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My name is Dayna Dunbar and I graduated from the University of Santa Monica in 2001.
Before the University of Santa Monica, I would say my life was characterized by a real roller
coaster emotional ride. Troubled relationships, because of that. I grew up in an alcoholic
home with violence in the home, and it always felt to me like my world was never, I was
never on solid ground. I never felt safe in the world. I never felt like I was supported
or secure. It was actually through an illness that I started to wake up to that.
But that sense of unsafety and insecurity, regardless of how much I got, how close I
got to God, how much I went to church, how much I studied spiritual teachings, which
I did a lot. I meditated a lot, all of those things. I still, that still never left me.
It still never released. So I moved to Southern California and I heard about USM, and I came
to an open house, and my ego was real invested in the Master's degree. I really wanted that.
My family is full of educated people.
And, the other thing was, this idea of the second year project. And my, I had always
had a dream of writing a novel. And this was a dream that was too big for me to even conceive
of, but when he said, the admissions counselor said, we do this thing in the second year
where you take something that you thought was too big for you to conceive of, and you
do that. And you do it with this incredible support system and with these steps that you
create yourself, and it's, you know, we take you through that process completely. And I've
always been good at school, and always done my homework, so I thought I could trick myself,
my psyche, into finishing a novel by making it homework. And so I said, I'm in.
It wasn't until I started at USM, and I mean, first weekend, the bricks started, you know,
I started laying them down. And, just, I mean these really simple, but to me really radical
revolutionary ideas that were being put into practice in class, and just starting the process
of really releasing and letting go of this kind of very painful ego structure that had
been controlling my life. Somehow, I don't know how they do it, but the doctors Hulnick
have masterfully put together this program where each of the aspects of the program,
the relationship project, the genealogy, the age stages, Erikson's age stages. As you're
going back, they dovetail with each other. And my project also dovetailed because it
was autobiographical, greatly autobiographical.
So I was going back in my history and writing my past, basically growing up, fictionalizing
it. And so it was all coming together, and one piece would fit on top of this piece and
then that piece would make that piece work, and the puzzle just started to build. And
my novel was really the expression of that whole thing, and it was so incredibly healing.
I was writing about the very moments in my life that had created the intense grief and
pain that I had been living with up until USM.
Very shortly after I graduated I got this phone call from this publisher, and it was
the call that I'd always wanted. I mean, I couldn't have written it myself. I mean, you
know, if I had written it as an ideal scene, which is something that in the university
they have to do to have your vision really clear, I wouldn't have been able to come up
with this. But it was not, this is the answer to all of my problems and this is the moment
that I've been waiting for. It was just, thank you, because I already knew. I didn't know
that it was like, she was gonna love it, or anybody else was gonna love it, but I knew
it was worthy. I knew that it had value, and that's what I realized through the process
of valuing myself, beginning the process of nurturing valuing myself, coming to understand
my own worth and the worth of my work and what comes through me into the world.
Now the contract was fantastic too, you know, the external manifestation which allowed me
to, first of all, write a second book and be paid for it, and I didn't know that I was
writing it. They actually asked me to write a sequel. And then I actually got to go and
move to Sedona Arizona, which was kind of a dream of mine. I'd been travelling there
for years and, you know, deeply powerful and beautiful place, and then, so, and then write
for a living.
After that I won an award. My book takes place in Oklahoma where I'm from, and I won an award,
the Oklahoma State Book of 2006. And through that I got to do this incredible tour of the
state and be paid handsomely for it, so there's been that payoff as well, where I get to be
with people and talk about writing and talk about, you know, USM a lot. I'm at every one
of those 85 events probably, cuz in my bio it said I had a Master's degree in spiritual
psychology, and people were like, what's that? You know, these people in these little bitty
towns in, you know, southwestern Oklahoma, where it's like, they're exposed to very little.
They all wanted to know, and so it was great, cuz, and it was my favorite question. And
I would get to tell them about USM and about what spiritual psychology was, and hopefully
plant some seeds for people and open some hearts and some minds.
When I talk to high school students, I have a PowerPoint presentation, and I start out
with a slide that has the definition of courage, and the fact that it comes, the word courage
comes from the root word, in French, the word coeur, which is heart. And I asked them to
think about the connection between the heart and having courage and bravery, because that,
I start that out, and it's really the story of my life that I'm telling. It got to where
it was more painful to not write than to write and fail, and that takes courage.
And it's amazing, because the university, they set it up so that's exactly what you
do. You face your stuff, I mean, it's so brilliant. The second year project is so brilliant. The
whole thing is brilliant, but because it all leads in together, but the second year project
is not really fundamentally so that you can do something that you've always wanted to
do and have this outward manifestation of it. That's not really the primary goal. The
primary goal is to get you on this path that triggers every one of your issues, like brings
is straight to the surface, and all of those excuses are brought right into your face,
and it says, okay, now what are you going to do?
Well, I think I'm going to quit. Well, okay. We've got this safety net and that safety
net and this safety net to catch you on your way down and get you back where you don't
quit, you move through it. You've healed that issue, so you don't have to deal with that
one anymore, and you go to the next one, and there it is. And then you move through them
in this incredibly graceful supported way. It gives you the opportunity to stand up in
your own strength of heart, to follow your heart's calling. And, you don't have to do
it alone. And as you step forward in that, in your truth, and in that empowerment, then
the universe begins to meet you with opportunities and with ideas and with insights and people
who help you. And, you know, it's, you don't, you're not on your own anymore. These people
started a school that is a complete radical, you know, way of dealing with education in
the world, and it's turned into, 25 years later, an institution that I think is changing,
you know, the planet.