We have achieved the greatest levels of freedom humanity has ever known, and yet we continue to be unfree. We keep ourselves from freedom. 

We construct our own prisons, and our fears stand guard. The path to freedom is through human development. It is that switch from guard to guardian. We each have a responsibility to be a guardian of our own true path. 

Herein I share some of what I have learned on my path thus far, and what I have come to believe and hold as true. It is my starting point for the remainder of this journey, and for steering the work of the Gergina Foundation. I hope it can be a first step of service to many. 

I believe we all have a path, a unique purpose we come into life for. There are times we forget and veer off this path. The structures of modern society make distractions much easier. 

Yet we are always called to the true path. And sometimes, these callings become hard to ignore. Sometimes, we stumble into challenging conditions, such as an illness, that make it easier to hear that calling. 

I believe there is a deep sense of meaning and purpose in the universe. Everything has its own right to existence, and its own meaning which we are sometimes unable to decode with the eyes of today. 

I believe when the sea is most stormy, the light is also easiest to see. That the times of greatest calamity are often a test of our strength and character. They are a chance to grow deeper roots and access our inner wisdom. 

We grow our roots to reach higher. I believe only we can make our path, by walking – by merely taking the next step into the unknown. 

We live in times of change. Some have termed it a perma-crisis. I believe there is beauty in uncertainty which we have lost the ability to appreciate and honor. Faith needs the terrain of uncertainty to show up. 

I believe only the person can heal, which is different from treating and trying to cure the physical body alone. Healing always needs the person’s life strength, participation, and actorship in the process. 

We are also living through a crisis of authority. Some have labeled it a post-truth society. But the truth is always with us, present and heard in silent pauses. 

We can access it through the unity of mind and heart, through the ‘reasonable heart’. 

I believe we all have an inner healer whom we can tune into and learn to honor and rely upon. It is we who are the greatest experts of ourselves, and we must cultivate this expertise. 

Our medical lexicon speaks of treatable and curable diseases, at the level of the body. 

But our immune system is also influenced by our nutrition, lifestyle, and most importantly, our identity. And therefore, our identity may also be what needs to heal. 

I believe only the person herself can decode the personal and higher meaning and significance of her condition. That the most important question is not what is happening, but how we live through these experiences. And that we always have that choice. 

I believe that healing requires change, and the most empowering change is always inside out. 

I believe that when we are given challenges, we are also given the tools and resources to meet these challenges. If we are willing to look. On some level, we always find ourselves in the conditions that we can learn the most from. 

I also believe every relationship offers powerful learning. Our job is to be good students. Our relationships offer us valuable perspectives, like peeking through different windows of a round tower. We need each other to be able to look through all of the windows, to get a fuller view of life. 

Together, all of these lenses are part of the way toward healing and wholeness. This is the way of the Hero. Ultimately, we are always traveling toward the light. 

It is claimed we live in an expert society. Today’s expertise is anchored in specific technical knowledge and the fixedness of the quantifiable, the absolutes of large data studies. Where it exists, the debate is often segmented. The gap between expert opinions and citizens’ concerns keeps growing. 

I believe the true mark of wisdom is the ability to shift viewpoints and continuously reconcile seemingly opposing perspectives. Keynes is known to have insisted that the clever man always changes his mind in the light of new evidence. Rumi famously urged us to trade cleverness for awe. 

Uniting polarities within ourselves, we become whole. One with life. 

A famous saying has it that all wealthy people are alike, but all poor suffer their poverty in their own unique way. Perhaps the same is true for health– all healthy people are alike, but every ill person is unwell in their own way.  

Yet this is a polarity we must also transcend. Health and illness are not absolute concepts. 

We are not broken, just finite. The way we manage fear determines our point in the continuum of health. Life is a dance between what we desire the most and what we most fear. 

I believe we allow health when we marry our story of unlimited potential, and yet accept the idea of death as part of life. We let go to let come. The idea of the beginning and the end is in each of our cells. 

Our mortality is the biggest certainty in our lives, and yet we spend little time contemplating it. Many a cancer ‘patient’ teaches us how the idea of death, of contemplating the finite, can liberate us. 

As ever, we also feel the tension between the forces of individuation and the collective, our contrasting needs for variety and certainty. How we balance this inside us and the broader society, in our institutions, determines our sense of belonging. 

I now also know how to look at this polarity, and see it with the eyes of the heart. I know the greatest unity also offers the greatest differentiation. And that we are most free when we are most connected. 

Everyone has their own path and diverse experience. Our life is ours to live; and still the true path, in many ways, is one. 

I have learned the universe does have a mandatory core curriculum. Our greatest choice is in how we learn our lessons. 

I believe the time has come for creating societies built on cooperation and trust. Societies where all people belong. 

Where the right values are embodied in the right spheres of society – freedom, equality, and solidarity, in the spheres of culture, politics, and economy. 

I believe the time has come for the new person with an expanded human consciousness. And that the understanding of medicine shall follow.