About the book
Shari Arison – considered the most influential woman in Israel and the richest woman in the Middle East, the leader of a business empire that spans the globe and the head of the largest private philanthropic foundations in Israel – has been on a lifelong spiritual journey. And she has a message for each and every one of us. We can – and must – transform the world. And we must start right now.
In her new book, Birth – When the Spiritual and the Material Come Together, Shari Arison wants to share her revealing personal account of that arduous journey and a blueprint of her vision for the future.
As the global economy staggers on the brink of collapse and the earth hurtles towards a looming environmental disaster, Shari steps forward to tell us that we have the power within us to turn collapse into change, chaos into harmony, the old unworkable conventions into a new model for living that brings together the spiritual and the material to create a better, brighter future for all of humanity.
Ranked as one of the world’s wealthiest women on the Forbes Billionaires List, Shari is the daughter of the late Ted Arison, the founder of Carnival Cruise Lines, the world’s largest cruise company. She is the controlling shareholder of Israel’s largest bank, of one of the country’s top real estate and global infrastructures companies and of the largest salt manufacturer in Israel, and she recently established a breakthrough multimillion-dollar global water initiative.
In the book, Shari shares with readers her conviction that her wealth is a gift, a platform for putting into action her deeply held beliefs about sustainability, mutual responsibility, transforming the world, about creating a new reality on Earth for us and for future generations.
"I believe that I have received a podium from God, a large and powerful business platform that enables me to generate change, that enables me to reach people in both the business world and the spiritual world, and to provide them with a role model – to show them that we must connect the business and the spiritual, that it depends only on them, only on us, on each one of us."
Her goal in the book is to reveal the fascinating path she has traveled on both the spiritual and the financial planes, to share her insights about the vital connection between the two and to speculate on the nature of the new world that will arise from the rubble of the one we now live in.
Born in New York to Israeli parents, Shari, an Israeli-American, spent much of her childhood shuttling back and forth between the two countries with their very different cultures. While materially she lacked for nothing, her early years, as she describes in the book, were not easy.
"I began my emotional and spiritual journey as a frightened and angry girl, who did not know how to express her feelings. I grew up in a home where we did not know how to deal with feelings, where we did not speak about emotions and where I felt that my feelings were suppressed and silenced."
She suffered from the feeling – even as a young girl – of being uncomfortable in the world, of not belonging. Her extreme sensitivity to the future was reflected in vivid and often terrifying visions of events that had yet to occur.
"For years, I suffered greatly from these visions, sensations and messages, which were tested again and again and always became a reality. I prayed that they would disappear. They brought a great deal of pain to my life. It was difficult to share them with those around me, who neither understood nor accepted, and regarded my authentic experiences with disdain or disbelief."
Her response to the pain and distress she was feeling was to embark on a spiritual quest, to conduct an ever-widening investigation into her innermost self over the course of many years.
And just as importantly, she also worked to acquire the tools to apply this knowledge effectively in order to make a genuine difference, to build a new reality and make the world a better place – socially, environmentally and economically.