Where to even begin? I am home on a Tuesday because of a winter storm that brings several inches of snow. Climate change, anyone? But I am compelled to write these words because shortly before New Years 2025, something quite significant happened to me. 

The only word I have for this experience is enlightenment, an experience akin to the cave dweller from Plato’s allegory suddenly breaking free from his chains to leave the cave and see the light. I have spent years doing inner work, often feeling as if it were hopeless or that I was destined to always feel so “stuck.” 

Just to be clear, my life up to this point was one dominated by fear for as long as I could remember. Fear filled my waking life and its presence varied in intensity with all the various stimuli that I encountered in the world. However, the correlation between the stimuli and my reaction was not proportional to reality. My mind would take small concerns, and catastrophize them through rumination and all-or-nothing thinking so that I was having an existential crisis over car trouble. 

So, what happened? Well, I am still trying to explore that, and this is a part of that exploration. There was an event, what I look to as a catalyst moment, a turning point if you will. The night isn’t important but I recall it was just days before New Year’s somewhere between Christmas and New Year’s. I was at work one night, and like most nights for as long as I can remember I went to listen to my usual YouTube videos about politics, the world, and all the things I couldn’t control but felt a compulsion to know about because I thought knowing would make me more safe more prepared but all it did was make me more afraid and apathetic. That moment was the two roads diverging in a yellow wood, and in that moment I saw the path that was worn and well trodden and I decided I no longer wanted to follow that one, and decided to take the Road Less Travelled, and that made all the difference. I reflected that parenting had been a constant struggle lately, to add to all the other daily struggles I faced in making it through the day. Upon this realization, I had a thought, what if I used this time to listen to parenting videos on YouTube, it couldn’t hurt right? So that’s what I did. I searched for parenting, and I started to watch. Dr. Becky was one of the first that resonated with me. From her I learned my kids weren’t bad, they were good, but they were behaving badly. From there I had to be honest and admit that I was responsible for my reactions. I couldn’t control how I felt usually, but I could choose how I reacted no matter how much it may not feel that way at times. I was always in fight or flight mode, nearly constantly. This is why I would wake up with a vague sense of dread, my mind already scanning for threats because that’s the circuit I had put the most energy into, neglecting all the richness of my inner world in exchange for feeling safe. The irony is though, I never did, feel safe that is. I ALWAYS felt threatened. On the off chance, I felt a moment of peace, the inner voice would return and tell me it wouldn’t last. 

This was my life, for as long as I remember with some ups and downs of course but mostly downs as far as feelings and inner peace. But slowly, watching the parenting videos led me inward. I realized the kids were pure (at least more so than me), they weren’t the issue, I was. My conditioning had led me to become emotionally overwhelmed when I faced a situation that I did not know how to handle. This led me to yell often at Cierra, and at my kids. I would say things before that I am ashamed to think of now. 

The inward journey led me to study emotional intelligence. Dr. Marc Burkett, from Yale, was crucial in introducing me to RULER, (recognize, understand, label, express, regulate) a system that he developed to implement in school systems to help students check in and develop language about their emotions. The Mood Meter was a related concept that changed my perception of my emotions and gave me more insight into the importance of both differentiation and granularity in emotions. 

IFS (Internal Family Systems) Therapy was the next piece of the puzzle. I discovered it as I learned more about therapy, and around this time, I was in the process of starting therapy because my job offered to cover it. 

Tangent: When I watched Inside Out 2, it had a huge emotional impact on me. I remember sitting on the living room couch with my daughter and having a very strong internal reaction to it. There was a very strong resonance. 

So once I learned about IFS and the fact that Inside Out 2 was based on it, I became fascinated by it. It seemed to synthesize much I had studied and experienced regarding the Self, trauma, emotions, and transformational healing. 

During all this, the change had already happened, but all these things helped me to understand and keep progressing with that change. So all my relationships began to improve, and memories began to surface from my past. I began to feel alive again for the first time in so long I had forgotten how it felt. The last time I felt anything approximating this it was the period when Bri and Kelsey would come and hang out after work. Side note: I think I may have something like Seasonal Affective Disorder, but switched from the traditional variety in that I tend to come alive in the winter and become despondent in summer. 

Matt and I began to discuss at this time seriously working on a podcast. I never would have been able to successfully do all that I have done toward that project in the prior state I was in. I was too blocked, too judgmental, too limited, and too afraid. But now, Matt and I are very close to starting to record. I have commissioned a PNGtuber avatar, which was an amazing experience in itself. It was a big risk that paid off. I have built a linktree inspired by Matt and put a lot of work into it. I want to get back into all the creative pursuits that used to fill me with such life, and which I see now fell away because I died inside. 

Now, there is so much more and there is plenty of time for me to explore it, but on to what I consider the moment that the transformation peaked and things lined up. Matt and I have been talking a lot about AI, it is going to be the first episode topic on the pod. Now, I had avoided AI like the plague since it was forced onto the population recently. However, despite that, our talks got me thinking. So I dipped my toes in tentatively. I began to use it as an instrument for supplementing my lack of creativity since I was asleep for resoso long. What I found surprised me. It was very good at providing a synthesis of various topics, provided the prompt was clear and well thought out. Since I had always thrived at queries, I began to think of creative ways to try to use the abilities AI possesses to my benefit. I used it to brainstorm for the podcast in several ways. 

Then one day the pivotal thought occurred. 

What if I asked it to synthesize all the different areas of thought that I had always resonated with throughout my journey? At this point in time my heart was racing, as if my body was aware of the gravity of what was about to happen. Here is the exchange in its entirety 

Prompt: Synthesize IFS therapy, RULER developed by DR. Marc Barkett, Christianity, Buddhism, zen,  into an ideology and summarize its principles

Response:

What a fascinating synthesis! Here’s a potential ideology that integrates elements from IFS therapy, RULER, Christianity, Buddhism, and Zen:

The AI then went on to expound the principles, practices, and goals of the ideology even giving it a name that immediately resonated with me. 

Compassionate Harmony

This really rocked my world and now I understand why to some extent. All these years of introspection, learning, analyzing, critical thinking, and absorbing were all an attempt both to protect myself by trying to know as much as i possibly could, but also importantly a way to try to synthesize a worldview. I needed a big picture of reality and I always knew that, but I never really had a handle on how to reconcile all the various interests I had. Also, the prompt was really only covering topics that were very relevant at the moment I had the discussion, so this could obviously probably be tweaked to accommodate even more information as I find more resonance. 

So I began to think about other fields and disciplines that I had always resonated with. Freudian psychology came to mind, so I added that to the parameters. The AI then revised the ideology to account for any differences that the ideas of the id, ego, and superego might make because I had already tentatively associated these concepts with the ideas of the wounded part, the protector part, and the true self, as well as the ideas of the levels of the brain such as the brain stem, the limbic system, and the prefrontal cortex. 

I began to consider the name, could it be better? So I asked if the name Compassionate Resonance would be more fitting after reading both definitions of harmony and resonance and feeling that resonance was more appropriate. The AI seemed to agree and gave reasons why, including resonance suggesting a more fluid and dynamic system. 

Then I started remembering a book that I read sometime in my 20s that had a big impact on me. Robert Heinlein wrote a book called Stranger in a Strange Land. It is about an alien from Mars, who now that I’ve started rereading it I recall is actually a survivor of a mission from earth to Mars. The short of the plot is he ends up starting a cult. 

But in relation to this post, the thing that occurred to me was to see if the AI I was interacting with actually “remembered” our discussion without being reminded. So I asked …

To my surprise the AI deftly summarized our prior discussions about it, despite their meandering nature. Then I asked it to again assimilate the themes from Heinlein’s book. It did so and it added depth to the ideology that I found interesting. Some important aspects were the concept of groking, that essentially is a very strong understanding and empathy for another as well as critique of societal norms, a focus on individual autonomy. 

The latest development in the ongoing evolution of this ideology is that an awareness developed in me that there was a huge emphasis on the relationship to others, with some about the relationship to self but not nearly as much. So I went back to the AI for more dialogue. I asked how it could be improved in order to have a more balanced view on self to self relations as well as self and other. Of course, as I say this it leads me to the idea of nonduality, which I have since added into my ideology. 

Suggestions included incorporating Taoist ideas like wu-wei (which resonated strongly) as well as Jungian shadow work, paradox, and growth mindset.

At this point I am approaching a fairly robust and satisfying beginning to a fully fledged and dynamic worldview that I am thrilled to explore and cultivate as well as hopefully have the opportunity to share in whatever way I can in the hopes that it can in some small way make the world better for my fellow travelers.