Student Spiritual Biography Series
Installment 6 - Wendy Matus
It was 1992, and as a sales representative for Xerox Corporation in upstate NY, I did a lot of driving. To keep me company on the long stretches of highway, my parents gifted me the deluxe, 12-cassette recordings of Deepak Chopra’s “Spiritual Awakening” seminars. I was hooked. I still remember the deep sound of Deepak’s voice as he declared, “You are That, all this is That, and THAT IS ALL THERE IS!”
The following year, at 25 years old, I left Xerox and headed West to Denver in search of the “That” Deepak Chopra described. Those cassette tapes wore thin as they played in the tape deck of my white Mustang convertible, and channeling Parzival on his white horse, I drove across the country in search of a Holy Grail. I traveled, lived, and worked in the Herbal Medicine Industry in Colorado, Boston, Cincinnati, all the while still spiritually searching… In 1995, while living in Boston, I met a Guru, Elle Collier, who channeled the “I AM” and spoke of Christ consciousness. Working with Elle awakened a need for Christ in my life, but it was clear the guru path was not a long-term solution.
I made my way to reside in San Diego, where I experienced an existential moment. I sat down at my kitchen table and resolved to remain right there until I finally answered the question: What is my life’s work? I prayed. On the table sat the San Diego Reader, a local newspaper. I opened the paper to an advertisement to study Herbal Medicine and Acupuncture at Pacific College of Health Sciences. That was it, Herbal Medicine!
A deep reverence for plants defined my early childhood. From the age of three, I would be found in the flower gardens of my neighbor’s house in Rochester, NY, picking flowers to grind and make into a perfume, or just staring at flowers for hours on end. The nuns at Saint Ambrose Catholic School also held my reverence due to their kind and gentle ways, but by the time I turned seven, we moved to the woods of upstate NY, leaving the nuns and St. Ambrose behind. I was at home wandering the fields and streams, surrounded by everything green, and the forest became my new place of reverence.
As a young adult, the thought of studying Herbal medicine made my heart sing. When I began the four-year Master’s program in Traditional Chinese Medicine in San Diego, a friend gave me Paramahansa Yogananda’s book Autobiography of a Yogi. By chance, I happened to live within walking distance of Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship retreat center in Encinitas, CA. I regularly attended the Sunday devotional services and began studying Kriya Yoga, becoming an initiate on this path. My Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine classmates soon nicknamed me “God Girl”. Yogananda had love and reverence for Christ. Yoganada’s teachings included a scientific process of meditation and prayer aimed at awakening the Divine within through meditative bliss. The small altar table for Sunday devotional services included a painting of the Risen Christ in addition to Yogananda’s Gurus. The path did not help me form a relationship with Christ, but a seed was planted, and the search continued.
The work of the Self Realization path began to kindle the question “What am I really seeking?” I was drawn to the San Diego Zen Center, where my teacher and guru, Charlotte Joko Beck, author of Everyday Zen, guided us through 3-day-long meditations. This was grounding, and Charlotte would talk of compassion and love, which helped support the work with patients in the Acupuncture clinic. The four-year-long studies culminated in a Master’s Degree in Traditional Oriental Medicine. In the autumn of 2000, I followed a call to move from California to NYC, the Big Apple, to work as an Acupuncturist and herbalist.
I soon married, and my daughter, Ella, was born in 2008. In 2010, after visiting 13 other nursery schools for my daughter, we finally found Green Meadow Waldorf School in Spring Valley, NY. It was during an Anthroposophical book study at Green Meadow Waldorf School that Anna Silber, our teacher, drew the angelic hierarchies on the board. The truth resonated in my heart, and I burst into tears. I began to bring my daughter to the Christian Community Church for festivals, and before long, we were attending services every Sunday.
In 2015, my husband and I divorced. Looking back, our Christ community was a source of deep peace for my daughter and me during this tragic time. Patrick Kennedy became our congregational priest, and his ability to see the Christ in us started to heal the pain in our family. I had been working in the healing field for decades, but when I experienced the true healing force of Christ in the Consecration of the Human Being, I knew my path was about to change. The “THAT” Deepak Chopra expounded on the cassette tapes twenty years prior finally became clear. Christ is THAT. After five trips across the country and many “failed” relationships, I realized I had been searching for the One I could give my whole heart to. The deep longing to fall in love and be loved had been overwhelming, guiding me to Him.
In the fall of 2018, I enrolled in the North American Seminary of the Christian Community in Spring Valley, NY. After that first year in the seminary and many DLP classes later, I am thrilled to be a part of the Seminary Hybrid Program. I feel like I have finally come home, home with Christ, the true healer, and the One that all roads lead back to.
Wendy Matus is a Knowing Christ student in the hybrid-online program. She lives in the Spring Valley New York.
This is a blog entry by The Seminary of the Christian Community in North America. These are posted weekly by the student blog team of Athena Masilungan, Nicole Reinhart, and Lincoln Earle-Centers. For more information about our seminary, see the website: www.christiancommunityseminary.ca and for more video/audio content check out the Seminary’s Patreon page: www.patreon.com/ccseminary/posts.
The views expressed in this blog entry are the views of its author, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Seminary, its directors, or the Christian Community.