Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.

September 2026 Newsletter

“God” may be the most loaded and misunderstood word in human history. Ask the 8+ billion people alive today what it means, and you’ll likely get 8+ billion different answers. The term carries centuries of theology, philosophy, comfort, hope and harm. Much of the violence in history has been perpetrated in its name.

In the modern era, many people identify as spiritual rather than religious. They seek a direct relationship with the Divine through meditation, prayer, or contemplation. They may use names like “Source,” “Ground of Being,” “Cosmic Consciousness,” “Universal Mind,” . “The Divine”, or “Divine Love.” But what do all these terms point to? That is the question this essay explores.

Read the full text

I am pleased to join the Groking Wholeness community as I begin a new monthly series entitled Aging Into Wholeness.

For most of my adult life, I have been interested in a discovering the answer to a simple question: What helps people continue to grow when life changes?

That question has followed me through several careers and many seasons of life. I served for twenty-six years in the USAF, spent more than four decades in clinical practice as a physician assistant, and later worked as a university educator and program director. Over time, my professional interests widened to include psychology, counseling, health promotion, spirituality, pastoral care, grief, caregiving, and the role of community in human well-being. My wife and I have only been married for 6 years. So I guess you can say I'm an elderly newlywed!

Today, I also serve as a Community Educator for the Alzheimer’s Association, helping individuals, families, caregivers, and community groups better understand Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, brain health, caregiving, and the resources available to support people through cognitive change. That work has reinforced something I learned many years ago in medicine: a person is always more than a diagnosis.

We may measure memory, mobility, blood pressure, cognition, and function, but none of those measures tells us who a person is. Human beings remain shaped by relationships, memories, values, hopes, fears, humor, faith, and the basic need to know that their lives still matter.

That conviction has become increasingly important to me as I have grown older myself.

Read the full article

Who Says Words With My Mouth?

All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I’ll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I’m like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?

Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

This poetry, I never know what I’m going to say.
I don’t plan it.
When I’m outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

You may not have heard an astonishing bit of news that surfaced a few weeks ago, but you need to know this.

An elderly Japanese American woman had been locked in by Alzheimer’s Disease. She had not spoken in several years, did not react to her family’s visits, couldn’t dress or wash herself and for all intents and purposes was disconnected from life entirely. She had trouble walking and couldn’t hold her urine, day and night, for 5 years.

One day an experimenter administered to her a substantial (5 gram) dose of “magic mushrooms”. These are the psyloscibe species, found all over the world, that contain psylocibin, a psychedelic compound. A solid dose might be 3 grams, an “ego dissolving dose” 5 grams.

Then, nineteen hours after the ingestion, the woman began to talk. Not only to talk, but to make sense, to start telling stories of her life, after years of silence. She talked and talked for nearly 24 hours. The next day she recognized her family members by name. She interacted socially in ways that were previously impossible for her. Remarkably, after 5 years of urinary incontinence, she could hold her urine. These changes persisted to some degree for weeks, but eventually petered out.

Several weeks later she was given another dose, this time 3 grams. The same thing happened!

Read the full text

I’d like to introduce you to three people who truly influenced my life trajectory and whose writings I’ve found relevant to a broader evolutionary context, in sync with my writing on the emerging story of oneness, wholeness and interbeing. To me, they all offer hope for the future of humanity. Via a mixture of pure chance, synchronicity and intent, I was introduced to them, and I intuited that they had important information about the emerging story. Only now, at my “ripe age” am I understanding the significance of their contributions. I continue to be inspired and learn from them.

Across the last century, three amazing thinkers named Edgar — Edgar Cayce, Edgar Mitchell, and Edgar Cahn — opened doorways into what it means to be fully human. They lived in different locations in the country (United States), worked in different domains, and spoke to different audiences, yet their contributions form a coherent arc. Together, they describe a lineage of insight about consciousness, human potential, and the structures of society that either suppress or unleash that potential.

Read the full article

“There is an active illumination happening between every act of understanding the way sunlight makes seeing possible without it being the thing you’re looking at. The source of that inner light is Cosmic Consciousness.”

September Book Review

by the Groking Wholeness Founders

to learn more

In Moral Ambition, internationally bestselling author Rutger Bregman reveals how our conventional definitions of success are harming us and the planet, and shows how we can shift the focus from personal gain to societal benefit. In the process, he explains, we will join a growing movement of pioneers who are already living out this ethos. They're the builders, the problem-solvers, the doers who have chosen a path less traveled. A guidebook to finding that path for ourselves, Moral Ambition reminds us that the real measure of success lies not in what we accumulate, but in what we contribute, and shows how we, too, can build a legacy that truly matters.

My days begin, before I even get out of bed, with a yoga nidra session, followed by Samaneri Jayasara reading the words of spiritual masters such as Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi, Papaji and others.

Among my favorite sessions are the words of Nisargadatta, taken from his dialogues with individuals who traveled to India seeking his wisdom. These dialogues were translated and published in I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj in 1973. Since then, the book has been reprinted 17 times, a testament to the enduring popularity of the wisdom it contains.

I have listened to several of Samaneri's recordings of Nisargadatta's words dozens of times—Grieve No More, There Is No Me, The Dawn of Wisdom and The Nature of Consciousness, to name a few. Never have I tired of hearing them; they are a balm to my soul.

At age 79—for at least four more days—I find it beyond fascinating that I have come full circle and can now fully understand what T.S. Eliot meant when he penned the poem above.

Read the full text

If you support our mission, please forward this newsletter to like minded friends and family to help spread our message. If you received this email from a friend and have not directly joined our community to receive our newsletter, Subscribe/ Contact Us now by clicking here.

Riverview, FL

Groking Wholeness

2025-2026

Subscribe / Contact Us

www.GrokingWholeness.info

[email protected]

If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.