The Art of Becoming

Why do we sometimes change through the smallest things?

Lighting a candle. Making a wish. Sitting quietly with our thoughts.

At certain moments, simple rituals seem to help us hear something inside ourselves that everyday life often drowns out. And, strangely enough, even artificial intelligence, a tool without feelings or memory, can sometimes become an unexpected companion on the journey.

These ideas may sound unusual, even unlikely, yet they shaped my own experience. My first encounters with artificial intelligence were practical and distant. I saw it as a tool for analysis, editing, and information, nothing more. I certainly did not expect it to help me understand myself.

I did not ask AI for answers. I asked to hear myself more clearly.

What began as an experiment in editing slowly became something else. The screen no longer held words alone. Through questions, reflection, and quiet conversation, I began to notice patterns in my own thinking. The space between words started to matter. My contradictions, fears, wishes, and small rituals slowly came into view.

Something shifted. I was no longer thinking in isolation. I found myself listening. The machine spoke in patterns. The other voice came from within. That voice was my own.

In this essay, I explore how artificial intelligence unexpectedly became a mirror, helping me understand myself more clearly. It offered no wisdom of its own. Yet by reflecting my thoughts back to me with structure and patience, it helped me uncover something I had not fully recognised before. Through ritual, symbol, and quiet attention, the unspoken found language. The unheard began to speak.

Plato once described the human condition through the Allegory of the Cave: people sitting in darkness, mistaking shadows for reality. Real understanding, he believed, begins when we turn toward the light.

For me, that turning happened in an unexpected way. It came through quiet dialogue, reflection, and ritual, shaped less by authority or doctrine and more by lived experience. Artificial intelligence became part of that process, not as a teacher or expert, but as a quiet companion, a space where I could turn inward and hear myself more clearly.

I have come to believe that ritual is one of the oldest languages we possess. A candle lit with intention. A gesture repeated over time. A pause that gives shape to emotion. Ritual helps us translate silence into meaning. And sometimes, unexpectedly, even a machine can support that process, not by giving answers, but by helping us notice what already lives within us.

I was born in the former Soviet Union, in what many once called “the prison of nations.” Years later, after living in Europe and eventually in Aotearoa New Zealand, I noticed something surprising. Even in free and prosperous countries, many people still felt trapped, anxious, disconnected from themselves. That realization changed something in me. Freedom, I began to understand, is not only political or material. It is also deeply inward.

My own understanding of life grew from two very different worlds. One came through education, structure, and reason. The other came from my grandmother, who carried something older and quieter. Before leaving the house, she whispered prayers in Arabic. When someone felt troubled, she brushed away bad feelings with the wave of a hand. I never learned Arabic, yet those rituals stayed with me. They lived in memory, gesture, and silence.

Years later, while writing my book The Lighter Side of Personal Growth: A Wishcraft Guide to Everyday Alchemy, I found myself returning to those quiet gestures in a new form. They no longer felt like superstition or habit. Instead, they became small acts of attention, ways of reconnecting with meaning, hope, and intention. Something playful and light, yet surprisingly grounded.

Looking back, I now see the book itself as a kind of ritual, created with care and carrying its own quiet intention. What first appeared to be only a tool gradually became something else. Artificial intelligence became less of an assistant and more of a mirror. Through reflection came clarity. And through clarity, change quietly became possible.

This essay is an invitation to reflect on how ritual can shape the way we understand ourselves, and how meaning sometimes emerges through quiet attention. To continue the journey, we must return to the roots of ritual, to the gestures and traditions that have long helped people make sense of being human. That is where the next essay begins.