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My original plan was
to get married, live in the suburbs, have three kids, a great husband,
and a big dog. And maybe give some after-school piano lessons.
I spent my Junior year abroad, studying piano at the Paris conservatory. That experience shifted my pursuits from music to a career in International Tourism. I spent the next twelve years living and traveling in over thirty countries, designing conventions and group travel programs. At the same time, I studied every spiritual teaching I could get my hands on. I thought I was searching, but at this point spirituality to me was still something I used to make things happen in my life. A successful career was now included in my ideas about the life God had planned for me. But I was still determined to get married and have a family. In fact, I would have it all! After all, this was what all the books were promising! Spirit was meant to work for us! And by the 1980's, I seemed to have succeeded. I had the big career, the handsome husband, the beautiful home, and a healthy new baby. Then in a shocking six-week period it all came tumbling down. In a bitter cold Boston February, my husband walked out, leaving me with no financial support to raise our infant son. Next, my home was robbed and I lost almost everything I owned. Two weeks after that my car was stolen. The shock of so much loss and upheaval led to an emotional and physical crisis. I got sick and was unable to continue working. For a number of years it seemed nothing got easier. Our personal design on life has nothing to do with Spirit's necessity. My ongoing personal and health problems forced me to question everything that up to that point had "worked like a charm"--including what I had believed to be a strong religious faith. My own personal efforts to "get it together" simply didn't work. In fact, nothing worked. It is easy to sum it all up now on the page, in a paragraph or two. But living through this experience took years, not just of physical and financial struggle but years of spiritual confusion as well. Everyone else seemed to have all the things that I wanted. More than just picture perfect lives, they had explanations and answers. So where were mine? Was I really creating my own (in this case…awful) reality? Why weren't my prayers working? What I didn’t know was that these years were working a change in me that I had never imagined, nor could I have. Spirit’s necessity is not of us. It lies outside our mind’s ideas. It is not just that we don’t create it. We can’t even imagine it. This shaking up was proving to be a “shaking down.” What I had always thought to be substantial and real would have to go. What remained was a new ground, one that was unshakeable. It was a ground that did not depend upon my affirmations, positive thinking, or self-empowerment to keep it going, and yet it was very real, more real than what I had previously known through all my “spiritual understanding.” It brought a deep and abiding sense of Love. In the midst of these difficult years, a counseling practice slowly developed with an emphasis on spiritual healing. The more aware I was of my own deep need for something outside religious dogma, New Age and self-help formulas, the more people called me with the same need. The more I found myself radically and utterly God-dependent, the more people came to me longing for this same freedom. This is the ground on which the seminars are built: We are not just dependent upon God in the traditional sense that He “helps” us. Rather, true strength and true life can only be found in a radical helplessness, wherein we realize that we have no life apart from God. We are in fact the activity of Spirit living its life as us. This is very different than us living our lives like God. The seminars have grown by word of mouth. I draw upon my studies of East-West traditions and the early church mystics. My understanding of spiritual healing comes from the Bible and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy. But what I am most sure of is what came through personal experience. I speak about Spirit and about Spirit being us, in practical, non-denominational, down-to-earth terms. Over the years, my work has taken me throughout Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, Africa, the US and South America. Currently, I divide my time between the United States and France. It’s a long way from the New Jersey suburbs, and instead of a big dog, I have two Chihuahuas. Wherever I go, I find people are dismayed with organized religion and growing frustrated with Self-Help. So many human systems! So little genuine freedom. Sharing what I have come to know of Spirit’s ground has become my life. In addition to the counseling work, I give seminars in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese on a wide range of practical topics. However, the focus always remains the same: Spirituality free from systems: How to let Spirit live its life as us. |
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