General Audiences

Spirituality is a cultivated state of awareness that I am an individual expression of an immortal Self whose nature is love, peace, and creativity.

Mysticism is the belief and the experience of direct, intimate union of the soul with God, through contemplation and love. Kitchen Mysticism is a path that cultivates the awareness of direct intimate union with the Divine in the arena of everyday mundane existence.

Stories

• The dream that led Mary to meet her husband
• The dream that led Mary on a journey to India
• Jack the dog, one of Mary’s finest teachers
• The Spider Story: Making Peace with God

Excerpts

“We Kitchen Mystics are passionate spiritual seekers who find ourselves involved in a never-ending mystery story that is unfolding with subtlety, finesse, and occasional high drama. There is a benevolent plot afoot, and the conspirators are everywhere— seen and unseen. Their mission: the total destruction of our fears and limitations, resulting in our final spiritual awakening! It’s harrowing, it’s uplifting, and it’s more thrilling than Star Trek because we ourselves are the main characters! Kitchen Mystics keep each other vastly entertained with stories of the latest personal breakthrough….

“I see God in onions. I always have. I remember when I first saw my mother slicing into an onion when I was about six. I stopped my playing, awestruck. What is this vegetable that is so pure, so watery-white, so many-layered in concentric rings that make mounds of perfect circles as they fall open onto the cutting board? I begged her to let me cut some, despite her warning that it would make my eyes burn. I can remember the concentraion and reverence welling up within me as I askwardly tried to make perfect slices. My eyes did burn and I had to stop after a few cuts, but I vowed that I would understand onions some day, and cook with them myself….”  —from The New Kitchen Mystic

• existence
• social (job, vocation, family roles)
• symbiotic (partnership with other people)
• common human purpose
• spiritual
• evolutionary

Stories

• The Aunt Ann Story (one of Mary’s best!)
• A Key Experience
• George

 Excerpts

“’Seeking purpose’ is a paradoxical activity. It is both necessary and unnecessary to seek it. The key to discovering and fulfilling one’s purpose is to just relax and love what you have — no, it’s to get going and create what you truly want — no, it’s to relax sometimes and get going at other times — no, it’s to do them both at the same time in different areas of your life — and as the saying goes, nothing that you do really matters but it’s very important that you do it anyway.” You see the challenge here? There are paradoxical truths about seeking one’s purpose that we need to understand and live by if we want our souls to sing well in the chorus of human expression…

In fact, both of these directives are correct, in different ways, for there are a number of levels to the subject of purpose. Everyone from a mossy rock to a human being is fulfilling at least one level of purpose by the mere fact of existence—I call this existential purpose. You exist because you exist. You can add a few skills on to that and leave society in a little better condition than when you arrived: that is social purpose. This is about what job you have or what career you pursue. You can be an old drunk like my Aunt Ann but willing to learn and to love with each day of your life, and fulfill our common human purpose. You can engage with life as a classroom of learning and mastering certain spiritual qualities, i.e. patience or tolerance, and you have a spiritual purpose. You can pair up with other people and share your complementary skills, and you’ve got purpose in partnership, or symbiotic purpose. You can choose to call on more of your unused brain capacity and advance the whole thing farther along—yes, the human being alone has the power of enhancing the evolution of our species. You can consciously serve our collective evolutionary purpose.

The relaxing thing about this way of looking at purpose is that you can do any amount of it that you choose. You can have a wonderful career and be a fairly decent person and touch some lives in a pleasant way, and never once ponder a greater meaning than that. You can “hang out”, and take the path of least resistance, and be someone’s loyal son. You can embrace the new technologies of body/mind transformation and take yourself higher and higher into the clear mountain air of consciousness despite the fact that you have a mundane job. You can be born with Down’s Syndrome and live on government aid, and warm the hearts of people around you with your innocent and loving disposition. On this level, we are all doing just fine.

And yet, there is something about the nature of a human being that insists on asking “Why?” and clamoring for more. There is something creative wired into our genes that bides it’s time and eventually explodes outward in a surprising moment of genesis that initiates a period of Divine restlessness and growth. Who knows what or who governs these cycles of rest and creativity? It’s a mystery. I invite you to explore this mystery.. . Relax—and get going!”
—from Living Your Purpose tape set and The New Kitchen Mystic book 

Stories

• Mary Meets her husband because of a dream
• Jamie and the Motorcycle Accident
• Hannah and her healthy new lifestyle
• Mary Steers her DaughterAway from Danger
• A Magic Telephone Number Locates a Missing Son

Excerpts

“Your intuition is trying to show you only one thing all of the time: how to be happy as you. It’s there to make life easier. Your intuition will help you understand and unfold your purpose here, and solve everyday problems. It needs to be reinstated on the throne next to the logical mind, where they can work as partners. Your intuition receives vision for a life direction that will make you happy and will use your unique nature to the fullest. Your planning mind makes a strategy. But it can’t make an airtight strategy, because there are always unknowns. Your intuition works through these unknowns, bringing ideas and resources into play right in the present moment. Your logical mind organizes information; it balances your checkbook. Your intuition balances your life. It tells you about health needs, connects you with good friends, and helps you with timing. It leads you into situations that elicit your joy. Together the intuition and the logical mind create a fulfilling and effective life.”  —from The New Kitchen Mystic

Model of soul and personality from wholistic psychology

How to Forgive Another Person or Situation
Prepare for a healing and a change in your life

• Be willing
• Release stored painful emotion
• Cancel your expectations, one by one
• Restore personal boundaries
• Connect with the spiritual level to receive unconditional love and light
• Send unconditional love and light to other
• See the good in them or the situation

integrating the physical change

Stories

• The Woman Who Couldn’t Forgive Her Fiancé and Best Friend’s Affair
• The Woman Who Forgave the Minister who Raped Her
• Mary Forgives Her Husband Who Won’t Do the Dishes
• The Man Who Forgave His Wife for Leaving Him
• The Woman Who Forgave Her Husband for Ignoring Her
• Mary’s Classroom in Forgiveness: Two Despicable Neighbors”

Excerpts

What does true forgiveness feel like? How do we know if we have really forgiven someone who has hurt us? The experience of forgiveness is so profound and refreshing that there is no doubt about it when it happens. Forgiveness changes us physically and emotionally, dissolving the stagnant weight of resentment and flooding our bodies with fresh new energy. It mends our tattered personal boundaries, and empowers us to move forward with more hope and creativity in operation than when we were holding our grudges. When we do the thorough and gritty work that goes into releasing the trauma from the past, we reestablish our connection with our spiritual Source, and that Source gifts us with a palpable sense of light and lightness. We find ourselves on new ground.” —from The New Kitchen Mystic