Are you seeking the path to inner peace and happiness? Theresa McGallicher has traveled that road, and discovered a power within herself she never knew existed through the transformative teachings of ACIM, otherwise known as A Course in Miracles.
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Show Notes | Transcript“All the worries, fears, anxieties, and doubts that had plagued me my entire life evaporated. It was so subtle. I just suddenly noticed that I felt like a different person one day.” – Theresa McGallicher
Theresa McGallagher is a spiritual transformation coach who found inner peace and happiness through the transformative power of A Course in Miracles. After experiencing a spiritual shift in 2015, Theresa committed herself to transmuting fear into love and helping others do the same. With a background in linguistics and a deep curiosity about faith and spirituality, Theresa embarked on a journey of self-discovery, seeking answers to the questions that had always intrigued her. Through her practice of A Course in Miracles, she found the guidance she had been searching for and experienced profound shifts in her relationships, mindset, and overall well-being. Now, Theresa is passionate about sharing the teachings of A Course in Miracles and helping individuals find their own inner peace and happiness.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Discover the transformative power of A Course in Miracles and unlock your path to inner peace and happiness.
- See why overcoming fear and ego can help you experience true freedom and find lasting happiness in your life.
- Seek your own personal spiritual path and uncover the deep sense of fulfillment and peace it can bring.
- Learn practical strategies for finding inner peace and happiness that you can apply to your everyday experiences.
Related Live. Love. Engage. episodes you may enjoy:
From Chaos to Clarity: Real-World Stories of Spiritual Awakening
Find Your Path to Clarity and Confidence with Elizabeth Kendig and Monica Lawson
Finding Your Inner GPS to Happiness with Marina Shakour Haber
Creating Happiness Habits with Barbara Ellison
Resources:
Connect with Theresa here
Follow Theresa on YouTube here
Join Theresa’s Miracles Attraction Community here
Join the Soulful Women’s Network here
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TRANSCRIPT
Gloria Grace Rand
Namaste and welcome to the show. Whether you’re a regular podcast or YouTube subscriber or you are brand new to Live, Love, Engage, I’m just really glad that you’re here. I am Gloria Grace, the light messenger and spiritual alignment coach and women entrepreneurs hire me to clear the inner blocks, keeping you stuck so you can live the life you want now. And I am so happy to be I’ve just been looking forward to this discussion today that we’re going to be having with a friend of mine that I met a few years ago, and I love that we are both interested in the same thing. But before I get to that, let me just tell you about her. So I want to welcome actually, I’m going to go ahead and bring her in right now, and then I’ll read her by her while she’s here. So I want to welcome Theresa McGallicher to Live, Love, Engage. And Theresa experienced a spiritual shift in 2015 as a result of her practice of A Course in Miracles, and that resulted in the release of anxiety, worry, and self-doubt. And since then, she has committed herself to transmuting the vibration of the planet from fear to love, which is a wonderful, wonderful mission. I love that you’re doing that. So officially now, welcome to the show, Theresa.
Theresa McGallicher
Thank you, Gloria Grace. I’m so happy to be here today.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, I’m just really excited to share A Course in Miracles with my audience because I’ve had lots of different people over the last few years that I’ve been doing this podcast, talking about all sorts of different ways to be able to improve their lives, to live fully, love deeply, engage authentically, as I like to say with the show. And one of the things that started me on my path, among others, was discovering a course of miracles. A Course in Miracles, I should say. So I would love to have you share what drew you to this course, and maybe you can explain a little bit about what it is as well, for those of you out there listening going, what is she talking about? So I’m going to leave that to you because you really are much more of an expert in it than I am. So I’m going to have you tell people a little bit about your journey and about what it is.
Theresa McGallicher
Okay. So I’ll start off by saying that I was raised Christian. I was raised in a Methodist household, Protestant, so not too evangelical, not too crazy. But we did go to church every Sunday, and I went to Vacation Bible School in the summer, and I loved all the Bible stories. Jesus loves everybody, all of that. But I did have issues with the church growing up because I felt like a lot of the things didn’t make sense. I couldn’t reconcile some of the things that I was told, and I started exploring different faiths and different religions at a pretty young age. As a teenager, I visited churches of my friends and a Jewish synagogue. And then I learned about the Baha’i Faith and became very fascinated by that. And I was really just kind of always looking for answers to these questions that I had about my faith that didn’t make sense, or my lack of faith, I should say. And when I was in my twenties, I realized that I had grown up in a dysfunctional household. I thought I grew up in a very normal household, an average American family of four living in the suburbs. But I came to realize that my father was an alcoholic, that my mother was codependent, and that I discovered Alanon and Twelve Step Work. So I dove into Alanon with a vengeance because I thought, here are the answers to all these questions that I’ve had about life. Suddenly things are starting to make sense. And as I was reading some of the literature from the twelve step programs, I started to run across quotes from A Course in Miracles. And I was like, what is this course in miracles? It sounds really intriguing. When I was younger, I used to visit my grandparents and they always had Guidepost magazine in the bathroom and I would always read the miracle stories that people had and think, wow, I wish something like that would happen to me. But my life was very ordinary. It seemed nothing mysterious or mystical ever happened. And so this was in the late 1980s that I found A Course in Miracles, 1987 or 88, I think. And at that time I was living abroad. Of course the internet wasn’t invented yet, so I couldn’t just google it. So the next chance that I came back to the U.S. On an R-and-R, on a vacation, I went to a bookstore and I found a Course in Miracles and I took it back with me and I opened it up and I tried to read it and I couldn’t make any sense of it. It seemed like Gobbledygook, it was written in English, but it just was very dense and I didn’t really understand what I was reading. And I also felt really suspicious because there was no author listed on the cover. So I was like, where did this come from? Who wrote this? What is it all about? I had a lot of questions, but I felt very drawn to the material. It uses Christian terminology and I found that very comfortable. And I decided that instead of trying to read the Text, which is a really long 600, some pages that I would do the Workbook Lessons first. So if you’ve never heard of the Course in Miracles, it’s actually three books in one. There is a section called the Text. There is a section called The Workbook Lessons, which is 365 lessons, one for each day of the year. And then there’s a small section after that called The Manual for teachers. And I a very action oriented person. I like to get things done. I don’t like to just sit around and philosophize. I like for things to be practical and I want to be able to use them in my life. So I thought, I’m going to do these workbook lessons instead of trying to read the text. And that’s what I did. So I would write the lesson each day on a three x five index card and I would take it into my office and I propped it up in front of my computer and then I would read it throughout the day and trying to remind myself what the lesson was. And as I got through the first 50 lessons, I started to notice something was changing in my life. I was feeling more peaceful. I was noticing that I was involved in relationships with people that didn’t serve me, that were full of drama, and that made me uncomfortable. And I started to ask myself, like, why am I allowing myself to participate in these kinds of relationships? I really wanted to be happy. Bottom line was, I just wanted to be happy. I wasn’t happy all the time. And I felt like this book had the answers for me. So the book was supposedly channeled. It’s a channeled work by Jesus. And because it came from Jesus, I had some trust in the message. One of the things that I had an issue with in Christianity is the fact that the Bible wasn’t written until some 300 years after Jesus lived and died. So basically, it’s heresy. It’s stories that have been were passed down orally for 300 years. And if you can imagine, our country is not even 300 years old. If someone were to write down the history of how our country was founded just based on stories their parents and grandparents and great grandparents had told them from revolutionary times how garbled that would come out, because you know that telephone game that you play when you repeat things, the story gets a little muddled. So that was one issue that I had. Another issue that I had was I had studied and worked professionally as a linguist. I had studied foreign languages and I had worked abroad as a linguist. And I know from firsthand experience that when you translate things from one language to another language, there’s a lot of room for confusion or error. And the fact that the Bible had been written in Hebrew and then Greek and then translated to English, I knew that some things just had not come out right in the wash. So I had decided at a certain point that I was only going to pay attention to the words that were attributed to Jesus in the Bible and disregard all the rest of it. And so when I found A Course in Miracles, it really resonated with me. It really did feel like a true message from Jesus. And even though I had hesitations about it, and I had some struggle with understanding the message. I just kept plowing ahead. And after I got past the first 50 lessons, I saw very clearly that I was in a very dysfunctional relationship with my boyfriend. And that relationship ended and I started to just ask myself, could I be happy all by myself without a boyfriend, without a man in my life, without a husband? Would that be possible? I had never even considered that thought up until that point. I truly believed that finding Prince Charming was the answer to everything in life. And I just started focusing on myself and my own happiness. And magically and miraculously, I met the man of my dreams and he kind of popped out of nowhere. He wasn’t somebody that I would previously have ever gone out on a date with. And we’ve been happily married now. We just celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. So I do know that miracles happen as a result of this practice. That was just the first miracle that I had in the beginning. And yeah, as you said, reading my bio, a lot of other bad things in my life just dissipated as a result of my spiritual practice.
Gloria Grace Rand
So many good things that you’ve mentioned there. And one of the things that I was going to ask you about, but it’s interesting that you went ahead and brought it up because it was how I was introduced to the course as well, is I had a counselor who told me, just go straight to the lessons. She said, do the daily lessons because it was the same thing she says, the beginning part, it is, as you said, it’s very dense. And I’ve since gone back and was trying to read through that again. And I stopped doing it because I think of the same thing. It just got to be too much. And so I’m thinking now maybe it would be good just to go back again and do the lessons. But one thing I wanted to pick up on. So you said that you got into the course back in the 80s, but there was something happened in 2015, so maybe you can share a little bit about that. What shifted, maybe for you there.
Theresa McGallicher
So I met my husband. I had this big romance. We got married, we got engaged, we got married. Within a year, we had three children, and my practice of the course fell away. I thought, wow, I’m good. I have the answers, I don’t need to keep doing this. And I also had some ego resistance, which is a thing that the course talks about, where we all don’t know what’s best for us and don’t want what’s best for us. Deep down inside, we all believe that we’re flawed in some way, that there’s something wrong with us and that we don’t deserve to really be happy. So, long story short, I stopped doing the course after I got married, I kept the book for 20 years on my bed, my nightstand next to my bed. And occasionally I would pick it up and read a passage, and occasionally I would go to a study group. But I didn’t really dedicate myself to the course. And my life was mainly very good. But when I had children, I started to backslide a little bit. My parenting, all of us parent the way we were parented, we don’t have any other role models. And I started to be really stressed out about things, certain things, again. And I had convinced myself that the course required a lot of attention, and then I didn’t have the time and energy to give to it while I was raising three kids and working full time. And that one day when my children were grown and I had the free time, I would do the course. So 20 years passed, my children grew up, I retired, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. And I thought, well, you told yourself you were going to do the course when you got to the stage. Now you need to do it. So that’s what I did. I opened the book one day, and my eyes fell on the table of contents, and I noticed for the first time that there were 31 chapters in the book. And I thought, you know, if I read a chapter every day, I could finish this whole book in one month, the text. And that’s what I did. So in October of 2014, I read the entire text in one month. I didn’t understand a lot on what I was reading, but I just made a commitment and I just plowed through. So that happened. And then after I finished the text, I was preparing a newsletter for my church. So at that point in time, I was attending the Unity Church, and I wanted to put a link to Unity Radio in the newsletter. And so I went to the Unity Radio website to look for the link, and I saw that they were interviewing a teacher of a Course in Miracles whose name was Lisa Natoli. I had never heard of her. And her interview fascinated me because she was teaching the course in a way that was really simple and easy to understand and practical and showing how to apply it to your daily life. It wasn’t just theory. And so I started following her, and I found out that she was offering a free program that was going to start on January 1 of 2015, and her program was called the 40 Day Program for Transformation. And I signed up, and I did her program for 40 days. And I just started having one miracle after another happen to me. I started having healed relationships with family members. I woke up every morning excited for the day. It felt like Christmas every day. I could not wait to run downstairs and watch her video for the day and do my lesson for the day and then see what miracle was going to happen. So I did that. And then when that program ended, I was like, wow, what’s next? Like, I felt a little adrift. And then I found out she was offering a paid program which was called Living in Purpose, that she no longer offers that program, but it was a six-month program and I really waffled because I didn’t really want to pay for it, but I bit the bullet and I did it. And that program taught me to be still, to listen for inner guidance, to not make any decisions on my own, but to always ask for help from a higher power and to basically practice that every day of my life. And when I got to the end of the six months, I noticed that I just felt relaxed all the time. Like all the worries and fears and anxieties and doubts that had plagued me my entire life had evaporated. And I didn’t even notice when it happened. It was so subtle and it wasn’t like fireworks. I just suddenly noticed that I felt like a different person one day. Like the things that I used to fret about didn’t bother me any longer. So I also did commit at that point in time to do the workbook lessons fully the entire 365, because I had never really got past 52 or something. And I did that. And I have continued to do the lessons every day for the last eight years. So I find every time I go through them, I get a different level of understanding. It’s sometimes almost like I’ve never done them before. I see the message in a new light. So I feel like there are layers to be undone with our human conditioning and the workbook lessons very gently and slowly, just unravel all of the madness that we’ve created for our lives.
Gloria Grace Rand
Oh, my goodness. You’re encouraging me now to go back in and take a look at it again. And I think rather than even doing the text, it’s probably time for me to just do the daily lessons and commit to doing that. And I like that. As we’re recording this, it’s almost June, so it might be a good time to start. Maybe June 1 or maybe I’ll just start tomorrow. Why wait, right? Maybe just do it that way.
Theresa McGallicher
I would like to say for anyone who’s not familiar with the Course of Miracles that you cannot do it wrong. There’s no right way to do it. Some people start with the manual for teachers and read that because it’s short and easily digestible. Whatever resonates with you is the way that you’re meant to go.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah. And I will tell you also, I’ll share with folks that I know you got a copy of it at the bookstore, but there are copies online. There are electronic copies online that you can find and so that’s where I actually was able to find mine as I was able to get a PDF copy. And so I have it on my computer and that made it handy for me because then I could just open it up and look at it every day. You’ve talked a lot about so many great things and such a profound effect that it has had on your life and I do appreciate that. You just said too, that there’s no that you can’t really get it wrong. What would you say, though, has been maybe just the biggest benefit of applying, of course, miracles in your life? Because I know you mentioned a lot of stuff, so maybe what’s your top one or two things?
Theresa McGallicher
I would say that I realized that it’s possible to be happy all the time. Before the course, I thought that happy and sad were natural emotions on a spectrum that everybody lived through and that you couldn’t control if you felt happy or sad. Like when things went my way the way I wanted them to go, I felt good. And when things went badly or not the way I expected, I felt bad and I didn’t realize I had any. I was just a victim of that up and down roller coaster of emotions. And the course has shown me that I don’t have to be a victim tied to a roller coaster. I can actually control the machine, the ride, and decide how I want to feel. And my feelings don’t have to be tied to anything external to me. I can choose to be happy no matter what’s going on in the world or what’s going on in my life.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, that’s a really important lesson to point out, because I do like to say is that we get to decide how we want to be in any moment of our life. We are in charge of that and sometimes we get into this acting by default or just following other people. But really it’s our life and we get to decide how we want to live it. And if you want to be happy, it starts with deciding and then you can find things that will support you in that, like A Course in Miracles. I wanted to ask you because I realized in knowing you over the past few years and one of the things I see that you do is you have a YouTube channel and you talk about A Course in Miracles. So could you tell us a little bit about that and maybe why you even decided to start doing that?
Theresa McGallicher
So the first year that I did the workbook lessons, I did them as instructed. I wrote them down and I repeated them throughout the day. And then the second year and the third year, I did it with partners. So I had people that asked me, they said, I’m having trouble sticking to being accountable to myself and sticking to the lessons every day. So would you do them with me? And then the fourth year, I decided that I would just record the lesson every day and put it up on YouTube, and that was how I did the lessons for a year. So that was how I got started with my YouTube channel, was just recording and posting each daily workbook lesson. And then from there, I just decided to continue creating content about the course, about anything spiritual that I thought might be helpful to people in their practical, everyday lives.
Gloria Grace Rand
I love that. Yeah, that’s how I approach doing The Daily Word from Unity, because you mentioned that you had gone to Unity Church, and that was something that my mom used to read, The Daily Word, and when I rediscovered it years later, for a while, I did actually. I was doing a series of Facebook lives where I would read The Daily Word entry for that day, and then I would share my experience of how I did that. So I like that you do that. So what is your YouTube channel? People want to be able to find those videos and be able to check you out.
Theresa McGallicher
It’s my name, Theresa McGallicher.
Gloria Grace Rand
Okay. All right, very good. And of course, I’ll have that in the show notes as well. For you trying to think here, what would be what’s the most challenging thing? Yeah, that’s what I want to ask you about. What’s been the biggest challenge that you found in either getting through the course or yeah, let’s say, has there been anything particularly that challenged you in using this method to help you in your life?
Theresa McGallicher
There are probably a couple of things I could say, but I think the biggest one is just deep down inside, a lot of us are driven by fear and we don’t realize it. And what I found for me was that I had a deep-seated fear of being seen by others as somebody weird or wacky or woo woo. So I didn’t talk about A Course in Miracles or tell people that I was a student of it for decades, literally. Like, I thought if anybody knew I was doing this, they would reject me. And I was fearful of rejection and abandonment and criticism. So that was a big stumbling block for me in the beginning. And then even after I felt like I had a firm grasp of the material under my belt, the ego gets in. I found myself in a lot of Facebook groups for students of A Course in Miracles where people were arguing about things like, which version is the right version of the course and which teacher is the right teacher, and you’re misinterpreting the course. The course is all about getting rid of conflict and seeing the commonalities in each other instead of creating more conflict. And so I would find myself sometimes engaged in these discussions about the course and then realize that I’d just gone down a rabbit hole right back to where I started before I found it, because the course is about acceptance and love. And not making other people wrong. So if you’re using it to make other people wrong, you’re misusing it. But, yeah, that’s been a challenge for me, is to see where I get caught in that sometimes and then to step away.
Gloria Grace Rand
Okay, I’m going to change gears just a little bit here because I like to ask my guests this question to see the different responses that I get. So I would love to know, what are you curious about right now?
Theresa McGallicher
Oh, my goodness. I love to do research. I’m curious about a million things. And when I find myself curious about something, I just go look it up. And I think Google is just the greatest invention ever to give you access to all kinds of information. I used to spend my hours in the library when I was younger, and now I just get on the so. But I’m very interested in spirituality, spiritual teachers, awakened masters, ascended masters, all things metaphysical, mystical, miraculous, which is the banner on my YouTube channel. I also love to travel. I’m very interested in other cultures and geography in other parts of the world that I haven’t been to or had a chance to experience. I mean, the list could go on.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, that’s quite all right. And we’re going to have to chat some more after we get done with the podcast because you and I have a lot in common, I’m discovering, but I’m not going to bore our listeners with all that right now. But I want to ask you also, is there anything else important about A Course in Miracles or about even the work that you’re doing that I haven’t asked you about that I should have?
Theresa McGallicher
I would like to say that A Course in Miracles is not for everyone. It has been my path and it has been my road to release from a lot of negativity in my life. But I feel that it is a work, a body of work that is for you. If it calls to you, if you feel attracted to it and it resonates with you, then it’s for you. If it doesn’t resonate with you, then your path is some other path. And the course says at the very beginning that there are thousands of paths back to God, back to the Creator, back to our source, and that A Course in Miracles is just one of them.
Gloria Grace Rand
I think that’s an important point to bring out. And it’s interesting because I’m trying to think, how did I get involved in a course of miracles in the first place? And I think it’s one of these things where whatever teaching it is that you wind up finding that helps you in your life, I think the universe leaves clues. And so for me, as I’m thinking back, I think I would hear about it from different people or read about it different places. And then when I was going through an exceptionally challenging time in my life, I had a counselor who suggested it, and I was like, okay, I think it’s time for me to check it out, because I think I’d even looked at it briefly even before that, but I wasn’t ready. I think that’s also the fact that sometimes it may not be for you, but it also may not be for you now, but it might be for you later.
Theresa McGallicher
Absolutely. I mean, that was my experience. I wasn’t ready for it in the 1980s. I got a little dose and then I needed a break for 20 years.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah. And that’s perfectly fine. It really is, because, yeah, I firmly believe that the universe is love and the universe loves us, and it’ll keep finding a way to let us know that even if sometimes our ego does get in the way, but everything gets there in its own time. Thank you so much for being here today. And just again, just to remind our listeners, if they want to learn more about you and see what you’re up to in the world, where is the best place for them to be able to contact you?
Theresa McGallicher
So I have a website, which is my name, Theresa McGallicher, and I’m on YouTube, as you’ve mentioned, and I also have a Facebook group called the Miracles Attraction Community. So I would love to invite anyone who’s interested to join me there.
Gloria Grace Rand
All right, excellent. Well, again, I’ll have all of that in the show notes, so if you are listening right now somewhere where you don’t have a pen handy, go to liveloveengagepodcast.com later on or even your regular podcast place that you get that information from and check the show notes, and then you’ll be able to get all of that information. So, again, thank you so much for being here. You have inspired me to take another look at the course. I think it’s time for me to revisit it. It’s been a few years, so I think I’m going to take a look at it again. And I really appreciate you being here today, Theresa.
Theresa McGallicher
It’s been my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Gloria Grace Rand
And I want to thank all of you for listening and for watching on my YouTube channel as well. I appreciate you and I encourage you, if you’re not subscribed yet, hopefully this will have changed your mind and you will hit that subscribe button or the what did they say on YouTube? Hit the bell or whatever you’re supposed to do on there. I don’t want to deal with it right now, but you know what I mean. Anyway, and as always, I encourage you to go out today and every day and live fully, love deeply, and engage authentically.
