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"Sue Pearson takes us on
an empowering spiritual journey..."
—John Hurst, A Course in Miracles study group facilitator
Is there more to this world than what human eyes see? In You Don’t Have to Die to Get to Heaven it is this world of vision beyond the eyes that you will explore with author Sue Pearson.
Sue had a transformative spiritual experience that opened a gateway in her mind, to a place where tragedy and sadness dissolved into peace and joy. Each story in this memoir takes the reader on a journey to sacred truth. With Sue as our guide, we learn about forgiveness and begin to remember who we truly are: perfect and innocent sons of God.
At times, Sue’s stories take you to dark places, but the despair that lives there cannot overcome the holy light of forgiveness. She shows us how miracles are born when we ask for divine guidance. She takes us along for holy encounters that are sometimes subtle but always imbued with love and peace.
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SUE PEARSON has been a professional journalist for more
than four decades working in television as a reporter, news anchor, talk show host and documentary producer. Along the way she picked up three Emmy awards. She is currently Editor of the Story Project at the Circle of Atonement, an organization which offers support to students of A Course in Miracles around the world. At
the Story Project Sue collects and edits other people’s true stories
of spiritual experiences and posts them online at circleofa.org.
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Published by the author in collaboration with Fearless Literary
Print ISBN 979-8-218-46303-8 • 152 pages • $14.95 • ebook $9.95
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print, Kindle and Nook editions
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E X C E R P T :
Introduction
I wasn’t a believer, an unbeliever, or even a doubter. Was God real? I didn’t know. My mind was just lazy. It was an imponderable question and would take energy away from creating a career in journalism, juggling relationships, and motherhood. I was jolted into the truth when my father died.
Growing up, my parents had been practicing protestants, first as Methodists then Episcopalians, after my baby sister died. My mother liked the grandness of Grace Episcopal Church, and she preferred the minister and the music there. My older sister, younger brother, and I all went to Sunday school until my mother’s depression broke us all. Right after my little sister, Nancy, died, I think my mother thought religion might help her with her grief since that’s what her father had taught as a Methodist minister. But my mother found no comfort at church no matter the denomination. Instead of comfort, she found oblivion in alcohol. My siblings and I distanced ourselves from the wreck she became, but not my father. He stood by her with love till the end.
I plowed forward with my life in the sometimes dizzying and mostly exhilarating world of broadcast journalism. My spiritual laziness had been replaced by a frantic daily pace. I be came addicted to the adrenaline high of deadlines. At various times in my career, I was a reporter, a news anchor, a talk show host, and a documentary producer. I married twice and had two children plus three stepchildren. I had put together a complicated life at a time in our culture when women were be ing told they could have it all. Success was prized if exhausting.
My father had been my north star throughout my life. He loved me unconditionally and provided the stability and support that helped me through bad times and good times. He was my hero and my rock. He delighted in my accomplishments even though his own were far more spectacular. He had been at the forefront of the aviation industry in its infancy as an aeronautical engineer and joined the space frontier with NASA all through its developing years. He retired as Deputy Director of the Space Shuttle Program. I was so proud of him.
My relationship with my mother was a different story. She had been strict and harsh and at times cruel. It’s been hard to admit this but when she died, I was glad. I didn’t have to deal with her alcoholism and all the hurt it brought our family.
My father died a decade after my mother’s passing and my period of spiritual laziness ended. When his diagnosis of stage 4 prostate cancer came, I fooled myself that he would overcome it. Still, he lived for four years after the doctor delivered the grim news. That final year when I knew he wasn’t going to beat this cancer I began believing in God and not because I thought God was good. No, I was angry with a higher power who could dangle love in front of His constituents only to snatch it away in death. What a cruel joke. I wanted God to go away and leave us be.
Then my father died, and I had to change my mind. His death brought me an unexpected and shocking spiritual transformation. This is the story I want to tell you about and all the surprising stories that followed and continue to unfold for me as the years go on.
I became a student of A Course in Miracles (ACIM) in 2011. The Course is contained in a 3-part book offering a different way to regard this world and a path to remembering who we really are. The book offers us, I believe, a bold look at truth. We are all children of God, perfect and innocent. We are not bodies having a spiritual experience but spirits having a body in a world of humans who believe they are separate beings. The Course in Miracles book consists of Text, Workbook, and Manual for Teachers. These three sections are aimed at discovering who we truly are because we have forgotten. The Text is the main introduction of principles, a workbook that offers practical exercises to enable us to see things differently, and A Manual for Teachers is meant to guide us in helping others out of darkness and into the light of who we really are as God created us.
It’s important that you know my spiritual transformation happened more than a decade before I decided to become a student of A Course in Miracles. My best friend, Bill, now my husband, suggested I might like this book because of his own spiritual journey and the answers the Course provided him. He knew my journey to God had begun with my father’s death. He also knew ACIM might deepen this journey. It has. I have been an ACIM student more than 13 years because the truth in the pages of this book reflect what I experienced in what is now referred to as a shared death experience (SDE) when I followed my father part way to heaven. I don’t profess to completely understand all the principles of ACIM, but I do trust these words are true. I understand more as I study more. This may not be your spiritual path and even the Course itself says it is not the only path. There are many paths. I encourage you to find the one that resonates with you. The Course and many religions and spiritual doctrines stress the importance of forgiveness, love, peace, and happiness. Be wary of the paths that emphasize anger, guilt, unworthiness, hatred, and retribution.
In the Manual for Teachers within ACIM, there is a section titled Who Are God’s Teachers? The answer: A teacher of God is anyone who chooses to be one. His qualifications consist solely in this: Somehow, somewhere he made a deliberate choice in which he did not see his interests as apart from someone else’s. (CE)M-1:1-2
That is why I can tell you I am a teacher of God. To be sure I am not an advanced teacher of God. You could say I am a newbie teacher of God. No matter where I am on the path or where you are, what you will see in my experiences can teach you about yourself. Our earthly bodies may look different, but we are the same. I am not different because I have deepened. I am not special because I have had otherworldly events unfold in my consciousness. I am not separate from you. All of us are connected in ways many of us don’t understand or want to acknowledge.
The Manual for Teachers says this about who the teachers are: They come from all over the world. They come from all religions and from no religion. They are the ones who have answered. The Call is universal. (CE)M-1.2:1-4
The Manual goes on to say: Many hear it, but few will answer. But it is all a matter of time. Everyone will answer in the end, but the end can be a long, long way off. (CE)M-1.2:7-9
For those of us who answer the call, the Manual says: A light has entered the darkness. It may be a single light, but it is enough. (CE)M-1:5-6
I imagine I am one light among many who wish to bring comfort to a weary world. If in my words your worldly fears dissolve a little and make way for a measure of peace, then I have answered the call and you have heard it.
Blessings from my heart to yours. May you have peace....
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