By Maginel Galt
I grew up without any religion, but I always felt I was seeking something that offered a mystical experience within spirituality. I initially came to faith as a Protestant in my early 20s after my mother’s untimely death. I came to the Catholic faith when I was close to 30 because it offered monasticism. I knew that I wanted my life to express my total dedication to God, which is why I chose to be a “religious,” or what some people call a nun.
I spent more than 19 years as a religious. I am 59 now, so it was certainly a big piece of my life. Initially I joined an order of women in Italy that had an active ministry of service. But they had had some big problems, so I later moved back to the United States where I found religious communities that were healthier.
After almost 20 years of living the life of a religious, I discerned that it was no longer what I was meant to be doing. I was in Saint Louis at the time, finishing my master’s degree in Chaplaincy Training when I understood that the concept of sin and the rigid thinking of both Protestant and Catholic Christianity had built up a tremendous amount of guilt and shame. So, I left religious life and eased away from the Catholic Church. I later investigated the Episcopalian (Anglican) Church, but even though I thought I’d walked away from it, I realized that I was still carrying so much Christian baggage that no Christian faith made sense to me. While I was passionate about the spiritual dimension of existence, I didn’t have a name for what I was looking for except the awareness of a deep unquenchable thirst. I just knew what I didn’t want.
It was A Course in Miracles (the Course, ACIM) that eventually set me free from the burden of Christian guilt and shame. I was ripe for it. I don’t remember the details of how it first started, I just know that my first contact was an ACIM meeting in St. Louis. It was a self-contained group of people who were very comfortable and close, so close that there was no room for me. Then I came across the website of a retreat centre outside Cleveland. The person who ran it was not well known in the spiritual community, but his simplicity impressed me deeply. He mentioned that he had gone through the entire Course twice and that got my attention. I bought my own copy of the book and started to study.
The Course was such a different way of seeing for me that I knew that I could not walk that path alone. In the summer of 2020, I attended Jennifer Hadley’s boot camp: “Freedom from Fear with A Course in Miracles.” It offered me a tremendous amount of group support. What I loved about her teaching style was that she was totally committed to spiritual growth.
Shortly after, I found the Circle of Atonement (the Circle) and started participating in Zoom classes. With the Circle, there was an obvious commitment to excellence. One time during a Circle Zoom class, a woman who had been studying the Course for many years was in a lot of distress because she was not experiencing any sense of a personal relationship with God. Robert Perry, who was leading the class, encouraged her to pray, and that stayed with me.
Later, in a transformation course I took with Nouk Sanchez (“The Deeper Teachings of A Course in Miracles”), we sometimes joined in silent or spontaneous prayer with whoever was going through difficulties. I’ve heard some people say that one problem with the Course is that students study the theory but miss out on living the experience. I believe the Course must be practiced in order to come alive; Course-based prayer is one of the ways that happens for me. Recently, I was inspired to start offering myself as a “spiritual midwife” to help women align with their authentic selves, especially women who come from a background in religion.
I have been asked how I was finally able rid myself of the load of guilt acquired during my Protestant and Catholic experiences. It might have been much harder had I been indoctrinated into these faiths as a child when I would have been more impressionable and mouldable than as an adult. I have worked hard to give up performance-based tendencies when practicing the Workbook and the false guilt this engenders. I am deeply grateful to have come across Course teachers who move from the head to the heart. For me, the direct experience of my innocence was crucial. We live in a heavily Christianized culture. As Course students, many of us, with or without belonging to an explicit church, are well-defended against recognizing and embracing our actual innocence. It has taken me some time to grasp the difference between self-blame and correction with no guilt that the Course asks for, but it is deeply refreshing and liberating.
I encountered my current transformational coach, Kelly Russell, at Rock Your Joy Ministry where she serves as a Course teacher. She provides the support I need – life coaching with an ACIM lens – by helping me recognize and let go of the rigidity in my life. I feel I am finally beginning to understand the Course’s teachings on the ego. What a relief it is to know that I can choose to listen to the Voice of Love (God) and not to the voice of fear (the ego). At every moment, I have the power to choose again. Thank goodness!
https://www.yourspiritualmidwife.com/
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