Chap. 17 - No longer rising, but rooting
🌿 The Early Days After the Collapse
My first therapy session wasn’t what I expected. I thought I would share stories from my life, talk about my history, and maybe be given insight or feedback. What I didn’t anticipate was that, in the those first early sessions, my deepest spiritual framework would be unmistakably questioned.
For years, I had lived by the belief that everything was mind. That my feelings originated in thought—and that healing meant correcting my thinking. I had learned this from various teachings in the world one of them being A Course in Miracles. I attended week-long ACIM retreats. I had practiced diligently. I even moved into an ACIM community in Mexico. Later, when back in the U.S., I showed up to classes, workshops, and weekly private sessions with a beloved teacher. I even joyfully transcribed her teachings, immersing myself in the language and rhythm of the Course.
But when my new therapist asked me how I felt, I answered with my familiar vocabulary: “There’s so much fear in my mind.”
She paused. Then asked, “Could you say, 'I feel scared?'”
My mind resisted. It sounded unspiritual. Too emotional and not the truth, as I had come to believe it. But I was there, and something in me—the same part that had cried out for help on the floor weeks earlier—said, "Try."
I said the words.
“I feel scared.”
And in that moment, my world shifted.
The words cracked open a dam I hadn’t known was there. I cried—not a tearful thought, but a wave of release. The fear I had kept locked behind philosophy and spiritual language was no longer abstract. It was mine. And it was moving.
By the end of that session, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years—disoriented, yes, and also relieved. I had found a doorway into a different kind of healing.
Not long after, I felt a natural shift away from the structured study of A Course in Miracles. My final session with my teacher was kind and clear. When I explained that I needed to explore this new therapeutic path, she affirmed that what we shared had always been rooted in the Course—and that without it, our time together had come to a natural close.
It was a bit of a jolt. I felt sad too. But in the quiet after our goodbye, I look back now and see what I couldn't see then: Grace was guiding me again.
It wasn’t a rejection of what I had learned. It was an invitation to embody it. Not through mastery of language or metaphysics, but through the trembling, raw truth of feeling. It was another turning—turning back toward myself.
⬅️ Chap. 16
➡️ Chap. 18
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🕊A Living Memoir
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