Avi from Boulder, Colorado, is a therapist and natural medicine facilitator who once lived fully inside Chabad life.

For over a decade, Hasidus, Kabbalah, tefillin, and the Shema were his clearest language for reaching toward the divine, but over time, as his work with psychedelic medicine deepened, that same language began to shift, the clothes and outer forms starting to feel disingenuous while something truer was opening inside.

The medicine did not pull him away from Judaism; it widened it, revealing the same Presence in the forest, in the mountains, in breath and relationship, and in the soul’s longing to reconnect with the divine within and without.

The Shema kept returning for Avi as both doorway and anchor: Hear, O Israel. At some point, the whole verse narrowed into a single word that felt like a deep well: שמע, shin, mem, ayin, listen. For Avi, these three letters carry a whole spiritual practice, listening to what is, listening to God in nature, listening to the body, and to the person sitting across from him in the therapy room. He spoke of a forest at dusk that is both listening and being listened to, of the slow intelligence of mycelium under the soil, of mountains that stay steady while the weather shifts around them, and the more he sat with it, the more he felt that שמע does not need more explanation; it already contains everything.

Gabriel imagined a piece that would treat that word as something living: שמע written in Hebrew calligraphy that stretches and branches like an underground network, the letters flowing into one another like roots or mycelium, a subtle structure beneath the surface.

For Avi, this tattoo becomes a small, visible place on his skin that keeps inviting him back to the same practice, to listen deeply, to trust that the same Oneness he touches in prayer, in the forest, and in his work with others is always here, waiting to be heard.