Spiritual Exploration

 

I offer my services as a guide-catalyst for spiritual growth, through workshops and one-to-one.

I work face-to-face with clients in NC and northeast Ohio or by phone anywhere in the world.

Email me: mary@marygrigolia.com or call: 919-452-4194 to set an appointment.

My Spiritual Journey

If you are considering asking me to serve as your spiritual guide, I’d like you to know where I’m coming from on my spiritual and religious journey. We don’t need to share the same background, merely an attunement to compassionate learning and growth.


I was attuned to the spiritual - the dimension where we are part of something larger than our individual selves  - all my life. As a child, I had luminous experiences in mundane activities - climbing the garden stairs to visit a neighbor, waiting at my seat by the window in third grade. That same year, I heard an inner voice saying, “The Christ is within you.” And I knew it was our true and shared identity.


As a teen-ager and young adult I struggled with bulimia.

I left my childhood (American Baptist) church and disavowed the belief that there is only one way to God/Truth.


As a young adult, I was drawn to altered states of consciousness. I studied yoga and eastern mysticism and meditation.


Embracing democracy as a form of spiritual practice, I threw myself into anti-war work, believing that ordinary people - teachers and trade unionists - could stop the war if we knew what was happening and were organized. I taught classes about the origins of the war; I wrote articles. I went door to door.


In a dark night of the soul at the age of 28, I had a near-death experience, bringing me back to my life’s purpose of individual healing and spiritual exploration in community, allowing me to start again.


I deepened my yoga and meditation practice and started teaching.


In my early 30s, I wrestled with anxiety attacks and learned to dispel them through chanting and movement, giving voice to the soul’s yearning for the divine.


At 40, I answered the call to ministry and went to seminary (Starr King School for the Ministry, part of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA). I was ordained a Unitarian Universalist minister in 1992.


I started sharing the chants and songs from my spiritual practice. My music ministry grew beyond my congregation through workshops, retreats, recordings and publishing.


I loved and cared for four congregations, growing with them in their ministry to one another and the communities they served.


I embraced the study of integral philosophy, integrating spirituality with an understanding of how consciousness evolves. I started teaching integral studies, using it in social justice work in my congregations and with individuals in spiritual direction and pastoral counseling.


I stepped away from parish ministry so that I could devote my ministry to a broader parish - working with individuals, groups and communities undergoing spiritual emergence, and deepening my spiritual practice of being present compassionately to what is emerging, listening and responding in writing, singing and sharing.


Namaste!

I believe the family of being is on a spiritual journey:

The One, in love with Being; yearning, dreaming of partnership.

Two partners, ten thousand partners, six billion partners:

Consciousness unfolding, dancing together.


How do we dance together with grace?

By opening to the flow which calls forth the dance,

not by dwelling on one another’s missteps.

When to engage a spiritual guide:

  1. 1.When you’re looking for a companion on the inner journey who has experience on the trail and is there to support you, not to tell you where to go and what to do

  2. 2.When you feel stuck in relationship with God/Spirit/Life and are ready to move beyond your stuckness

  3. 3.When you’re ready for new ways to make meaning in your life

  4. 4.When you’re homesick for God/Spirit and not ready to return to the religious home of your childhood

  5. 5.When you need a witness for releasing old blames and hurts in your relationship with God

  6. 6.When you’re feeling spiritually dry

  7. 7.When you are ready to put words to your yearnings for the divine and not comfortable doing so only with friends or family

  8. 8.When you have questions about your relationship with God/Life/the One and would like someone to talk with who won’t judge you or try to impose their answers

Dying Well

Perhaps you’ve seen a loved one descend into fearful clinging and prolonged suffering at the end of life and wonder how to avoid what Buddhists call the “hell realms” of dying.

                                 “I’m not afraid of death, it’s dying that scares me.”

As a minister and teacher of meditation, I’ve used meditation techniques that help us live well and die well - when we’re ready. I’m available to work with individuals, families, spiritual exploration groups and congregations. Click here to find out more information.