Shoshana Simons' Commencement 2025 Address

Shoshana Simons, Ph.D., RDT, is Professor Emerita and former Program Chair of CIIS’ M.A. in Counseling Psychology concentration in Expressive Arts Therapy. She is a drama therapist, voice actor, and arts-based coach and consultant with 35-plus years of experience in community building.
 

Beloved Graduates, Esteemed Colleagues, Cherished Families and Friends,

Before I begin, let’s take a moment to pause…breathe…close your eyes...place your hand on your heart…tap it gently…and listen…here together…present…syncopation. And now please open your eyes…

Today you graduate from the California Institute of Integral Studies — a place that dared, from its founding, to reimagine education as a full-bodied, soul-rooted endeavor, now weaving in wisdom teachings from North, South, East and West.

A place where scholarship is woven with self-inquiry. Where activism is braided with spirituality. Where the mind, the heart, the body, and the earth are not separate domains but one living ecosystem.

You have carried this vision forward — not just by dreaming it, but by doing it. Through your sleepless nights, your difficult questions, your stubborn hope and persistence through the immense challenges of these last years. Through the papers written, the group projects completed, the classes attended, the communities nourished, the insights accumulated.

You have not just survived. You have co-created something new.

Today, I too mark a passage — retiring from my core faculty role after nineteen miraculous years. And so, as I speak to you today, I speak both as one standing at the edge of my own threshold and as one blessing you on your journey across yours.

I re-turn to the "symphony of improbable coincidences" (thank you Dr. Deepak Chopra) that brought us together — that intricate, unplannable web of meetings, choices, accidents, and acts of courage.

That symphony that dared to sing: This life. This moment. This learning. These companions. This now.

We learn that in a world shaped by interdependence, co-creation is not optional. It is the only way.
Shoshana Simons, Professor Emerita, Expressive Arts Therapy

These words from the poem “Miracle Fair” by the post-WWII Polish poet, Wislawa Szymborska, remind us: “It is not the spectacular that makes a miracle. It is the quiet certainties — the glance, the breath, the ordinary heartbeat persisting against the grand silence of the cosmos.”

You, graduates, are miracles in motion. Each of you a living answer to improbability’s deepest prayer.

At CIIS, we teach not simply content, but connection. We practice staying connected to the beat, even as the music changes, even when the path grows uncertain or steep.

We practice embracing our “mistakes” — not as failures to be hidden, but as portals to deeper wisdom.

We learn that in a world shaped by interdependence, co-creation is not optional. It is the only way.

Microbiologist Kriti Sharma, in her book Interdependence: Biology and Beyond, reminds us: “The world comes into being moment by moment, dependent upon our participation…We are not separate from creation, but vital contributors to its unfolding.”

You, dear graduates, have not waited for a perfect world to appear. You are participating in its becoming. You are shaping new ways of knowing, new communities of care, new invitations to justice, to creativity, to healing. You are weaving prophecy into legacy.

You become the bridge.

And so, I offer you these teachings, drawn from practices of applied improvisation that I’ve leaned into over my almost two decades at CIIS, and 50 years of working life, as you step into your next becoming:

Remember the Yes that first brought you here. Let it be your compass when the path ahead splinters.

Plan with your left brain; implement with your right.

Pair your intellectual rigor with your heartistry and compassion.

Remember who you are centering.

Let your work serve not only you, but the wider, wilder world that called you here.

Know your craft. Wear it with humility and with pride.

Accept the Offer. Especially when it arrives disguised as uncertainty.

Say Yes-And. Not because everything is easy, but because anything is possible.

Have each other’s backs.

Support each other’s rights.

Hear, help, hold one another. Especially when one of us falls between the cracks. 

CIIS taught us this:

Integral means everything belongs.

Everyone belongs.

Mind and body. Grief and joy. Methodology and mystery. Imagination and action. You have lived this truth. You have embodied it. You have added your irreplaceable notes to this evolving song.

Stay connected to the beat.

Fold your mistakes into the music.

Accept the offer.

Keep participating.

Graduates, you are not stepping into a world you must fix alone. You are stepping into a world that needs you, not as saviors but as co-creators.

In the sacred space between prophecy and legacy, between intention and manifestation, between dream and deed — you stand.

You are improbable.

You are miracle.

You are ready.

Congratulations, beloved graduates. Thank you for your courage, your brilliance, your insistence on being here, now. Thank you for the world you are already helping to bring into being. And thank you for letting me walk a part of this improbable road with you.

It has been, and will always be, a miracle.

¡Hecho esta! 
¡Hecho esta! 
¡Hecho esta!

And so it is! 
And so it is! 
And so it is!