Founder Letter: The Ground Beneath the Ground, An Inquiry into True Safety

The Ground Beneath the Ground

Personally, I used to think safety was something I could build: walls high enough, savings accounts large enough, relationships secure enough, plans detailed enough. I spent years constructing elaborate fortresses against uncertainty, only to discover that the very act of building them kept me trapped in a chronic state of vigilance. The fortress became the prison.

But what is safety, really? 

We live in a culture obsessed with risk management. We insure our cars, our homes, our lives. We create backup plans for our backup plans. We seek approval, accumulate resources, and try to control outcomes. These aren't wrong impulses; they arise from a genuine recognition of our vulnerability in an unpredictable world.

Yet something feels fundamentally off about this approach. No matter how much we secure externally, that underlying anxiety never quite disappears. The mind that believes safety comes from controlling circumstances is the same mind that can always imagine new threats, new variables that haven't been accounted for. It's an endless game that cannot be won because the rules keep changing.

I know people with tremendous external security (wealth, status, loving families) who still live in states of chronic fear. And I've met others who've lost everything and found themselves more at peace than ever before. The inner feeling of aafety and the outer sense of security are  different phenomena.

The Ecosystem's Teaching

For almost 9 years now, I have been living for a large part of the year in a remote part of Hawaii, surrounded by the constant dance of tropical life. Like many of you who live close to the land, every day I witnessed the seamless intelligence of nature: how one species creates conditions for another, how death becomes nourishment, how the whole system self-regulates through countless interdependent relationships. The jungle isn't anxious about tomorrow's rain or whether the trade winds would blow. Each creature simply participated fully in its role within the larger intelligence, trusting the system that had sustained life for millions of years.

Watching this daily unfolding began to shift something in my relationship to uncertainty. I started to sense that the same intelligence orchestrating the forest might be orchestrating my life: not in some predetermined way, but through a kind of responsive creativity that could work with whatever arose.

The ecosystem taught me that resilience isn't about avoiding change or death, but about being so deeply woven into the web of life that your individual fluctuations become part of a larger stability. True safety, I began to sense, might be found not in separation from life's intelligence, but in conscious participation with it.

The Space Between Worlds

This understanding deepened during an experience that took me to the edge of life itself. During a near-death experience, I encountered something that defied every assumption I'd held about existence, consciousness, and safety.

In that liminal space between worlds, I discovered a quality of being that was simultaneously empty and full, silent and alive, utterly peaceful and vibrantly creative. It was love, but not love as emotion: love as the fundamental nature of reality itself. There was no sense of threat because there was no sense of separation. What I had always taken to be "myself" was revealed as a temporary wave in an infinite ocean of consciousness.

Most importantly, I experienced what could only be called absolute safety: not because nothing could hurt me, but because there was no separate "me" to be hurt. What I truly was could never be diminished, harmed, or lost because it was identical with the source of all existence.

This wasn't a belief or concept. It was as immediate and undeniable as the sensation of breathing. And when I returned to ordinary consciousness, something had permanently shifted. The chronic background anxiety that had colored most of my life began to fade, replaced by a deep knowing that I was held by something infinitely larger and more intelligent than my personal concerns.

The Paradox of Inner and Outer

This inner transformation didn't make me indifferent to external conditions or relationships. Instead, it made me more available for genuine connection and more capable of contributing to collective safety and wellbeing.

When you're not frantically trying to secure yourself against life, you have energy available for caring about others. When you're not operating from chronic fear, you become a safer person to be around: more present, more trustworthy, more able to stay steady when others are struggling.

I found myself naturally attracting and creating relationships characterized by mutual support rather than mutual dependence. My circle became a network of people who had done their own inner work, who could be genuinely there for each other without the desperate neediness that often masquerades as love.

This is where the purely spiritual approach to safety reveals its limitations. Yes, touching that fundamental ground of being is transformative. But humans are inherently social creatures, and our nervous systems co-regulate through relationship. We need both the inner knowing of our essential safety and the outer experience of being held by community.

Moreover, living in a society marked by systemic inequalities and historical traumas means that some people face genuine external threats that cannot be addressed through inner work alone. True safety might require both personal spiritual development and collective action to create conditions where everyone can access the stability needed for deeper self-inquiry.

Heart-Mind Coherence

What I've discovered is that authentic safety emerges when the heart and mind come into coherence: when the heart's deeper knowing informs the mind's processing, and the mind's clarity serves the heart's wisdom. When these two are aligned, something remarkable happens. The nervous system stops firing chronic stress signals based on imagined future threats. The body relaxes into the present moment. Decision-making becomes clearer because it's informed by both intuitive wisdom and practical intelligence.

Most importantly, you stop fighting yourself. Instead of the internal war between the mind that wants control and the heart that knows surrender, there's an integrated intelligence that can navigate life's complexities with both groundedness and flexibility.

This coherence can't be forced, but it can be cultivated. It seems to emerge naturally when we stop trying to find safety in the wrong places and start learning to rest in the deeper currents of existence.

The Ground Beneath the Ground

What I've come to understand is that true safety is not the absence of danger, but the presence of something that cannot be touched by danger. It's not about creating perfect conditions, but about discovering the ground of being that remains stable regardless of conditions.

This ground is always present. It's the awareness in which all experiences arise and pass away. It's the love that connects all beings. It's the intelligence that moves the stars and beats your heart. It's what you truly are beneath all the stories you tell yourself about who you are.

The beautiful paradox is that when you find this inner ground, you naturally become more engaged with creating outer conditions that support collective flourishing. The inner work and the outer work become expressions of the same commitment to life.

An Invitation to Inquiry

I share these reflections as invitations to all of us to do our own inquiry. What is our relationship to safety? Where do we look for it? What would it feel like to trust the intelligence of life itself? These aren't casual questions. They point toward the deepest issues of human existence: How do we live fully in an uncertain world? How do we love without guarantee? How do we find peace in the midst of chaos? What would become possible if you knew, in your bones, that you are profoundly safe: not because life will always go your way, but because you are woven inseparably into the fabric of existence itself?

These questions live in the heart of what it means to be human. May they serve your own journey toward the deepest safety available to us all.