I finished my Intro to Mysticism class and began attending the morning meditations and other classes. I found myself opening up and deepening my personal search for love and truth.  Surrounded in love and support, I am provided with a safe, comfortable environment in which to observe my vulnerabilities, work to transform them into positive strengths and let them go.  Working closely with Master Jesus, Mother Mary, Reverend David, Reverend Monica, and my newfound friendships within my spiritual community, gave me the freedom and confidence to follow my heart and create my own destiny through God’s will.  It just so happens that God’s will for me lays in Colorado.

Mother Clare Watts was with our community for long weekend at the end of April. I attended the daily seminars offered and was able to express my enthusiasm and gratitude of being able to experience her light and truth.  I told her how I have recently gone through some changes and ended up in the scary position of being totally open and in flux: no serious relational commitments (I’m single), no career (business partnership fell through), no children, no house (have an apartment). In this moment, as wonderful and empowering as this state has the potential to be, it definitely was not. I was scared and craved stability.  Mother Clare offered me a job in Colorado, at the Sophia Peace Center.  I was in awe. To have Mother Clare offer me this opportunity is wonderful. My gut reaction was: picking up and moving is not stability—it’s the opposite.  I was still on the emotional rollercoaster ride of my emotions from not only my own spiritual process but attending the seminars as well; I needed sometime to process this decision, out of respect for Mother Clare and myself.  For the next couple of days, I thought and felt, and fought with myself.

“I should stay here and focus on straightening out my life. Picking up and moving temporarily to Colorado won’t solve anything.”

“So what? I’m already unstable why not embrace it? I will never have this opportunity again. And even if I did, I probably won’t be at a better place to accept it than right now.”

After morning meditation, I told Reverend David and Reverend Monica that I accept Mother Clare’s invitation.  Since then, I have experienced a plethora of emotions and feelings—worry and doubt to gratitude and exhilaration. If it weren’t for the Reverends and my friendships through the Center of Light, I would not have found the courage to follow through on this journey, or the humility to write about it. Next week, I will begin my “physical” journey of transformative love, when I embark on my road trip from New York to Colorado.  I know within my heart this trip will not only bring me closer to knowing and finding God but also myself. And I have a premonition that they aren’t too far apart.

By Elise, Student, New York and Dolores

Hers is a journey of awakening, hope and opening to real love. In her conversion story, we are witnesses to God’s tremendous love, compassion and forgiveness through Jesus and his Mother Mary.

Most people, even the most unspiritual or secular among us, have heard of Mary Magdalene. She is mentioned in the gospels primarily at or after Jesus’ death. Luke refers to her as ‘a sinner’ (7.37) and tells us that ‘seven demons had gone out’ from her (8.2). She was considered to be a prostitute.

How could her story have relevance for us today? Can you even imagine that her story has anything to do with you? In obvious or subtle ways, most of us have separated ourselves from God and ‘sold out’ to whatever it is in the world that has seduced or attracted us. Sometimes this is pretty apparent to us, and sometimes it is not. That is why we have to look deeper into your hearts and minds to see where this separation is happening within us. We have to ask how we have made our own needs, our pride and our fears bigger than God is in our lives.

This is the awakening part of the story. When we take the risk of looking closely and honestly at ourselves we can see the truth about where we may have ‘sold out’ to have things our way, or feel like we are in control. Seeing this isn’t always easy, but that is where the hope part comes in.

Mary Magdalene’s story is a story of hope because, having seen her transformation, we know that we too can be transformed, no matter how far we have gone away or how miserably we think we have failed. The only way transformation could happen for Mary was that she allowed an opening for the Master Jesus’ love to fill her. That is also how we will be transformed. The more we allow real love in to break open our hearts, the more we can be healed.

As we open to the love of God, Jesus and Mary, we too can experience the compassion and unconditional forgiveness that is available to each one of us. We are the lost sheep that Jesus speaks of in the Parable of the Lost Sheep (Matthew 18: 10-14). The good shepherd will leave ninety-nine sheep on the mountain and go in search of the one that went astray.  The shepherd rejoices when that one is found.

It is never too late or we have never been too ‘bad’ to open to the healing love of Jesus and Mary. We are welcomed back in with open arms. It is our decision. Mary Magdalene went from being filled with darkness to being the first person that Jesus appeared to after his Resurrection (after seeing his Mother). That is an amazing transformation. And we too can chose to be transformed as she was.

By Rev Louise, Priest, Seattle

From the first class I attended at the Center I was deeply touched by the peace that was emanating from the priests there, and that seemed to permeate the whole room. I drank it in and kept coming because I felt safe, relieved, and accepted. It wasn’t until I started working with a teacher that I realized how my usually non-peaceful state was created by myself, and how little I was able to love and accept myself as I was. My whole life had always been about achievement and performance; about being “good” and doing everything right; about finding approval on the outside rather than listening to the inside. It was a very painful recognition, but it started my gradual (and ongoing) process of changing my attitudes and casting out beliefs that kept me in that stagnating negative place I had been for so long (for example, the conviction that I needed a man to be accepted and acceptable in the world). I started to look at life with different eyes, to tune into myself and into God, and to focus less on my issues. In meditation I now feel that there is love and acceptance deep inside myself that remains untouched by whatever storms are raging around me. There is even joy and happiness of a kind and abundance I would never have thought possible. Sometimes I am just overwhelmed by laughter. I am beginning to see heaven.

Last week, I became aware of this change when I had a collision accident. Just weeks previously when changing my insurance, I had proudly announced to the new company that I had never had an accident. Now I had. The moment of the crash was shocking, adrenalin rushing and all. But I quickly realized how lucky I had been: nobody was hurt; both cars were still driveable; just the previous night I had finally remembered to put my new policy card into my car; and the other driver wasn’t even angry (“It happens,” was all she said!). Perhaps most miraculously, when I finally arrived at my destination (a fund-raiser for our Center), I found that God had even taken care of my delay: someone else had spontaneously showed up and helped in my place. It really was amazing. When I would previously have complained, I now felt so deeply grateful and protected.

But there was something else. Once off the road I realized that I did feel very bad about the incident. I had made a mistake; I had been distracted; I had caused a problem; I had failed. And so I was beginning to reproach myself, to feel ashamed. After all, what would the neighbors say when they saw my dented car?? It was at that point that I realized how ridiculous the spin of negative feelings was that I was just about to enter. Those were old voices, and with all my experience of the last two years, I knew that they weren’t true. Besides, not even the other driver had reproached me; so why should I? And why should I care what my neighbors or anybody else would think? This was my life and my car. And why should I be bad just because I hadn’t paid attention for a split second? Now, these thoughts made me feel energetic and happy. I got increasingly energized and tossed out all those other, negative thoughts and emotions, one by one. The accident was part of life, and so I decided to embrace and accept this life fully. By the time I reached home I couldn’t care less what others thought, and I felt freer and more peaceful than before: the accident had given me a chance to break through my old perfectionist ways; to accept myself despite being anything-but-perfect; and to feel God’s love for me deeper and deeper inside myself. What grace! Now I was not only grateful for God’s protection but also for the opportunity God had presented me to learn and grow — and I was overwhelmed by love.

I pray that I will continue to grow and embrace such experiences, that I will have the strength to break (through) more of my patterns, and that I will muster the courage to set my soul free. And I cannot thank God enough for the amazing teachers God sent.

By Paola, Student, New Haven

Over the course of middle school and high school these friendships were tested and strained, broken, and reconciled. I wanted so badly to trust and love my friends as brothers, and I tried numerous times to create such relationships with them. They seemed open to the idea, but heartbreak followed when I discovered the truth of their actions and words. Although I had many friends after that, I never trusted any of them with my heart or my true feelings. I just couldn’t be sure what they would do with them. Yet, the longing for a brotherhood never left me. In college I tried helping establishing a fraternity chapter, but discovered early on that it was not what I was hoping for.

The hope for meaningful and deep connections seemed pretty desolate and I forgot about it. I numbed out by smoking pot mostly, doing the superficial social thing, or getting enamored in relationships with a couple women.

But my soul was crying out to me. A couple years ago, before bed, when all was still and quiet I started to hear it, I could feel it, I didn’t know what it was then. I knew I felt empty but I didn’t know what to do about it. So I just hoped this ‘thing’ would be gone in the morning. But each night it was there, I went to some extremes to stop feeling this way but it had the opposite effect. The cry from inside me got louder. Then one night when it was roaring and I couldn’t shut it out or sleep, I looked into my heart and the sadness that met me was overwhelming. I started to cry and sob, and I lifted eyes up and prayed for help. “I need help, I don’t know what, but I need help, I don’t want to feel this way forever, I want to love, I want to feel loved, I want to know you, God, and know that I am not alone.” That was essentially all I said in my heart. Then I was exhausted and fell asleep easily.

When I found the Center of Light in Denver I knew right away it was what I had been searching for. There was instantly a part inside of me that recognized the truth. Not so much in their words as in their eyes. When I was invited to move to Milwaukee and become a novice my heart leapt in my chest, I remember that moment vividly. In meditations, I began having memories of times in my life when I had prayed to God, when I asked for help. Then one day the memory of that night returned to me and I knew that that prayer was being answered. Also, as a novice, I have six brothers here living in the center who are devoted to the spiritual work just as I am. The depth of trust and care and love that I have with them is what my heart always longed for. I never made a formal prayer about this one, but the teachers and priests told me, “God knows you better than you know yourself.”  The experience of this brotherhood is a feeling I had relegated to hopeful thinking and perhaps even fantasy. What love it is living here in spiritual community!

By Jonah, Novice, Milwaukee

I got thrown in jail earlier this month.  I got pulled over for a minor traffic violation, out of which surfaced some relatively serious unresolved charges from a year and a half ago.  My arresting officer was nice enough to allow me to call Reverend Simone and I left her a message asking her to pray for the situation because the charges were stiff, my bond was high and I was scared.  I didn’t know how long I would have to stay in that awful place called jail or how quickly it would break me down.  But just six hours into it, I was surprised to find I was being released.

My surprise and relief gave way to horror when I found out that it was Reverend Simone, Mother Clare and Reverend Cynthia who had spent their afternoon downtown, bailing me out.  Panic set in.  How could I ever accept this?  I don’t deserve this at all.  How could I ever repay them?  I can’t believe they wasted their whole afternoon on me.  These were the indignant and terrifying thoughts that would occupy my mind for days to come.  The situation ‘worsened’ when my community took a collection and raised over half of my bail money.  That was it.  I thought, Are you kidding me?!  How can I ever accept this?!  I did something wrong!  I screwed up and yet I’m being helped in ways that I can never repay!  But I had to accept it.  What else could I do?  This is why I say that God left me with no reasonable choice but to accept the Love.  How could I refuse it?  The favors were done, the gifts were given.

The real change came when Reverend Simone told me to write an email thanking my community for the money.  As I typed, all I wanted to communicate was how undeserving I felt, how unworthy I was of their generosity.  But I knew I couldn’t write that, for fear of sounding ungrateful for the favor.  This was the turning point.  I had to write the email doing nothing but thanking them and accepting their love.  It was painful.  My heart literally began to ache as I wrote the email and sent it off.  My heart was being broken open.  I was being loved.  After years of denying it, refusing help and pridefully suffering in solitude, here I was having no choice but to let go and let God love me.  I just had to sit there and take it… as if it were some terrible punishment.  But my heart swelled and learned to receive Love during this totally new experience of giving up the fight.

Since the incident, my life has been like an AVALANCHE of love.  As if God is so overjoyed to finally get to give me Love and healing, that God is just pouring it and showering it upon me in copious amounts.  At first I wondered if this was just to make up for lost time or if being in God is consistently like this, filled with such unmistakable personal care, love and attention.  But so far, it seems like every day, God is nearly yelling at me through my experiences, screaming, I LOVE YOU!!  Even in the difficult and painful experiences that arise, I am blown away to find that God is just showing me the very thing I need to see in order to heal, in order to bring me closer to God and farther into God’s love.  So, even in the tough experiences, I marvel, “How loving!”  God actually wants me to get well.

How much I am being blessed.  How perfectly I am being cared for.  And how unreal that all I ever had to do was just accept it.  Just accept a gift that is bigger than I can ever pay back.  That I am loved.

By Sophie, Student, Charlotte

I spent two years flying back and forth between my home in California and the recording studio in New York. On the outside I was elated because it looked like I wasn’t going to have to work another day job after this. Inside I felt intermittently parched, insecure and ceaselessly lonely so I started meditating and praying because I felt a deep longing for strength, love, and clarity that I knew I should have, but didn’t. I started working with the law of attraction after reading about it in a book and I felt something good growing in my life, which I thought was my music career and the influx of happiness and fulfillment its fruition would surely bring.

Nearly three years into the production process, we were just about done. We had all the tracks recorded and mixed on 2 inch analogue tape, all-star accompaniment added, mastered at the best mastering studio in NY, and copies were in the hands of Neil Young, Santana, and Alicia Keys. All we had to do was pick pictures for the cover art and the thing would be done. At about this point, I found the Center of Light in Oakland and had gone through the mystical baptism and was newly a student, working with a priest and spiritual teacher. I was receiving as much love and teaching as I could handle, and my eyes were starting to open to a whole new way of life. I was being given the tools to start a relationship with Truth, Light and Love.

Over the years I had become part of the family with my producer and his wife and we had mutual respect and trust. Before my producer left the country one day he told me, “take your time looking at the cover pictures, we’ve spent three years on this project, no need to rush now, I’ll be back in a couple weeks and we can talk about it.” One week later I got a very strange e-mail from him in Thailand. It said basically that he had had it with me, and we would not be releasing the album and he was frustrated and finished with the entire project. This was the first time I’d heard anything remotely like this from him, as he had always encouraged us to take our time and was extremely enthusiastic about the project. I remember the shock of this moment so clearly!
In slow motion, I went from my computer with a virtual stab wound over to the couch in the living room. I sat down. I took a breath. And with all the spiritual baby muscle I could muster, I closed my eyes, opened to God and said, “God, I need you now.” It was the first time in my life I put an emotional reaction on hold and opened to God. As I sat there, I had the most intense experience of God’s presence I had ever felt. It washed over me and I felt loved through and through. It was unquestionably, undeniably Love.

This was the beginning of my life in God – a life not as an artist or as anyone special, but as someone so blessed to be moving with and in the constant presence of the love that is God, and learning daily from this love. There is nothing else I would rather do. Looking back, I see that e-mail from my producer as the best gift I could receive because it set me free from a life of bondage to external validation. It gave me an easy and graceful way out of something I was so stubbornly attached to.

I thank God for seeing each one of us perfectly and knowing how to bring us home to where we are truly in love!

By Nadia, Deacon, Minneapolis

The Colorado Peace Ride?  It’s a 238-mile bicycle ride in the mountains to raise money for non-profit organizations.

I said, “Sure.  I’ll do it.”

I hadn’t ridden a bike since I was twelve years old, but I was up for the challenge.  I had no idea what I was getting into.  After all, it’s just about riding a bike, right?

I trained consistently for six months, mostly on weekends when I wasn’t working.  I began to feel burned-out at 4 months of training, and shared with my teacher what I was feeling.  She asked me, “What are you thinking about when you’re riding? Are you praying?  Maybe you should try doing that.”

I did, and it made a world of difference in my training.  Instead of feeling exhausted after many hours of riding, focusing on something meaningful outside of myself gave me tons of energy.  I felt a real sense of accomplishment after riding that had an impact that was beyond a physical or mental experience.  For the first time in my months of training, riders around me would smile at me, or say hello.  It seemed as if my prayer work also gave them energy and encouragement on long climbs uphill, even if it wasn’t them that I was praying for.

While on my training rides, I often pondered, “What is the Peace Ride? What does it mean to ‘Be the Peace, Be the Ride’?”  When going inside to find the answer, I was surprised to find that when I felt that place of peace inside of myself, I felt so much inspiration, love, and joy.  It seemed that the mountains, the trees, and all of nature around me responded back to me as if encouraging and cheering me on to connect more deeply with that place inside of myself.  I began to get a sense of what this Peace Ride was about and was in awe knowing that if a few hundred people got together to ride while feeling this immense peace and love I was witnessing… REAL, positive change could actually affect this planet.  Wow…

The Peace Ride finally came, and went.  I feel like a different person, as if I’ve gone through some kind of massive transformation. I’m not talking about being proud of a big physical accomplishment, or getting a badge for completing a ride.  I’m talking about feeling more peace, clarity, and heart-opening than I’ve felt in a long time, if ever this much.  I’m not so sure what happened to me, when it happened over the four days of riding, or how it happened.  I just know that all my sweat and hard work in the months before were well worth this ride that I will never forget.

Now, if we can only bring this level of consciousness and experience of peace to riders, organized rides, and communities around the world… How cool would that be??

By Christine, Student, Denver

Why would I trust people who talk about Jesus and Mary all the time, who dress in priest clothing, who talk about connecting with God as if it is possible in every moment, as if God is totally real and totally present in everything? Don’t these people actually just want something from me, like my money, or my worshipful attention, or my submission to their own selfish will? Aren’t they just fanatics, and aren’t I just a wounded, vulnerable sucker?

No, they are not trying to get anything from me, and no, they are not fanatics. And while I may be wounded, I don’t think I’m a sucker. The reason I trust them is not a reason, it is a feeling of love and safety, which has been reinforced through consistent failed efforts on my part to discount or ignore that very, very good feeling. I think that at first, a part of me only really wanted a quick fix of peace, a practical tool for my own selfish gain, and maybe a dash of generosity in my personality so that I could get more admiration from people. And instead I found a verification of a whole way of looking at life which I used to dream about when I was younger – an idealism based on deeper, hard-to-face truth about myself and about the world, and an intimate feeling of the presence of God in everything. In being around people of real purity and integrity I saw how screwed up I was, re-enacting all the projections of fear and rage and sadness from my childhood in every circumstance and relationship in my life (and I’m still seeing it, a lot.). And I saw a group of people who acknowledge that this mess is what we are all in, and working our way out of it with the guidance of a teacher is something we all can do, without being self-conscious or worried about it.

Why am I not worried? Aren’t these people going to reject me when they find our what a wuss, what a loser, what a jerk I am? Nope. They have compassion toward every single despicable trait, and they are helping me heal it, through love (like, forceful, hearty, honest love, not sappy, new-agey, or manipulative love). And, based on what I’ve seen of people who have stuck with it, it looks like it’s possible to be totally, completely healed. Like, nothing-in-me-ever-reacts-negatively-to-anything kind of healed, and that’s pretty enticing. Sounds crazy I know. You’d really have to meet these people.

How do they know so much? Well, simply put, they have gone through the same process themselves, from really screwed-up to really in love with God and really strong, with a teaching that is a combination of psychology and real spirituality. And when I say real spirituality, I mean Jesus and Mary, the actual Teachers, Their actual spirit and example and teachings, and not Christian religions. This is deeper than religion, it is the source of religion, it is the practice of spiritual experience and union with God. It’s awesome.

I don’t really want anything more than to actually know God, to become myself, and to love in a real and true way according to what God wants. I’ve been looking for it for a long time, and it’s the biggest thing that’s happened to me. So as far as I know, this is where I’m camping out for this lifetime.

By Jason, Novice, Chicago

My journey on the spiritual path began with a very mundane web search. Initially I was very intrigued with the Center Of Light because it combined traditional Christianity (Jesus, Mary, the gospel) and Eastern practices (meditation, working with a teacher and self discovery). Being a foreigner to this country, I loved how non-secular the Order is and how loving and welcoming everyone is. But all these intellectual reasons were just a way for me to convince myself that I should pursue this path. The real reason is that the void that existed in me for so many years was filled when I was in the presence of the priests. I didn’t really know what it was, but I knew that there was something deep happening in my being.

When I’m with my teacher, I feel accepted, loved and guided. I am very amazed and grateful how my teacher can see the good in me even when I don’t see it. I can discuss any fear, shame, anger…and I’m never labeled as a “Bad Person”. My teacher has the sight to see way beyond these emotions and always reassures me that all these emotions are “not me.” She reminds me constantly that these emotions are hiding fears and wounds that will be healed if I open up to the light.

My spiritual journey impacted all areas of my life — from my professional life to my relationship with my kids to my physical body — this path started shedding light everywhere. I had to let go of thoughts and desires that were not compatible with what I was being taught and this wasn’t always easy since a lot of my thoughts are engrained patterns that I’ve had for years. One thing I’ve been noticing is that every time I trust and let go of an unhealthy habit or thought, a positive transformation follows.

I pray to God that I will have the courage to surrender to the Love that is available to everyone and that I will let go of anything that will prevent me from answering my primary question, “What is the real purpose of my life?” I pray that God will reveal to me what lessons I came to learn and how I can serve, love and become a beacon of light.

By Thomas, Student, Boston