Introduction
In late 2024, amidst significant global and personal events, Richard penned this remarkable letter to a close circle of men who have been deeply engaged in group mentoring and awareness work with him.
This letter serves as both a historical snapshot and a timeless mirror for self-reflection. Through masterful questioning, Richard weaves together global events like Trump’s re-election with deeply personal moments—a friend’s illness, a mother’s passing, shared experiences at his home—offering an invitation to pause and reflect on how these kinds of events may resonate and influence our lives in the present moment.
Why This Letter May Be Helpful to You
The letter demonstrates how to hold multiple levels of experience simultaneously: the personal and the collective, the immediate and the essential, the practical and the metaphysical. In a time when global events like presidential elections and climate records intersect with deeply personal experiences—illness, loss, shared gatherings—it offers a vital framework for processing change and finding perspective.
After Reading: Tools for Reflection
After sitting with this letter, you may take some time to consider these questions, with an awareness of what’s naturally unfolds:
- What past experiences continue to “reverberate” in your present life? Rather than going into the past, the invitation is to ask yourself: how do these past experiences influence you now in the field of your direct experience?
- When you look at the mix of events in your life —both personal (like health challenges or family changes) and global (like elections or climate news)—do larger stories or meanings tend to arise in your mind to help you create some sense of coherence around these events? Can you be become aware of them?
- What does your mind’s creation of meaning and coherence around such events make you feel?
- How conscious and direct is your relationship to your “sense of the essential”? How does it influence your relationship to your own mind, to your own feelings, and to your moment-by-moment life choices? Specifically, is “what is essential to you” bringing you to greater inner freedom, joy, and love?
The following is the original letter, preserved as it was written.
Dear Gentlemen,
What a dull time. Nothing much is happening lately!!!
I mean, Donald Trump is President Elect. 2024 has already been declared the hottest year since records have been kept. And then, of course, there were our recent days together here at Moon Lake, with alas, many of you not present.
What still reverberates from our gathering for those of you who were here and rather than going into the past, how is that influencing you now?
Also relevant in this list of happenings, I feel, is Dusty being very unwell for several weeks afterwards (praying he is fully recovered now). And Brian and Marika who went to Mayo Clinic and received very good news… At my end, Kathy’s mother passed away last Thursday and happily Kathy got home last Monday.
Kathy was with her in what was an extraordinary (in my observation and sensing) 5+ week vigil right up to the last breath. I was with them for a few days before our gathering here at Moon Lake and have shared some of how that was and continues to impact me. Also, I have finished Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk, a book I urge all of you to read. So as we come together Monday, I have no doubt that each of you have reverberated with all the above in individual/personal ways, but as well as we all bathe in the collective ripples, or in some cases tsunamis. I wonder what meta-thesis some of you may be contemplating about it all?
I recently sent out a video to my database with my reflections on the election and have had some important feedback. Not sure how many of you are on that list and have seen it. The title was: “Congratulations Mr Trump (which came from a dream Kathy had on election night where she shook Trump’s hand). The co-title was, “Nothing essential has changed.” Congratulations Mr. Trump… and Nothing Essential Has Changed. If you haven’t viewed it, you can find it on my YouTube station, or maybe one of you who did receive it can forward a link to the rest.
It seems to me that there are several themes we might reflect on before Monday, starting with what you each regard as essential and how your sense of the essential influences how you have been thinking about, and responding to the election outcome(s). Clearly, there are so many as yet to be experienced consequences of this election and some of them will, no doubt, have significant effects on the lives of many people, nationally and internationally, and no doubt, though perhaps more indirectly, on our lives as well. But won’t those outcomes, or how they are experienced and lived, be determined person by person in accordance to what each holds as fundamentally essential? There is a great deal of implication in this question, that we can discuss. But let’s see what unfolds as you each reflect on what you hold as fundamentally essential. How conscious and direct is your relationship to your sense of the essential? How does it influence your relationship to your own mind, to your own feelings, and to your moment-by-moment life choices? Specifically, is what is essential to you bringing you to greater inner freedom, joy, and love?
I love you gentlemen and I am honored to dance with you as we do.
I very much look forward to being with you on Monday.
Richard the Eldering