Julie Schmidt
I am devoted to applied spiritual living grounded in this body as this earth. Walking the liminal. I am both wounded and complete. Broken and whole. Perfectly imperfect! Navigating this calling has been far from easy even though it has been extremely enriching. I have been unraveled, deconstructed and dismantled more times than I can count. Remade, reborn and transformed just as many! Every challenge that comes with the turn of the wheel has given me a profound deepening, a fuller understanding, a capacity to embrace uncertainty. An immanent transcendence, a transcendent immanence. Educating me in how to walk liminal spaces.
As a child I was raised Christian, but at the age of ten I left the church. Not for reasons I could fully fathom or formulate at the time but in retrospect because the idea of a patriarchal, transcendent God outside of life was not for me. Even though years later I came across the mystical gnostic gospels of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and the disciples. This side of Christianity I find quite profound.
In my younger years, on the surface my home environment was mostly kind, and I was well provided for. However, my father was very distant emotionally and my mother was an enabler. I was treated in the classic sense of “children should be seen but not heard.” Emotionally repressed; I was told way to often that I was too sensitive, too emotional…too much. As a response to these conditionings, I tried to become smaller. I repressed my true nature by shutting down, switching off my inherent connection to life and to my developing intuition. As a result, I became emotionally and spiritually starved. Ironically turning to food for support, hoping to find nourishment there. Instead, I developed an unruly eating disorder where I literally saw both sides of the scale as an anorexic and binge eater. It is quite amusing that during the worst of it I was working on my bachelor’s degree in nutrition science! Eventually, I bottomed out, which was an absolutely horrible experience. But at the same time, truly a miracle! It opened doors for me in amazing ways which continue to this day. An inner journey and discovery of who I am, what Life and God is and how it all relates together.
After college I spent many years in eastern practices mostly based in Shaivism and Vedanta. But also, Tibetan Buddhism. I learned to meditate and chant, studied spiritual texts & sutras, and did lots of seva. It was both a heart-based devotional experience as well as learning and understanding the deep wisdom of the teachings and philosophies. Initially, meditation was very challenging for me; however, chanting was this amazing grace that just flowed into my life. Channels opened up in me that I didn’t know even existed, along with incredible experiences of bliss, joy and deep connections of unity. I learned to play the tamboura and the harmonium and gave my service to the community through music. Eventually this practice guided me into a deeper capacity for meditation.
What I learned is I needed to meditate in accordance with my own constitution rather than some imposed technique. Over time meditation became a very profound practice for me. After several years I even developed a meditation course which I have taught countless times. During this period, I also went on to get my master’s degree in Consciousness Studies and Theology, training and interning to be a minister. My focus has been and still is on teaching and working with others. I have taught classes on mysticism, visioning, prayer and other spiritual practices. Done numerous sessions with others exploring their spiritual depths and blocks to it. We all are these amazing beings yet we carry a lot of conditioning and inherited patterns of functioning in this world that interferes with our true nature. But we can grow from this, instead of turning a blind eye where this continues to act out below our level of awareness.
These past few years I have devoted myself deeply to the Divine Feminine and earth-based traditions. To understand the shadow and darkness, within myself and in the world. Not as something morbid or wrong but as a balance to our current dysfunctional power mongering and patriarchal culture. The dark is part of our cycles. Simply, it is our night to our day. We all have traumas & wounding. I do! These are not “things” to be fixed and then rid of. But vehicles of understanding on how to be a true human, as an evolving relationship with nature that deeps our compassion, humbleness and intimacy. With our selves, life and each other. To be human is to be broken. It’s the ongoing composting that fertilizes the new growth! The Sacred Feminine is needed right now. I feel Her deeply in me, in the ground, in life and as this planet. She is rising.
Bachelor’s Degree in Nutrition Science from UC Davis
Master’s Degree in Consciousness Studies from Holmes Institute
Licensed and Ordained Minister with CSL
Certified Massage Therapist
Certified Moonologist (Moon Astrology)