We live at the intersection of multiple thresholds — ecological, political, spiritual, relational. The dominant culture has sold us individuation as isolation, productivity as purpose, and certainty as wisdom. The costs are visible everywhere: rampant loneliness, severed connection to the earth, an epidemic of meaninglessness dressed up as busyness.
And yet the human heart keeps reaching — for genuine encounter, for community, for the mycelia beneath the surface that connects us to each other and to the living world. The earth herself is teaching, if we can slow down enough to hear.
This work draws from a growing edge of thinkers and practitioners who are learning to sit with complexity rather than fix it — among them Bayo Akomolafe, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Joanna Macy, Vanessa Andreotti, Sophie Strand, adrienne maree brown, and Tyson Yunkaporta. It is rooted in the conviction that the threshold we stand at is not only a crisis but an invitation — to compost what no longer serves, to weave what has been severed, to find in emergence and pleasure and the intelligence of living systems a different way of being in the world.
At the threshold of every life, there are questions that won't resolve — that deepen instead, growing roots into the dark. Soul companioning is the practice of sitting with those questions together. Not to answer them. To let them teach.
I bring the imaginal — dreams, images, the SoulCollage card that chose itself, the poem that arrived uninvited — alongside interspiritual, creative and earth-based practices rooted in the Bengali Shakta lineage and depth psychology in the lineage of Jung and Hillman. You bring everything your soul is carrying. We meet in the temenos — the sacred container — and see what wants to emerge.
All sessions are offered online, which means we can meet wherever you are.
If something in you is leaning toward this work, reach out. We'll begin with a threshold conversation — no commitment, just a first sitting together.
Sushmita is faculty at The Thread Interfaith Seminary, where she teaches in a program designed for those who sense a call to ministry but don't fit the mold of any single tradition. The work here is long and slow and deep: accompanying students across months and years as they discern, form, and find their own ministerial voice.
The Thread is an interspiritual community rooted in the conviction that the next chapter of human spiritual life will be woven from many threads, not one. Teaching here is not instruction — it is the practice of entering questions together, dwelling in the not-yet-knowing, and trusting what emerges.
Workshops and public offerings emerge from the same threshold as the soul companioning work — image, imagination, the body's knowing, and the invitation to sit with complexity rather than resolve it. They take many forms: an online workshop on political engagement held through a contemplative lens, a dream retreat in the Georgia mountains, a SoulCollage circle, a sermon that becomes a community conversation.
Upcoming events are listed below. Past offerings — going back to 2014 — are archived there too, and give a sense of the range of what is possible.
Monthly, Sushmita leads worship at South Nassau Unitarian Universalist Congregation — in person and on Zoom — bringing together the contemplative, the poetic, and the politically awake. Each service holds a question the season is asking. She also leads occasional services at other communities, including the New Thought community in Southampton, Long Island. Past sermons are available on the events archive and on YouTube.
Each summer, Sushmita co-facilitates Soul Spa — a body and soul nourishment weekend for BIPOC leaders at the Dharmakaya Center of Wellbeing in Cragsmoor, New York. Held in the Catskill Mountains, this intimate residential retreat offers a rare container: rest, creative practice, community, and the particular medicine of being fully seen among kin. This is an offering rooted in the understanding that those who carry the weight of leadership in unjust systems need spaces designed specifically for their restoration.
Something has brought you here. Maybe a question that won't resolve. Maybe a longing that hasn't found its name yet. Maybe simple curiosity.
Whatever it is — reach out. A message, a question, a first hello. Nothing is too small or too uncertain to name.
Sushmita reads every message personally and responds to each one.
Or reach Sushmita directly at sushmita@on-seeing.com