President's Commencement Speech 2007
Dr. James Michael Nolan

I am going to share a few brief thoughts and experiences I have had leading up to this event. Parts of this speech came in very non-logical, not-linear ways, and I thought about cleaning them up to make them sound MORE logical, more linear, but I decided to just share it the way it came to me, kind of stream-of-consciousness. I hope this works out·.

I started about seventeen speeches in the past two weeks. I was clever, I was funny, I was deep and soulful.

I couldn't get it right.

I called in Spirit. I thought the Holy Guys might show up. Maybe Ram Dass, or my Druid Guide, or my Power Animal. Or even Carl Jung÷Carl Jung would be good.

Nope. No luck there·.

Then I had a dream, and Ernest Hemingway showed up, and I was directed to his most wonderful book, A Moveable Feast. Do you remember that book? You should re-read it·.

In it, Hemingway wrote: ãIf you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for all of Paris is a Moveable Feast.ä

And I felt the connection. And as you well know, this is how connections come, way outside the boundaries of logic and linearity. And I wrote this down:

ãIf you are lucky enough to have attended Southwestern College , then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Southwestern College is a Moveable Feast.ä

I loved that connection.

And I still didn't have a speech.

But I looked further into a Moveable Feast and found this advice:

ãAll you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.ä

I thought about this a lot. And I realized that Hemingway was being kind of a Southwestern College guy÷he was saying STAND IN YOUR TRUTH. WHAT IS TRUE FOR YOU RIGHT NOW?

So I wrote the two truest sentences I could write.

The first one came out like this:
ãMy heart is full of love and admiration for these people graduating today.ä

 And as I look out at your faces, I know this sentence to be true. This is your day. We have seen the work you guys have done in your time here. You are ready.

Then I wrote:
" Southwestern College is the most beautiful and important and unique school I know.ä

You may ask Why this seems true to me.

Well, some of you know that I have been a bit of a vagabond in the world of Higher Education. I have been affiliated with a dozen universities. I have experienced NOTHING even close to Southwestern, or to the Southwestern graduate. And I swear to god, this is not Graduation Speech Rhetoric. It is the truth of my experience and of my heart.

So that was Hemingway's contribution to this speech, but the literary guys were not done with me yet·.

 I was still thinking about how and why you guys are special, and what came through Consciousness was a book written by the Jungian James Hillman and the iconoclastic, renegade wise-guy journalist from Austin , Texas , Michael Ventura. The book is ãWe've had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World is Getting Worse.ä

And I thought, Hmm, how does THAT fit in with a graduation speech for Counselors? So I sat with it. And here is what came up for me.

One possibility is that the world is in SUCH god-awful shape that all the Psychotherapy in the world can't fix it.

What seemed truer for me was this: That the way Psychotherapy has been practiced over the past hundred years is not what the world needed.

Psychotherapy, as it has been practiced and defined, has become largely about manipulating Cognitions and Behaviors. Cognitions and Behaviors are perfectly wonderful things, but they HARDLY capture the totality or the ESSENCE of the Human Spirit or Consciousness. You CAN work only with Cognitions and Behaviors, and help people muddle through life in a little less pain.

But Southwestern College and these graduates are decidedly NOT in the business of helping people ãmuddle throughä life·.They came here to become facilitators of transformation and Bearers of Light. They came to make a difference. They came here to learn about the deepest places in the heart, and the brightest and darkest places in the soul.

At Southwestern College, we know about symptomology and Psychopathology. But we also know about love and light and soul and meaning and spirit and the higher self and Consciousness.

We've had a hundred years of Psychotherapy and the world is getting worse.

But what if we'd had a hundred years of love, or a hundred years of hearts that were open, or a hundred years of these people sitting in front of me working to Transform Consciousness? I think Hillman and Ventura would have written a different book.

You WILL make the world better. I feel certain that I speak for everyone on this stage when I say I know this to be true·.

So far Hemingway, James Hillman and Michael Ventura have all shown up. But I had one final literary visitor last night. So if I look tired, you know the reason why.

In a really amazing quote, Sigmund Freud once wrote: ãEverywhere I go, it seems a poet has been there before me.ä Everywhere I go, it seems a poet has been there before me·.. Wow·..

I have always felt that to be true. I cannot think of any modern day Psychologist who understands the human experience any better than William Shakespeare. And guess who came in a dream to help me finish this speech at like three o'clock this morning? You guessed it. The Bard of Avon himself. I don't know what it is like to be you, but welcome to MY world.

Actually, it was a couple of his characters that came: Prince Hamlet and Horatio. Let me refresh your memory, since you have probably not read Hamlet for a year or so. In Act I, Hamlet is having a conversation with the ghost of his father.

OK, so if Hamlet gets translated into 2007 terms, Hamlet is definitely a student at Southwestern College . I'm not sure who gets to play him if we shoot the movie, but I can make an argument for Jason Holley, Steve Moser, or Paul Weeks. In the play, Hamlet and Horatio are both students at the University of Wittenberg . Horatio studies natural sciences and logic. He is like, say, Neuropsych Guy. He is NOT a Southwestern Guy. He busts in on a scene where Hamlet is talking with Spirits.

We don't have a problem with that here at Southwestern÷we talk with Spirits all the time. In 2007 terms, I am thinking this is like Neuropsych Guy from UNM busting into Katherine's Consciousness Two class during Light Figure Presentations.

Dude is freaked out.

Horatio exclaims:
ãO day and night, but this is wondrous strange!ä

And Hamlet responds:
ãThere are more things
In heaven and earth, Horatio
Than are dreamt of in your philosophyä

Shakespeare wrote this in 1600, over four hundred years ago. Carl Jung said it to Sigmund Freud. ãSigmund, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.ä Southwestern College is saying it today to the world of mainstream Healing and Psychology.

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Southwestern College gets it.

You guys get it.

The mainstream does not yet get it.

As Horatio did not get it back in 1600.

You graduates will do excellently in the mundane world. And that is really important. But you will also bring excellence to the world of Meaning-Making, the world of Spirit, the world of Energy, the world of Consciousness.

You understand the lower world, the middle world and the upper world. You may not yet fully appreciate how unusual that is for new graduates. But you will·.

I leave you with the final stanza of a poem that could easily be your poem; it's called The Road Not Taken. You know this poem. It reflects the choice you have made to come to Southwestern College .

ãI shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood and I÷
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.ä

Congratulations on your choice.