, back in 1979, someone had scribbled a note: “All we need is the truth to help heal the wounds.”

Did we get it yesterday? Was it enough? Certainly it is more than the Palestinians will ever get for the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacre. Or the people of Qana who were demanding an inquiry in 1996 after Israeli shells slaughtered 101 civilians sheltering in the UN compound. The UN’s official report into the massacre implied that it was deliberate.

Lord Widgery was not so brave. Of 500 eyewitness testimonies given to him, he bothered to read only 15. Was he merely idle? Or was he a weak, morally enfeebled man, more fearful of condemning his country’s armed forces than he was of concealing the truth?

Or did we British journalists have something to answer for in our slavish adherence to the notion of the British Army’s integrity? I don’t think we cared about the Irish – either the Catholic or the Protestant variety. I don’t think we cared about Ireland. I don’t think the British Army cared. At last, I suppose, the Saville report has answered that scribbled note I found outside the Glenfada flats 13 years ago.

But at least the people of Derry care about others who have died unjustly. In 2003, as the Americans occupied Iraq, American paratroopers opened fire on a crowd of protesting Iraqis in the city of Fallujah. They killed 14, claiming they were shot at. Subsequent inquiries suggested this was a lie. A few days later, in Baghdad, I took a call from an old friend in Derry. He wanted to lead a delegation of Bloody Sunday relatives to Fallujah, he said, to show their sorrow for the dead Iraqis. I don’t think the Americans cared about the Iraqis. But the Irish of Bloody Sunday cared.

June 3, 2010

A special thank you to HealthCorps coordinator, Jessica Anders without whom none of this would have happened.

“Hey, I want to thank you for showing me how to meditate. I also want to thank you for helping (me) forgive someone.” Aurelia R

“…. Hope to see you again and thanks for teaching my classmates and I how to meditate. That was a cool lesson. Cya” Daniel

“Thanks for coming. I was relaxed the whole day you came.” Shanya

“Hey, gracias for coming to this school and teaching us how to meditate, it really helped w/all the stress in my life.” Paul P

“…. I am always stressed but you helped me.” Eric M

“Hey, this is your friend Malik. Thank you for showing us how to meditate.”

“Can’t thank you enough for your dedication to the education of our youth….” Ryan (teacher)

Today had a sweet sadness to it, Jenny Ninyo, HealthCorps coordinator organized a wonderful lunch for the teachers in the school where she’s worked for two years, bringing health, fitness, well-being and mental resilience programs to students and staff. The buffet lunch involved a plethora of healthy, beautifully prepared food, and one after another, the teachers came up to Jenny and said how much they’d miss her, for this is near the end of her two year stint as a HealthCorps coordinator. Jenny, as is the case with all HealthCorps coordinators is an extraordinary young woman of rich and varied talents – she is an expert at Hatha Yoga, a linguist, she teaches and tutors in Hebrew, she is a great cook and organizer, a great motivator and fun to be with. She’ll be much missed. The good news for us is that she’s staying in New York City.

As part of the lunch, an optional Sahaja Meditation program was available and about 24 teachers and 6 parents tried Sahaja Meditation. All of those I spoke to said this would be a very valuable practice, given what a stressful job teaching now is in Manhattan. Many said they’d love to attend the introductory evening to Sahaja Meditation to be held on July 8, 2010 at 7 pm at:

New York Society for Ethical Culture

2 West 64th Street at Central Park West New York, NY 10023.

And, as if by way of coincidence, who should walk in but Anna Mancini, who was teaching in this school as a substitute teacher. Anna kindly sat with Joan and I as we meditated with Jenny and a very nice math teacher, Laura.

As a HealthCorps Coordinator in a Bronx high school, I provide innovative health and wellness workshops for my students.  Our curriculum includes a fair amount of nutritional and fitness education but also touches upon mental resiliency topics.  And I truly believe, optimal health and wellness begins not with education but rather the openness of the heart and the mind.

For the past 7 weeks, Alan and sometimes Lioudmila Wherry have graciously practiced Sahaja meditation with my students and allowed them to discover its power. Without question, it’s been the highlight of working with my students within the classroom…the best part of the work day.  Every week, we position desks in a circle and read one passage pertaining to themes such as forgiveness, trust, being present, fear & love, and the true source of joy.  “Joy is not what happens to you; it is what comes through you when you are conscious of the blessing you are.”  Alan and myself share personal anecdotes and pose questions that allow the students to find their own individual answers.

In a neighborhood and school environment with constant noise, distractions, and one too many fights, I’ve been encouraged by the ability of the students to quiet their voices, minds, and focus on themselves.  To incorporate ”personal growth-work” into their traditional school work is important.  To scan a room and see 20 students in utter deep silence for 10-15 minutes is damn near breathtaking.

Leslie Dolland

something not quite right, but we know what it intended!