THIS year featured a rare convergence of Rosh Hashonah, the beginning of Ramadan and the Vernal Equinox on the same day of the new moon. Whether you are Jewish, Moslem, Wiccan, or any other spiritual persuasion, this was a day for introspection and life changes.

I personally felt a profound sense of rebirth from celebrating the start of the new year (5767) with the Nevei Kodesh Jewish Renewal community in Boulder, Colorado.

Unlike the staid and generally boring rote recitations of the High Holy Days worship services from my youth in a Reform congregation, the services this weekend led by Rabbi Tizrah Firestone with assistance by Rabbi Zalman Schachter filled the sanctuary with joyful song and deep prayer. I truly felt my connection to Spirit.

As the services began, I felt tears well up inside from the power of the music and feeling of being in a community of kindred souls, who like me have explored many different spiritual paths, eastern and western.

During the evening and day of services, I made that wondrous, powerful journey of 18 inches that every man must make from his head to his heart. My biggest take-away from the services this year was a renewal of my commitment to inner peace.

In recent months, I’ve been so fixated on the many details of launching my book, Global Sense, that I’ve not sustained the daily personal growth practice at the root of everything I say in the book, especially the idea that world peace starts with inner peace. I’ve not been walking my talk. I’ve not been feeling the peace that passes all understanding, the source of the abiding faith that empowers my hope for humanity.

So, in this new year, I’m humbly owning that my life is a work in progress. I’m owning that I still have much to learn and far to grow. I’m owning that all of the turbulence, urgency and worry in my life springs from the illusion of scarcity. I’m accepting the reality that there really is more than enough abundance and love in the universe to meet all of my needs (and your needs, too, for that matter).

I now affirm that I am one with the Source of Life. And from this global sense of being connected with the whole world, I breathe a sigh of sublime surrender. Here and now, in this day and hour of new beginnings, I breathe peace.

Tomorrow, I begin the process of renewal all over again.

Shalom. Salaam. Peace.