About Maria
Relentless Follower of Christ
As a professional Spiritual Director and Christian Meditation Teacher, Rev. Maria E. Gullo, MSPC has spent the past 20+ years teaching, supporting and sharing the contemplative dimension of Christian spirituality. She is an ordained minister with the Federation of Christian Ministries, commissioned presenter by Contemplative Outreach, and a Certified Integrative Health Coach.
Maria received her Master’s Degree in Pastoral Counseling and Spiritual Direction from Neumann University in 2004. During challenging life circumstances she was guided through a difficult time of darkness thanks to the work of the contemplative mystics and saints.
As the Founding Director of The Deeper Connection, Maria is passionate about teaching, supporting and sharing the contemplative dimension of Christianity. Maria has experience in helping her clients overcome addictions, anxiety, divorce, loss and feeling disheartened with religion. Her clients develop a deeper connection, clearer understanding and authentic relationship with God, self and others. Maria delivers the message of contemplative Christian spirituality through workshops, lectures and retreats. She facilitates contemplative worship services and prayer gatherings while also creating guided prayer and meditation tools including audio downloads and CDs available through her website as well as on iTunes, CDBaby and the Insight Timer mobile meditation app.
Maria is a follower of Christ, a dedicated mother and grandmother. A lifelong dancer and lover of the performing arts, she enjoys ballroom dancing which she says balances out her contemplative nature.
To My Soul Friends,
Thank you for being here, for taking the time to explore this website. I love sharing this work with you and the world. Many of you have had such moments where God shows up at the most unlikeliest times and everything changes. I call these ‘moments of deeper connection’.
One of these moments happened to me while I was in the midst of a divorce and changed my life. Sitting on my bed paralyzed by guilt and shame I could barely open my mouth to pray for help. I tried to sit in Centering Prayer and that’s when it happened. I didn’t have a vision or hear an audible voice rather the voiceless Voice of Christ pierced through my self loathing and spoke these words, “I am here, closer to you than you are to your own breath. Is there anyone here to condemn you? Is there anyone here to judge you? Neither do I.”
I didn’t experience any miraculous escape from walking through the loss of a marriage. What I did experience is coming to the awareness, that even through the darkest time God is intimately connected to me and if I am willing and open to this relationship then I will experience the peace beyond all circumstances, hope in the darkness and love in spite of loss.
Up to that point I had been in ministry and was even in graduate school for a degree in Pastoral Counseling. However, in that moment the Holy Spirit breathed on my ember of desire igniting into flame my love for God and His people. This ministry, The Deeper Connection was born.
If you are reading this then you can trust you’ve been invited by the Holy Spirit to lean deeper into God. It is time to live the beautiful life you long for by opening to the life changing moments of intimacy with the Divine. I am honored to be your Spiritual Director as you transform your life through The Deeper Connection with God, your true self and others.
Peace and grace
Maria