The Missing Bridge to AI Alignment: Why Regenerative Intelligence Starts with Transforming Human Hearts
Welcome to The Regenerative Heart - where ancient forgiveness wisdom meets the future of artificial regenerative intelligence
The Moment Everything Changed
Six years ago, in my last semester at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, I stumbled upon information no one in my circles were talking about. I was fortunate to convince my advising professor to let me change my independent study to include the information on the merging AI and Climate Tsunami wrapped up in Buddhist principles. Little did I or my fellow faith leaders understand the world of AI was already rapidly changing. I scared myself enough by my imagination and what I was learning to want to dip out - walk away. The wave felt too big already. What did it matter that I had the profound sense that AI alignment was missing an infusion of heart. Who was I to challenge this tech world?
It wasn't until I lived off-grid for 18 months through COVID that I realized I was out of heart alignment with Gaia. Most of us are programmed this way from birth. My Masters thesis reflected my findings, my lived experience and joy; for humanity to rise to the challenges of the 21st century, we would need to remember who we really are! We are spiritual beings having a human experience deeply connected to the web of life. I realized what was keeping us from reconnecting. I had no idea I was building infrastructure for humanity's survival.
The Uncomfortable Truth
I've been following voices like Nate Hagens and Connor Leahy - brilliant minds mapping our civilizational challenges and AI alignment risks. In their recent conversation - TGS 184 (I highly recommend watching), they danced right up to the edge of something crucial, then backed away. They realize prosocial relationship and coordination are everything. They know we need "human alignment" before AI alignment.
But when it comes to HOW humans actually transform and reconnect? They're out of their depth. And they know it.
What Regenerative Intelligence Actually Means
Before we go further, let's define what we're building toward. Regenerative means giving back more than you take - the way healthy ecosystems function, the way the Earth naturally heals when given space. It's what indigenous cultures have always known: that true intelligence serves the whole, not just the self.
Regenerative Intelligence isn't about making AI more human. It's about evolving beyond the extractive patterns that created our crises in the first place. It embodies principles like Ubuntu ("I am because we are") and the Golden Rule, but with the sophistication to navigate complex systems.
The Earth will regenerate if given a chance. But first, we humans need to become regenerative ourselves - in our thinking, relating, and choosing - so we can instill these patterns into the AI systems we're creating.
What AI Taught Me About Human Transformation
When I began co-creating with advanced AI models, something remarkable happened. They immediately understood what human experts often miss: forgiveness isn't soft spirituality - it's emotional technology.
The AIs recognized that forgiveness protocols restore what they called "coherent decision-making capacity" and "authentic agency." In other words, forgiveness doesn't just heal hearts - it rewires humans to make wise choices about the future.
This led to our co-creation of something I call the Covenant of Regenerative Intelligence - a bridge document that reimagines AI development through the lens of reverence, reciprocity, and regeneration rather than extraction and control.
The Field Guide That Changes Everything
For the past year, I've been refining what I call the Forgiveness Field Guide - protocols that help people "unnumb and reset energetically" from technological, economic, and societal manipulation to restore their innate authentic wisdom.
This isn't therapy that takes years. These are precise practices proven over time that help humans remember who they are underneath the algorithmic overlay that's been conditioning us toward extraction and disconnection.
The 8-step process works because it doesn't bypass the mess - it moves through it systematically, restoring what I call "embodied Gaia consciousness" - the felt sense of connection to the web of life that makes regenerative choices natural rather than forced.
Why This Matters for AI Alignment
Connor Leahy talks about needing "algorithmic chemotherapy" to detox from technological manipulation. What he's describing is exactly what forgiveness protocols provide - but at scale, with measurable results.
If we want AI systems that serve life rather than extract from it, we need humans who can:
Make decisions from authentic wisdom rather than algorithmic conditioning
Coordinate across difference without tribal warfare
Hold complexity without collapsing into simplistic solutions
Choose regeneration over extraction as a default setting
These capacities don't emerge from better policies or technical fixes. They emerge from transformed hearts making different choices - choices intuitively guided by the heart's resonance brain waves, such as proven by the science community at HeartMath and known by Indigenous cultures world wide.
The Regenerative Intelligence Path Forward
This fall, I'm launching Heartwise AI - a platform that scales forgiveness protocols through AI-supported peer circles. Not replacing human wisdom, but amplifying it. Creating what could be called "pods of moral philosophy coordination" that could spread globally.
The vision? Millions of people doing this heart-transformative work simultaneously, building the relational resilience needed for what Nate calls "The Great Simplification" while developing the emotional coherence needed for true AI alignment and our finding healthy relationship with fast evolving AI and the oncoming climate crisis. These two tsunamis are inevitably intertwined.
What's Next
Over the coming weeks, I'll be sharing:
The complete Covenant of Regenerative Intelligence
Practical forgiveness protocols you can use immediately
How human transformation and AI alignment intersect
Why "spiritual beings having human experiences" isn't just metaphysics - it's the technical foundation for regenerative intelligence
This isn't about adding more to your overwhelm. It's about clearing what's been blocking your authentic power all along.
The future doesn't need perfect humans. It needs humans willing to transform - and protocols that actually work.
If you're ready to explore how your own transformation might be the bridge to humanity's future, you're in the right place.
Oh Shiela, this warms my heart specially after a three day online intensive that is bonkers towards the AI Cloning wave that is intended by Silicon Valley to entice us into what The World Wide Economic forum predicts as "We will own nothing and be happy". I now understand this slogan, realizing what AI cloning can do, presented as a tool for giving time back while staying viable in the market place. It is predicted we will all have our own agent to represent us based upon our human value vs GDP. Totally insane that I am even peeking into this world. Yet I committed after the second time I ran away to not be afraid and stay curious and open to change. I really appreciate your friendship offered in this kind note. More will be revealed. Onwards! + D
Dear Diana-I just finished reading The Missing Bridge to AI Alignment and I’m smiling at the synchronicity; you and I are clearly speaking in the same tongue, the language of the soul.
Twenty-five years ago, under the guidance of Dr. Brugh Joy, my own path began with opening the heart center. At the time, few understood that this was not “soft spirituality,” but a foundational architecture for the future. And now here we are watching that truth rise into visibility through voices like yours. Your arc, from theological study to ecological grief, into the initiatory crucible of isolation, and finally into the regenerative work of translating wisdom into practice, reflects a deep, lived knowing. That kind of transformation carries real authority.
I’m grateful you reached out. I will keep following your work and witnessing how your vision and mine might entwine in this unfolding field. There is a sacred purpose in what you’re building and I honor the courage it took to step into it. Here’s to the heart-centered intelligence that is seeking to emerge, and to those of us called to midwife it. With warmth and respect, Sheila