Representing Rainier High School, Oak won in competition and went on to the regional level. Schools represented were Avanti High School, Rainier High School, Tenino High School, Spanaway Lake high School, and Bethel Junior High School.

When asked about his inspiration driving him in this contest, Oak said he recently saw Ramtha’s Rockumentary video for the first time. He was so touched and inspired by Ramtha’s expression of truth that he knew he would win. (Read News Report)

In competition with over 1200 entries from all over the world, Oak’s younger sister Aries won the 2007 University of Washington Neuroscience for Kids Art Contest in the K-2 grade category, together with her CSE classmate Evan Hawkins. In acknowledgement of this achievement, Aries was a guest, together with JZ Knight, on Seattle’s Dave Ross Show on April 12, 2007. During the interview she was asked by host Dave Ross to do a remote-view while on the air and to his amazement she did it correctly. All of the Hygaard family are long-time current students of Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment and are cherished at RSE for their love and dedication.

This is the second year in a row that an RSE student from CSE has won this contest. (Contest Details)

Surandon’s mom, Gaelie Winsor, shared with us how he composed his winning poem:
He had been at home sick during the week when the others in his class worked on their poems at CSE. He started writing it one night and wanted to read me the two sentences he had written so far.
He said, "My brain is a driver. It tells me where to go."
I said, "Cool. So where’s your brain going to take you?"
He said, "To New York."
I said, "Oh, yeah? What are you going to do in New York?"
He said, "I’m going to visit the polar bears on a mountain."
I said, "Oh … okay … but … just to let you know ... polar bears don’t live on a mountain in New York. They live in the Arctic tundra."
He said, "Oh, so what else can I do in New York?"
I said, "Well, there’s always Broadway."
Then after a really tough decision between the polar bears and Broadway, Surandon finally decided that his poem would run like this:

My brain is a driver.
It tells me where to go.
It takes me to New York
to see a broadway show.
— Surandon Kidd

"Since I was a child, wild and domestic animals were my most trusted companions because, unlike the people I observed in my life, I experienced all animals as honest and trustworthy. It seemed that they knew something that kept them free of the troubles that consumed the lives of so many humans and I found sanctuary in that. When I first read Ramtha’s words, what does a salamander know that you don’t know, I was very excited and deeply moved because he asked one of the questions that I had asked myself all my life. What was it that they knew and why in their simplicity are they so unencumbered and free? For over 37 years I have been rehabilitating wild animals in need of care and I have observed, in each of the tens of thousands of animals that I have worked on, that every one of them live in the moment, experience emotions but are not consumed by them, never judge or blame anything, evolve as best they can to their situations, show no remorse, and not one of them has demonstrated any attachment to their past. In other words, they all live in an analogical state, in the present, in the Now. That, of course, is nature’s state that just is.

"It was Ramtha’s questions, explanations, and exquisite descriptions about nature that motivated me as a student of the Great Work to gain a much deeper understanding of myself and mankind by observing and contemplating the animals under my care. I came to the realization that they were the obvious unobvious that surrounded me in my daily life. I have always felt privileged to be with them but now I know that I am in the presence of great divine beings and my greatest teachers, the animals."

Jay Holcomb is the Executive Director of the International Bird Rescue Research Center (IBRRC).
(Visit IBRRC Web Site)