In 2013, I stood in Jerusalem with a Satmar rabbi who remains a dear friend. I had travelled south from a wedding in Haifa, and together we walked across the Holy Esplanade. At one point we met a Catholic priest. My friend introduced me, half playfully, as his Muslim cousin though I have long believed that once a person has encountered God, no cult or category can truly contain them.
For a moment, the three of us—representatives of three branches of a single ancient longing—simply spoke. The priest shared something that has stayed with me ever since: that those who arrive here with clear intention are purified by the very act of stepping onto this ground which many hold holy. Not by ritual. Not by ceremony. By intention itself—by the purposefulness, the inner honesty, the willingness to be improved. I have felt that intention in every pilgrimage life has granted me: in Lourdes, where the mere thought of Mary sitting quietly on a courtyard bench unsettles the soul into honesty; in the Kaaba’s overpowering pull; in Jerusalem’s unbearable suffering; in Cairo’s Coptic Church, where the image of the infant Jesus in the basement disarms even the most guarded heart; in Najaf’s meditative reach; in Sacré-Coeur in Paris, where I asked God what was missing in my model and received the name Compassiviste while descending the hill that night, passing a restaurant whose feminine twist on a word unlocked something in my mind; in Bihar, where the air itself feels like a reminder that souls and stardust once shared the same birthplace in a universe that formed with intention, purpose, dedication. And in many more places where my recovery from capitalism—that most lethal addiction—was shaped by a Love still far greater than my understanding.
What struck me in Jerusalem was not the priest’s theology but his insight into human transformation: Purification rarely introduces itself. We pass through it unnamed. Only later—sometimes years later—do we recognize the hardship that lifted a weight we didn’t know we were carrying, leaving behind a cleaner, wiser self. Unfortunately, we sometimes never learn and hold the suffering we take from incidents we unknowingly label as negative. Every real cleansing is demanding. It resembles washing a deeply soiled cloth or a bodily purge: uncomfortable, exhausting, essential. So when difficulty arrives now, I no longer ask “Why me?” Instead I ask, “Why now? What is this carving out inside me? What must be cleared?” I sit with the hardship: losing money, losing teammates, losing ideas I once treated as indispensable, losing friends whose chapters with me had reached their natural end, losing relationships once their purpose was fulfilled. I watch momentum fracture, collaborations evaporate. And I study each loss with the seriousness of a student of meaning. Because every time, something inside my Compassiviste architecture—and yes, my life and Compassiviste are inseparable—becomes clearer, stronger, more aligned. A layer of arrogance falls away. A layer of illusion dissolves. Something becomes more revered as holy, not in a ceremonial sense but in the sense that it stands proven as truthful. This is why I do not question the force shaping this path. Some call it God. Some call it the universe. Some call it nature—or Nature, when they sense its divinity. The names are many and mostly irrelevant. The cultish insistence on one name is what breeds division. What matters is the recognition that this force is intentional. Directional. Purposeful, even—especially—when it contradicts our expectations.
These tribulations are not obstacles. They become the compass of compassion. Guidance does not always arrive wrapped in funding, applause, or gifts. Often it comes through subtraction: the removal of what cannot ascend with us into the next circle of our development. My task is not to resist with ego, doctrine, or fear. My task is to listen. To allow myself to be sculpted. Each such moment lifts the work into a higher spiritual orbit. That is why I insist—without metaphor—that our work is holy. Not sanctimonious, not exclusive, but holy in the sense of being guided, developmental, still emerging from meditation into mission. But its necessity is unmistakable. In Islamic terms—to honor the triad of Abrahamic traditions that converge in Jerusalem—this is the true meaning of “jihad”: the inner commissioning toward a harmonious mission. A sacred responsibility to rise, to unite, to support humanity out of the structures that diminish us, and to restore the world to the abundance that was always meant to belong to every form of life.
Consider this simple truth: We did not create the apples or the oranges. We did not create rice, wheat, or water. Nourishment was gifted to us in overflowing generosity— planned by God, by Nature, by evolution, by whatever name evokes the awe we feel. What we created—through greed and systems built upon scarcity—was the shortage. What we manufactured was the competition for what was meant to be shared. So perhaps this hardship, and your patience in carrying it, is not a setback but a calibration. A moment asking whether we truly trust what we have pledged ourselves to. Whether we trust this path enough to accept its refinements, its ascents, its storms—as willingly as we accept its celebrations. If we do, then this too is part of our purification—the necessary preparation for the work we are being called to complete. The work to social harmony, the eventual state of Pure Love.
