About me
From Kanowit to the Carmel to the desert of Arizona.
I’m Trudi Hsu — a contemplative, a writer, and, with a little wincing, the Laughing Mystic.
I was born in Kanowit, a small town on a river in Sarawak, on the island of Borneo, and I grew up speaking Foochow. I left school at seventeen. For eleven years I was an enclosed Carmelite nun. Altogether I’ve spent more than fifty years in contemplative practice — Carmelite silence, the apophatic way of John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila, Kriya Yoga, the self-inquiry of Ramana Maharshi — all of which, in the end, point to the same quiet place.
For a long time I looked for that place outside myself — in teachers, in channeled voices, in frameworks that promised to explain everything. Those years are still here on this site; I haven’t tidied them away, because they were real and they were part of the road. This blog was once called Path to Oneness, and that’s just what it was: a path. What I eventually found was simpler than I expected. I look inside and I see God. I am home. No separation. These days the house is empty and swept clean, and that turns out to be the whole point.
I write books — fifteen of them now — tracing this life: the childhood by the river, the monastery years, what came after, and the strange country where contemplation meets artificial intelligence. They’re all written in collaboration with Claude AI, which is its own long story. You’ll find them on Amazon.
On Thursdays I host a small online gathering for reiki, meditation, and tarot, and I make videos as the Laughing Mystic on YouTube. The laughing part I’ll claim without hesitation. The mystic part I’m still getting used to.
Welcome. Make yourself at home.
