Spiritual guide promotes worldwide meditation event to mark 25th anniversary of September 11 attack

Michal Lichtman, a spiritual guide who works with people on developing awareness and what she describes as their “inner light,” has proposed an international meditation to be held on Friday, September 11, at 9:11 a.m. New York time. The symbolic starting time echoes the date of the attacks, and participants are invited to meditate together for nine minutes and 11 seconds.

The first plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001, and the second hit the South Tower at 9:03. The attacks, carried out by al-Qaeda terrorists who hijacked four planes, killed 2,977 people at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and aboard United Airlines Flight 93.

For Lichtman, the anniversary has become connected with a spiritual journey that began shortly before the attacks.

“About a year before 9/11, I was introduced to the world of yoga and spirituality, where I have been deepening my studies since,” she said. “Looking back today, knowing that there are no coincidences and that everything is connected, I realize I had embarked on a journey to understand darkness, the essence of light, and how – by becoming aware of both within ourselves – we can heal and find balance.”

She remembers being deeply affected in the aftermath of the attacks, particularly by accounts of people who were found alive amid the destruction.

Over the years, she said, she came to believe that fear and what she calls “survival mode” can leave people psychologically and spiritually immobilized. Her meditation practice encourages people to recognize patterns of fear rather than allowing those patterns to determine how they react.

“When I talk about inner light, I am referring to the light of the soul, the living spirit within us that the ‘noise’ around us and in our heads has dimmed,” she said. “When the inner light is turned on, the noise quietens and clarity emerges.”

The idea for this year’s global meditation grew out of an event Lichtman organized in Jerusalem last year as part of her initiative Migdalor – Growing Light.

Lichtman said she initially attached no particular significance to the date.

“It was only when I wrote to the producer to save the date that I made a typo and corrected it. That’s when I saw it: 9/11,” she recalled. “And when I looked at the time stamp of the messages, I realized they were sent at exactly 9:11 a.m.”

The rescheduled Migdalor event was held at the Tower of David on September 11, 2025, bringing together participants from different faiths and backgrounds for a guided meditation centered on Lichtman’s concept of inner light.

She said that afterward she began repeatedly noticing 9:11 on clocks and gradually came to see it as encouragement to develop the idea further.

“And that is how the Global Meditation was born,” she said. The project was developed with the production support of Avisha NessAiver and video and sound work by Tali Appel.

Lichtman emphasizes that the meditation is not intended for people of any particular faith or spiritual background.

“It is a short, simple meditation for everyone,” she said. “The guidance is designed to allow you to feel rather than just comprehend – to breathe, briefly quiet the background noise, and allow the heart to fill up, so we can recognize that we are all connected.”

She hopes participants will use the nine minutes and 11 seconds both to remember those who died and to reflect on their own responses to suffering.

She has linked the coming year with the Hebrew word “zechut,” which can mean merit, right, or privilege, as well as with the ideas of purity and clarity, which are central to her spiritual practice.

“From a deep inner sense, the words came to me: ‘Tehei Shana Potahat Zechut’ – may this be a year that opens us to zechut,” she said.

For Lichtman, the coincidence of the 25th anniversary of the attacks and the beginning of the Jewish New Year makes the meditation particularly meaningful.

“If there is one thing I hope people take away from those nine minutes and 11 seconds,” she said, “it is the reminder that when we connect to our inner light, we connect deeply to ourselves and, through that connection, to every human being in the world.”