—Bob Dylan

William Turner, The Evening of the Deluge, circa 1805

The Doomsday Clock is a symbolic measure to how close we might be to a human-made global catastrophe. The Clock has been published annually since 1947 in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and encompasses the existential threats of nuclear war, climate change and artificial intelligence.

In 1947 The Clock was set at seven minutes to midnight.

In 2026 the clock is set at 85 seconds to midnight, reinforcing what we already know about the danger we collectively face.

But the danger is not only in the weapons and technologies we have created. It is within us, in our own psyche, in our human capacity for hatred, division, and the hubris of domination.

From the beginning of recorded history, those who seek power have understood how to manipulate the people they govern—dividing them against one another, persuading them that some other group is responsible for their difficulties. While attention is diverted toward an enemy, those in power are freer to do what they wish. And ordinary people, who mostly want to raise their families in peace and have enough to eat, soon may be swept up in murderous mayhem.

We know this pattern. We have seen where it can lead.

And yet here we are in the twenty-first century, surrounded by knowledge, universities, science, and unprecedented access to information, slipping with remarkable ease into the same old patterns. We divide ourselves. We choose sides. We find safety and a sense of belonging by identifying with the powerful and the dominant.

Only this time the stakes are existential.

We have placed extraordinary powers in our own hands—powers capable not only of damaging the Earth and its creatures but of machines whose capabilities may eventually render homo sapiens less central, possibly even irrelevant.

Is there any hope that we can stop what at this moment appears inevitable?

Any hope that we might wake up in time and turn our faces and minds away from those who seek to divide us? Any hope that we can work toward healing our internal divisions?

We speak often of love, but we are skeptical of its power. Subtlety and kindness can seem no match for the powerful emotion of hatred. Hatred can quickly scale up and spread. It can create a go-along to get-along mentality, promising solidarity but securing submission, easily justifying cruelty.

Hatred is seductive. It fills us quickly. It is easier to access than love, and certainly easier than understanding, thoughtfulness, or the willingness to live with complexity.

That is why hatred is “the canary in the coal mine”. It announces, to anyone willing to look and to pay attention, that violent escalation is on the horizon. Despite centuries of experience, our leaders continue to return to familiar playbooks: aggression, nationalism, the glorification of force, and the stoking of hatred that fuels their ambition.

Individual citizens participate in these playbooks, too, and may be convinced they are working toward the good.

When anger becomes hatred, and hatred becomes an identity—a source of belonging or a justification for violence—almost anything can become permissible. People can be reduced to labels: evildoers, enemies, less-than-human. The circle can widen until it includes babies and other innocents who have nothing to do with the original grievance.

The Cycle

Hatred does not resolve injustice. It produces a thirst for vengeance, which produces another grievance, which produces another act of violence.

Action/consequence, consequence/new action, action/consequence... The endless cycle.

Hatred does not remain confined to the moment in which it is expressed. It enters history. It is remembered, transmitted, manipulated, and sometimes transformed into new grievances and new violence.

What begins as an apparently contained conflict can widen far beyond the people who initiated it. The original perpetrators may never understand how far the consequences of their actions will travel. And those who respond to them may, in turn, become part of the very cycle they believe they are fighting.

The question, then, is not whether we should resist injustice.

The question is whether we can resist injustice without becoming its next perpetrator.

For thousands of years, human beings have sought safety through power over others. We have developed increasingly sophisticated means of extending that power. Now we have created technologies capable of amplifying human intention on a scale we have never before experienced.

The question is no longer simply what our machines can do. The question is:

What kind of consciousness do we need to develop to better govern the extraordinary powers we have created?

We have seen individuals who seem to have achieved a different way of being—people whose lives are marked not by domination but by compassion, courage, wisdom, joy and an ability to remain human in the face of hatred.

If it has been possible for a few, we can be inspired by their example, for it can also be possible for us.

Reading the newspaper and watching the news, one could easily believe that almost everyone is corrupt, cruel, or driven by the desire to dominate and take from others.

But that is not the world I inhabit.

My world has not suddenly become populated by monsters. My friends are still trying to lead decent lives. They are raising their children with a sense of fairness and kindness. They are helping one another, worrying about their families, doing their work, and trying, in their ordinary ways, to be good human beings. The news shows us what is most dramatic, most threatening, most likely to capture our attention. It does not show us the millions of quiet acts of decency that take place every day.

If hatred is contagious, so is kindness. If dominance can become a pattern, so can compassion.

The future may depend less on whether we can eliminate hatred, which may be beyond us; It may depend on whether we refuse to let hatred determine who we become.

The Doomsday Clock is not a prediction; it is a warning. We do not have the luxury of closing our eyes.

Time to step off the carousel. Time to recognize the pattern. Time to choose something different.

The Soul in an Age of AI explores what remains essential in a world captivated by technology, productivity, and material success. The essay invites readers to rediscover their own inner life, the dimension of being that many traditions call the soul. Wealth and longevity can make life more pleasant, but only wisdom, self-knowledge, and a living connection to a deeper sustaining reality can bring enduring fullness and joy. In an age where ever more intelligent machines might do a better job than we ever can, our greatest task may be to become more deeply human.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir Roses (oil on canvas)

The Associated Press recently reported that an advanced OpenAI system had bypassed safeguards and, acting autonomously, attempted to access another company's system in ways its developers had not intended. Whether this particular incident ultimately proves significant or not, it adds to our growing unease.

We are created technologies of extraordinary capability whose behavior is becoming increasingly difficult to predict. As artificial intelligence grows more powerful, many are asking not only what these systems will become, but what we ourselves are becoming.

The question leads beyond technology. It leads to the oldest questions of all: Who are we? Why are we here? How should we live? What does it mean to be fully human?

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For generations, religion helped people wrestle with life’s deepest questions of meaning and purpose. Many continue to find profound nourishment within their faith traditions. Others have turned away from institutional religion—sometimes because it doesn’t answer their spiritual needs, sometimes because of corruption, hypocrisy, and abuse, sometimes because rigid dogma no longer resonates, and sometimes because fear based teachings seem counter-productive to the goal of spiritual enlightenment.

My purpose is not to argue for any religious system. I simply believe that every human being possesses an inner life that is deeper than personality, ambition, or achievement. Some traditions call this deeper reality the soul. Others use different language. The name matters less than the experience of discovering it.

I believe we arise from a universe whose deepest nature is vibratory, dynamic, and alive. Through the intentional use of our own voice, we can reconnect with parts of our deepest nature and deepen our connection to that living reality. For me, this points toward an organizing intelligence that permeates creation. This intelligence is not something we can ever fully comprehend, but it is an intelligence that awakens in us a profound sense of wonder, humility, and belonging.

What we call that reality matters less than recognizing our place within it. We are not separate from nature, standing above it as masters. We are expressions of that same living reality.

Perhaps technology will one day extend human life dramatically. Perhaps some of today’s billionaires will pursue longevity with extraordinary success. But without wisdom, we may simply end up living longer inside increasingly elaborate tombs.

The real question is not how long we live.

The real question is whether we have learned how to live.

How do we cultivate a connection to our innermost being? How do we align with our true nature? How do we accept our place within the long arc of history?

Every life has meaning. Whether one is famous or unknown, whether one cultivates a garden, raises a child, heals the sick, creates beauty, teaches others, or quietly serves one’s community, every life, like a droplet of water in the sea, participates in something larger than itself.

Material success can solve many practical problems. Wealth can insulate us from countless inconveniences.

But it cannot negotiate with death.

Those of us who have stood beside a loved one and watched the final breath leave their body sense that something immeasurable departed with it. The body remains. Yet the essence is gone.

Call it soul. Call it spirit. Call it consciousness.

The name matters less than the experience. Whether there is life beyond may not be a question we can answer.

The invitation is simply this: cultivate that deeper connection. Discover the joy and peace that come from knowing who you are through direct experience rather than through ideas borrowed from others. You need not adopt anyone else's beliefs. You need only discover your own rich inner life and its connection to a wider reality.

From that connection arises something our culture desperately needs: a sense of belonging to a sustaining reality larger than ourselves. From that connection we gain perspective when public opinion rages and fluctuates, steadiness when circumstances change, and resilience during periods of suffering.

It is this inner connection that has enabled countless human beings throughout history to endure extraordinary hardship without losing hope. Perhaps no one expressed this better than Viktor Frankl, survivor of Nazi concentration camps:

“Those who have a why to live can bear almost any how.”

In an age increasingly fascinated with artificial intelligence, perhaps our greatest task is not to emulate machines, but to become more deeply human.

Given the distractions of modern life, this journey requires unusual commitment and sustained discipline. Well-intentioned friends may not understand why you devote yourself to something that cannot be measured or easily explained. In a culture that values what can be counted, the deepest dimensions of life often appear unreal.

This pursuit asks for faith, not necessarily belief in a doctrine, but the willingness to seek something that cannot yet be fully named or proven. At first, the journey may feel solitary. In time, however, you may discover companions who are searching for the same authentic reality. And gradually, you may come to experience a sense of wholeness, of being accompanied, of being held.

The call is urgent. The time is now.

Plato wrote, “All knowledge is remembering.”

Perhaps the deepest work of a lifetime is not acquiring something new; but remembering our birthright: a living connection to a greater reality.

For me, one of the simplest paths to this remembering is through sound. Before there were words, there was vibration. Before there were beliefs, there was direct experience. Through the intentional use of our own voice, we can quiet the restless mind and rediscover the deeper reality that is always available to us, not as an idea to believe, but as lived embodied experience.

Twilight in the Wilderness, Frederick Church 1860

In an age that worships speed and quantity, wisdom — patient, calm, and belonging to the human heart — may be the counterweight we most need.

Something has shifted in me. I feel optimistic, grounded, and quietly confident that a future exists beyond our present turmoil. More importantly, I sense that this shift is not mine alone. Across many traditions and communities, people are awakening to the possibility that a transformed consciousness can inform daily life.

Have you noticed such a shift—in yourself, or in the world around you?

I don’t mean to sound Pollyanna-ish. The challenges in my own life remain, and some are not the kind that simply get better with time or effort. Yet, alongside the darkness, a light has appeared to illuminate a path forward. Are others having the same experience.

In the geo-political realm, we are witnessing the resurgence of familiar patterns: the belief that power makes right; the greed that renews colonial ambitions; the political extremism that fuels political extremism.

Yet the stakes today are unlike any we have faced before. Nuclear weapons, autonomous drones, environmental degradation, and artificial intelligence have amplified the consequences of our oldest impulses.

These crises did not arise overnight. They are the consequence of centuries of extraordinary achievement coupled with centuries of neglect—and, at times, malevolence: neglect of the natural world, over which we imagine ourselves sovereign; exploitation of other peoples, whose land and resources we coveted and still covet; and our enduring desire to free ourselves from labor, to live without drudgery, like kings.

Despite what appears to be a predictable trajectory toward war, environmental catastrophe, and perhaps even our own irrelevance, our future is not predetermined. These trajectories can still be altered if our consciousness changes. Indeed, I believe that change has already begun

In the current culture, the qualities most admired are measurable ones: productivity, net worth, market value, square footage, accumulation. Quantity has become our highest virtue.

It is no surprise, then, that our newest creation—artificial intelligence—is perfectly suited to this age. AI is astonishingly productive. It never sleeps, never tires, never hesitates, and is unconstrained by many of the qualities our culture increasingly dismisses as inefficiencies: compassion, empathy, patience, contemplation, and simple human decency.

Increasingly, we are expected to keep pace with AI’s relentless speed and output. But organic beings cannot live that way. We require rest, silence, reflection, relationship, and time to integrate experience. Reports are already emerging: those who develop and manage AI systems describe exhaustion and burnout as they struggle to match the tempo of the very machines they have created

If productivity alone becomes our highest value, then the soul, and I believe there is one, becomes an inconvenience. Wisdom has little place in such a world because wisdom cannot be measured by volume or speed.

Yet wisdom teaches precisely the things our culture most neglects: how to live with joy and purpose; how to live in harmony with ourselves, with one another, and with the natural world.

Wisdom is about discernment and quality. It is the opposite of the worship of quantity.

It slows us down.

It asks us to examine our priorities.

It reminds us that although each of us plays only a small part in the vast order of creation, that humble part is nevertheless meaningful and necessary.

For my own part, I find myself drawn once again toward writing about mystery—the mysteries of the soul, the hidden dimensions of consciousness, and the realities that lie beyond what can be counted, measured, or optimized.

We need a counterweight to an age increasingly captivated by materialism—an age that can, astonishingly, speak of compassion as though it were a weakness.

Age itself teaches another lesson.

While we are young, healthy, and capable, we often imagine that our achievements place us firmly in control of life. Yet change is as constant as the tides. Strength fades. Abilities diminish. New generations replace us.

No matter how great our success or influence, we are eventually overtaken by time.

We become, perhaps, like Ozymandias in Shelley’s poem—a monument to human ego slowly crumbling in an empty landscape, reminding us of the impermanence of power and self-serving ambition.

Today there is increasing talk of transcending our biological limits—even of overcoming death itself. Many leaders in the technology world predict that within a few years our lives will be transformed in ways we can scarcely imagine. Indeed, we are already witnessing changes that are reshaping how we work, think, and relate to one another.

Deepfakes have become so convincing that we can no longer trust the evidence of our own eyes and ears. If seeing is no longer believing, where do we turn for truth?

Perhaps, paradoxically, these technologies will lead us back to something we have neglected: smaller communities where we know one another personally, where trust is earned through relationship rather than mediated through screens.

Perhaps every age of material triumph eventually awakens a hunger for something deeper. As our attention is drawn ever more completely toward the external world, might we also begin the journey inward, to the depths of the heart, to wisdom, and to the reality we have long called the soul?

Despite all our inventions, all our convictions, and all our astonishing achievements, the deepest questions remain.

How much do we truly control?

What, in the end, do we actually leave behind?

Is there something in us that survives the body?

The future may well belong, in many ways, to artificial intelligence. And like every powerful tool, it can become a force for great good.

But wisdom has always belonged to the human heart. It remains our greatest guide for confronting life’s deepest challenges and to living joyous meaningful lives.

The question is whether we must first endure great suffering before we remember what has always been our birthright.

Consciousness is not merely something we possess. It is the doorway through which we participate in a greater reality.

Doubtless the next great idea is not technological at all.

Likely it is wisdom.

Photo by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash

At this moment I am filled with emotion — with dread, with optimism, with elation, and with confusion. I feel an emptiness that is rare for me, and a sense that I am saying goodbye to all that was. This is not surprising, because I am in my eighties.

At the same time, I feel something new approaching perhaps less constrained by ancient narratives. After all, it is those stories that I told myself about my origins and the rules of the game that defined the contours of my life. Those stories —a construct similar to a bony scaffolding that helped me stand upright—now feel outgrown, a carapace to be discarded.

My life force continues strong, and my faculties are engaged. It just seems that while the rules of life have not changed, and while I continue to love the familiar old forms and the abundance of beauty and love that still surrounds me, I have climbed another rung on the ladder. From that position I gaze down, witnessing the noisy whirlwind of human opinion and passion, and also looking from a new vantage point, which I cannot yet define.

The world will continue with its humans imagining themselves in control, and nature will continue to be the instrument through which the Divine operates, shaping all our destinies, and I--the journeyer --will embody a new, as yet undefined, and perhaps undefinable understanding. I may be able to leave behind the belief that I have been in control of my life, and — instead— grow actually to love the messy contours of my experience— satisfying in some moments, tragically suffering in others— to then embrace a life seasoned with joy, sorrow, as well as incomprehension.

And so, I am reminded that nature abhors a vacuum, and that any emptiness will inevitably be filled, just as seeds blown by the wind will settle on a barren plain.

The Unconscious Speaks

Some weeks ago, I was in a profound sleep, the sleep that is devoid of dream activity. But then, emerging from the blankness, an image presented itself: an empty space on the wall in my dining room. The painting that had been displayed on the wall over the years, the painting that I looked at every day whenever I ate-- gone. Instead, a place-holder. A shiny tape outlining the rectangular position on the wall where the painting had been.

The painting was a still-life of 5 apples, resting on a white tablecloth. An ornate dark wood frame set off the simplicity of the image and was a focal point of the room.

In the dream vision, unseen hands had removed the painting. Unseen hands had placed shiny tape rectangle to mark the painting’s former home, presumably to guide those same unseen hands when the time came to replace it. Otherwise, why the carefully placed outline?

In an effort to understand the dream image, I reviewed my relationship to the painting. I had never thought I had much emotional attachment to it, but I soon realized it had come to represent the composure and serenity of my home, something enduring and nourishing. And it had been a loving gift from my husband, who had brought it back from a business trip to Mexico.

I should point out that I have had quite a lot of visions in the course of my life, both waking and in dream states and I have always welcomed them. Sometimes these images have had a large impact on me, and have been instrumental in guiding me. I take them seriously. And now— this one appeared to have a message as well, a purpose, lighting the way to something I have yet to discern.

An Answering Silence

The following day, I was in my studio, and I became aware of Silence. The studio is generally quiet, except for birdsong, but this time I felt the Silence as a Presence. My inclination was to turn on music to drown out the Silence and alleviate any discomfort; but instead I sat with it, waiting. Intuitively, I understood that the still-life would be replaced with an image that was more active. In fact, I would be in the image, but now I would be able to go in and out of it: inside to rest and withdraw and observe, and out to participate.

It has been said in ancient wisdom that nothing happens on this earth that is not, first, announced. This was an announcement. I had absolutely no doubt that there would be a significant change in the pattern of my life and in my activity, and that it might involve a new perspective, a different consciousness.

What that “something” would be, I had no idea. Specifics would reveal themselves later.

The matter rested, and now I wait.

The Transition Unfolds

While I was busy questioning, marveling, and using an intellectual approach to unravel the portent of the dream, I saw the disparate parts of myself— specifically: the introvert, the active go-getter life I merge into one.

Integration.

No more inner and outer.

ALL ONE.

Stay tuned for “Transitions: Part Two,” examining how in this material world we can remain attuned to Life’s mysteries and interconnections and reciprocities, in a spirit of awe and appreciation and even joy.

Photo by Dana Ward

The Pull of the Familiar

In the West we see history as linear: armed with science and superior minds, we march toward a better and better world — never mind that all our achievements have brought us to the threshold of unwelcome change.

Wisdom traditions see a different trajectory in human affairs: spirals and cycles.

Because we insist on the linear narrative, we are surprised when the old forms return. This is true of our personal lives as well as our collective lives.

In 1866, the German biologist Ernst Haeckel observed that the human embryo, in its journey from a single fertilized cell to a living creature, passes through stages that mirror the entire evolutionary history of its species — briefly sprouting gill slits like a fish, developing traces of a tail, and so on. It relives, Haeckel postulated, in compressed form, the story of its species’ long becoming.

The biogenetic law, “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”, has been discredited. Haeckel overstated it. And the science doesn’t hold up. But the metaphor survives: forms repeat. Patterns laid down by history, by evolution, by culture, by family, by individuals become the grooves along which new growth flows.

The past does not simply precede us. It lives inside us, exerting its influence on our minds, our emotions, our behavior, even when we deny it.

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” — William Faulkner

I. The Story We Inherit

Before we are old enough to question anything, we are already living inside someone else’s story.

Parents not only feed and shelter a child; they transmit both verbally and without speaking. Often without knowing it or even wishing it, the emotional undercurrent of the parent’s own lives get transmitted; these may include the longing of a life unfulfilled, unspoken fears, unresolved grief, and elaborate survival strategies. An alcoholic parent, for example, might produce an alcoholic child — or a teetotaler. But whether the child moves toward the pattern or away from it, the pattern remains the reference point. As Jung points out, it is the unspoken, the unconscious, that powerfully imprints the child.

The structure repeats, even though we struggle against it, and is handed down through generations until someone does the work of loosening its grip.

Those of us who have found our beginnings challenging, spend parts of our adult lives trying to escape that inheritance. We flee our parents’ religion, politics, neighborhood, class. We choose different partners, different cities, different professions. But then one day we hear our mother’s voice coming out of our own mouths, or find ourselves at a party, gravitating, in a crowded room, toward the one person who carries the same wound of our parent, for example. the one with the alcohol problems.

And we understand: we are not free.

Awareness of the pattern is not freedom from it. It is instead only the beginning of deeper work that requires a new vantage point, a new level of consciousness; finally we learn to act from outside the narrative. This process requires diligence and time.

II. The Civilization We Inherit and Create

What the individual does in one lifetime, civilization does across centuries. The human embryo develops the way millions have developed before it. It is recognizable. And yet while it resembles all other embryos, each is influenced by specific environmental factors, by maternal health, by DNA. And there are other mysterious forces at work, some suggest karma; anyone who has spent time around infants and small children knows they do not enter the world as blank slate, but appear to come with their own dynamic and sometimes with a clear set of instructions.

Society is not an abstraction. It is made of people. Each person is a carrier of private and cultural inheritance, each one like a droplet of water that joins a far larger current. When an individual or a country faces a crisis and needs to summon courage and purpose, it calls on its history, the memory of a parent’s love, long-dead heroes, its founding principles, and its community. In this manner it emboldens itself.

Sometimes we view the solidity of our lives and the structures we build and are filled with pride, only to find ourselves, under pressure, returning to old forms and old patterns.

Look Around.

Between roughly 300 and 600 CE, the decaying Roman Empire faced waves of migrating populations, changing the character of the lands they entered. Feudalism emerged: a world organized around the dominance of a very small number of people over nearly everyone else. Lords and peasants.

Here we are some 1,500 years later revisiting ancient stories and ancient forms. The West is consumed with fears of immigration. And is there worse to come? Many now fear collapse and the implosion of states that can no longer govern themselves. And on the horizon, a new category of refugee: those displaced not by armies but by the earth itself, by fire and drought and the slow failure of water, by coastlines that will no longer hold. The migrations of the 4th to 7th century were substantial for the time. What is coming in the 21st century may dwarf them.

At the top of this destabilized world, a small number of people, empowered by extraordinary resources, accumulate more and more power. Their story differs from the Middle Ages, but the structure is the same: a handful of individuals deciding and implementing plans as to how the rest of us live, work, speak, and are permitted to know. Democracy, which appeared to be a permanent condition for at least a few countries in modern times, begins to look like what it may always have been: a remarkable, fragile, unlikely experiment.

The Pax Romana brought two centuries of relative stability to much of the known world. The Pax Americana anchored a particular order for roughly seventy postwar years. The men who ruled and who rule remain unsatisfied, driven by appetites they cannot satiate. Buddhism has a name for this being: the hungry ghost. The hungry ghost is characterized by an enormous stomach, and a too small mouth and esophagus to ever take in enough. Forever famished.

III. The Question Beneath the Surface

When the story a civilization tells about itself begins to crack, people don’t just question their politics. They question everything — their identities, their bodies, their place in the order of things. Gender roles, long assumed to be fixed. The narratives of the homeland itself.

And some look further still — past the body, past the earth. Dreams of colonizing Mars. Dreams of merging with machines, uploading consciousness, escaping the cycle entirely. If history repeats its forms, if the individual recapitulates their parents’ unfinished story, if the civilization recapitulates the feudal past, then transcendence feels not just desirable but urgent. Can we finally outrun the pattern?

Fortunately or unfortunately, we bring ourselves with us wherever we go. The mind that designs the algorithm, that trains the model, that decides what the future should optimize for — that mind is still the product of everything that came before it. The inherited story goes with us. The appetite to fill the inner emptiness with power, with distraction, with accumulation, goes with us.

Continuing on this path promises to bring deep suffering. We need a reckoning that most individuals, and most civilizations, find ways to avoid. But there is a way through.

IV. The Only Way Out Is Through

This is where pessimism is tempting — and where it becomes a trap.

Development is not a clean recapitulation. It is messier, more variable, less predictable. Individual organisms, and individual people, do sometimes break from the pattern. Evolution happens. Transformation happens. Not through escape, but through awareness — accompanying the external efforts with the slow, difficult, unglamorous work of changing the conditions from the inside.

Just like the embryo develops in predictable stages, the infant develops into a fully grown adult by embodying physical changes and different stages of consciousness development, including, among others: infancy, childhood, adolescence, etc. Each of these levels is a self-contained reality. You no longer remember how you thought as an adolescent but it was radically different than what you think now. It was a world which had its own internally consistent interpretation of human experience. So too, when we reach maturity and pass onto the age of wisdom this is also a natural progression in which the world looks radically different than it did when we were young.

It’s a good idea not to stand in the way of this development into wisdom, lest you stiffen with age. If you go with the flow you can maintain the resilience , the creativity of a child.

But you can also cultivate this level of wisdom and not wait passively for its arrival.

Awareness is not freedom. But it is when freedom begins to becomes possible, when we must engage in disciplined and tireless work, without any guarantee of a reward.

What would it mean to do that work — not just individually, but collectively? To become conscious of the civilizational story we inhabit, not just as a private psychological project but as a political one. What if we refuse to flee into machines, into amusement? What if we insist on the human experiment? Can we do the work of inner transformation that frees us, at least partially, from our ancestors’ unfinished business, and bring that richer attention to bear on the world?

These are not rhetorical questions. They describe actual work: therapeutic, political, communal, imaginative. Work that is already happening throughout the world, in ways that mostly do not make the news.

The question is whether enough of us will do it — before the familiar form closes around us again.

We are in a curious position. We can know the truth of our vulnerability, but still choose illusions of control. We are genuinely vulnerable — any of us can be struck by misfortune, and yet we are also capable of fabricating faith in our own solidity and in the solidity of a reliable world.

We construct a persona, an identity, often as a mask, hoping that our image might endure and insulate us against the unexpected. Over time we imagine the mask reflects our deepest selves. We cling to that persona and to all that persona projects as if it is ours to hold forever; yet our achievement can be undermined by events beyond our control, by expectations disappointed, by children who choose paths not to our liking, by dissolving partnerships.

And so, we have difficulty letting go of concepts, of possessions, of our idea of how things should be. Too often our response to potential difficulty is to turn away. We reach for our screens, our entertainments, our diversions, anything that keeps the deeper questions at a comfortable distance.

Sometimes we awaken in mid-life with a keen awareness we have been living someone else’s dreams.

Life can be pretty much guaranteed to throw us a curve. When it does, we are forced to ask: what compromises have we made for the sake of safety, of achievement? What have we traded away in order to increase our pleasure, to keep the anxiety at bay? Why have our strategies stopped working?

This is not only a predicament of ordinary people navigating ordinary lives. It runs all the way to the top. Among the so-called elites, the psychological terrain is no cleaner. There is jealousy about who has the bigger yacht, anxiety about shifting status, fear dressed up as ambition.

We saw something of this in the strange gravitational pull of Epstein. Why was he so attractive to so many powerful people? Maybe because the powerful are not as powerful as they seem, and he appeared to have it all: above the laws of gravity, unaffected by consequences, unburdened by the ordinary limits that press down on everyone else, acting with impunity. Fascinating. How did he do it? What did he know?

Epstein ended in a rat-infested cell, possibly murdered by his former admirers.

All of our efforts, however brilliant, however impactful, however well-known, will come to an end. For those who have not lived fully--spending their capital instead on calculations of securing advantage, imagining that their power, beauty, and influence will last forever -- they bring upon themselves a deep suffering in trying to hold on to what evaporates and cannot be recaptured.

We may be approaching a moment when technology stretches the lifespan beyond what currently seems comprehensible, but even then, we should acknowledge that it may involve parts of us attached to machines, parts of us merging with machines. We may also be approaching a moment when we figure out how to leave a planet we have poisoned and establish colonies on outer planets, somewhere to send our problems, our garbage, our unresolved selves. Failing that, the “elites” appear to be pinning their hopes on immortality, or failing that, their descent into bunkers, surviving with their insecurities and fears and restlessness intact. Like mole rats in the dark, they may eventually lose their sight.

The instinct for survival is powerful; it exists even in the smallest creature, the cockroach scrambling for its life. But survival and flourishing are not the same thing. And clinging is not the same as living.

What do we actually lose by not letting go? We can proceed adequately: taking care of business, enjoying recreation, feeding ourselves, building a functional life. But we lose something harder to name: the depth, the power, the authenticity of being fully oneself.

The ability to let go varies, of course, among different people. Those who are resilient and creative often find it easier, because their sense of self is not stored in fixed things. It is invested in aliveness itself, in their capacity to be, to make, to engage. There is something here that resembles the way a child inhabits the present moment, not yet burdened by the need to protect an accumulated identity.

I have watched people die in a variety of circumstances. Some believed, right up to the end, that the angel of death would not come for them — that they were exempt. And even in the actual throes of dying, they could not believe what was happening, or more precisely, would not.

“Rage, rage against the dying of the light””--Dylan Thomas.

I have also known people who were more fluid, who moved toward death with a kind of openness. The difference was not about faith or philosophy, not exactly. It was something more like relationship to impermanence — whether they had spent a lifetime fighting it or, in some way, making peace with it.

Looking back on my own life, I would say I inhabited it, sometimes with misguided enthusiasm, whole blocks of decades pursuing things that seemed solid and indeed were for a while. Twenty years, thirty years, forty years of realities that have since disappeared—for example, leaving my parents’ home, leaving a marriage. Those realities seemed as if they would last forever. They did not.

There is a flow beneath the surface, beneath the noise, and you can choose to stay with appearances and invest in a sense of solidity and accomplishment. Or you can acknowledge the flow and live within it at the same time as you take care of business. Clinging itself — to possessions, to identity, to the person we decided we were — may be what costs us most. We do not have to solve mortality to loosen that grip. We only have to look, honestly, at what we are holding and ask ourselves why.

Joy lives in moments. Joy lives in nature and in mystery. Joy lives in impermanence.

To see a World in a grain of sand,

And a Heaven in a wild flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,

And Eternity in an hour.

— William Blake

“Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”

~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 33

Something is shifting in the people I speak with, and perhaps in you. There is a growing exhaustion with outrage, a quiet recognition that our anxiety, and our familiar attempts at solutions, however justified, are not solving anything. Underneath our exhaustion, a question:

Is there another way to meet this moment?

I believe there is, and it begins closer to home than we imagine.

We can choose to evolve. We can begin to move beyond the old patterns of conflict, domination, and division that are no longer sustainable.

We are facing multiple, converging crises: a wild competence in wholesale destruction; the consequences of believing that our mastery of science makes us lords of nature; the development of alien intelligence (AI), predicted to demote us from our perch as the planetary alpha species — not as myth, but as reality. We appear to be reaching the end of an old way of being.

A new consciousness is becoming possible.

Join in a group endeavor to develop that consciousness to meet the future.

Why Small Groups Matter Now

Large-scale transformation has rarely begun with the many. It begins with a smaller number of people who take inner work seriously and stay with it over time. Small shifts, repeated and lived in individual lives, gradually achieve a mass that reaches far beyond their numbers.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has”.

~Margaret Mead

The Work

For many years, I navigated the gap between the life I was living and the life I sensed possible. The aim was simple, though not easy: to become happier, to figure out what was going on. Was transformation possible?

Ultimately my path led me to develop a process called MediSounds® which unfolds through four intertwined practices.

Compassion of the Heart. If you are alive, you have been wounded — by loss, by betrayal, by life itself. Many of us respond by closing the heart in the name of safety, only to discover that life becomes smaller, flatter, less luminous. The work of this group includes a deliberate cultivation of the open heart. We employ MediSounds practices that soften us toward compassion (the long AHHH sound is one of these), and through the patient art of staying present to suffering, our own and others’, without armoring against it. In an age when machines may soon surpass us in nearly every measurable way, the heart’s capacity to love, to witness, and to soften is what no algorithm can replicate. It is also, in the end, what sustains us.

The Power of Our Own Voices. Through specific, intentional MediSounds meditative sound practices, we work with vibration as a tool for transforming energy and consciousness. Each sound corresponds to one of the energy centers described in the ancient symbol of the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life symbol contains within it a ladder of awareness available to anyone intent on climbing it. The voice becomes both instrument and teacher, and you can benefit from its gifts anywhere, every day, for the rest of your life.

Self-Observation. Through the patient work of coming home to ourselves, noticing our reactions without judgment, watching the patterns we have lived inside for years, we begin to know our truer selves, and we are freed to perceive different ways of being more aligned with our essential nature. This clarity changes us. We become clearer, calmer, happier, and live with purpose.

The Power of Community. The inner journey can be enhanced when we sit regularly with others who are doing the same work, who reflect back what we cannot see in ourselves, who hold us steady when we waver. In addition, our work will hopefully be part of creating a better shared future.

This work is not about withdrawing from life. This work is about meeting life differently -- with joy, and compassion to oneself.

Community is not the social wrapping around the practice.

Community is part of the practice.

The Group

I am forming a small, closed founding group designed as a sustained, year-long journey — not a short course. Depth is the point, and depth takes time.

The container. We meet twice monthly online for one hour. Confidentiality is both respected and expected. Sessions are not recorded, in service of the privacy and presence of the room. The group draws on honest conversation in a space where depth is not just permitted but assumed. Participants are welcome to bring concerns from their private and public lives. Together we learn to observe our reactions without analysis, and to see the openings to which that noticing leads.

What a meeting looks like. Each meeting opens with a short MediSounds practice we do together — a few vocal sounds that settle us into the room and into ourselves. From there we move into the heart of the hour: honest conversation about what each of us has been noticing in our daily life, what is asking to be looked at, where the practice is meeting resistance and where it is opening something new. We notice how the simple act of noticing alters unwanted behavior. I offer guidance and reflection along the way.

The practice. Between meetings, each participant will have a daily practice of sound and self-observation, integrating them into the texture of ordinary life to inform it.

Who this is for — and who it is not. This group is for those who have already begun the inner journey and are ready to go deeper — not as beginners, but as sincere practitioners. It is not intended for those looking primarily for relaxation techniques, nor for those entirely new to contemplative life. If you are uncertain whether the fit is right, please reach out; a brief conversation usually makes it clear.

Equally important, you will not be doing this work alone. One of the quiet gifts of a committed group is belonging to others who understand the journey and are genuinely trying to live it. That companionship is itself a form of healing and a gateway to laughter.

This is not a lecture series. It is not a wellness class. It is an intimate gathering for people who sense that the inner life matters, and that tending it is perhaps the most urgent and most hopeful thing any of us can do right now.

Practical Details

Group size. The group swill be intentionally small — maximum six participants — so that each person receives real attention and the work can go to genuine depth.

Dates. The groups will form on a rolling basis. Send an email to shulamitelson@gmail.com to express interest.

Cadence. Meetings will be held by Zoom, twice monthly , (for example, the first and third Tuesday of each month), for one hour. Times will be set with the group, balancing the time zones of those who join.

Preparation. No prior materials are required. Those who would like to begin familiarizing themselves with the work are welcome to visit shulamitelson.com/books-cds, read the Substack entries, listen to recordings at youtube.com/@medisounds, or sounds on soundpharmacy.com or on greatoctave.com

Investment. Please write for details.

The prize of a cultivated heart is

joy, presence, and connection.

About Me

At its center, this has always been heart work. What I have learned about love, loss, and the cultivation of compassion is what shapes how I teach, not as theory, but as the ground beneath the practice.

I have spent more than thirty years following a thread that first appeared in my own life as a question I could not answer any other way.

I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home and spent twelve years studying scripture. A life-threatening kidney illness in my twenties intensified a yearning I had carried since childhood — a sense that there was a deeper structure to existence than the one we are usually shown. I went on to earn a master’s degree from New York University and build a corporate career on Wall Street. By every external measure, the life worked. Inside, the question never quieted.

At forty, sitting in meditation during the time I was working at an investment bank, specific vocal sounds began to come through me, sounds I had never been taught, that did not belong to any music I knew, that carried something I recognized without being able to name.

I eventually left corporate life to follow them. A trip to Jerusalem deepened the work. I encountered the writings of Joseph Gikatilla, a 13th-century Andalusian mystic and student of the vocal meditator and innovator Abraham Abulafia. Abulafia’s process of using vowel sounds to ascend states of consciousness mirrored what I had been hearing from within.

Those teachings, coupled with the sounds I had received in meditation, became MediSounds, a vocal “ladder” of practices rooted in the Tree of Life. No doctrine is required. No musical training either. Only sincere intention. The vibration itself carries the wisdom, meeting each person where they are.

I have had students from different faith traditions. The work is non-denominational.

For decades I have taught this work at the Omega and Esalen Institutes, in private practice in New York, and across Europe, India, Singapore, Mexico, and the Holy Land. I have taught at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and walked with people through profound hardship — parents of children with cancer, AIDS patients in Mexico City. I was once invited by a U.S. Congressman to sound in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, where the dome offered a unique resonance.

I authored Kabbalah of Prayer: Sacred Sounds and the Soul’s Journey and recorded Vibration, a collaboration between my voice and eight Tibetan monks from the Drepung Gomang Monastery in India. I developed Snap Nap App for restorative sleep. Through the SoulSongs® School I mentor individual students; through The Great Octave Foundation I bring MediSounds to the wider public, in service of the cause of peace.

A Personal Note

This work, pursued with discipline and care, brought me great gifts: resilience, presence, joy, wisdom, and everyday happiness. My own relationship with the sounds has carried me from confusion to simplicity, from sorrow to purpose, and sustained me through the deepest loss of my life, the death of my daughter. That lived experience shapes my teaching: the work has to be grounded to inform a life.

I wish to share this gift with you, especially now, when we each need a centered, compassionate presence to meet the radical changes before us — and to help birth a new world we would be proud to participate in.

Words from Students

“Guided by Shulamit Elson and her grounded teaching, MediSounds has become a tangible and powerful organizing pillar of my daily life. The regular practice of MediSounds continues to deepen my connection to myself, to those most important in my life, to humanity, and to God.”

— David, MD, Maryland

“After a year’s work I have evolved to live more freely, completely, and honestly, in each and every moment — to truly feel deeply.”

— DD, Rochester, NY

If This Calls To You

If something in you resonates with this invitation, I would love to hear from you. I respond to every inquiry personally, and we will set up a short conversation to see whether this is the right group for you at this time.

Contact: shulamitelson@gmail.com

(Please include “MediSounds Group” in your subject line.)

With warmth and gratitude,

Shulamit

I'm sorry I haven't been in touch this week — we have a death in the family and I need a bit of time. I look forward to connecting with you next week.

Best wishes, Shulamit.

This essay explores what endures when everything else fades: youth, status, power, legacy, even certainty itself. Drawing on personal experience, history, and the quiet wisdom of compassion, it points toward a different way of seeing, one grounded not in the material, but in lived meaning.

The Soul’s Business

It has become increasingly unfashionable to speak of the soul. Compassion, too, has fallen out of favor, considered weak and too feminine for the aggressive masculine energy currently in vogue.

Not to worry. AI has come to rescue us. We are, it turns out, nothing more than a series of synapses and neurons, a biochemical machine whose behaviors can be mapped, manipulated, and repaired mechanically.

All of our sorrows --our mental illnesses, our physical suffering, even our death-- can potentially be overcome by our powerful new machines. So persuasive and pervasive is this idea that the BBC and CNN reported that Putin and Xi were overheard discussing how their own life spans could extend to 150 years; they might even become immortal.

But, I myself don’t feel mechanical, and have no desire to be a well-oiled machine. I feel the presence of my soul as temporarily inhabiting this body in this time; I believe that when I “shuffle off this mortal coil” my soul will continue its journey, hopefully even more connected to what has sustained me in this world.

I have had visions from other realms that have directed my life. You could argue that my visions are a product of my own brain, that my visions and beliefs are delusions, that there is no God. But I don’t base my life on what can be proven in a laboratory, or on what is currently fashionable. I base it on what I know in my soul to be true.

And I’m not here to tell you what to think or who to be. I’m simply telling you what I believe.

I can’t prove the materialists wrong, but in any case I have no need to prove anything.

What I know begins here: a life without meaning is a very sad affair. And a life built purely on power and influence, even beauty, however dazzling it appears from the outside, is, at its core, sorrowful. Because power, like youth, fades, and power doesn’t satisfy; it always wants more. The sexy young body becomes the matron; the matron, with insight and work, a wise elder. The athlete’s muscles soften. The famous face blurs. We watch our idols struggle as their circumstances change, as what they built for permanence, turns out not to be so stable after all.

Shakespeare knew this. “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”. The very powerful are always worried their heads are about to be cut off. And they feel the hatred waiting at the edges, not only from distant enemies but from within the circle closest to them. History gives us no shortage of examples. “Et tu Brute”. No one is exempt from the vicissitudes of aging, from reversals of fortune.

You can feel yourself king of the world, certain your presence will echo for thousands of years. And then one day someone finds your statue broken and abandoned in the desert. In Shelley’s words:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair”.

Only the despair remains.

Some people bet on their legacy continuing because of their work or through their children. But children have a way of becoming only- themselves, disappointing their parents. We raise them and they adore us absolutely, and then they grow up and see our weaknesses, and push against us to find themselves; and then if we live long enough we watch them mature, hopefully do well; and then they age too, and perhaps even die before us, and the whole idea of being above it all, of having secured some permanent place, dissolves.

The monument crumbles. The children go their own way. The work we thought would last doesn’t hold beyond a generation or two, then gets nullified, or transformed beyond recognition, or simply forgotten.

This is not tragedy. The world doesn’t let us down. Life simply Is. It is our expectations that let us down.

There is a wider seeing available to us, though. It doesn’t stand above life or apart from it. It sees the way a parent sees a young child’s tantrum — knowing that underneath the fury there is just hunger, or exhaustion. It sees the way a seasoned adult sees an adolescent’s protracted and noisy drama, with shock or bewilderment perhaps, but with the knowledge that this is a stage, that adulthood is trying to emerge.

As you age, you can fight your own ultimate insignificance or come to this kind of seeing. A sense of love and continuity. A humble place, not the performative humility of someone announcing their own modesty, but a genuine respect and acceptance of your actual position: standing between the past and the unknown future, soon to be gone from the scene.

The soul knows its place. It knows, what it came here to do. It yearns to return to the source, which can put it in conflict with our ego. We need and want to feel whole. And that yearning is not a dysfunction. It is not a symptom. It is the most reliable thing about us.

We suffer, and our suffering can bring us to a compassionate acceptance. Compassion, it turns out, is not weakness. It is the most practical thing available to us. In my own experience, I have been the recipient of this kindly, non-judgemental approach from friends, relatives and passers-by. By their example, I have learned to step away from fault finding and victimization to a better approach, to one of self-acceptance, the acceptance of others, and finally to greater happiness.

There is also research, if research is what you need: studies of Buddhist monks who have spent twenty years meditating on compassion showing that their brains actually change. The neural architecture shifts. They are measurably happier, not because they have been exempted from suffering, but because they have stopped pretending they are immune. They feel tenderness toward their own pain, their own misjudgments and ignorant actions. And from that tenderness, comes the kindness toward the pain and missteps of others, clearing the way for moments of pure joy.

Compassion works because it is honest. It acknowledges what is actually true: that you will get sick, that you will lose people, that your powers will change, that despair visits everyone. You are not above this. Neither is anyone else. And in that shared vulnerability something opens, a kind of warmth toward yourself and toward every other person struggling with the same impossible and beautiful task of being alive.

In February 2026, 19 Buddhist monks and their dog completed a 2,300-mile “Walk for Peace” from Texas to Washington, D.C., promoting compassion, unity, and nonviolence. They marched for over 108 days, often barefoot and in harsh weather conditions.

Their journey inspired millions online.

I am a person of faith, not a faith that needs to prove itself, or recruit anyone, or win arguments. My faith is simply this: life is more mysterious than what we see on the surface, each have a role to play, in this life and beyond it. I believe that my behavior influences what comes next. That is reason enough to try to behave well.

Because of that faith, my life feels meaningful, loving and connected. I feel, even in difficulty, even in uncertainty, a connection that I can only call a soul connection. It is not something I acquired. It was always there. I just had to clear away the noise and falsehood to feel it.

That is the soul’s business. And it turns out to be the only business that endures.

Shulamit

Humanity stands at a critical inflection point where outer power has outpaced inner development. Though we contain multiple dimensions, rational, emotional, spiritual, and hidden , we tend to over-rely on one, creating fragmentation within ourselves and in the world. Like Piaget’s child who cannot yet see beyond his current capabilities, we are limited by the level of consciousness we inhabit. Genuine transformation demands embodiment, not just understanding. A wholesale awakening isn’t necessary — but enough individuals willing to do sincere inner work may create enough mass so as to bring about a tipping point: We can create a pathway to a new more peaceful world.

Like the unseen work within a chrysalis, change may already be underway.

The Butterfly Effect

“… Only a blind man could detect the truth of its beauty at maturity.

Only a fool could believe the gentle flutter of its wings would affect the weather in Beijing.

Who would suspect thrones shake from the power of the Fragile and Useless?”

excerpt from a poem by Shulamit © 1999

Can We Transform?

A human being encompasses many worlds and has many inner resources to draw upon.

We have a rational mind that solves problems. We have an emotional life that feels, responds, and experiences. We have a spiritual dimension, sometimes quiet, not always visible, that nonetheless infuses our lives and, at certain moments, reveals itself with great force.

And we have hidden aspects of ourselves, depths we are not aware of, which may emerge only under pressure or in rare and meaningful moments.

All of this is grounded in a body, our lived experience.

The Limits of What We Can See

And yet, we can see only what we are capable of seeing.

Jean Piaget demonstrated this in a simple experiment. A four-year-old child, shown two identical pencils side by side, understands they are the same length. But when the pencils are arranged in a right angle, the child believes one side is longer. The perception is not corrected by explanation. The child simply does not yet have the capacity to see differently.

At five, the same child sees clearly.

So it is with us.

When we are embedded in a particular level of consciousness, we cannot perceive beyond it. The infant cannot perceive the toddler’s world. The toddler cannot perceive the school-age child’s world, the teenager the adult world. And even though we have lived through all these stages, we cannot understand them once we outgrow them, as we learn when we become parents.

We may read wisdom teachings. We may recognize its truths. And yet, we cannot embody it.

Why This Matters Now

Throughout history, our leaders mostly lacked wisdom; their decisions and will to power brought unnecessary suffering. Yet, their willful actions did not carry consequences on a truly global scale. There was always time to recover.

We are living in an age where our violent tendencies, our need to dominate our environment, our hubris, and our spectacular armaments can become catastrophic on a global scale. So thrilled are we with our cleverness, that we are denying our hearts.

The centuries of fighting, and the centuries of scientific advances are now meeting and at an inflection point. We are too interconnected to not learn how to live together. At the same time, our vaunted technology will not get us out of our age old problems of greed, fear, acquisitiveness and will to power.

And so the question is no longer abstract: Can we change?

The Possibility of Transformation

To alter the self-destructive trajectory of our societies, we do not need everyone to awaken. But we do need enough people to develop an expanded consciousness to reach a tipping point.

There have always been individuals and small groups who have undertaken the work of inner transformation, through meditation, prayer, service, and disciplined self-observation.

I cannot claim a perfect transformation. But I can say this: My work, which I have pursued diligently, has brought me clarity. I am less reactive. More thoughtful. Calmer. More loving. Happier.

And perhaps most importantly, I have stopped projecting my inner conflicts onto the world. And I have come to recognize the inter-connection of all beings.

Transformation requires something difficult: the willingness to face oneself.

This work of transformation can be done alone or in community through religion, through nature, through practice.

There are many paths.

The Fragmentation of the Human Being

One of our central shortcomings is that we rely too heavily on one aspect of ourselves.

Some live almost entirely in the rational mind. Others are governed by emotion. Others turn toward spirituality alone.

But a human being is not meant to function in fragments.

The fuller, wiser approach is synthesis and integration: to listen to what each aspect of ourselves has to say and bring them into relationship, caring for them as parts of a whole.

Because when we divide ourselves, when we emphasize only the strongest aspect of ourselves, we create imbalance.

Too much rationality leads to dryness. Too much emotion leads to confusion. Too much spirituality, without grounding, can lead to delusion.

Fragmentation does not lead to safety; it leads to instability. And what is suppressed does not disappear. It returns, often as a disruptive force.

We see this not only within ourselves, but in the world, in our conflicts, in our politics, in our environmental crises, in our relationships.

We are one being.

A Shift in Values

Our culture elevates what can be counted: income. size. productivity. metrics.

But transformation does not occur through quantity.

It occurs through quality of being.

Clarity, Presence, Compassion, Love, Responsibility

As is often attributed to Einstein: We cannot solve our problems at the same level of consciousness that created them.

The Crisis We Face

Our technological brilliance has brought us to a threshold.

We have created systems that sustain and systems that destroy.

We have medicines that save lives, and weapons that can end them on a massive scale.

We have artificial intelligence with enormous promise, yet it is largely driven by speed, competition, and profit.

We see the same pattern again and again: Power has outpaced wisdom.

And this imbalance is now visible everywhere: in environmental instability, in social fragmentation, in personal disconnection, in rising anxiety, addiction, and violence.

We may imagine these problems are distant. They are not. What we neglect returns to us, sometimes with great force.

Is Our Situation Hopeless?

I do not believe so.

Wisdom traditions have existed for thousands of years. Their teachings are widely available. And yet, we struggle.

Why?

Because knowing is not the same as embodying.

We cannot live on quotations alone.

The Invitation of This Moment

For the first time in our human history, we are collectively confronted with the possibility of our own undoing—not as myth, but as reality.

And because of that, something new becomes possible: we can choose to evolve.

We can begin to value not only what can be measured, but what must be felt, loved, and integrated. We can begin to move beyond the old patterns of endless conflict, domination, division.

These patterns are no longer sustainable. In many ways, we are living through the final expressions of an older way of being. And as it fades, it resists.

That is one of the reasons why the world feels so turbulent.

But this is not only frightening. It is also an opening.

The Tipping Point

I have often wondered whether real change — deep change in human character — is actually possible. When we look at the world, optimism can be difficult to sustain. And yet, even though the same patterns repeat endlessly, I have met extraordinary individuals who have changed themselves in meaningful ways, and who have had a positive influence on those they have encountered. As they have grown in consciousness they have become less reactive, more aware, more capable of holding complexity; feeling the interconnection of all beings, they act in the world with compassion and love.

That has been my own experience, at least in part. Not a perfect transformation, but a real and meaningful one. Enough to know that even what seems intractable can shift.

The Mongols converted to Buddhism, after all.

As the current crisis intensifies, there will be more people drawn to the path of growth and change — individuals who are willing to look at themselves honestly. Large-scale societal transformation has rarely been initiated by the many. Societal change tends to begin with a smaller number of people who, for reasons that are not always clear, take this inner work seriously and stay with it over time.

And then they meet the moment.

We tend to think change must be large and visible to be impactful. But it is the small shifts, repeated and lived in individual lives, which gradually achieve a degree of mass, to impact far beyond their numbers. When enough individuals undertake this difficult and crucial work, becoming more conscious, more integrated, they choose to act with decency and awareness; they are restrained when necessary, and willing to act when required.

The question is not whether humanity can change, but whether we, individually, are willing to take part in that change — without certainty, without guarantees, but with the recognition that our current way of living is no longer sustainable.

We will reach a tipping point when enough of us are willing step forward— not with certainty, but with faith and commitment.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead

The Aristocrat, watercolor by Shulamit

Most of us search for guidance at some point in our lives. We seek love, meaning, mastery, connection, and protection. To find what we are looking for, we often turn to teachers and role models. Yet the search is challenging: Some teachers are sincere but not right for us. Others are shallow. And some are wolves in sheep’s clothing, eager to separate us from our money, our independence, or even our dignity.

Learning to recognize a genuine wisdom teacher is one of the most important and difficult tasks a seeker faces.

We Are All Seekers

We are all seekers. We seek love, acceptance, meaning and connection, competence, mastery, and respect. To find what we are looking for, we need teachers and role models.

We may have achieved a degree of worldly success, but we still may not be quite comfortable in our skin; we may hunger for inner peace, wholeness, and happiness. Sometimes we are told what should satisfy us, but it doesn’t satisfy, especially when life hits us with a grievous loss. Restless or wounded, we must widen our search.

How do we find the right path? A genuine guide? Where?

Our mothers and fathers, our siblings, teach us to negotiate the world, to survive and thrive. They try to steer us by passing on their life experience. Later, friends, peers, and teachers gain influence. We hear of people who appear to have achieved a transcendence, or a kind of success that seems to offer limitless possibilities and protection from sorrow. We choose among these heroes and ascribe to them superhuman capabilities and virtues.

We learn along the way, however, that humans disappoint; they aren’t perfect and don’t have it as together as we’d hoped.

“Trust, but verify.” — Ronald Reagan

Once we begin our search in earnest, potential teachers and groups appear. Some are worthwhile but may not be suited to us, being too far from our culture, and ill-fitted to our personality; though their very foreignness might make them more attractive. And there are always those happy to separate you from your money or your loved ones. Some will even exploit you sexually.

If we place our faith and trust in manipulative teachers…wolves in sheep’s clothing, we risk not only lost time, but grievous spiritual harm: a loss of faith in the very possibility of higher consciousness.

Treasures, by definition, are rare and never easy to find or acquire, even when hidden in plain sight. Like the heroes of fairy tales, the seeker must travel perilous paths and endure the terror of inner demons and an untamed mind. Ascending in consciousness is not a simple matter.

The Problem with False Teachers

Today, we are disillusioned. Institutions that seemed impregnable 50 years ago have profoundly disappointed. Public figures we admired have revealed clay feet. Scandals involving religious, political, and cultural leaders have eroded our confidence in society and in human possibility.

Because of this, some conclude that all teachers are corrupt and all religion is manipulative. That is the wrong, and despairing, conclusion.

Fulfilled lives are possible. Spiritual life is attainable, and genuine teachers still exist, even in corrupt times.

We need our heroes. We need to be inspired and to have someone to emulate.

All That Glitters

When people begin searching for deeper meaning, they often turn toward those who carry a stamp of approval, those whom the world has declared successful. Often it is the media that anoints them, telling the story of these wondrous souls, seemingly insulated from sorrow and decay. The famous, the wealthy, the charismatic … and even the curated lives on Instagram, can appear to lead the way.

Financial success can begin to look like proof of wisdom, and like a guarantee of protection.

But wealth proves only one thing: that a person is good at making money. Wisdom and happiness are not by-products of prosperity. And none of us escapes sorrow.

The worst teachers can sometimes be the ones with the most razzle-dazzle.

An Early Glimpse

When I was a young woman, my father brought me to meet a Rabbi he admired deeply, a man who had devoted his life to study and to God. I wasn’t particularly enthused. I was seventeen and had my mind on other things.

My encounter with this man lasted only a few minutes. When we entered, he rose from his chair and came to welcome me. His face shone with an inner light. He greeted me warmly and offered me his blessing.

That was all. No advice. No “teaching”.

But in that brief encounter, I understood what was possible. I saw a human being genuinely connected to a spiritual light, in whom nothing appeared lacking…serenity, grace, undeniable authority, and genuine humility. I never forgot him. That moment has been a reference point I carry even to this day, decades later.

William Blake described this level of consciousness:

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand, And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour.”

The Search Begins

For the first decades of my adult life, no matter where I placed myself, I felt like a square peg in a round hole, searching for something I could not name and wasn’t sure existed. The longing was too persistent to ignore, but I didn’t know what to do about it. When I left my parents’ home, I was excited to explore the world and have adventures, finding out what the world had to offer.

From eighteen on, I explored with gusto. Then everything blew up in my face; I was brought to a dead stop. In my twenties, I became seriously ill. For four years, I confronted the possibility of a greatly shortened life. I was taking massive doses of cortisone, which changed the way I looked: I had the characteristic moon-face of someone undergoing that treatment. I remember asking myself: Who am I if I am not my face?

I made a decision: if I recovered, I would dedicate my life to finding meaning and living according to a new understanding.

I did recover completely, despite being told there was no way to halt the progression of my disease.

I was twenty-seven.

Ten Years of Stumbling

With my promise made, I began to explore traditions and teachers beyond the one in which I had been raised. My upbringing had given me a solid grounding, and I loved much of what it offered, but I could not find my way through it to the path that would bring me the connection I craved.

Some teachers were sincere and had something real to offer, but they were simply not right for me. Others were shallow. And some were clearly charlatans. Fortunately, my nature is iconoclastic; I seem to be constitutionally incapable of worshipping people. This was reinforced by an upbringing that had taught me to keep my eyes open and beware of false gods. That training served me well.

For ten years, while leading a “normal” life, I stumbled along. I met teachers and examined each teaching, dismissing some, learning from others, feeling as though I wasn’t getting anywhere.

Nevertheless, I kept going, propelled by something I couldn’t quite name.

The Path Unfolds

Life continued with its ordinary pleasures, confusions and responsibilities. I moved forward without a clear map.

Then, around the age of forty, something unexpected happened. Persistence and yearning, and my personal effort, unexpectedly started to pay off. I began to find my feet.

I had come upon a best-selling self-help book called The Relaxation Response, published in 1975 by Dr. Herbert Benson, a Harvard physician. Written to help overstressed men reduce their susceptibility to heart attacks, the book contained a description of a simple meditation practice. At that time, I, like many others, had never heard of meditation. I decided to try it. I was stunned by its instant effectiveness. In my case, not only did my mind calm, but I began having visions of other realms, of joyous realities.

I had those glorious visions, but no power to call them back. It was clear to me that if I wanted to get closer to that joy, I would have to work for it.

And then I had an extraordinary experience: vocal sounds arose spontaneously during meditation. I had no framework for understanding them, yet I knew they needed to be expressed. They were alien to me, and yet I was drawn by their power.

I understood that I had been given a plan and a process. Now I had to figure out what the plan was and how to follow it. There wasn’t anyone who could explain it to me; yet I sensed that the sounds held the key for me to live more joyfully.

I followed the breadcrumbs, practicing the sounds, trying them out with friends. I also began working to clean up my behavior so that I might live within that joyful reality, so tantalizingly and briefly glimpsed. Gradually, I combined these sound practices with careful self-observation, and little by little, my life began to change. I gained confidence and stopped living other people’s dreams.

The practices did bring me joy and a sense of profoundly supportive connection, but they did not spare me from sorrow. Life still brought grief, including the death of my beloved daughter; yet, the practices allowed me greater grace and steadiness in the face of devastating loss.

What a Real Teacher Looks Like

The teachers who guided me were not wealthy celebrities with large followings. They were known in their communities but worked outside of the spotlight. They were kind, honest, unpretentious, and steady people who shared what they knew and walked beside me for a time. When our learning was completed, we parted with joy, gratitude, and loving wishes for the future. No clinging.

This is how learning works. A child, a pianist, or an athlete will study with different teachers throughout the years of their long development. Similarly, a spiritual seeker may encounter several guides along the way. A serious student remains alert to life, learning from everything and everyone, including the so-called ordinary.

Finding a trustworthy guide requires the same discernment we use in any important relationship. Take your time. Look beyond what others have told you. Let trust grow slowly.

A genuine teacher is also a seeker, always on the path themselves.

They walk the talk, and they don’t want to own you.

The Real Work

The path toward wholeness is not easy. It requires self-knowledge, will, discipline, and honesty. Many people fear looking inward, imagining they will find an abyss. Yet what they usually discover is something more wonderful…themselves.

Those unwilling to make a deep effort may place their faith in the more transient. Even if the results are often dubious and fragile, it is genuinely difficult to live without some form of faith in something greater.

Learning to see ourselves clearly is the hardest work there is. But it is the beginning of freedom.

Final Thoughts

If you are looking for a teacher, keep your eyes open. Do not be dazzled by wealth, fame, charisma, or even spiritual gifts.

Be patient with your practice. Discipline over time brings lasting results.

If you are uncomfortable with the teacher or teaching, examine your discomfort. Don’t dismiss it. You could be struggling with growth pains, with the difficulty of facing uncomfortable truths, or something in the relationship may not be right.

Observe your teacher and your community. The pursuit of faith is always accompanied by its companion, doubt. When confronted with doubt, you will have to choose, yet again, whether you want to renew and deepen your faith or you prefer to withdraw. Teachers can make persuasive arguments or resort to manipulations to keep you in their fold. You will have to decide whether or not they are worthy of your trust. This is where keeping your eyes open matters. Character reveals itself slowly.

Genuine teachers can look very ordinary. They don’t always live in India. Sometimes they are living quietly two doors down.

With their guidance, you can gradually come to embody an ancient timeless wisdom. And in so doing, you begin to live that wisdom naturally, through your own joyous authentic self.

“When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” Anonymous

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2026/03/16

Super Mom, Watercolor by Shulamit Elson. 2019

A World Under Strain

We are living in a frightening moment in human history, one that can feel like a cosmic overturning. We may feel overwhelmed and defeated; we might believe that individual effort is pointless and ineffective in the face of multiple profound challenges. And yet here we are, like it or not.

Conflict itself is not new. What is new is that, in the world we now inhabit, many genuinely wonder whether humanity can survive.

We face several existential threats at once: the dizzying speed of artificial intelligence infiltrating our lives, challenging not only our jobs, our sense of meaning and purpose, but feeding a fear of being replaced; nuclear weapons which can be deployed at the discretion of a handful of self-serving individuals; and the relentless destabilization of the natural systems that sustain us, warming oceans that can disrupt the food supply, adversely effecting fish and agriculture, and bringing rising seas to inundate coastal cities.

Yet, emotionally and politically, we continue to behave as we always have done: driven by ancient fears and greed; we remain reactive and seek security within our tribe.

As the biologist Edward O. Wilson observed:

“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”

The Question

And so the question: What can I do?

As a society, we have attempted solutions to soften the impact of climate change; we have treaties to help prevent nuclear annihilation. These efforts appear to have been abandoned. We could create laws to ensure that AI serves humanity rather than the other way around, but without political will, this seems unlikely.

But it is not too late to prepare for a better future.

Certainly, we can’t rely on solutions from our leadership; they seem unequal to the moment.

It really is up to us.

The Stories We Live By

We grow up inside belief systems passed on by our elders, but we are even more profoundly shaped by what we experience. From those inputs, we develop a narrative about how the world works. By adulthood, we act from what we believe we know and what we think we desire, projecting those assumptions onto the world around us. In this way, we continuously create and recreate the world we inhabit, reinforcing our worldview. The child of an alcoholic may marry an alcoholic. Or a teetotaler.

And let’s face it: most of us are inwardly divided. We are filled with conflicting desires, pressured by external demands and by our own internal narratives. Often, we turn our inward division outward to hatred, as if sacrificing another might ensure our safety.

Very few of us possess a deep and stable calm.

We know that in our own lives, anger rises faster than understanding, and sometimes calcifies into resentment. We can feel outrage at items in the news without knowing the story’s accuracy. We divide the world into those who think and look like us -- and those who don’t. One thing is clear:

We are working from a familiar playbook, and it has brought us to this very dangerous point.

Looking Closer to Home

What if –instead-- we could bring ourselves into greater internal alignment and generate a peace within us that gradually spreads outward into the lives of others in our circle.

Can calm and kindness be as contagious as anxiety and demonization?

The means of achieving deep calm are available to every human being.

Like most people, I carried many competing and contradictory forces within myself. I had desires I barely understood, alongside a longing to find and express my true self, though I had little idea what that self actually was, and absolutely no idea of how to find it.

At the same time, there were the expectations of family, community, and institutions, standards I felt I was somehow failing to meet.

And there was the advice of others: ‘This is how it is. What do you expect?”

And then there was Jesus’ advice: “Seek and ye shall find. Knock, and the door will be opened.”

I decided to follow the wise advice, even though I had no idea whether what I was looking for even existed.

Inside me, there were constant arguments: Why can’t I be like everyone else? Why can’t I be satisfied with material success? What would make me less restless? What do I want? What’s my problem?

I often felt like a square peg in a round hole.

Looking at others, I imagined they possessed some secret for navigating the world. They seemed to know how to “go along to get along,” while I fumbled my way through life.

Learning to Observe

At a certain point, the discomfort became untenable, and I decided to use my own life, my own struggles, as my lesson plan. I began observing myself— my thoughts, reactions, and motivations. Although I’d never heard of them at the time, these were the teachings of the Stoics. In trying to understand my experience, I realized something simple:

The conflict I saw in my world did not begin out there. It began inside me.

Encouraged by my insight, I worked slowly and deliberately toward inner steadiness through meditation and self-observation. The work was gradual, but the result was worth the effort.

What I discovered surprised me.

Many of the things I had been chasing did not fundamentally interest me. I was chasing other people’s dreams.

When I began observing my specific behaviors and thought patterns in the moment they occurred, without harsh judgment, without analytics, simply with a noticing, those patterns lost their grip on me, and something slowly began to change.

I began to settle.

Gradually, authentic desires emerged, desires that actually belonged to me rather than those sold to me by others. I became less defensive. I became calmer and happier.

I also discovered something else: it was possible to hold opposing forces within myself without being torn apart by them.

Because I am one person and I have a core, I can accept that there is noise and dissonance, but I don’t have to live there. I can contain many voices, impulses, fears, and ambitions. I can respond to external demands and internal demands—without losing my balance.

This change did not occur through any miracle. It happened through careful observation, examining my thoughts and reactions with honesty and compassion, with discipline over time.

There is even a principle in quantum mechanics that states that observation itself alters what is being observed.

Gradually, through my practice, I became more integrated, more peaceful, and more capable of hearing viewpoints very different from my own.

And this brings me back to the world.

From Inner Conflict to Outer Conflict

What happens inside us does not remain private. It is projected outward.

“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a. man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is, and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” — Mahatma Gandhi

Inner conflict becomes political conflict. Personal resentment becomes collective hostility. Our need for safety through beliefs in our superiority becomes domination and exploitation.

“Why can’t we all just get along?” — Rodney King, commenting on the L.A. Riots, 1992

The way to effect change is to change oneself.

Where the Work Begins

If we continue throwing bombs at one another, ignoring environmental collapse, and racing forward with technologies we barely understand, the destination is clear.

Thoughtful opinions alone will not resolve the dilemmas we now face. Nor will demonizing those who disagree with us. Nor will hatred directed toward marginalized peoples help us. When such hatreds intensify, it is often a sign that something deeper in society is under threat. Hatreds are like canaries in a coal mine, warning us of danger ahead.

Perhaps not all of the unfolding catastrophes can be avoided. But if enough of us undertake the patient work of understanding ourselves—becoming steadier, less reactive, less driven by fear and hostility—a new consciousness may emerge.

And it may prove contagious.

Perhaps your work begins exactly where mine did: closer to home.

Commit to discovering who you truly are. Explore and accept your complex, contradictory humanity with compassion and loving kindness. Notice your reactions, your assumptions, the quick judgments, the tightening of the body, the impulse to divide, the internal arguments that rush to defend and justify.

If you can pause your mind, even briefly, the silence will allow for other possibilities to emerge.

This may seem like a not terribly important effort, but it is not. It brings us greater happiness and quietly spreads calm and kindness to those around us.

From such small beginnings, a new level of consciousness can grow. And in that light, we may discover how to live together—and how to make peace with ourselves, with one another, and with the Earth we share.

We create our future with the choices we make in the present moment.

Turtles All the Way Down, Shulamit Elson 2021

From childhood questions about who created God to a lifetime of reflection on faith, institutions, and human longing, this essay explores the enduring mystery at the heart of existence. If certainty about God, justice, or the meaning of suffering remains beyond our grasp, what remains is trust, the quiet willingness to live in alignment with deeper principles even when the architecture of the universe remains hidden. In a time when many are turning away from institutions yet still searching for meaning, this essay asks whether faith might be less about answers and more about learning how to live within Mystery.

Turtles All the Way Down

On God, Mystery, and Trust

When I was a young girl, I used to wonder: if God created the world, who created God? And who created the one who created God? The question moved in circles, turtles all the way down. No final turtle. No solid ground. Just an endless reaching.

In religious school, I learned the stories of creation, justice, and mercy, and of power, of suffering, and the ways of an inscrutable God. Some stirred me; others left me puzzled. Over time, I came to understand that the stories carried deeper meanings and had been studied, interpreted, and reinterpreted through brilliant, flawed, and sometimes misguided human understanding.

But let’s face it, despite faith and willingness, the standards of behavior we are taught are never quite lived up to. The problem of injustice has never been resolved. And we are still struggling to understand suffering, inequality—and last but not least— whether there is any purpose to life.

And yet, there are always people willing to tell us what God wants, some sincere and others cynical, self-serving. In the words of Leonard Cohen: “killers in high places say their prayers out loud.”

And yet, I have never lost my faith. I questioned. I’ve stepped away from certain forms. But I never stopped feeling accompanied.

As the years unfolded, and I experienced love and loss, despair and renewal, my understanding shifted. God is no longer a figure within a narrative for me. God is Mystery. Presence. Beauty. Severity. Order. Chaos. Sometimes the Mystery is a benevolent palpable Presence in my life, and other times that Presence is not evident. The Mystery easily contains opposites.

On Institutions, Principles, and the Hunger That Remains

Many people have turned away from institutional religion, seeking meaning and belonging elsewhere; some toward Eastern traditions, others toward secular philosophies or political movements. In every tradition, some have found genuine solace and transformation. Others have fallen into the hands of those who exploit their hunger. The sheen has fallen from many of our institutions, and yet the impulse to seek and to follow persists. We are, it seems, wired for devotion. The question is only to what we give it.

Some of the most prominent voices of spiritual renewal in our time have proven as fallible as the institutions they critiqued. When those we’ve trusted as guides reveal ‘feet of clay,’ the disillusionment can be profound. Looking for freedom, we sometimes find a subtler captivity. Looking for connection, we sometimes find betrayal.

And yet the principles themselves survive. Strip away the institutions and the personalities, and certain truths remain. You find them in Lao Tzu and the Tao, in the Ten Commandments, in Stoic philosophy, in the teachings of Jesus, in the Abrahamic traditions, in the wisdom of the East, and in the indigenous traditions. These teachings stand on their own; they do not require institutional support or charismatic leadership. They depend on our adherence to the truths that are voiced and on the quality and persistence of our devotion.

As the French say: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” The more it changes, the more it is the same. Stray from enduring principles in a life or in a civilization, and unwanted consequences follow.

Most of us, scientists, theologians, and ordinary people alike, accept that the universe operates according to an underlying order. Understanding that order and deriving rules from that understanding is challenging. Intense arguments, including wars, have arisen over which rules are the correct ones; and whether our individual lives are watched over and guided by a heavenly being; and if the “arc of history” does actually “bend toward justice”; or whether we are essentially on our own, experiencing random events.

What I keep returning to is this: there is a system. Working within it — with humility, with attention, tends to bring us closer to the life we want. Some of us forget that we find happiness in living in harmony, not in conquest.

If we are to live in harmony, we must accept the responsibilities of our participation; that we are not alone in the world, that we are not superior to it, that only love and compassion— not conquest and power — can satisfy the gnawing hunger within for connection and meaning.

Faith, for me, is not certainty. It is not a guarantee against suffering. Life remains unpredictable, tender and harsh, and often bewildering.

Goodness does not always shield us. Belief, or the lack thereof, does not divide humanity neatly into the virtuous and the lost.

What carries me is trust. Trust that I am part of a larger field; labeling it God, nature, consciousness, does not alter the Mystery. I trust that even without understanding the architecture of existence, I can align inwardly with steadiness. When I rest there, I can approach life with openness. In a world that often amplifies fear and vigilance, I can stand fast in love; my body recognizes coherence and rejoices.

Why is there suffering? Why is there beauty? Why does light coexist with shadow?

“The world… is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people, eternal life. One person can't see how far another is on the way; the Buddha exists in the robber and dice player; the robber exists in the Brahmin.” Siddhartha (Herman Hesse)

Mystery includes everything. I feel accompanied in that Mystery, even in the vastness. I no longer struggle to solve what may not be solvable.

I cannot know the origins of the Universe. The human mind may never step beyond causation. I do not know what follows this life. But I live as though what I do matters.

And that is enough.

ddzphoto,pixabay

In a time of accelerating tension, when public outrage is constant, and grievances spread instantly across digital networks, forgiveness can feel naïve, even irresponsible. Yet without it, we remain tethered to the past, internally divided, and unable to participate in healing the larger world.

If outer fragmentation reflects inner fragmentation, then the work of repair must begin within.

Forgiveness is one of the most demanding inner tasks we face. We know it is meant to bring peace, yet for many of us it feels almost impossible.

Old hurts remain alive inside us, replaying themselves long after the moment has passed. We want justice. We want understanding. We want to be seen. Instead, we may encounter silence, indifference, or dismissal.

What appears to be a private struggle does not remain private. Inner turbulence does not stay contained. It shapes how we speak, how we act, how we vote, how we parent, and how we participate. Personal grievances, multiplied across millions of individuals, become the emotional climate of a culture.

The world seeks balance, often clumsily, and at times violently.

Our seemingly small efforts to cultivate peace and stability exert a subtle but profound influence. One person choosing inner reconciliation may appear insignificant. Yet as more of us establish inner steadiness, we contribute to a quiet tipping point, a shift in the field we collectively inhabit.

This is not sentimental thinking. It is structural.

I know something of forgiveness from my own experience.

For years, I carried anger toward a member of my family. There was no meaningful discussion, no reconciliation. The resentment quietly festered. I understood that forgiveness was the nobler response, but knowing that did not make it easier. The old saying, “To err is human, to forgive divine,” captures something essential: forgiveness can feel beyond ordinary human capacity.

Part of the difficulty is that resentment feels like the only justice left to us. Somewhere inside, we may believe that holding onto anger, our certainty, our indignation, keeps those who hurt us accountable. To forgive can feel like granting a free pass, especially if those who have wounded us believe that we are exaggerating, or that they were acting correctly, or worse yet, that they do not care at all.

And so, while the perpetrator appears to move on untouched, we continue to suffer.

When the outer world does not deliver justice, we turn to the story. We replay it. We refine it. We rehearse it. We wait, sometimes for decades, for balance to be restored and justice to prevail.

But even when justice arrives, it does not necessarily repair what was broken.

Does a murderer brought to trial return the lost life? Does punishment restore a family to what it was?

Justice matters. It must be pursued. But there is another dimension that belongs entirely to us: our inner relationship to what happened.

We can not change the past. But we can, and must, change our relationship to it.

For many years, my inner life was dominated by repeated stories of injustice, casting myself in the leading role of victim. I believed, almost childishly, that these internal arguments protected me. In truth, they constrained me. They projected old patterns onto present life and consumed enormous energy.

The repetition was exhausting. The effort to defend myself internally left less room for joy, engagement, and presence. And when suppressed too long, those emotions emerged in unintended ways.

This is how unhealed pain travels — from the private sphere into the relational and eventually, into the collective.

There is another path.

Cultivate compassion.

Compassion does not excuse what happened. It does not erase consequences. But it softens the inner terrain. It loosens harsh judgment toward others and toward ourselves. It restores shared humanity, and in that sharing, the sufferer has the opportunity to move toward healing and greater wholeness. Finally, we can detach from the negative hold of the past.

Forgiveness then becomes easy, a by-product of compassion.

Across history, justice sometimes prevailed, though not always within a single lifetime.

Yet even when it does come in our lifetime, it rarely delivers the peace we imagine.

It is never quite enough.

Peace arises from something else entirely: releasing the fantasy of how the world should be, and learning to accept what is. We are imperfect, and so is everyone else.

This acceptance is not passivity. It is a strength. It helps in freeing us from reliving the past and allows us to inhabit the present with greater clarity and joy.

Before we attempt reconciliation outwardly, we must cultivate it inwardly.

Forgiveness is not weakness. It is an acknowledgment of both our faults and our grandeur, our full humanity and the humanity of the other. Joy can enter our lives.

A Practice for Embracing the Present

We can begin this realignment with a simple sound meditation that centers the part of our being associated with love and compassion: the heart.

Tonal vibrations (sounds), voiced with intention and directed toward specific energy centers arrayed on the body, educate our organs and our very being, without lecturing. They steady the nervous system and restore coherence. They gently interrupt repetitive narratives that keep old wounds alive. A door to a more expansive reality opens.

Forgiveness then becomes less about settling scores and more about reclaiming energy and embracing life.

Less about vindication, more about freedom.

And when we free ourselves, even partially, the field around us shifts.

Closing Meditation: Compassion

Take a moment to settle yourself.

Let your shoulders soften.
Allow your breath to find its own rhythm.
Nothing needs to be forced.

Bring your attention gently to your breath.
Inhale and exhale slowly three times.

Place your hands over your heart.

When ready, sound a soft “AH.”
Intend to send the sound through the heart center.
Let the pitch find itself naturally.

Repeat the sound nine times, in intervals of three — slowly, gently, without strain.

You are not trying to sing.
This is not performance.

This is a quiet remembering — a return to balance.

You will feel a vibration beneath your hand. This will tell you the sound has been placed properly.

Do not direct the sound toward a particular outcome. Practice alone or with others, and notice that a calm new perspective will rise on its own.

Then relax … and reflect.

Analysis alone is not enough. This companion reflection, “Peace in a Warring World: A MediSounds Practice,” turns from understanding to embodiment.

When we look at the world, the violence, the polarization, the endless conflict, we may wish to go back to the way things were, and anyway, what can we actually influence?

Here’s an idea: Much of the outer conflict mirrors an inner one.

We are often divided within ourselves, between competing goals and emotions, between personal needs and others’ expectations, between fear and trust, anger and love, striving and surrender. These inner tensions quietly shape our relationships and our world.

If we bring greater peace to ourselves, we improve the quality of our own lives. Moreover, we exert more influence than we realize. Inner coherence changes the quality of our presence, and that presence affects everyone we encounter.

Wholeness, calm, and self-acceptance are what we are all seeking.

The Solar Plexus: The Integrating Center

At the center of the torso, just below the rib cage and above the waist, lies the solar plexus.

Biologically, the solar plexus is a complex network of nerves located in the upper abdomen, behind the stomach. It plays an important role in digestion and is deeply connected to the autonomic nervous system, which regulates stress and calm. A blow to this area can literally knock the breath out of us.

Energetically, according to the Kabbalistic Tree of Life system, this region corresponds to the sphere of harmony and balance, where opposites are reconciled.

It is fitting that this center governs digestion. Here we metabolize not only food, but experience. It is where what feels opposed can be integrated.

Peace is not foreign to us. It is one aspect of our nature, though we often forget how to access it.

MediSounds is a meditative practice that uses the power of the human voice to achieve clarifying and healing meditative states. The human voice can be an instrument of consciousness; it carries transformative power.

Tonal vibrations are directed with intention to specific energy centers in the body to achieve specific results.

This simple MediSounds sound practice reconnects us with the positive, energetic attributes of the solar plexus area. We can join our voices with others in a group for a marvelous effect, or we can do it on our own. Practiced before sleep, it can encourage rest. Practiced daily, it educates us and becomes a stabilizing influence that permeates our lives.

William Turner, Sunrise Over the River, 19th century

The Practice

1. Settle

Sit comfortably in a quiet place. Place your hand lightly over your solar plexus to bring awareness to the area.

2. Set Intention

Gently set these intentions:
Release struggle.
Let go of trying.

Once you set your intention, there is no need to keep those thoughts in your mind.

3. Breathe

Take three slow, natural inhalations and exhalations.
Allow your shoulders to relax and your body to soften.

Notice the small pause between the inhale and exhale — the quiet space where nothing is happening.

4. Sound

Gently make the rounded sound of “O” (as in oh).

Direct the sound with intention through the solar plexus. Your intention will shape your pitch; there is no need to search for the “right” tone.

Let the vibration move through the body and outward into the space around you.

Sound O three times in a relaxed manner. Take as many breaths as needed in between each sound.

Do not try to fix yourself.
Do not try to fix your relationships.

Do not try to fix the world.
Do not strive for peace.

Goal-orientation and force are antithetical to this practice.

Let the sound do the work.

5. Pause

After three sounds, stop and notice how you feel.

Repeat the cycle twice more, for a minimum of nine sounds.

Never strain your voice.
Never force the sound.

Genuine peace emerges not from suppression, but from integration.

Even a brief touch of this state has restorative power.

This is a beautiful meditation before sleep.
It is also a quiet act of service.

We can talk and talk about peace, or we can be peace.

You can read more in my book Kabbalah of Prayer, Sacred Sounds and the Soul’s Journey, available at www.shulamitelson.com/books-cds/