Amber Mikesell, founder of Suivera, joins Sunny Ray to explain how a multi-faith, dogma-free community became one of the fastest growing spiritual movements online. Suivera means self-truth in Latin, and Mikesell describes launching it online in May 2020 after brick and mortar plans fell through due to the pandemic. Within a month, over 100,000 people responded to a simple question about feeling unsupported in their spiritual search, and within a year the community reached 1.3 million people across 113 countries. Mikesell, who trained as a master-level life coach and integrative health coach studying world religions and quantum science, explains why Suivera refuses to prescribe beliefs and instead teaches people to ask better questions. She shares how the group resolved a Muslim and Christian community conflict in Pakistan by focusing on children's education, why she considers ignorance rather than fear the opposite of love, and how raising a neurodiverse son shaped her approach. The conversation covers fundraising, humanitarian outreach, the Heart Leader podcast, and what it actually takes to build a new religion from scratch.
Amber Mikesell explains how Suivera grew to 1.3 million people across 113 countries by refusing to tell anyone what to believe.
What is Suivera and what problem were you trying to solve?
We found there were plenty of paths that told you what to believe, but very few safe spaces, especially during the pandemic, to question what you'd been told and why. Every religion started from a desire to love and be loved, but people wanted to put you in a box. We started online in May 2020, asked if others felt this too, and had 103,000 people respond within a month wanting information without being told what to do with it.
What convinced you a multi-faith approach could actually hold together at scale rather than pleasing no one?
Honestly I wasn't convinced, but I thought we had to see if it was possible. When we studied global religions and broke them down, we all wanted the same thing, love, connection, and a path to the infinite. The proof came in Pakistan, where a fighting Muslim and Christian community set their differences aside to focus on getting children into school, and the community started integrating instead of segregating.
You've said lasting transformation comes from better questions rather than better answers. What experience taught you that?
I don't like being told what to do, and I doubt anyone does. We go to events, follow someone's prescription, and it doesn't work because we're not them. What actually helps is asking what got me here, what does my body need, what is my purpose. Mine is different from yours, so following someone else's answer leads to their best outcome, not mine.
What has supporting neurodiverse adults taught you that changed how you think about the rest of your work?
My son is on the spectrum, and watching him respond to the world has taught me more than almost anything else. They will not listen to you prescriptively, which is a gift. They live in what they're experiencing right now, not what happened two days ago or what's coming next, and most of us have gotten far away from that focus.
How does Suivera actually function, is it in person, online, structured like a religion?
We are technically a religion, actually the 22nd largest globally. We have meetings in person in the Scottsdale area and a sermon available online every other week. The approach is just different, because we're dogma-free. You can bring your own path up the mountain, whether that's Christianity or Judaism or a blend of Vedas and Buddhism, and we're curious about yours rather than telling you to take ours.
How does one even go about starting a religion?
It's a little easier than you'd think. We had to create a creed and code of doctrine, everything required to establish a new belief system. What we chose not to create was a dogma, because a dogma is how you tell people what to do. It wasn't really planned, we felt something, shared it with our online community, and so many other people felt it too, so we united around it.
What commitment do the 1.3 million people in the community actually make?
We all join together making a commitment that we will use love as our common language and speak with curiosity. If someone steps out of line, which happens because we're people, they get two discussion points and then are asked to leave until they can get their center back. We don't accept hate speech, because to us the opposite of love isn't fear, it's ignorance, and ignorance breeds fear.
Where can people learn more about Suivera and reach you?
They can learn more at suivera.org, s u i v e r a dot org. There's a lot of information there, and they can reach me directly, it's just amber at suivera.org. I'm always happy to answer questions. I know it's probably a little different, but we all have to be a little different, otherwise we just keep doing the same thing.
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