02/13/2026
I recently had a client say something that brought tears to my eyes.
After a consequential and vulnerable conversation, he said, "Sarah, you’re like a great jazz musician. You riff on the spiritual journey with language that is melodic ... expressive of what wants to come through ... and spot-on regarding what's longing to be heard."
This reflection touched me deeply. There's nothing like feeling so well-received. But, his feedback is especially cool because what you may not know about me is this …
I’ve always had a longing to be a jazz musician.
I played piano growing up, and a bit of violin, cello, and guitar along the way. I can hold a beat. I can read music. I even got an electric piano as a 60th birthday gift, hoping to enact my dream of riffing with sound. However, given the limits of attention in the space-time continuum, it just hasn’t happened.
Yet.
Still, how exciting to imagine that my dream may be showing itself through words rather than tones!
My client reminded me — being an accomplished musician in his own right — that modern jazz was born out of tremendous suffering and existential angst. Just like the spiritual quest!
"Jazz," he said, "is both a crying out from our deepest pain, and a pathway through it. And this is the experience I have being with you. You name my angst, you meet it and hold me, and you speak a way forward."
So, today, still floating in the liminal wake of my dear friend Dot's dying and her beautiful burial, I've decided not to overthink this email and just riff ... on our existential angst and a way through. Improv style. See if I can live up to my client's praise.
Let me know how it lands in your ears and heart. Am I naming your angst, meeting you, and offering a way through?
Let's begin here ...
Our angst is our liberation. (With a deep bow to my beloved friend and teacher, JunPo.)
If our deepest longing is to know who we are and why we're here, then why do we invest in a life that follows a script written by cultural history and biological evolution, when underlying (and within) this script lives something far more interesting, enlivening and mysterious?
Right here. Always here. Right now.
Energy. Love. God. Truth. Call it by whatever name — it is the ocean we swim in, the stuff we're made of.
It is also that which we tend to dismiss. It's hidden in plain sight. It doesn't need us to notice it. It just is. And, if we are it, and held by it, why bother noticing or seeking it? Why not just be it?
Turns out, the impulse to figure out what to do in order to be is activated precisely when angst is present. I'd even say, the impulse is the angst.
The angst pulls us out of the script for a moment, when our story becomes too painful or messed up and all we want is to be free of suffering. To find ease.
Then, in our desperation and despair, we search for the panacea to our angst within the story from which the angst arose. Oh no! We hunt in the mud for soap to clean the mud, and we only make more mud. This is when the madness can set in.
But, if we were to stop and meet the angst ... to touch its root rather than treat the symptoms, we would encounter the path to our liberation.
It’s that simple.
Just not that easy.
Here’s the thing: my take on all this is nothing new. It's found throughout history — in the esoteric threads of organized religions, in the dens of philosophers, and even in the laboratories of scientists.
This is the view of what's called nondual reality, which suggests that our self-absorption in our story is the source of our angst, the sacred mystery is where we become free of our angst, and though these realms may seem like two separate realities, from the nondual perspective, they are not two things. They are one.
Therefore, if the story is our angst and the mystery is our liberation, and they are not two ... then our angst IS our liberation.
Ta da!
Now, we're at the point where my riff can get funky and definitely needs more practice, because — though an adequate and useful term — most people have never heard the word nondual. And those who have are often unsure exactly what it means.
So, I invite you to step into the sanctuary of The Art of Being Human, and experience jazz-style learning with me and a small group of incredible humans, where our inquiry will include the nondual worldview as an instrument in our music making.
Warning.
Nondual reality is a paradox. Period. The mind can never comprehend it. Sorry if this disappoints you. Or makes you wary. Or weary.
This, again, is the angst knocking.
Shhhh ... Let your being tune in.
Listen. Soften.
Instead of grasping for understanding, try surrendering your need to know. Let the mind collapse into the unknowable.
Let it fall right through that angst.
Into liberation.
When we gather for The Art of Being Human, we will not just discuss theory, we will practice inhabiting this living song. We will learn how to allow our lives to settle into a ground of ease and clarity .... maybe even rewrite the script we inherited into a story more reflective of reality.
There's room for a few more voices to join the ensemble — if you feel ready to stop being a spectator watching the show and ready to start playing the music with others.
We convene soon.
