Virginia Mudd

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I created this website to accompany my books, Bicycling Home, My Journey to Find God, and Across America on the Yellow Brick Road. It is also a continuation of my own spiritual path, a place for me to share my passion for and fascination with the spiritual journey with you.

I've been consciously on this path of exploration, investigation, discovery, and transformation for over 35 years. After all these years it is still a mystery, which is partly what makes it so compelling, so interesting.

My outer and inner explorations are recounted in part in these two books, which are focused around bicycle adventures. Across America on the Yellow Brick Road tells of a 3,500-mile trip with another woman from California to Washington, D.C. in 1978. Bicycling Home, My Journey to Find God, is centered around a solo bike trip I made from the Bay Area in California to the Grand Tetons of Wyoming in 1984. (And. no, you don't have to even know how to ride a bike to appreciate the journey!) Both books are about my journey to find myself and find God, the most mysterious, arduous, adventurous, rewarding journey of my life.

Along the way I've gained insights that I feel are useful and relevant to many of us who are on the spiritual path as we strive to know ourselves better, to be more connected and loving to each other, the earth, the cosmos and ourselves.

Many of the insights I gained "after the fact," after the terrifying struggle with my food addiction and the suffering of an unworkable love relationship. (How I wished it had been the other way around!) For example, Jungian Marion Woodman says: "...their addiction is their way to truth... in the addiction is the hidden treasure...It is their particular sacred journey, their Tao, their Way." And Robert Johnson says: "The suffering of romance is ultimately no different than the suffering of mysticism and religion."

Both these transformative experiences called me to follow my heart as I sought ways to escape the hell of addiction, and answers to the agony of romantic love. Above all I wanted to satisfy my deepest longing--to find and have union with God.

While my particular spiritual journey turns out to be intimately connected with Christ and Christianity, I consider myself a spiritually independent Christian. There are many paths to our spiritual homes, and many names for God (I'm not out to convert anyone!) and I have been, and continue to be, guided and inspired by the wisdom teachings of many spiritual traditions. My most important teachers are... Thomas Merton, Marion Woodman, M. Scott Peck, Robert Johnson, Paramahansa Yogananda, Ram Dass, Tessa Bielecki, Paul Tillich, Pema Chodron, Fr. Thomas Keating, Neil Douglas-Klotz, Thich Nhat Hanh, Byron Katie, and others, as well as wonderful people who do not make teaching their profession.

I hope you will join me on this continuing, incredible journey.Article