Letter 22: The Signal - Attuning to the Pulse of Life

“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

— Mary Oliver

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Dear Future Human,

This is life–wonderful and horrible things will happen. Don’t run away, don’t go numb; stay awake to it all.

You are born fully equipped to meet life as it is.

So much of our lives are driven by a single-minded focus toward seeking, achieving, or avoiding. Every day, we hurriedly pass by multitudes of life’s miracles—a child’s smile, an ant hill, a song—as if we are all alone in the world. We live inside love, but we don’t feel, see or immerse ourselves in it.^¹

We have tossed this abstract and elusive word around so frequently that we have no ability to recognize it when we encounter it. Yet if you pause for one moment to reflect, you may realize how much of your life is about seeking to experience love.

What exactly is the love we are seeking?

I call it the Signal: the direct, undistorted pulse of life moving through every organism in constant dialogue with its surroundings. It has been present since the birth of the cosmos and will continue long after we are gone. The Signal is not a state we achieve, but a living current that is always here guiding, informing, and nudging life toward growth and renewal.

To sense it, however, we must be in a certain state ourselves. Just as static on a radio can drown out the broadcast, our defenses, distractions, and distortions can obscure the Signal. When we grow still enough, attuned enough, it comes through—sometimes as a whisper, sometimes as a force—pointing us toward the next right action.²

It is life’s beacon, always transmitting.

You are a whole organism, in relationship with millions of other whole organisms³, responding to the world as it unfolds. You can’t control it—no one can. But you can meet life as it is, not as you think, wish, or believe it should be.

Here’s what a simple moment in a day can look like when there is attunement to the Signal of life.

It was a striking, sunny, spring Sunday afternoon. The air was crisp and dry. A light wind was softly brushing by the sea of people milling about on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum. There was a sense of burgeoning joy and wonderment, as if we were all experiencing life for the first time. As I stood at the top of the stairs waiting to meet my girlfriend, a rush of alertness coursed through my being. I could feel each sense of my body come to attention; the fresh, sweet smell of budding trees and flowers; the gentle caress of the wind against my body; the bright, radiating sunlight illuminating everything it touched; the cacophony of conversations, children’s gleeful cries, cars passing, trees rustling, all entered my ears in symphonic concert. I tasted its entirety.

Standing there, drinking it in, swimming in the ocean of creation, my soul soared. I began to scan my surroundings with this fresh lens, perceiving details I don’t generally notice. As I glanced toward the entrance of the museum, I suddenly saw him.

He was there all along, but I didn’t see him. He was holding a large black broom, sweeping the floor. My eyes rested on him, watching his intent movements. I could feel the total focus and care present in his being. There was a sacred devotion in his actions. He was not merely sweeping the floor; he seemed to be serving something greater.

I looked around to see if anyone else noticed him. Like me moments before, no one did. I walked over and said, “hello.” He broke into a huge smile. We talked about the weather, about winter finally ending. He asked and I responded that I am waiting for someone to join me. I noted and acknowledged him for the care he put into his work. He exuded light, and proudly shared his story with me.

When my friend arrived, he set down his broom and stepped away, returning a moment later with two museum tickets held out in his hand. I was speechless. In that instant, I knew that beneath the surface of our encounter we had touched something profound—an intimate moment of genuine connection between our deepest selves.

In this moment, he and I broke through our habitual perception, discovering the richness that is always all around us. We saw, felt, and acknowledged each other intimately. Appreciation and love were unabashedly present. This simple act, unnoticed by the masses, revealed a truth about wholeness: each part of life, each person, each action, holds intrinsic value when we attend fully.

Then there are moments when life pulls the rug out from underneath our feet—moments when the pain feels unbearable, or when things simply don’t go our way. How we meet these moments can shape everything that follows. When we meet them with presence, tuning into the Signal within, that subtle, guiding voice of our body, emotions, and intuition—we move with awareness rather than resistance or denial. Listening to the Signal doesn’t mean our pain disappears; it means we have a guide, a compass pointing toward what needs attention, care, or action.

What I have learned is that tuning in to the Signal won’t make me a perfect person, but it can reveal more of my wholeness. By whole I mean having the wherewithal, the sense-ability (the capacity to perceive, feel, and process life fully) to learn from life, and to act in ways that are aligned with our deepest ‘knowing.’ It means recognizing that we were born with all the necessary apparatus to flourish in life. Yes, there will be situations that you don’t yet know how to handle, challenges that may feel beyond your reach—but when you are connected to your whole Self, you can learn, adapt, and respond. You will discover that your body, mind, and spirit are equipped not to avoid the unknown, but to navigate it, to grow through it, and ultimately, to emerge stronger.⁴

Wholeness fosters integrity: a coherent connection to every part of you that meets every person, situation, and task—all relationships with everyone in concert with your whole self. Whenever you compartmentalize, splinter, block or hide from any part of you, you become disconnected from the Signal. Wholeness also means embracing every part of you—awareness and acceptance of your fears, limitations, insecurities, not knowing, your stories, your gifts, your joys, your courage—all that makes you who you are.⁵

Certainly, you have sensed and experienced the Signal—felt an intuitive bodily resonance with its existence. We all have latent access to the kind of presence that brings reality to sharp and visceral life—or life to sharp and visceral reality. Think of locking eyes with an old friend or a partner and feeling a quick shock of recognition—feeling, for an instant, that you really see them. Think of what happens when you plunge a hand into a cold stream of running water. You don’t have to assess that the water is wet, you simply experience it. The world and your sense of it exist in one undifferentiated experience. Water/wet. Water/cold, chills in your body.

Or perhaps you know this feeling from smaller moments: The way your body relaxes when you hear your favorite song. The moment when you taste something delicious and time seems to stop. The moment when you are listening to a friend share something vulnerable and you feel your heart open without any effort on your part. These aren’t mystical experiences—they are your Signal working exactly as it is designed to.

What is happening, in these moments, in those spaces, that allows you to connect to your Signal? In these moments, there is no space between you and the person, water, or nature. In these moments, you are undefended from life. Life is not some external force, happening to you. You are happening with life. You are life, happening: one thread inside an infinitely variegated tapestry.

When you see, feel, and accept the totality of life as it arises, within you and around you, you experience direct reality as it is occurring. When you stop trying to control your feelings and thoughts, and don’t attempt to impose or pursue illusory desires or avoid illusory threats, you attune yourself to the Signal. It is as if there is an inner floodlight revealing to you the wholeness of life’s intricate and elegant design. You can visualize and contemplate how everything connects—how things fit together. You realize how you gracefully fit into the fiber of life; you belong—never separate.

I met with a mother who described the moment she stopped fighting her toddler’s bedtime resistance. Instead of escalating into a battle of wills, she sat down beside his bed and simply breathed. She didn’t try to fix his big emotions or rush him to sleep. She just stayed present. “I stopped seeing his crying as a problem to solve, and started seeing it as communication,” she told me. “Once I stopped resisting his resistance, something in both of us relaxed. He wasn’t my adversary; he was a small human processing a big day, and I was there with him.” The Signal is the floodlight illuminating the design—seeing how his need for security and her need for rest could coexist, how presence could transform conflict into connection.

When you attune to your Signal, you will experience an energy, a direction driven by curiosity for the sake of curiosity, a resonance, a freedom, efficiency, and clarity that knows the right action, and knows when it doesn’t know. When you are attuned to your innate Signal, there is no gap, no thought between you and your expressed essence —you just are.

A musician friend described this feeling perfectly: “When I’m truly playing—not performing, not trying to impress, just playing—there’s no ‘me’ playing the piano. There’s just music happening. My fingers know where to go before my mind does. I’m not choosing the notes; the music is choosing me.” This is the Signal in action—no gap between impulse and expression, between knowing and doing.⁶

When you are living fully in touch with the Signal, you experience a life rich in feeling, authentic in expression and clarity of motivation. It is living from a deep knowing that you belong here, with the opportunity and responsibility to learn, connect, and co-create.

The invitation is here, always. To step into this magnificent symphony of existence. Listen deeply. Move slowly enough to feel the pulse of life itself. Remember that you belong to something infinitely greater than your individual concerns, yet infinitely intimate in its expression through you.

This is the Signal calling you home to yourself, to your birthright of wonder, to your place in the grand tapestry of being.

Will you answer?

Love,

Ronit

1. Yosi Amram PhD,, “Beauty as Medicine for the Soul”, Psychology Today, May 2025.

2. A.P. Jha, J. Krompinger & M.J. Baime, “Mindfulness training modifies subsystems of attention,” Springer Nature Link, June 2007.

3. S.F. Gilbert, J. Sapp & A.I. Tauber, “A Symbiotic View of Life: We Have Never Been Individuals”, Quarterly Review of Biology, December 2012.

4. Ann S. Masten, “Ordinary Magic: Resilience Processes in Development,” American Psychologist, March 2001.

5. B.Q. Ford, P. Lam, O.P. John & I.B. Mauss, “The psychological health benefits of accepting negative emotions and thoughts: Laboratory, diary, and longitudinal evidence”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, December 2018.

6. Arne Dietrich, “Neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the experience of flow,” Conscious Cognition, December 2004.

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