I teach A Course in Miracles. I am a disciple of Jesus and a messenger of God. I help people to know their own perfection. I teach people to become aware of how they think, and how by changing their thoughts their life changes.
My mission is to help people overcome blocks and obstacles that hold them back in fear. Once fear is dissolved, miracles happen naturally and spontaneously with no effort.
How did it all start?
On July 4, 2000, I stood in my living room in Park Slope, Brooklyn and declared God as my new boss. I didn’t think much of it. I’d lived what I considered a fairly ordinary life up until that fateful day that changed my world upside down, inside out, right-side up.
Up until then, I had ups and downs like everyone else. I had a successful career in publishing. I had friends and a fairly busy social life. I had moments of happiness and sadness; success and failure; love and loss, sickness and health. Normal, right?
I didn’t think so.
Something in me knew that the constant mood shifts were not right. I longed for consistency of purpose, passion, joy, love and freedom. I was afraid of losing my job. I was afraid that I would never find love and that I would grow old alone. I was especially afraid of being alcoholic. That probably scared me the most. I couldn’t stop drinking no matter how much I tried.
During high school, college and my twenties, I thought drinking was fun and social. I was the ultimate party girl. Everyone loved me. I had tons of friends. I got a great job in New York in publishing. Some days were good and some days were bad. This is life, right?
I didn’t think so.
My entire life – even as early back as a child – I knew something was fundamentally wrong with the world that people felt hate, got divorced, got sick, died, and lost the things they loved. I did the best I could in terms of fitting in, coping, surviving, striving, and being a good person.
I started to become seriously afraid for myself when I turned 30 and I realized that my drinking had turned a corner. I was no longer just a fun social drinker. Now, I needed to drink. I kept trying to quit and could not, and that’s when I knew I had a problem. I dumped hundred of bottles of vodka down the kitchen sink in attempt to stop, only to find myself back at the liquor store within a week. I’d feel excited and defeated in equal measures standing there in the check-out line.
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I just wanted to be happy. I wanted a life that seemed completely impossible to me.
I read every self-help book and these books always made me feel exited with possibility for a new life, but I always slipped back into my old habits. Things would change for a while, only to be exactly the same again within a few weeks or months.
The undercurrent of my life was frustration. I was mostly confused and baffled because I KNEW there was something that I was missing.
From 1991 (when I graduated college) to 2000 (when I declared God as my boss), I moved 12 times to 4 different cities in 3 different states. I thought if I changed the scenery of my life – different apartment, different job, different relationship – my life would change. Whatever it was I was looking for, I was convinced I’d recognize it once I found it.
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What happened on July 4, 2000 was not any kind of epiphany. I was not trying to achieve or accomplish anything. Mostly I was just really mad. I was mad at life. I was mad at myself. All my moving around felt like a whole lot of MOTION and physical exertion, but nothing ever really changed. I was always identically the same person – a woman who wanted love, companionship and adventure but who in reality was a woman who spent almost all her time alone – working, reading, wishing, praying hoping – and waiting for 5 o’clock to arrive so she could make a vodka tonic.
So on July 4, 2000, after desperately realizing how much I wanted my life to have meaning and purpose, I turned to the last place I ever would have thought to turn to: God. I didn’t have any kind of relationship with him. I was not a church-goer nor religious.
I said a few simple words: “God, if you’re there. I’m yours. I want to work for you now. You’re my new boss.”
There were no fireworks. No angels. No revelations. No peace washing over me. I probably made a vodka tonic and then went outside to smoke a cigarette.
Six days later, on July 10, 2000, I was at work when I got a tap on the shoulder from the woman in Human Resources. She brought me into the small conference room and sitting there was the publisher and some other people I didn’t know. They said they had to let me go. The publisher was crying. He was like family to me. It was nothing personal. We had gotten involved with a project that lost a lot of money and a whole group of us lost our jobs.
All I could think was: OH MY GOD! I HAVE BEEN HIRED BY GOD!
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The next several years were an attempt to find my way in completely unknown territory. How do you work for God when you can’t even see Him?
I didn’t want to base my work on any religious ideas. I wanted to learn how to communicate with God directly because I knew it was possible to talk with him and he would answer. I had spend so much time reading about other people’s experience and advice that finally I wanted to see things with my own two eyes. I wanted to witness things first-hand.
My rule of thumb was to believe in miracles ONLY if I saw miracles with my own two eyes. I had a copy of a book called A Course in Miracles and it says there is a world where there is only love, and so I made it my decision to reach that world through trial and error.
I would use my life as A Great Science Experiment into the unknown.
To the best of my ability, I disconnected myself from my past and all my stories. It was like pushing a Delete Button or a Reset Button – like creating a space in the sequence and continuity. I let myself be brand new. I let go of my story of myself as an addict. I let myself be a child again.
Immediately, I lost my desire to drink alcohol. Alcohol became liquid poison to me. I quit smoking on the same day. The thought of a cigarette was suddenly repulsive to me. I never once looked at the “whys” or “reasons” or “causes”, I simply caused an interruption between my past and the present moment – a total disconnection.
Jesus calls this being “born again.”
I called it a miracle.
I started a blog called Gorgeous for God, which started as 3-word reminder to help me remember my function and perfection in the world as Light.
Even though I was no longer drinking or smoking, I still experienced fear. I knew there was more work to be done.
I figured if I made a daily commitment to be a state of gratitude and to follow the instructions of A Course in Miracles perfectly, with no exception, something would shift for me.
This meant 100% responsibility for everything that happened to me. If something was happening to me, I knew I must have caused it with my thinking. I stopped blaming life and other people for my circumstances.
I started to see things differently. I began to experience life differently. I started to feel tremendous amounts of joy, clarity, freedom, and a profound sense of peace.
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I know God and I also know the pain of being human. I know Heaven and I know earth. I know the path to God, and I know it well. I know where the stumbling blocks are in this journey, and how to avoid them. I know the obstacles and how to get around them. I know the fastest route to God based on my 8-years in the wilderness.
I know what it feels like to have lots of money and I know what it feels like to have none. I know what it feels like to be trapped and afraid, to have an addiction, to lose people you love. I know what it feels like to be alone and lost.
I also know you have to keep going and it helps to have someone standing beside you, guiding you along, inspiring you when you are just too weary to go further.
It is my joy to be a guide on this journey past all sickness and problems, right straight into the light.
For me, Gorgeous for God, is a haven where you can rest and be inspired and find some mighty companions to travel this magnificent journey back to God.
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