I thank Creator Spirit and the ancestors of the Gidhabal Traditional Owner people for allowing my voice to be heard and for allowing my feet to walk in safety across their sacred country. The School of Total Education is built upon the lands that have owned the Gidhabal people for over 40,000 years. This city of Warwick has been built upon their country and from what I understand there are being put into place cultural processes to rejuvenate this peoples Cicada Totem.

The Cicada Totem Spirit is connected and spiritually attuned to Mother Earth. So with my ancestors voices who will join with mine in this atmosphere of celebration let me say this to you in a language that is 40,000 years old, “Junjarin-nga dhar’guna yau’eembai’ya ngoolam’bula dhar’kun yar war gow”. These are my peoples words they are Kabi Kabi words. They are an ancient blessing given by my people to publicly bestow honor and to bless others and they mean: “May the spiritual forces of Mother Earth guide and protect your inner self and truth”.

Today begins another chapter in the Book of students and families lives. Perhaps the Chapter will be titled “Graduation.” In this chapter you will record people who were present your family and friends and your own impressions of them as they came to celebrate this most auspicious occasion. Graduation ceremonies were introduced into the world of social interaction by great philosopher’s of ancient Greece. It was said that Plato and Aristotle were always looking for an excuse to have celebration parties, so they invented graduations, a time to share a very personal triumph with your school, you family, your friends and your community.

Today you students and parents are sharing the power of education and knowledge, a power that is yours. You have been equipped with knowledge on how to release that power now placed in your hands to benefit yourself, your family and our community as a whole.

Today you come to that pause in the last paragraph of this chapter because you may never again spend each day in the company of so many highly intelligent people, people who are independent thinkers who are life minded and peace minded. This will be the legacy you will carry everywhere you go after today. And wherever you go know this, there will be at least one very bright person to offer a contribution to life and living and that very bright person will be you.

We all commence this chapter at different levels of maturity because this is where we take responsibility for what we have learned and we begin to put our learning into practice in so many different ways. But you have come to the paragraph in your story that tells the reader that you are taking responsibility and your reader will understand that you have learned the first lesson of maturity. Maturity teaches you that no matter where you go or what you do with your life you will only find contentment, peace and a sense of achievement if you are the person you have been created to be. We have all heard someone say that they want to be like some movie star, or some rock star or some other celebrity out there because that person is their idol. But why be an imitation of someone else when you are the genuine article, when you are the real thing here and now in this present moment you are the quintessential essence of who you are and who you are becoming.

The thing about imitators is they can never find peace or contentment because they are always trying to improve the version of their idol that they are living at any given time. And why write a book about you that will be fiction when you can fill the pages of your life with genuine stories of you and your life experiences. Life does not contribute to imitation it contributes to reality and being real and life gets exciting when a person discovers that it is okay to be who you are in this present moment.

As students you have had the privilege of being schooled in an environment that values your family, and your humanity and that respects your development as a human being. You have been blessed as a student to develop your potential in a learning place that promotes a culture of peace-mindedness where it is practiced and promoted every day. You will go from this place into a world that is different and you will carry with you a respect for that difference. But you will also carry with you the learnings of your founder Vijay Yogendra who gifted you the legacy he left for you which was to prepare you as graduating students for the next chapter in the book of your life as you live it in this 21st Century.

As students you have been given keys to become more fully who you are, and you have the capacity to become to the fullest extent of possibilities the person who you really are and that is what life in this institution has gifted to you. I also believe you have been given the opportunity to increase your capacity to listen to that inner voice that talks with you, that voice that you need to help you find ways to answer your own truth, that directs and guides you to always be life-minded, peace minded and appreciative of the life you have been give. You have been given the tools to live your life not the life that others want for you, but to live your life understanding that when you listen to your own truth you are set free to be the beautiful or handsome creation that you are now not tomorrow, not yesterday, but now today, in this present moment.

Many obstacles will be waiting for you to overcome, and there will be times when you look up the road and see no obstacles just a tree lined avenue because that is what life will gift to you. Life is about, hard times, and good times. Perhaps the wounds of the hard times those times that we call failures, perhaps at those times you will draw the strength from inside your spirit and turn those failures into lessons of wisdom, the points in your story where you will note that you matured more, where deeper and greater understanding about who you are came to you. I have learned to be grateful for the adversity that has come into my own life, because you see I survived, I came through it and when I look back upon it I find that as a person I grew and my feet fitted more accurately into the feet of the Master of my spirituality the Master whom I have followed since the age of four.

When I was a little girl growing up in rainforest country in the north of Queensland, there were puzzles around me that I needed answers for. My two sisters and five brothers still remind me of my obnoxious habit of saying, “But why?” to almost everything asked of me, and every experience I encountered, you see I have always been filled with curiosity about life, and as I have grown older, my obnoxious habit is still very evident.

I used to ask my Daddy wonderfully childish questions like, “Daddy how come the water hangs off a leaf and looks like a diamond?” I’d only seen diamonds in books, not a real one, but a droplet of water was a diamond far more beautiful then the ones I saw in a magazine. “Daddy how come the clouds chase after each other all day?” You see I’d watch clouds as I floated on my back in the creek that was the boarder of our property.

I used to find it so amusing that the clouds I tagged never got caught by the clouds that seemed to chase after them. “Daddy what makes the sun come up and the moon go down?” The rainforest at night is a beautiful alive and subtle place. And it is an absolute fairy place, its spectacular! when you’re down on the forest floor watching the morning sun filter sunrays through the trees whose branches rise above you. Friday’s were the best part of the week for me as a child. I always knew when it was Friday because my mother would pack my little dilly bag with some damper, and some smoked fish, some matches, and other things that a four year old needed and then she would tie it onto a sturdy stick, my walking stick, and off I would go into the forest, all by myself to set up the first part of a camp that my bigger brothers and sisters would come and finish off when they got back from school and there we would camp over part of the week-end. That was my world, and I would spend the day, talking to my invisible friends, trying to find fairy folk, or finding something new that I could tell my mother all about when she came looking for me in some part of the day. “Daddy why is my totem spirit the blue mountain butterfly?”

I always knew the answer to this one, but I just wanted to hear the story of my conception because it gave to me a place to belong and living objects to be connected too and it made me feel safe and secure. You see my parents told me that when my mother became aware that she had conceived me she was down at the creek with other women doing the washing and she was lying back on the grass and this amazing butterfly alighted on her stomach. An old lady told my mother to be still.

The story goes that the butterfly walked all over my mother’s stomach then up her neck and onto her face and then down to her left ear. There it stayed for several minutes then walked back over her forehead and right across my mother’s right eye and then it flew away. The old lady that was with her started to cry, and then she explained to my mother that, “Them blue mountain butterfly people come for your baby Muriel, they come to tell you that baby belongs to them”. I’ve never questioned the story, just accepted it but I used to ask,” Why them people, why not the green ant people, or the parrot people.” But with maturity I have just accepted that blue mountain butterflies are my people, and when I get to the Dreamtime I will understand more fully what they saw in me to single me out to belong to them. Of all the people on the planet they singled me out like they had been doing for 40,000 years they took me and spiritually connected me to themselves.

I am sure there are other human beings that butterflies have done the same thing to and I can’t wait to meet them. I am always hopeful that when I go to a place, or travel, I will meet someone who has the same totem as me, I’ve only met several as yet, but we all have similar stories to share and that makes my connection much more spiritually real and powerful.

I still love the answers to my questions that Daddy gave me, and back then I would take my answers and share them with all my friends both the visible and the invisible. I would start my conversations with my friends by saying in the voice of a four year old philosopher, “Did you know that water hangs off a leaf because it loves leaves and it looks like a diamond because it wants to make the leaf look beautiful.” My visible friends, would look at me with four and five year old awe and acknowledge my wisdom with a ,”Wow!! “How come you know that?” “Who told you that?” And with the wisdom of a four year old I would say, “My Daddy.” And we would all gather around a leaf with water on and wisely nod our heads because we all now knew the reason or so we thought. You see we were educating ourselves.

But sometimes in my fathers wisdom he would tell me that he did not know the answer to my question and I would have to find the answer for myself. “Daddy what will I be when I grow up?”

My father who was the son of a slave and my mother who was a Gooreng Gooreng woman and both had very little schooling, well they would create the highest, grandest, vision possible for my life because they wanted to put inside me a belief about myself that what they were saying could be possible. And they also taught me that I had to own the vision and make it mine that it would never happen if I did not choose to take ownership of the vision. My father taught himself to read and write English, then he taught my mother the same skills. That was the way it was back then, particularly if you were black. There was very little chance for them to finish school, or go on to high school and going to university was an unthinkable thing. It was just not possible not for black people anyway.

The questions I asked my parents also taught me that there is a power greater than myself that rules my life and becomes active within me through the choices I make. And if I was still, and at peace, and in love with me and my world I would hear that inner voice directing me.

I also learned to listen to my totem spirit’s voice, so between the voice of Creator Spirit and the voice of my totem spirit anything was possible if my belief was filled with the inspiration they bought to the choices that I made.

So today I say to you, can you dare to dream your visions, and hold the highest and the grandest vision to the answer you will give yourself to the question you may ask yourself, “What will I be when I grow up?” Only you can answer that by taking ownership of the life you have been given to live, because your life speaks to the power of what can be done. Do you realize that even as I am speaking that there are icons of our society that will be non-existent in the future you are making for your generation? There are things that will be past their use by date in one two or five years from now. But the constant thing in that future is that you will be there, the whole of you, the all of you and what will you be like?

Every experience in life has a teaching message attached to it. When something difficult arises what are you being taught? What is your inner voice whispering to you? You are a fortunate student born into a family who valued you enough to want the best education you could have. You have the brains and natural abilities that throughout your learning has been channelled toward your spirit self, to your capacity to excel and has enabled you to draw on the breadth of knowledge, the support for independence of thought and the courage to make choices that will take you into chapter after chapter of a fulfilling life. You have the capacity to be made conscious of your ability to still your racing mind, settle your chaotic emotions, and listen and understand the experiences you encounter and go to your source in search of answers?

I say you are very fortunate because your future lies wide open before you. During my lifetime I have encountered those who dared to dream, to take a risk in order to advance social justice. I was born into a civil rights activist’s family to a father and mother who believed with their whole hearts that conflict and injustice could be resolved with peaceful means and not by aggressive and violent means. My parents lived their lives doing little actions that supported their commitment to a better future for their people. Grandfather was a slave and yet he instilled in his 15 children that life is worth living if you believe that you can contribute some small thing to making life and living for yourself and others just that little bit more equitable, just, and compassionate.

That was pretty special coming from a man who was a slave in this country and whose wife was never recognised as a citizen of this land even though she was a member of the First Nations people of Australia.

The world you are inheriting is pretty mixed up right now, what with millions of children going to bed with no parent, no family, no shelter, and no food in their stomachs, where climate is changing rapidly, where wars are raging, where famine, terrorism and hatred of other human beings continues to be a living nightmare for all of us. Where even in our own back yard we have Aboriginal people who continue to live in abysmal and appalling conditions of third world poverty, poverty that we think is only true for countries in other parts of the world. So I again ask the question of you graduating students. “What will you do when you grow up?”

Claire what will your contribution be to your generation because you see you already are gifted with a great motivation to understand people. You are also gifted enough to discipline yourself and maintain a positive attitude. These characteristics are needed in our world today. More importantly they need to be demonstrated to your peers the youth of your community. You have the capacity to know that in spite of all that is around you there will always be those joyful times after the dark times in all of our lives.

And Asha what will you carry away with you from this place of learning. Will your openness, of character, your thoughtfulness, and acceptance of people will you have opportunities to demonstrate to others what you know about yourself. Will you like Dan be able to still your inner spirit and have the resilience to strengthen your capacity and ability to stand up for others in non-judgemental ways. You are both blessed with creativity and caring never lose sight of those attributes they are already awakened in you.

Amy there are many hurting people young, and old who may never know what you know about yourself because of the circumstances they are in. You have the great gift of honesty and friendship. Someone said once that to be a friend of another you must first be a friend of your own self. Everybody needs a person who can be a good friend who can be considered a loyal friend, a person who can express goodness. These characteristics are not easy to carry, but when someone is hurting in a hurting world they will need someone like you to be there, to just be their friend.

And Tim will you continue to pursue what you are beginning to understand about yourself. Will you listen to your inner voice guiding your intelligent mind to explore and develop your ability to share knowledge and wisdom with others? You I am told are an intelligent young man, and our world, our community needs intelligent confident young men like you to not only share your knowledge and your wisdom with them but to also ensure that they too will become confident enough to reach out to others and do what they see comes naturally to you, your ability to be a human resource no matter where your journey takes you.

I have heard that your classmate Rory is already expressing his gift. Rory you are blessed with an amazing capacity to focus and follow through on a task whilst you support others around you. Did you know that these qualities are the making of a great leader? To have the capacity to get the job done is one thing, any politician will tell you they can do that. But what makes a statesman out of a politician is an ability to totally support others around you to stay focused as well that’s what makes leaders and perhaps you Rory are a leader of the tomorrow you are making today, so dream big as you leave this place today.

I am an academic and I am always amazed when I am acknowledged as one. It sometimes seems to me anyway that I kind of fell into it, or floated into it. However, like you Holly, I have always pursued excellence in all that I do and say. Holly to pursue excellence in teaching, writing, thinking and speaking, and excellence in just living my life has given me the ability to never settle for mediocrity, never settle for slip and slop. I have learned in my pursuit of excellence that if I esteem others, value and respect others and their work, I can maintain my own integrity in always being genuinely me, and what I do achieve is excellence in the work that I do. Holly in the next chapter of your life perhaps your story will have accolades from others, because they will see in you a women of integrity.

When a person is passionate about social justice that person will need a great sense of fun and humour to carry them through the dark places others who come to them with needs will take them. I know some of those dark places because as a therapist who worked with men who committed violent and sexual crimes I travelled down some pretty dark and terrifying sub-terrainian labyrinths whilst supporting these men back to taking responsibility for their actions and finding the gift of forgiveness within themselves.

But Hadley the passion you have for social justice and the ability you have to empathise with another person’s pain and suffering as well as their joy is an amazing gift. When you leave this place your passion will go with you. And across your pathway Creator Spirit will send those people who will need the time and space to sit, or to talk or share with someone like you who can walk in their shoes with them with acceptance of their humanity. Do not be surprised by them just remember that you can channel your passion and empathy like a healing toward the hurts they will share with you.

Alison your generation and the generation that has gone before you are in need of dedicated and committed individuals like you are becoming. Particularly our generation there are those who desperately search for individuals who can also express their sincerity with gentleness kindness and with friendship. You have learned to express these qualities in this place of learning and part of that learning has equipped you to understand your giftings. In some areas of our society sincerity, gentleness, and commitment are forgotten words, because the pressures of life have deadened these qualities to the very core of some people’s souls. To have the ability to demonstrate the qualities you are already gifted with Alison is what empty people need, it is what people’s souls need to be re-awakened to. I know that you will grow from strength to strength in the world that waits for you Alison. Protect yourself, do not fall into the trap of being a push over artist, and never allow life to quench your openness of heart as demonstrated in your gentle spirit. This community needs these expressions of you.

In the material I have read about this school there is a this inspirational message from your founder, “Only a lamp can light another lamp”. That is what I see here before me today, in each of you students. Each of you are different coloured lamps, different shaped lamps, different designed lamps. But you all have this one thing in common, you have a light that is burning brightly. Your parents found out first that they were lamps and once they had been lit, they went to each of you and lit the wick in your lamp. At a time when this country, this community and our world are in great need of talented people like each of you, this day marks the entry into that empty space, that void that only you can fit. So whatever you do, what ever field you enter, whatever country, city, or town you live in, you will have numerous chances to use your abilities, talents, and energies to do something valuable and wonderful.

You will have limitless chances to make a difference in a small or a huge way. You will encounter adversity, and there will be failure with your successes. But every time you stand up for an ideal, or act to improve the life or living of others, or you contribute to changing an injustice you will send a flicker of the light from this school that has become your light now and you will ignite other lights that will build into a beautiful flame of hope. Do something great with the light that you have, put your self out there, be bold, take action, speak out, take a stand because through your learning in this place you have been given the abilities to become part of something larger, and greater than yourself. Let every chapter in your book of life leave a legacy behind you for others to read about you as students who had the courage to use their abilities to not only change history but make history throughout their lifetime and that is the coolest thing a young person living today can do.

		Cheri Yavu-Kama-Harathunian is a member of the Kabi Kabi clan of Queensland’s Central area. She is an author and teacher with interests in peace and spirituality, domestic violence and family dynamics, therapy and life skilling, education and employment, sexuality and gender, identity and cultural issues, and Aboriginal Law. Cheri is currently employed at Central Queensland University as Co-ordinator of the Indigenous Nulloo Yumbah Learning Spirituality and Research Centre. She was guest speaker at the SOTE graduation in November 2006.

An edited version of this article was originally published in the May 2007 edition of the SOTE Newsletter. (Published on web site: June 2007)

Copyright The School of Total Education 2007.