Supporting Personal Transformation

By Kelly Kandra Hughes

Norfolk resident Elisabeth Sperling will never forget her first day of kindergarten. Even though it was decades ago, one pivotal moment sparked a passion in Sperling that is still ignited today. On that day, the teacher greeted Sperling with a “hello” and then told her there was a girl crying in the corner. “Can you see what that’s about and comfort her? “

Sperling has considered herself a teacher ever since. “I’ve always been a teacher of some kind. For me, that’s what it’s always been about. It’s the togetherness, the learning, and the mutual support. I love being in a community of people learning together.”

After earning a BA from Harvard University in Russian and Soviet Studies and an MA in Teaching from Columbia University, Sperling spent 16 years as a high school global history teacher. During that time, she found there was always a curriculum behind the curriculum. “It was about how to be a human being,” says Sperling. “How to understand your place in the world and your relationship to yourself and other people. We asked questions like what is friendship and what is altruism. Those kinds of questions made the kids light up.” 

It was when Sperling took a personal development course after she left high school academia that she realized the entire course was the hidden curriculum through which she so often engaged her high school students. The teachings she studied were embedded in global wisdom, traditions, philosophies, literature, and science. “A lot of the basic problems of how to live well, how to live according to our values, how to feel fulfilled and joyful, and to love each other truly and deeply – they’re not modern questions. They’re eternal. People have pondered them and come up with great answers and practices.”

The professor invited Sperling to teach with him the following year, and she stayed on for five years. “It was a fantastic training, learning, and growing experience for me.”

Sperling believed in sharing this wisdom with a greater community. So she partnered with another teacher in the course. “We wanted to build an organization that could grow and reach a lot of people and live beyond our lifetimes. It’s our dream to help people tap into their inner wisdom and the wisdom of the ages. We are the most intelligent species, we think, but we need to be a wiser humanity. That’s our quest.”

From that dream, the Wise Humanity organization was born. Their mission is to launch and support people on a journey of happiness and fulfillment, inner awareness and a higher level of consciousness. They hope to build a better future for the participants, their communities, and the planet. 

Wise Humanity offers a 12-week personal transformation course twice a year, in February and September. During that time, participants make a group commitment to learn new psychological, social, and emotional tools and practice them. Participants then join in a virtual meeting. “Every week, you practice a tool. You learn from it. You crystallize it until you can explain it to others. There’s magic to being in and learning in a group.”

 The course is currently taught over Zoom, but Sperling and her business partner hope to offer more courses in person. They offered their first in-person retreat for course graduates last year in Norfolk. They gathered at Sperling’s house, with attendees staying in Air BnB’s around town. Their next retreat is scheduled for later this spring in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. All forty spaces have already been booked by current Wise Humanity participants, past participants, and spouses and guests. Sperling believes the deep work of personal transformation is a lifelong journey. “It’s so deceiving in our society to think you go through school and then you’re done learning. After that, the ways people learn can be so haphazard. In the twelve weeks of Wise Humanity you learn the tools and you get a chance to implement each one for a week. But really it’s a doorway to the rest of your life. One of the things I love to say is it’s for grownups who want to keep growing.”

More information about Wise Humanity can be found on their website: https://www.wisehumanity.org.