This is the first in a series of letters to you - our earliest supporters. We’re putting our money where our mouth is by telling the authentic stories of what brought us here - and where we’re going next.

I started building The PATH in the second year of my Master of Divinity degree at the University of Chicago. For those who don’t know, Divinity School is a training ground for scholars, practitioners, and leaders in the world of religion and spirituality - of any, all, or no religious adherence. We study academic disciplines like philosophy, theology, and history of religions, but it’s also a pre-professional program, so we also study the arts of ministry: ritual performance, spiritual counseling, community stewardship, and other areas of religious and spiritual leadership.

Here, amid all these brilliant people walking different paths and learning how to build a better world, I came to a realization. At their core, all the world’s wisdom traditions are instruction manuals for how to thrive in the face of one central problem: human suffering.

In the US and many countries around the world, we’re experiencing a series of overlapping mental health problems - anxiety and depression are at all-time highs, and suicide rates are rising, as have drug addiction rates. It’s no wonder why. Technology, globalization, and the pandemic have triggered rapid and challenging changes in culture, society, and the environment. Social change has exposed the seedy underbellies of long-standing institutions like democracy, education, justice, and organized religion.

All together, a more general type of crisis is emerging: a crisis of meaning. You’ve probably felt it, the gut-wrenching pain of watching senseless violence erupt around the world; the soul-crushing despair as decades of inaction push us to the brink of climate catastrophe; the hollowing out of your will to believe that, in the grand scheme of things, your life matters.

So much for the bad news. The good news is that humanity has been cultivating antidotes to hopelessness, despair, and meaninglessness for thousands of years. Teachers from across time and space, from Gautama Buddha to Jesus of Nazareth, to Charles Darwin, have taught us ways to look at the world - worldviews - that sustain a sense of meaning.

But what does “meaning” mean? Some might tell you it’s an unanswerable question. Others might tell you that you have to find your singular purpose in life. We ground ourselves in evidence, so our product rests on, among other things, research on the field of Positive Psychology - the study of character strength, purpose, and resilience. Positive Psychology research suggests that meaning is more a verb than a noun - your capacity to believe that your life and its events matter (to you, to others, to the planet, to God or the Universe – any or all of the above) and that the world makes sense, is organized according to a set of principles that no amount of pain or suffering could change.

Meaningfulness is like a muscle - it can get stronger and bigger over time if you feed it healthy ideas and exercise it by putting it into practice in your life. But it can also atrophy, leading you down the path of hopelessness, apathy, and anomie. That’s where we come in. We’re blending the rich diversity of the world’s wisdom with clinical science to help you build the grounds for meaningfulness in your life. This isn’t another meditation app (though we love meditation) and this isn’t spiritual psycho-babble (though we love clinical psychology). This is tools for deep work, tools for you to build answers to life’s biggest questions, like “Who am I?”, “Am I living a good life?”, and “Are things going to be ok - in the end?”

We won’t pretend we have the answers to those questions. But we’re committed to helping you find them for yourself.

Thanks for reading. We’re so grateful for your support. Building this company has been a gift, and we want it to be a gift to you. To say thanks, we invite you to use code MEANINGBLOG for 50% off your first Spiritual Health Report.