About Mary
Mary O’Malley is an author, teacher and counselor whose work awakens others to the joy of being fully alive. Her inspired and transformative approach to compulsions offers a way to replace fear, hopelessness and struggle with ease, well being and joy.
Barely surviving her childhood, at 26 she found herself lost in a labyrinth of self-hatred, confusion, and despair. Then one spring morning she walked into a room where Joel Kramer was to teach a hatha yoga seminar. As soon as he began to speak, Mary became intensely alert and deeply fascinated. As she listened to what he had to say, it felt like her life had been lived inside of a b-grade, black and white film, and all of a sudden it became a full color, four star movie. She felt vibrant and alive, curious rather than reactive, compassionate rather than judgmental, and trusting rather than fearing. Even though the years of living in deep despair were very painful, they all now made sense. In fact, all of the joys and sorrows, the clarity and the confusion, and the openings and closings of life made sense. Although she returned to ordinary consciousness when she left the room, this awakening continued to work in the depths of Mary’s being, setting her on the path to changing her whole relationship with her compulsions, freeing her from a lifelong struggle and opening her to the joy and the wonder of being fully awake to Life.
Since then, she has dedicated her life to helping others heal themselves by seeing what truly blocks them from life’s joy. Through her individual counseling and coaching, books, classes, retreats and ongoing groups, Mary invites people to experience the miracle of awakening.
Acknowledged as a leader in the field of Awakening by many (including Neale Donald Walsch, Jeff Foster, Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield, Stephen Levine, and Christiana Northrup), Mary clearly sees both the big picture-and the details-of human patterns and conditioning. She possesses an extraordinary ability to understand and connect with people. And she is skilled in empowering people to work with difficult mind states resulting in greater inner awareness and presence and a greater capacity for joy.
Mary is committed to helping people heal their inner wars, so that they can become a part of the healing of our planet. Eckhart Tolle says, “Thank you, Mary, for your contribution to the evolution of human consciousness.” Mary’s work has also been endorsed by Neale Donald Walsch, Christiane Northrup, Jeff Foster and other spiritual teachers and authors. To read the endorsements, please follow this link.
To view Mary’s Wikipedia page, follow this link.
About Awakening
What would your life be like if you could reconnect with the joy, wonder, and vitality of being truly alive?
Awakening invites you into deep connection and a sense of belonging to yourself and to your life. By cultivating curiosity, compassion and trust, you become more present to your life, and in that presence, you are healed and you become a healing force in the world.
In Awakening, we cultivate both a curiosity about what is happening right now and a compassionate meeting of whatever is there. One of the core places we can learn this way of being with life is through the challenges of our lives. Rather than seeing them as problems to be solved, we can see them doorways to be opened into the healing that we long for. Our challenges are tailor-made to help us see our conditioned, reactive self so it can be dissolved and we can again fully engage with life.
One of the challenges we work with is compulsions. To some degree, we are all compulsive. By compulsive, we mean engaging in any recurring activity to manage our feelings, an activity that eventually ends up managing us. Ultimately, our core compulsion is to struggle. We live in a story in our heads that is always trying to get us to do life, telling us we need to make ourselves and our lives better or different from what they are. In our endless trying, we have forgotten how to be. We have forgotten how to open to the marvelous and magical adventure of life. We have forgotten how to trust ourselves, to trust our lives, and to live in joy.
Mary’s work through Awakening has been endorsed by Eckhart Tolle, Neale Donald Walsch, Christiane Northrup and other spiritual teachers and authors. To read the endorsements, please follow this link.
Here is a 3-minute video presentation of the essence of Awakening.