• Posts by Celia McBride

    Animal Medicine

    • February 28, 2023 2:36 pm
    Dearest Readers,

    Since publishing my memoir, I’ve been taking time to discern my next creative project. Write something new? What about all the stories that didn’t make it into the book? I have a mountain of them.

    I thought maybe I could publish the occasional piece here. The story below, about an encounter with a beaver, got cut out of the memoir because one of the editors said, “Too many animals!”

    There were a lot of animal stories. Encounters with woodpeckers and bears and deer and armadillos and beavers have always made me feel as though the Cosmos is conscious of me. When I am at my lowest, animals show up, and it always feels like I’m being reassured by a Loving Force.

    Here is the story of The Beaver:

    Have you seen the TV movie adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge? The Mayor, played by Ciarán Hinds, has made some terrible decisions, most of them while drinking. His protégé, Donald Farfrae, on the other hand, is a more saintly man, with very few troubles or fears.

    One evening, the Mayor confides in Farfrae and shares honestly with the young man about his despair. Here’s an excerpt from the book:

    “… I sank into one of those gloomy fits I sometimes suffer from … when the world seems to have the blackness of hell, and, like Job, I could curse the day that gave me birth.”

    “Ah, now, I never feel like it,” said Farfrae.

    “Then pray to God that you never may, young man.”

    When I was watching this scene in the film, I fully expected the young man to say, “Ah, yes, I understand.” But he says the opposite. This dropped my jaw.

    You mean there are actually people out there who have no idea what that kind of hopelessness feels like?

    Those of us who do understand these black, gloomy fits know well how hard it is to cope with them. Sometimes there is no remedy but to ride them out.

    On a day when I was in the kind of despair that the Mayor described, I walked to the Yukon River for relief. Nature is often one of the surest ways to lift the blackness of hell and I knew being outside would help.

    I found a bench by a bend in the river and began to pray. I remember saying the words, “Take me, God, I am willing to die.”

    SLAP!

    I opened my eyes. A beaver was in the water right in front of me.

    SPLASH!

    It dove underwater and I watched it resurface a few feet further upriver.

    Suddenly, my self-pity evaporated. The Beaver had woken me up.

    In that moment, it was as though I’d swallowed a fast-acting miracle. I became willing to live.

    —

    That’s a super-abridged version of the story but you get the idea. Reflecting on it now, I am again struck by what I call Impeccable Timing. The slap of the beaver’s tail at the instant when I “cursed the day that gave me birth.” I wasn’t alone, I was known.

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    The Ups of Down

    • February 16, 2023 9:50 am

    This Blog was published first as The Healing Journey Letter. Click here to Subscribe.Dearest Readers,

    As as child of the 70s and 80s, I would have considered 2023 to be “The Future” when I was growing up. It amazes me that The Future is now the present, and though we don’t have flying cars (yet), technology is boldly taking us where no one has been before.

    That said, times are really tough. I sincerely hope that wherever you are, whatever you are doing, you are finding the love, care and support you need to live through the pains of this day and age. I know it’s not easy.

    If you’ve been reading my letters, you’ll know that in September 2021 I began to experience health challenges. In mid-October 2022, just over a year later, I started to feel better.

    Can I get a “hallelujah”?

    Thank you. It feels great. Lifestyle changes definitely helped, but time, more than anything else, seems to have made the real difference.

    Over the course of the year, some of you heard me describe my 3-part wellness program:

    Turn people down; let people down; lie down.

    A friend suggested I share it with all of you, so here is The Down Remedy:

    1. Turn people down:

    Someone asks you to do something for them.
    You don’t want to do it but you are willing to sacrifice your well-being so they won’t be disappointed.
    You realize the insanity of that line of thinking and understand there is no having it both ways:
    You either honour your feelings or you please them.
    You say NO.
    They are disappointed but the world doesn’t stop.

    2. Let people down:

    People admire you.
    You have shown yourself to be someone who can handle anything.
    You start to make decisions (see #1) that shatter people’s opinion of you.
    You are no longer a superhero in the eyes of many.
    Again, amazingly, the world doesn’t stop.

    3. Lie down:

    You don’t want to rest.
    You want to keep stimulating, keep doing, keep going.
    Instead, you force yourself to lie down, to close your eyes, to let go and rest.
    The world does stop, for a while.
    And it’s a very good thing.

    Take as prescribed, Gentle Readers.

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    The Missing Link

    • November 2, 2022 12:16 pm

    This Blog was published first as The Healing Journey Letter. Click here to Subscribe.

    Dearest Readers,

    I was recently given the gift of an online course with Pema Chödrön, quite possibly the most famous female Buddhist monk in the world, and have been lately digging in to her teachings on love, compassion, joy and equanimity.

    Ani Pema (as she is called) used to teach kindergarten before she was a monk and her instruction reflects that: she’s patient, caring and funny. I love the way she bravely owns her sh!# and humbly shares her shortcomings with all of us.

    One of the more personally enlightening pieces in the course has been the focus on self-compassion. I’ve had a couple of pretty big revelations about it and would like to pass them on to you.

    The first one is a quote I wrote and posted on social media the other day:

    “It is easy to say, “Have self-compassion,” but it actually takes years of practice.”

    Kind of self-explanatory.

    The second revelation came when I was talking about the teachings with the same friend who’d gifted me the course. I was resisting the notion of “shifting attention from self to others” and feeling like I was being fed yet another organized religion’s doctrine about self-sacrifice being the path to heaven (or, in this case, freedom from suffering).

    Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for thinking of others. In fact, I took the practice to such extremes that I acquired an illness a year ago as the direct result of over-giving and determined self-sacrifice. My resistance is well-founded.

    But as I watched myself getting worked up with my friend, and heard my “out loud” struggle with the Buddhist concept, the fuller meaning quietly and gently dropped in.

    It suddenly dawned on me that the teaching doesn’t start with compassion for others, it starts with self-compassion.

    Maybe I’d gotten the order wrong?

    “Have I been giving all this time without a foundation of self-compassion?” I asked my friend.

    In a flash, as she nodded her opinion, it came to me that I undoubtedly had.

    “The missing link!” I cried.

    The missing link.

    In order to “shift attention from self to others” I actually have to start with the self. My desire to serve, to respond with compassion to the suffering of others, has to begin with serving my needs and responding with compassion to myself.

    Whaaaat? It sounds so SELFISH!

    That’s the problem. I tend to think any focus on myself is self-centered. But without that compassion for who I am and where I’m at, I’m probably just running on empty. You might get filled up but I’m left depleted.

    I don’t think I’m saying anything new here. It’s the old “put your own oxygen mask on first” analogy, but it feels new, like I’ve been working on a giant puzzle and I just found one of the pieces that got knocked under the carpet.

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    Keep on Truckin’

    • October 25, 2022 3:47 pm

    Dearest Readers,

    When I was a kid, a friend of mine had one of those 70s-disco-prismatic stickers on his bedroom wall that said, “Keep on Truckin’.” Can you picture it? The holographic, pink-and-yellow prisms overlaid with a funkadelic font? For some reason, I’ve never forgotten it.

    Keep on truckin’. This corny slogan came back to me this week because the Negative Nellies were going at me and it was all I could do to stay afloat. Sometimes, when the darkness descends, there is nothing to do but keep on truckin’.

    For most of my healing journey, I have been quick to take action when my mood has started to go south. If I have felt like I was heading toward the pit, I would read something inspiring, call someone wise, listen to a motivational speaker, stand on my head, pray, meditate, walk in Nature, anything to avoid going down.

    These days, because I’m still contending with post-infectious fatigue (from the stomach virus I contracted last fall), I am less inclined to do the work. It’s too much effort! I know taking positive action will help me to feel better but some days I just do not have it in me.

    In my disinclination to motivate myself, I created a character called “The Un-Motivational Speaker.” Here’s a taste of her attitude and approach:

    “What’s so great about being happy anyway? Being miserable is so much easier. You don’t have to do anything! Happiness is all do-do-do, and go-go-go. Why not take a break and enjoy wallowing in self-pity?”

    “You wanna stay in bed? Stay in bed! Why all this emphasis on getting up? As if being awake is the be all and end all. Enlightenment is exhausting. Keep sleeping already!”

    “Forget ‘Just Do it’. Too much energy! Work, work, work. Who needs it? ‘Just Give Up’ instead. It’s much more relaxing.”

    “Who says you have to keep trying all the time? You wanna be down, be down! You don’t wanna change, don’t change! ‘Come as you are’? How about ‘stay as you are’! This transformation business is highly overrated, IMHO.”

    I don’t know if The Un-Motivational Speaker is your kind of “funny” but she sure gives me a chuckle. Sometimes I need to make fun of my commitment to heal at all costs. And, ironically enough, laughing at myself is its own healing practice.

    Mind you, I haven’t mastered the technique. Learning to laugh at my suffering, my mistakes and my less-than-attractive qualities has been a slow, semi-painful process. I got laughed at as a kid and it hurt. A lot. But the hurt turned into self-protection and the self-protection turned into rigidity and we all know there’s not much fun in being a concrete wall.

    Over time, as I’ve learned to let down the barriers, make friends with the past, and soften my grip on control, I’ve also learned that it’s okay to lighten up. Even when I’m depressed! Being spiritual has to be funny. Otherwise it’s a joke.

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    Return of Spirit

    • June 7, 2022 12:22 pm

    Dearest Readers,

    As many of you know, I’ve spent the last six years writing a spiritual memoir called O My God: An Un-Becoming Journey, and am now in the final stages of assisted publishing with Tellwell, a Canadian indie company. Fingers crossed, the book will be available for purchase in June.

    Am I over the moon with excitement? A part of me is doing a happy dance, yes, but the inner critics (there are more than one), released an avalanche of negative self-judgement while I was completing the penultimate polish of the manuscript, and with it came a pile of dread.

    If you have your own inner critics you know they aren’t very kind. I struggled to finish the draft while the “voices of dissent” (as I like to call the barrage) went on and on. I listened to them, tuned them out, asked for help and took care of myself. It took me a while, but I eventually remembered that negative voices are not truth-tellers. They are fearful needs trying to get met.

    Last week, I managed to complete the draft and submit it to Tellwell, and later that day I went for a massage. It was good timing. I could reward my achievement by doing something special and allow myself to receive intense self-care at the same time.

    Just before getting on the table, the massage therapist asked me if I’d like to pick a card.

    “Always,” I said.

    He held up a deck in a black box, emblazoned with an image of a fluorescent, psychedelic phoenix on the front, accompanied by the deck’s name: “Return of Spirit.”

    He shuffled, and held out the fanned cards. I let my fingers hover above them, feeling for the energetic pull. A card found my fingers and I slid it out.

    We looked. The image matched the one on the box. The card read “Return of Spirit.”

    “No one has ever pulled that card before!” he exclaimed. “That is the first time anyone has ever got that card! It’s the master card!”

    I smiled. The Universe has its ways, doesn’t it?

    Excitedly, he read the card’s wisdom:

    “You have come a long way in your journey. No, it hasn’t been easy, but you have made it through. Acknowledge, for just a moment, the strength and courage that you have discovered within you. This is the card of triumph, heart-felt connection, and mastery. Hold your head high and feel proud of who you are … Your spiritual connection to Source is stronger now than it has ever been.”

    Really? I was a little baffled. I wasn’t feeling anything close to triumph or mastery. The illness I wrote about in my last two letters is still with me, the inner critics had just spent days trying to kill me … oh, and there’s some other hard stuff happening: a pandemic, a war in Ukraine, nasty divisions bubbling up everywhere, climate change.

    No, it hasn’t been easy. For anyone.

    “But you have made it through.”

    Well, yes.

    Could you acknowledge just for a moment the strength and courage you’ve discovered within you?

    Yes … I could.

    Could you hold your head high and feel proud of who you are?

    “Now wait a minute,” the critics jump in, “that is going toooo far into the corny-mushy-gushy zone.”

    Shhh. It’s okay. Just relax already. You don’t have to police that zone. It’s not your job.

    Okay. You’re right. I’m relaxing. Sigh.

    Now. Could you trust that your spiritual connection to Source is stronger now than it has ever been?

    Well …

    Well?

    Well, yes. I suppose I could. I pulled Master Card, didn’t I?

    You certainly did.

    Whoot-whoot! I pulled the Master Card! Happy dance! Head-held-high-and-proud dance! Goofy-silly-freedom dance! I’m-publishing-a-book-that-took-me-six-years-to-write dance! Yee-haw! Yippeeee! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

    From the corny-mushy-gushy fires of love,

    Celia

    I Heart Therapy

    • February 9, 2022 11:16 am

    Dearest Readers,

    This past December, two years into a relationship (and a pandemic), and three months into an illness (post-viral syndrome, initiated by a gastro virus), I said to myself, “I need therapy.” I’ve been to therapists on and off over the years and I (virtually) see my own spiritual director on a regular basis but the last time I went to a therapist was more than eight years ago.

    It was time.

    I love therapy. In my teens, therapy helped me to say, “I love you,” to my father (and helped him say it back). In my thirties, therapy helped me to come to terms with my sexuality (I am a heterosexual-identified bisexual, yes!). In my forties, therapy helped me to figure out what to do with my life (quit my job and pursue my calling).

    To illustrate how much I love therapy I will tell you a little story:

    Once, during my spiritual direction training, I was the guinea pig for a “practice” spiritual direction session. My cohort was observing me in the session with a spiritual director who also happened to be a therapist.

    I was talking about my spiritual journey, enjoying the rapt attention of a roomful of listeners, when I said something that made the director stop me and say, “Now I don’t want to go any further here because this is spiritual direction and I don’t want it to become a therapy session.”

    “Oh, I love therapy,” I replied, confidently.

    He looked at me, squarely. Was I really giving him permission to “go there” in front of all of these people? I looked back at him. Yes, I was.

    “Alright. What’s ‘belonging’?” he asked me. I must have used the word when I was talking and he had knowingly (and artfully) picked up on it.

    The question went into my heart like an arrow, penetrating my bravado. “I never felt like I belonged anywhere in my whole life,” I said, tears spilling down my cheeks.

    He had seen something of my inner life and I had been willing to expose it. It was a powerful moment for every single person in that room and … healing happened.

    And this is why I love therapy (and spiritual direction): healing happens.

    In a recent session with my new therapist, I shared some of my latest struggles. “It’s sounds like the story of your life could be titled Life is Very Hard.”

    I felt my defenses rising up because for years I’d consciously avoided saying “life is hard.” It had felt like a negative statement that needed to be transformed. Instead, I’d practiced saying “life isn’t easy” or “life can be challenging.”

    But in that moment I realized something: I work with many people who find life hard and somewhere along the line I had let go of my practice of transforming the words in order to validate the statement for the ones who felt it to be true. “Yes, I hear you. Life is hard.”

    “Maybe I’ve swung too far the other way,” I conceded.

    “Or maybe that’s just my projection,” she said, softening. “What would you call the title of your life’s book?”

    “Never Enough,” I said, without hesitation.

    It’s true. No matter how much healing I’ve experienced there continues to be that deep-rooted shame in my being that tells me I’m not enough. It doesn’t rule my life (most of the time) but it’s never fully gone away. Sometimes it even returns in a full-force gale.

    “Maybe you need to learn to make friends with your shame,” my therapist said.

    This was a new angle.

    Healing the shame? Been there done that. But making friends with shame? Okay, let’s do it!

    So, thanks to good ol’ therapy, I’ve renamed shame “Shamé” and we’re getting along great. We’ve gone for walks, watched movies together and next week we’re going to an outdoor show (weather permitting).

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    No Fixing Required

    • December 11, 2021 9:45 am

    Dearest Readers,

    On September 21st, I nearly fainted at the long-term care home where I provide spiritual care. I was in the middle of delivering a sermon for the residents during our homemade church service and the world started to go black.

    I pulled up a stool and carried on, acting as if I was okay when I wasn’t. I didn’t want people to worry. But after the room cleared, I got help from the nurse and called for a ride home.

    Because I had spent part of the previous weekend with a family who’d had “the gastro,” and because I was in bed for the next two days with nausea and a weak stomach, the sickness was chalked up to gastroenteritis.

    The family who’d given me the bug got better in two days. Ten weeks later I am still sick.

    What I want to write to you about is not the details of my illness but the practice of surrender. Because one has led to the other.

    Twenty-plus years ago, when I got on the Healing Journey and began to seriously attend to my spiritual life, I unwittingly got on the Fixing Journey, too.

    Give me a problem and I will give you the solution. You’re sick? Say affirmations. You’re sad? Be positive! You’re depressed? Change!

    Apparently, I’m not the only one. There is actually an Instagram account called “Healing from Healing.” It can be a bit crass but the account holder is ultimately trying to illustrate the wider healing community’s compulsion to fix: if you’re not happy/healthy/whole you must be doing something wrong!

    It’s taken me a long time to learn that healing doesn’t mean fixing and controlling. It means letting go, releasing, accepting, surrendering. And believe me, I haven’t finished learning the lesson.

    Since getting sick, friends have offered me silent faith sessions, tried to perform distance healing practices on my body, and recommended shamans and psychics.

    You would think I would be grateful for all of this support but my reaction has sort of been, hmm, how shall I say it? Irritation.

    “Stop trying to fix me! Just let me be sick!”

    Now, because I analyze everything, I realize that this part of me, let’s call her Resistance, might be the part of me that doesn’t want to heal. Maybe she likes being sick because she gets to check out of life.

    Maybe.

    Maybe not.

    Maybe there is another part of me, let’s call her Wisdom, that knows that this illness is actually teaching me something important and a miraculous cure would only eradicate the lesson.

    So what’s the lesson?

    There are a few:

    Since becoming ill, I have had to say “no” a lot. Saying “no” is not one of my strong points.

    Since becoming ill, I have had to let go of my fear of being judged. I imagine that people are going to see me as “less than” because I’m not working, I’m weak, I’m cancelling appointments, I’m falling behind. I have had to let these imaginary people think what they are going to think.

    Since becoming ill, I have had to accept that my body is not able to do what it could do ten weeks ago. But I’m a yoga teacher! Too bad.

    Since becoming ill, I’ve had to surrender to the fact that life has thrown me a curve ball and I can’t reach my arm out to catch it because the lymph nodes in my armpit are swollen and it hurts to much to stretch.

    These are big lessons. Vital lessons, no? Why try to fix and control them away? They are teaching me well.

    Yes, I would like to heal. Yes, I would like to have my energy back. And, what if it was okay to be sick? What if this sickness is actually healing me, one small surrender at a time?

    If I was to be suddenly, miraculously healed by a prayer, a shaman or a psychic, would I not just go right back to saying “yes” when I need to say “no”? Would I not immediately return to over-giving my time and energy? To doing more than my body can handle so that I would finally be enough?

    It’s highly likely.

    In the first few weeks, when I was still fighting this thing and struggling to accept what my body was saying, I taught a couple of online yoga classes. Cancelling was unthinkable.

    Then I remembered how I am always telling my students to “listen to your body.”

    How could I teach this kind of wisdom and not practice it myself?

    So, I cancelled. And the next week, I cancelled again. And the next week, again.

    Ugh.

    The only consolation was that I was living my teachings.

    Listen, let go, accept, surrender.

    That’ll fix it.

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    What’s the Point?

    • August 20, 2021 3:25 pm

    Dearest Readers,

    The tough times continue. We are still grappling with the pandemic. Climate change seems to be worsening. In Canada we are coming to grips with a genocide. Racism and general xenophobia are frighteningly widespread.

    Despite a whole lot of good work being done to transform our world, the current situation can feel overwhelming. When the overwhelm hits hard and things feel utterly hopeless, apathy arises. ‘What’s the point?’ is a question I ask, and get asked, often.

    Not everyone feels this kind of despair but I’m pretty sure all of us are looking for meaning. What, exactly, is the point of all of this?

    Lately, when this deep question of ‘purpose’ comes up, I have been thinking of Oliver Šteins.

    I interviewed Oliver for Communion in 2016 after he told me he was ‘a militant atheist and a very spiritual person’. He was adamant that human life did not have any great purpose but he was nevertheless excited by the profound mystery of the human journey:

    “Live for the moment,” he says in the interview, “It’s much more exciting. What’s happening now. Concentrate on what’s happening now and enjoy it because tomorrow it could be all over, right?”

    Oliver was diagnosed with ALS a couple of years after our conversation and he died in March of this year. The thoughts he shared during the interview now seem incredibly prescient. He talked about his death and how he wanted to ‘go’ and, despite his anti-religious feeling, he felt deeply connected to an Eternal Energy:

    “Where did it all come from?” he asks. “How did this all come about?” Then he answers his own question: “I don’t know. But I’ll keep asking and that’s what keeps me motivated, that’s what keeps me interested in life.”

    Oliver found his purpose by asking the Big Questions. He didn’t need certainty to feel that Life had meaning. It was the uncertainty that inspired him. (I am a recovering controller and I find this incredibly brave.)

    There is a poignant moment in the interview when Oliver is talking about the awesome Ogilvie Mountains on the Yukon’s Dempster Highway:

    “Seeing just how elated I was, how all-inspiring, the hope… that I was this little speck on this planet and amongst all this… there’s nobody around… the sun’s beaming and there’s a cloud moving in and the wind, and… I just felt very moved, very spiritual at that point. I had that connection.”

    That connection. When I find myself in what’s-the-point territory I know it’s time to make That Connection. I need to look at the Big Picture and orient myself within it. I don’t necessarily need to know that Life has a Purpose but I need to find purpose for my own life.

    Oliver then goes on to say, “I’m insignificant, I really am. I’m not depressed about it. I’m very elated.”

    For Oliver, being an insignificant ‘little speck’ in the Universe gave him a feeling of elation. That Connection. Watching shows about the Cosmos and reading books about astrophysics and cosmology are elating for me, too. We are not separate from That Vastness. The reason we feel that connection is because we are Inextricably Connected to Everything.

    Oliver resisted the idea that God was a being but he embraced Being with passion and determination. Without knowing he would be dead in five years, he says, “When the time comes of my passing… I wanna go [back to those mountains]. That would be my final stop. Get in a lawn chair and just look over that. I would like to exit that way.”

    Oliver died in Cobourg, Ontario. He didn’t get to set up that lawn chair on the Dempster Highway. But, amazingly, wondrously, purposefully, and very much with-a-point, his life is continuing to speak:

    “Concentrate on what’s happening now and enjoy it because tomorrow it could be all over, right?”

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    (Watch the 10-minute Communion episode with Oliver on YouTube.)

    Have Faith?

    • August 18, 2021 8:02 am

    Dearest Readers,

    A number of years ago, when I was just at the beginning of what I would now call the conscious spiritual journey, a friend said to me, “Have faith,” after I bombarded her with a fearful tirade of controlling remarks.

    Have faith.

    Her words had the right effect. I calmed down and took a breath. I knew I had to let go of whatever was causing me anxiety in that fraught moment and this little phrase helped me to do that.

    ‘Have faith’ can mean anything to anyone, really. It can mean believing in God but it can also mean trusting in the human spirit.

    I work with a lot of people who have either lost their faith or simply don’t have any to begin with. Some of them once believed in a God that was ‘good’ but because they see so much ‘bad’ they no longer do. This makes sense. ‘Belief’ is fickle. It can be too easily eroded by the ‘thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.’ (That’s Hamlet.)

    Having faith requires trust and trusting is different than believing. In what do I trust?

    I trust that I am not the Power Making the Planets Spin. 

    I trust that the Spirit of Goodness will prevail. It may take a week, a month, a year, century or a millennium but eventually things work out. This quote sums it up: ‘If it ends, it ends well. If it doesn’t end well, it’s not over yet.’

    I trust that the Universe knows what It is doing. When looks like the world is going to hell in a hand basket I remember that a heck of a lot has happened before now and a heck of a lot is going to happen after now. We are still evolving. I trust that.

    Have faith.

    It’s easy to say. I could have had a different reaction all those years ago when my friend said those words to me (f*ck off comes to mind). But she wasn’t being flippant. She was reassuring me. And because I do have faith, not blind-everything-happens-for-a-reason-spiritual-bypassing-faith, but faith in the stars and the sun and the moon, in the galaxies and the entire cosmic dance, in the grass growing and the trees blowing and the unfolding of history and the miraculous present and the uncertain future. I have faith in the steadfast spirit of the animals, in the perseverance of people who continue to fight for justice and equality despite staggering injustices and inequality, in the kindness of strangers and the generosity of neighbours and, finally, in the Transformative, Radical, Unconditional Love that seems to permeate Everything and defies logic and intellectual understanding.

    Have faith, she said. I listened. And I let go.

    And I’m still listening and I’m still letting go. Because I still like to hold on. And I doubt and I question and I fear and I rage. And I have faith.

    May we all have faith right now. Not faith that ‘everything will be okay’. But that everything will be. Because it is.

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    Un-Mask the Fear

    • August 13, 2020 12:24 pm

    Dearest Readers,

    The last Healing Journey letter was written at the end of March when the idea of wearing masks in public was unthinkable. Now we are in August and saying, “Nice mask!” to each other and comparing fabric and patterns. Humans are, if nothing else, pretty adaptable creatures, no?

    I’ve noticed that the lockdown has divided some of us into two camps: one, for whom the isolation is anxiety-producing, and the other for whom it is a relief.

    I tend to fall mostly into the second camp.

    Not that I’ve been isolated very much. I was in self-isolation for three weeks when I thought I had the virus but after I finally tested negative (way back in April when it took 9 days to get results), I was able to go back to work at the long-term care home and have been around people pretty much every day since then.

    Those three weeks in isolation were very healing. The everyday anxiousness I feel at just having to participate in life went away. I don’t have to go anywhere? Do anything? Ahhhhh….

    I’ve been hearing from some of you that you feel the same way: the forced isolation has relieved your own felt-sense of a pressurized world.

    And then there are those of you who are really feeling the loneliness. The lack of social connection has been getting to you and you feel like you’re climbing the walls. It’s been all you can do to stay sane in a situation some of you have likened to being in prison.

    (There might actually be a third camp: those of you who live alone and are retired and life hasn’t changed much for you. Regardless, it’s a time of change for everyone, whether personally or globally.)

    There was a time in my life when I didn’t even know I felt anxious about day-to-day living. The anxiousness was masked behind overachieving and pushing myself. It was only when I began to do inner work that I realized my insides are often churning. About what? Oh, you name it. Just about anything and everything.

    Ironically, the more conscious I’ve become and the more healing I’ve experienced, the more the anxious state has been exposed. It’s probably not the best advertisement for waking up, is it? ‘Get on the spiritual journey, folks, and you will discover how neurotic you really are!’

    But ‘un-masking’ the fear has been a life-saver.

    The literal masks we’re now wearing are also life-savers but they are a nuisance and, for some, a source of stress. Despite the attempt at making them fashionable, masks hide our smiles and facial expressions, which connect us to one another in important ways. (On the plus side, masks hide yawns and spinach in your teeth.)

    Like the virus-prevention mask hiding the smile and the yawn (and the spinach), the masks of overachieving and ‘pushing through it’ can be hiding an anxious or a fearful part of the self. When I removed these protective outer masks, i.e. when I began to slow down, get quiet and ‘check in’, I began to discover what was really going on inside of me.

    Becoming conscious of the fear actually enabled me to attend to what was underneath it: a desire for reassurance, support and self-acceptance. At one time, I would have died before admitting that I was afraid of life but admitting to the fearand exposing it continues to reduce the power it holds over me and provides me with an ongoing source of courage.

    When I leave the long-term care home after hours of wearing a mask and finally get to pull it off as I cross the parking lot, I cannot tell you how liberating it feels. The fresh air on my face is like a kiss from God. When I remove the mask of ‘having it all together’ and share the fear, I feel a similar kind of freedom. The relief is like a Cosmic Thumbs-up.

    So let’s keep our masks on to prevent the spread of the virus and let’s keep un-masking to discover ourselves. Sometimes what’s hiding underneath is actually what connects us to one another.