Will Cady on What It Means to Be Human in the Age of AI
Will Cady, Co-Founder of HEAL MVMNT, explores what it means to be human in the age of AI—and why spirituality, intuition, and human dignity may matter more than ever. From tarot and technology to leading with heart, he shares how embracing what makes us deeply human can change the way we work, lead, and move through the world.
How do you define "spiritual" and has that definition changed over time?
Today, I define it has being in touch with your humanity. My grasp on spirituality has evolved throughout my life, but it's largely ascended along the rungs of a ladder I've always seen. What has changed is less my definitions of spirituality and more the cultural context by definitions of spirituality live within. To my honest surprise, it seems American culture has bent towards spirituality rather than away from it. It's almost hard to describe to the polarization and deep stigma I recall being associated with spirituality from hardened institutional forces decades ago.
Today, it seems a tremendous uncertainty has set in, which has humbled many and led to a broader recognition that there's something within these spiritual practices worth considering. At the time of this writing, that is all focused squarely on the question being prompted by the rise of AI systems to all of us: what does it mean to be human?
That is a deeply spiritual question.
Was there a breaking point or a moment when the old ways of working stopped being enough? What did that look like for you?
My first breaking point was my near death experience at three years old. My second breaking point was 25 years later when a psychic reminded me, without prior knowledge, that this had happened and I'd taken for granted what it had meant for my development.
From a very young age, the veil has been thin. As I gained more personal and professional responsibility, I had sought out a teacher in the psychic arts to help me hone in these experiences I had long been living with but hadn't quite understood. They gave me language and tools to harness it. So, for me, the 'old ways of working' that stopped being enough was the denial that my gifts existed. The new way of working became to embrace them and utilize them directly, rather than diagonally, to achieve my objectives and meet my emerging responsibilities appropriately.
What's the spiritual practice, ritual, or habit that most directly shows up in how you lead?
Tarot. It's cerebral and its symbolically coded with the same cultural DNA of my physical inheritance. It's jewish Kabbalah, it's Celtic lore, it's alchemic systems, it's arthurian grail mythology, and so many other elements of my humanity imprinted upon a deck of cards I can play with. I'm half Jewish, half Celtic, and my middle name is Arthur. It's all right there and it's no wonder it wants to act through me.
A huge part of my mission is to help people walk the path from out of their heads and into their hearts to find their voice in between. The complexity of the operating system underlying tarot is like catnip for heady people. It's a great way in to spiritual experience, as it was for me. The magic happens when those interesting ideas start knocking on the door to open our hearts and incredible synchronistic moments start coming in. Lately, I've been teaching tarot as a tool for storytelling and the resonance of this with people has been fantastic. I love that this invites people to choose their comfort level or their depth while I abide at the frequency appropriate to my depth and offer service from that presence.
Are you open at work about your spiritual life or is this your coming out? What do your colleagues think?
Reddit made me do it. They had a 'bring your whole self' to work principle and they really teased the witch out of me. MOAR! They said. They dressed me up in the role of the 'shaman of Reddit' and I found myself leading meditations, creating a custom Reddit-branded tarot deck, cleansing the energy of offices and just being that character fully. It was awesome and it encouraged me to just go for it and be 'out' about it, which being embodied as a tech bro creates such delicious cognitive dissonance for people. That my proper role was to lead the company's creative strategy is perfect proof that creativity is spirituality in drag.
What would you want a skeptic in a corner office to know about why this way of working is actually a competitive advantage?
I brought the Dalai Lama's physician to Reddit for a fireside chat during a company all hands. When we were talking about the value of meditation in a corporate context, he said, "we don't meditate to become more productive. We meditate to make better decisions." I think that's something anyone in a corner office needs to reflect on deeply.
How does this work ground you in a world of chaos and uncertainty?
It helps me to see the deeper tides underneath the crashing waves on the surface. Intuitively, I really do find myself tapping in to something deeper that helps me somatically feel safe in this rapidly changing world, feeling with embodied confidence that we're all going somewhere profound together. Intellectually, the study of the great ages of the zodiac (which is essential for understanding tarot) lays out a map that, believe it or not, makes everything happening today make total sense.
What has opening up to your spiritual side changed for you in ways you never saw coming?
I thought people would want to burn the witch. It's been the opposite. The more I open up about my spirituality, the more the world opens up for me. So in that sense, it has softened me. It has reinforced my sense of surrender into a universe that wants the best for me. Ironically, my near death experience as a child put the opposite into me. It opened my crown for spiritual receptivity but tightened my foundation into a hyper-vigilant, ever-present sense of a lack of safety. The elegance of my life journey passing through and ultimately balancing that source of my psychic strengths and weaknesses is precisely the kind of deep, personal. awe-some lesson committing to our spirituality can bring.
How different is the leader you are now from the one you used to be, and what would that earlier version of you think?
I think the earlier version of me would see how much I put the weight of the world on my own shoulders and question the validity of that kind of thinking. This is what happened on the other side of gaining validation and confidence in my abilities. I'm working on bringing this into balance. Becoming a new father and thus revisiting childhood is helping.
In a world being rapidly reshaped by AI, why do you think humans need this now more than ever?
We actually have quite poor and dysfunctional definitions of our humanity. AI is taking parts we thought were human, but never were. So we're being left with what is irreducibly human. A lot of people see scarcity there, but truly there is infinite wealth. We need to be confronted with that because we've really undersold ourselves to ourselves about who we really are.
What's one piece of "good advice" about being a Chief Spiritual Officer you want to share with the world?
Bad ass grounding. Your job is to hold people safely through the discomfort because that's the portal of our evolution. The greatest shamans aren't the ones everyone sees. They're the ones who hold it down so everyone else can fly.
What's one word you want to leave us all with?
Dignity.
We need to all be thinking more about human dignity and the quiet, transformative power investing in it can bring.
