• We Are Known

    • March 25, 2020 9:57 am


     Dearest Readers,

    I would like to wish you all a very Happy New Year. Can you believe it’s been twenty years since Y2K? Astonishing.

    Maybe I’m slow but it only occurred to me very recently that 2020 is a play on ’20/20′.

    ’20/20 vision’ and ‘hindsight is 20/20’ bring to mind a more clear way of seeing. How could we move into this new decade with a new kind of clarity? Perhaps by seeing ourselves not simply as individuals but as component parts of a Cosmic Oneness. Whether you are religious and believe that we are all Children of God or spiritual and believe that we are All One or secular/scientific and understand that we all share the same DNA, the fact remains: we are all intimately connected. We are not separate from one another.

    This fact was brought home to me again and again when I attended an amazing conference in San Jose, CA called Science and Non-Duality (SAND) this past October 2019. The organizers of the conference are a dynamic couple who had a desire to share with others their mutual love of science and mysticism and set about creating a conference where folks could come together to celebrate the mysteries and wonders of both.

    The pairing of science, with its fact-based approach, and spirituality, with its wisdom-based knowing, excites me almost like nothing else. When I was very little, I used to fall asleep by pressing my fists into my eyes so that I could view the kaleidoscope of colours that the pressure produced. When I did this, I somehow felt not only that I was seeing God but that God was living inside of me. In other words, my very first experience of God looked something like this:

    A number of the guest speakers at the SAND conference were scientists who spend their research time asking the question ‘Is the Universe conscious?’ In other words, does that kaleidoscope of colours have a consciousness? Does it know itself? Does it know me? Does it know, period?

    For me, the answer to these questions is a roof-top shouting ‘YES’. For how can the Mechanism Behind Consciousness not have consciousness itself? (The ancient yogis believe that ‘God’ is Consciousness itself.)


    Science cannot yet explain consciousness (why we have it, where it comes from, what it even is) and so it remains the greatest mystery. Religion and spirituality fill in the answers. We get to decide for ourselves.

    Einstein supposedly said something like, “Either everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle.” To that end, either everything has consciousness or nothing does. Either the Universe is conscious (of itself, of me and you and all that is) or it’s not.

    Living life as though the Universe is as conscious of me as I am of It makes life pretty interesting. It also addresses existential loneliness or the feeling that I am alone and unloved.

    On an evening walk some years ago, I was stopped short by a large scattering of wood chips on the sidewalk. I looked up to see what had caused the mess and saw perfect, round holes in the tree, as if a large drill-bit had punched in and out of the bark. The very next day, when I passed the same tree I saw a woodpecker hammering its head in and out of the tree at rapid speed. I actually laughed out loud. No wonder an animation artist had invented Woody the Woodpecker, a comical, ridiculous bird!

    I don’t know how long I watched that woodpecker. It had me completely mesmerized. I was transported by the power it had in its little head to bore holes in trees, by its determination to feed itself, by the absolute phenomenon of its being. By simply by observing the humble woodpecker, I had been awakened to something far greater than my own self-centered thoughts.

    The amazing thing is, Woodpecker has continued to show up in my life, seemingly just when I need it. On more than one occasion, when I’ve been in a funk, the bird appears. Just this past July, when I was feeling despair at the state of the world, criticizing myself for being imperfect, tired of life in general, Woodpecker stopped me as I walked through a ravine to get to my destination. I first heard the rat-a-tat-tat of the beak-against-trunk and then saw it, high in a branch of an old maple. “I’m here,” it said. 

    I wrote the above paragraph about five days ago. Two days ago, I was walking on the grey streets of the town where I live, feeling extremely melancholy. My mood had dipped, as it does, and I was heading to the shores of Lake Ontario for a boost. I caught a flash of a bird flying by and looked to the tree where I saw it land. Woodpecker. “I’m here,” it said.

    Call these encounters coincidence. Call them nothing at all. Or call them a form of conscious contact from a Conscious Universe. When I choose the latter way of seeing I am bolstered by the notion that every conceivable thing is fused with Knowing. That means that I am Known. And You are Known. And We are Known. Kind of radical, know?

    May this Knowing be the foundation of our 20/20 vision.

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    Let it Out

    • November 15, 2019 5:12 pm
    Detail from ‘Wrath’ by Celia McBride, Oil on Board

    Dearest Readers,

    I’m sure I’ve blogged about this moment in the past. It is a moment in the movie Milk when Sean Penn, as Harvey Milk, says to a crowd of protesters fighting for equal rights for homosexuals, “I know you’re angry.” He is shouting into a megaphone. He pauses. In that pause, as the viewer, I fully expected him to say, “But it’s okay,” or “We need to be peaceful,” or “We need to be calm.” Instead, he shouts, “I’m angry!”

    As someone who has often tried to bypass my own anger with a spiritual remedy, it was a learning moment. ‘Oh, right, it’s okay to be angry.’ I forget this a lot. I know repressing my anger isn’t good but that doesn’t stop me from trying to transform it into forgiveness or acceptance before I’ve actually felt any of the the angry feelings.

    The other day as I was doing the dishes I realized I was holding in some of those angry feelings and probably had been for some time. Having recently read an out-of-print book called Cry Anger in which the author, Dr. Jack Birnbaum, encourages people to get angry, I let the feelings out.

    As I scrubbed the cutlery I shouted my grievances to the Cosmic Engine. Some were personal (a romantic rejection; a foot injury), some were more universal (climate change; human suffering). As the complaints poured forth out of my body, all prefaced with, “I’m angry!”, I immediately started to feel better.

    Dr. Birnbaum, in writing about one of his patients, said, “His anxiety was a shield against his own rage and hostility, which he controlled with his perfectionistic way of living.”

    After releasing my own anger, I could see it more clearly: perfectionism in disguise.

    Perfectionism says: I’m getting it wrong (whatever ‘it’ is), other people are getting it wrong and the Cosmic Engine is getting it wrong.

    That’s a lot of control. Or, lack thereof.

    My desire for control is a natural instinct. It is just trying to keep me safe. But controlling doesn’t keep me safe. It keeps me angry.

    Letting the anger out brought a new sense of freedom. Self-compassion flooded in. I remembered that when I’m expecting perfection, anger will not be far behind.

    So let it out. If you can. In a safe environment. In a quiet kitchen, maybe, with your hands in the suds.

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    We’re Alive!

    • February 12, 2019 6:51 pm

    Dearest Readers,

    After retiring from showbiz a number of years ago and then weaning myself off the dubious pleasure of award shows, I recently found myself catching snippets of the 2019 Golden Globes while staying with some friends. The happy couple was ensconced in their den and I, busy with other things, would come and go from the room to chat with them while the stars of Hollywood made their speeches and showed off their formal duds on the TV.

    During one of my brief stop-ins to the den, Jeff Bridges was called to the stage to receive a lifetime achievement award. He was suitably humble and excited and after the requisite thank-yous to his agents and lawyers and colleagues and family, he shouted out his exuberance for life, waving his award in the air while saying, “We’re all alive, right here, right now, this is happening. We’re alive!” (You can jump right to 3:49 for that particular moment.)

    Bridge’s words came out so joyfully, in such an unaffected and sweetly, awkward manner, that my friends and I could not help but laugh. Who does that? This wasn’t an arm-waving celebration of personal victory (for many before him have done that little dance with their newly-acquired statue) but a celebration of our aliveness, the astonishing, undeniable reality of our Being.

    His jubilant affirmation reminded me of a spoken-word poem I’d written in the 90s, listing all the times I could have died and ending each account with the words, ‘I’m alive.’ One of the concluding stanzas goes like this:

    i was born
    i was given this gift
    this life overwhelming
    this blessing this hope
    i’m alive

    And the final stanza:

    we’re alive
    you’re alive
    i’m alive

    The poem remains my own hand-waving exclamation of childish wonder at the miracle of our inexplicable existence. Like Jeff Bridges, I am in total awe that This is Happening, right here, right now.

    And yet not too many of us are gleefully whooping about the mind-blowing fact of our actuality. Humans can go through hours, days, weeks, months and years utterly asleep to ourselves and the absolute mystery and phenomenon of It All.

    Not only that, many people feel that being alive is not a miracle to be celebrated but a sentence to endure. I know that feeling well and understand that it can be a quantum leap to get from ‘I’m done’ to being amazed by the fact that I am a breathing body with trillions of cells, held to the earth by a puzzling gravitational pull, traveling around the sun at unfathomable speeds in a universe that may or may not have had a beginning and may or may not have an end.

    But this is one way to make the leap: Be amazed.

    Be amazed by the breath. This constant companion, always there, coming in and going out of the body, whether I pay attention to it or not. There. It. Is.

    we’ve got lungs cleansing breath is the life force giver
    we’re alive

    Be amazed by the weather (even while you’re complaining about it). How does snow fall from a cloud? How does a lake freeze over? How does the sun warm the skin even in frigid temperatures?

    we’re rich without a penny
    we’re alive

    Be amazed by others. That person I’m judging has an entire story, a family history, a complex emotional life, common fears, desires and needs. That person is trying, just like I am and just like you are, to meet the challenges life brings.

    we’re alive

    Sometimes, when I’m riding on a bus or a train or sitting in an airplane, I will take a moment to open myself up to all of the people around me, imagining their individual lives, realizing that each of them has the same, full, rich complexity of human experience as I do. With this exercise, these easily-ignored strangers become my human family, fellow travelers on the Path of Life.

    And I am amazed.

    I provide spiritual care for dying people and being so close to death on a daily basis makes me cherish my aliveness. A dear friend of mine recently died in the middle of his own fantastic life and his sudden death now infuses my aliveness. Death is the unmentionable reality informing our lives. Let us all be amazed by that fact. And let us remember, as often as we can, that we are here, This is Happening. Right now. We’re alive!

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    This and That

    • February 7, 2019 7:20 am

    Dearest Readers,

    The other night I was getting ready for bed with my 7-year old nephew who was visiting for the weekend and we had the most profound conversation while brushing our teeth in front of the mirror.

    “Isn’t it amazing how we can look into a flat piece of glass and see ourselves doing the exact thing that we’re doing right now in perfect clarity?” I asked him.

    “Yeah!” he replied with delight, “And how do our eyes even see everything?” he asked with genuine amazement.

    “I don’t know!” I exclaimed.

    “And who even invented words?” he went on.

    “I don’t even know!” I replied.

    “And how is this flat glass,” he said, motioning to the mirror, “Made from sand? How do you heat sand and get glass?”

    I laughed and shook my head. He ran his electric toothbrush through his grinning mouth. We were both in a state of awe about How Things Come To Be.

    What a joyful state. Taking time to experience this kind of childlike wonder is one of life’s great pleasures. It is truly a spiritual experience.

    As an interspiritual person, I draw my inspiration from a number of traditions to get that kind of joy. One is astrophysics and I am a big fan of Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist and television host, and am currently reading his book Astrophysics For People in a Hurry. It is full of hard-science facts like, “Every one of our body’s atoms is traceable to the big bang,” [p.33] and humble admissions such as “astrophysicists have no idea how the cosmos came into existence.”

    [p.32, p17]

    In Tyson’s broad-minded view, “accepting our kinship with all life on earth is a soaring spiritual experience.” (Cosmos, Episode 2, 27:25)

    I also follow Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk and brilliant spiritual teacher whom I had the great pleasure of meeting at St. Benedict’s monastery in Snowmass, Colorado. (As I write this, Fr Thomas is very close to death.) He, too, is a lover of science and feels strongly that religion has to listen to science because science is giving us up-to-date information about who and what God is. By Keating’s definition, God is “Is-ness”.

    Yogic philosophy also informs my spirituality. I teach yoga and bring the spiritual teachings to my classes as well as sharing the physical practice. This weekend I will be leading a workshop called Yoga, Meditation and Self-Realization. Self-realization is waking up to who we really are. “We are stardust brought to life,” writes Tyson [p.33]. Our very essence is Cosmic. Whatever you choose to call that Essence, be it God or the Universe or All, It is the very nature of who we are. I Am That.

    But even though I Am That, I still have to be this human being. I still have to be Celia on a daily basis. I am a person with a busy mind and an imperfect body. Self-realization, or enlightenment, in my view, doesn’t mean sitting on a cloud. It means understanding that even though we may not be our busy minds and imperfect bodies we nevertheless have to live with them both.

    How do we do that? How do we hold both truths that we are human and we are this Cosmic Oneness?

    It takes practice. And willingness. It’s easier to shut down the truth of who we are and just grit the teeth and get this business-of-being-human over with. But look how much we’re suffering. When we bring the reality of our inter-connectedness into our individual realities our perception will change. If we are not separate from one another or from the Creative Force of Life then why would we ever hurt each other? We would only be hurting ourselves.

    “How do our eyes even see everything?” When my nephew asked that question with such sincerity and openness, he was in a state of wonder. He was also self-realizing. There is something else going on here. We are participating in an astounding phenomenon we call Existence. And we are not doing so in isolation from one another. The more we awaken to this truth, the deeper our human healing will be.

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    Forget It

    • October 10, 2018 2:47 pm

    Dearest Readers,

    Lately, I’ve been making a lot of mistakes.

    Last week, I was supposed to bring the cash box to our Contact Dance Improv Jam and left it at home.

    A few days before that, I was supposed to give a friend a copy of the memoir I’m writing and I didn’t remember to do it.

    The other evening, I had a call scheduled with a friend and even though I’d remembered earlier in the day it completely slipped my mind at the appointed time.

    This week, I didn’t bring the keys to the yoga studio and had to go back home and get them (luckily, one of the students gave me a lift so I could still start the class on time).

    The list goes on: I forgot to feed the parking meter and got a ticket; misplaced my reading glasses; left the bagels I’d just bought behind…

    When I recounted these events to a friend, she asked me how old I was.

    “Are you implying that I might have early-onset Alzheimer’s?”

    “It’s not inconceivable.”

    No, it’s not. But rather than making a beeline to the doctor I’ve chalked up the mental blank spots to the following reasons:

    1. My schedule has changed recently and I’m adjusting to the changes
    2. I provide spiritual care for the elderly and the dying and there is some emotional shut-down happening (as a way of navigating the suffering and the grief)
    3. Smartphone use

    I’m pretty sure these are the main factors contributing to my current state of distraction. Change can be discombobulating. Grief can be overwhelming. Screens are taking over our lives.

    I know I’m not the only one who is deeply distracted these days. There seems to be a whole lot of us walking around a little (or a lot) removed from our Selves. And why wouldn’t we be? Being a human being is challenging at the best of times and numbing out (whether intentionally or subconsciously) is a way to cope.

    The real challenge, however, is to stay engaged with Reality as it unfolds.

    This is easier said than done, especially when things are uncomfortable. I have such a natural ability to dissociate that I don’t often realize I’ve internally separated myself from my life situation until I’ve been shocked back into Presence by the appearance of a $60 parking ticket.

    Turns out this is a good way to work with a distressing event. Be it a minor mishap or a major calamity, the shock can actually serve as a wake-up call:

    Stop.
    Notice.
    Am I in my body?
    Am I even aware that I am breathing?
    What is happening around me?
    Where did I disappear to and how long have I been gone?

    Instead of beating myself up for the ‘mistakes’ I’ve been making I’ve been instead trying to see them as opportunities to wake up.

    BING! You forgot the keys. BING! You lost your glasses. BING! You stood up your friend. BING!

    Where did you go, Celia? Time to come back now.

    The beating-myself-up mechanism still kicks in and sometimes the anger does, too. Pretty normal reactions to making mistakes. Those old friends simply need to be gently reminded that I’m doing my best. That usually settles them down.

    When I view the things that shock me out of my numbness as opportunities to be fully alive then I become truly aligned with What IS. And What Is, is nothing less than the life force energy creating and sustaining all things at every conceivable moment in time and space.

    What is that?

    We don’t know.

    We call It by many names and we make war over it. We ignore It, rail against It, deny It, fear It and try and try and try to explain It. But we cannot explain It.

    We simply do not understand The Inexplicable Mystery of Our Being.

    But just because we don’t understand It doesn’t mean we can’t align ourselves with It. And I am aligned with my Being when I am awake to my Self and to others and to what is unfolding in Reality right now.

    So when you suddenly remember that forgot your keys, take it as the Cosmic BING! Take it as a moment to be amazed by the phenomenon of your existence and by Existence Itself. This moment of realignment Is All There Is and it’s worth waking up for.

    From the Fires of Love,

    Celia

    The Return

    • February 18, 2018 10:48 am

    Dearest Readers,

    Resisting Love, the last blog post, elicited a number of heartfelt responses. One woman’s comment struck me as particularly pressing.

    She wrote:

    “I appreciate the message of acceptance and I have to admit I was left wanting more….more about how….how to accept…how to stay open…..how to live and trust and evolve….”

    Isn’t this the million dollar question for all of us? How? How? How do we do it? How do we really live? Not just cope or get by or survive the daily struggle but really embrace Life fully and joyfully, living as though each day were our very last?

    There is no One Manual. There are many manuals to choose from to help guide us but despite being given great wisdom from the sacred scriptures of our ancient cultures and having multiple modern-day self-help books from which to choose, none of us really knows what we’re doing. We are all just figuring it out as we go.

    This is really something, isn’t it? We are all trying so hard to get this Life Thing right. And it isn’t easy! Being human is very confusing. Why did that happen? What am I supposed to do about this? What do I do with all of these thoughts? How do I handle my emotions? Am I doing enough?

    Without an Instruction Booklet we pretty much just carry on the best we can. And we really are all doing the best we can. It might not seem that way sometimes and yet this is where ‘how to accept’ comes in. How would it be for me to accept that we are all doing the best we can with what we’ve got?

    The inner perfectionist balks. Are you kidding me? she says. He is not doing his best and she could be doing way better.

    There is no Acceptance when I am expecting everyone to be operating at a perfect level of human awareness and behaviour. Acceptance requires that I let go of unrealistic expectations and remember that just like me that person is trying to figure out how to live.

    ‘How to stay open’ is just as challenging. Staying open means leaving myself vulnerable to being rejected and getting hurt. Staying open means I will not be in control of the situation. This is unthinkable. The inner protector says, It is better to armour up and shut down. But being numb doesn’t actually feel all that great. What to do?

    The ‘How’ of anything always starts with a conscious decision. I am deciding to practice staying open even though I am afraid to let go of my desire for control. Once we make the decision, it then becomes a little bit easier to take the necessary action, in this case welcoming the fear of rejection.

    That sounds really unpleasant. Welcome the fear of rejection? Are you nuts?

    The only way I can possibly welcome anything this uncomfortable is by cultivating a Deeper Understanding of Who I Am. This is where ‘how to live and trust and evolve’ comes in.

    If I am 100% identified with my temporary nature, my little finite human life, then I will experience all hurt and rejection as being about me, about my person, as my fault. This misguided identification will then result in shameful feelings, which, in turn, produce the controlling, perfectionist, armoured-up person living in fear and anxiety.

    Cultivating a Deeper Understanding of Who I Am involves dis-identifying with what I think and feel and desire. Take note, I did not say annihilate. Thoughts and feelings and desires are natural, human, and necessary and I am not trying to get rid of them (and believe me, I have tried).

    I am simply trying overcome the false notion that my thoughts, feelings and desires are the sum total of my being because when I mistake these instincts for my True Identity, I suffer.

    But if I am not what I think, feel and desire then who am I? What is my True Identity?

    As I wrote in the last post, Who We Are is nothing less than The Evolving Manifestation of the Mysterious Energy Creating and Sustaining All Things at Every Conceivable Level of Physical and Non-Physical Reality (aka ‘God’).

    The human challenge is that we cannot Know This with our intellect. This Knowing comes from a place in us that is beyond the intellectual mind and it is only by cultivating This Knowing through formal or informal practices like prayer and meditation (in any and all forms) that This Knowing becomes intuitive (oh, and studying astrophysics helps, too).

    Once this intuitive connection happens, the How is more readily accessible because there remains only one, simple action left to take: The Return.

    The Action of Returning is key to accepting, staying open, living, trusting and evolving. And it’s not too difficult, though it does require vigilance. Every single time I realize that I’ve forgotten Who I Really Am, that I’ve become identified with my thoughts, feelings and desires, I return to the Deeper Understanding of My Being, my True Identity.

    How often do I practice The Return? A hundred million times a day.

    Whenever I realize I’ve disappeared, forgotten, resisted, distracted, escaped, left the building, I return, return, return.

    To what am I returning? To That Which I Already Am.

    Yes, my anger, fear, self-loathing, doubt, insecurity, jealousy, resentment is still there. This is my humanness and I will never outrun it (and I do still try). But what we are returning to is far deeper than our humanness, it is That Which Makes Us Human.

    From the fires of Love,

    Celia

    Resisting Love

    • October 14, 2017 12:52 pm

    This blog post is the last issue of The Healing Journey, the letter I send out to subscribers. You may subscribe here to receive the email.

    Dearest Readers,

    ‘Love’ gets a lot of air time as the final solution to the world’s problems.

    All you need is love. Make love not war. Whatever the question, love is the answer.

    I do not disagree. In fact, I would march in any protest holding a One Love slogan high or chanting it loud and long for all to hear.

    Why, then, when we are so good at touting this truth, do we still resist love? And not just on a global scale, as a peaceful solution to mass discord, but on a personal one as well?

    How many people do you know who hurt themselves or reject goodness or resist love? A few? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? Millions? Billions?

    For your separation from God is the hardest work in this world.

    This line from a poem by Hafez (or Hafiz) says it all. Why are we working so hard to separate ourselves from That Which We Already Are?

    Lots of reasons. Trauma, addiction, mental illness, low self-esteem, self-loathing, desire for power and control, fear.

    In short: because we’re human.

    In evolutionary terms, it could be argued that we are still at the very beginning of our journey toward full, conscious awakening. There may be a few awakened beings walking around but most of us are still dragging our knuckles and clubbing each other.

    Why?

    Because we don’t realize Who We Really Are.

    I think I’m Celia. And I am. I’m also the Evolving Manifestation of the Mysterious Energy Creating and Sustaining All Things at Every Conceivable Level of Physical and Non-Physical Reality.

    (I know, it’s a lot easier to say ‘God’ but the word divides. You’ve heard me say it before, we need a new word. Or we at least need to come to some kind of agreement on what the word means. Until then, I’ll create variations.)

    Being Celia, or human, means I am subject to human experience. Human experience includes wrestling with ‘the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.’ I am going to get hurt and rejected. I am going to suffer. Because I’ve suffered and been hurt and rejected, I’m going to identify with these experiences. Naturally. And this identification is going to lead me to believe that I am unworthy, unloved and unlovable. Hence, when love comes my way I’m going to resist it. Or even before it comes my way I’m going to make sure it doesn’t arrive. Cut it off at the pass.

    This is the wound of separation, which leads to the hardest work in the world. So how do we heal?

    First of all, there is no cure for being human. It is what I am. No matter how hard I try, I will not outrun my humanity and the fear that comes with it.

    In the same way, I cannot outrun That Which Makes Me Human. I may be able to resist The Force Behind Human Existence but extricating myself from It? Not a chance.

    This is why separation is ‘the hardest work in the world’. Because we literally cannot do it.

    Resisting Love because we’re afraid of being hurt or vulnerable or rejected is the expected human reaction. Understanding that it is impossible to resist That Which We Already Are is the evolved and awakened response.

    Still, resistance persists. I may know intellectually that I am the Cosmos Looking at Itself or a Child of God or Bliss Absolute or however you want to say it and yet there I go again, pressing the self-sabotage button, rejecting Love before it rejects me.

    It’s okay.

    We can’t annihilate our separation work any more than we can outrun our humanness. Because our separation work is our humanness. This is how we are made. If we didn’t have the veil of separation we’d be God. Or the Thing That Makes All Things Possible. That veil is what enables us to be here.

    So, if you are in the resistance, if your separation work is generating or perpetuating the suffering, be gentle with yourself. We’re still evolving. We’re not getting it wrong.

    I recently asked a 105 year-old woman what her secret was. “I just live,” she said.

    May we all just live, as we are, trusting that Evolution or Divine Love or Cosmic Oneness is doing Its good work in all of us, even now, and even now, and now and now…

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    Oh My God

    • July 13, 2017 9:46 am

    Dearest Readers,

    One of the things I enjoy most is having meaningful discussions. Small talk is okay but I’d much rather have Deep Talk. Why chit-chat about the weather when we could be talking about the Meaning of Life?

    My all-time favourite subject is God. Whether we talk about ‘God’ as a word that soothes or rankles or ‘God’ as a deity who exists or doesn’t, everybody is going to have something interesting to say on the topic.

    On a recent outing with a friend, he mentioned a phone call he’d had with his mother, a spiritual person who relies on God for guidance.

    “She’s always talking about God and I’m like, Mom, I don’t believe in God.”

    I’d previously had all kinds of spiritual conversations with this person so I was curious as to what he really meant. Did he mean he didn’t believe in a man with a beard directing human activity? Did he mean he didn’t believe in religion? As I’ve written here before, language is key, and finding the right language can open the door.

    “You don’t believe in God and yet I’m wondering if you experience the Universe as participatory,” I asked him.

    He thought about it for a while and then said, “It’s my experience that sometimes it feels like I’m getting kicked around and other times I feel like I might be being guided.”

    At that moment we passed a church with a banner that read, “What about God and Science?”

    “I think it’s worth noting the appearance of that banner right now,” I said, pointing up at the oracular question looming above us. Hmmm…

    Another conversation with a friend who identified as a ‘militant atheist’ in one breath and a ‘very spiritual person’ in the next prompted me to interview him to ask him more about his dichotomous stance. During the interview he ended up saying, “I am God. You’re God.”

    I knew what he meant. He didn’t mean that he’d made the world or that I had but rather Whatever Made The World was currently operating in us, present in us. We aren’t It, per se, but we are of It. The Quakers have an apt way of putting it: “There is that of God in Everyone.”

    Later, the friend who’d said he didn’t believe in God but did feel, to some extent, that the Universe is participatory, texted me his appreciation for our conversation.

    “I think it’s cool that you are constantly expanding your definition for the human journey beyond any spiritual/religious lexicon,” he wrote.

    He’s right about my ‘constantly expanding’. There was a time when I was positively evangelical in my views, which made having any kind of meaningful spiritual dialogue near impossible. Coming up against my own rigidity has forced me to move beyond language and labels because I’ve learned the hard way that the more I cling to my own beliefs as ‘right’ and my own labels as ‘true’ then the less any kind of real connection can take place.

    And that is what I am looking for. Real Connection. Yes, it is much easier to dis-connect. To hide away and disengage. Even when I’m in the presence of others I can cut myself off. Because it takes real effort to make a Real Connection. Being Present requires a certain amount of letting go and a certain amount of waking up. Either way, it’s work. And sometimes I don’t want to do the work.

    But I do it anyway. And I keep on doing it. Because if the Universe is participating in my life then I’d like to participate right back. We are still evolving here. Our current experience is just a blip in the Evolutionary Time Span. If the God conversation lands us in a debate about religion or embroiled in a dogmatic argument then we have missed out on an opportunity to find our Common Ground.

    What is our Common Ground? It’s pretty simple. We all belong to one species: Homo sapiens and we are all made up of trillions of atoms. All of us. We are all made of the same stuff: Energy.

    What is Energy? Why does it exist? We don’t know. But we all get to decide our own answer. We all get to interpret Energy or God or That Which is Beyond the Intellect however we darn please. And as long as we don’t get caught up in thinking we have the right answer or the best interpretation, then we should be able to unite in our Common Ground and move forward together. I can think of nothing more pressing in today’s world.

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    D-Day

    • May 21, 2017 8:44 am

    This blog post is the last issue of The Healing Journey, the letter I send out to subscribers. You may subscribe here to receive the email.

    Dearest Readers,

    Language is meaningful and I’m careful about the words I choose, whether I’m posting them online or pronouncing them in speech. Watching my words is a mindful practice requiring constant awareness and committed intention. For example, I used to swear like trucker and I hated a lot of things. Now, refraining from saying “I hate” something is a way for me to transcend and transform the judging mind and not swearing upholds ahimsa or the practice of non-violence.

    I can still drop the F-bomb on occasion and my mind still judges but the Healing Journey has given me a better understanding of where my feelings are really coming from and why I react harshly to certain people or situations. Looking directly at my fears and attachments has helped me to untangle them and recognize how they will continually motivate my actions if left unchecked. This inner work has naturally resulted in a more intentional way of speaking and behaving.

    Finding alternative words to shift my attitude and energy has meant that I would never say I was ‘depressed’ even if I was. Instead I might tell you that my energy was very low (or completely depleted) or that my spiritual condition was not at peak. This refusal to name ‘depression’ as such felt like a way to conquer it or rise high above its lowly depths. But it never made it go away. So, recently, after a stretch of working hard to overcome the funk, something in me decided to call a spade a spade. “I’m depressed,” I said to a friend. It was freeing to finally name it with such frankness.

    Years ago, I watched a 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, seems to have had all the luck in the world. One evening, the Mayor confides in Farfrae and shares honestly with the younger man about his deeper troubles.

     “…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.”

    Because I knew exactly what the Mayor was talking about I fully expected his friend to answer him with a knowing “aye, mate, I hear ye.” But Farfrae has no idea what the Mayor is talking about.

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

    His response knocked me over. You mean some people actually have no idea what the blackness of hell feels like? What it is to experience utter hopelessness? To wish for death to come swiftly and end it all finally and forever?

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

    The Mayor’s retort is right on because no one who knows that kind of mental suffering would ever want anyone else to go through it. It’s brutal.

    “So what are you using to overcome it?” my own friend asked me.

    “All my tools,” I told her. “I pray, meditate, do the next right thing, change the thought, watch it, repeat a mantra, have mercy on myself, share it, help someone else to get out of myself, work on my defects and assets, whatever it takes, WHATEVER IT TAKES to not succumb to the pit of despair and to move through it and beyond. In short, whatever I am capable of in the moment.”

    “Wow,” she replied. This sounds very effortful.”

    Well, it is. And it’s effective, too.

    One of the least effortful and most effective tools on that list is to ‘watch it’. While requiring a certain level of vigilance, watching the mind doesn’t require a lot of effort. Stepping back from what the mind is doing (or not doing, as the case may be) has taught me that I am, in fact, not my thoughts. I am not the D-word. I am not even the brain, which seems to be misfiring and malfunctioning in the D-state. Like watching my words, watching my thinking creates a shift in energy. Eckhart Tolle has cornered the market on this idea and it’s life-changing.

    That life-changing shift in energy enables me to respond to the D in a more enlightened capacity. I can even welcome it, saying, “Hello! You again. Thanks for the visit! Off you go.” I can also view D as a brilliant spiritual teacher who has led me down the path of humility, shown me how to surrender and how to soften, how to respond with compassion to myself and others and forced me continually let go of my attachment to what I think so that I may dwell more comfortably in That Which the Mind Cannot Grasp.

    What is That Which the Mind Cannot Grasp? It is the Energy Behind All Things. It is God. It is no god. It is Light and it is Dark. It is depression and it is freedom from the D word. There is no thing that It is Not. I like Maya Angelou’s word for It: All.

    So this is what I rely on to overcome the blackness of hell. I rely on ALL. And it works. For me. And whatever works for you is good, too. If you are working with D then I am with you. And if you’re not, I pray to ALL that you never may.

    May we continue to watch what we say and how we say it. And may we each learn to tell the truth about ourselves to others without shame.

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    The Agony of Nothing

    • January 5, 2017 12:12 pm

    This blog post is the last issue of The Healing Journey, the letter I send out to subscribers. You may subscribe here to receive the email.

    This past August my parents and our family suffered the loss of Maggie, our beloved Great Dane, to bone cancer. A few weeks after Maggie died my mother announced that she was getting a new puppy. I was surprised. When Maggie was deteriorating my mum had stated very clearly that she would never get another dog.

    “You said you weren’t going to get another dog,” I reminded her.

    “I know,” she answered, “But I can’t bear the agony of nothing.”

    “The agony of nothing,” I repeated, impressed by her ability to name so aptly our existential human emptiness, “That’s it. Right there. That is what it all comes down to. If we cannot learn to bear the agony of nothing–”

    “We’re doomed!” she interjected.

    That wasn’t exactly what I was going to say. I was going to say that if we cannot learn to bear the agony of nothing then we are destined to get a puppy to make the pain go away. But what happens when the puppy dies and we are once again left with that “deep-down, black, bottom-of-the-well, no-hope, end-of-the-world, what’s-the-use loneliness”? (Thank you, Charlie Brown.)

    Well, we can always find something else to temporarily relieve the dread. There is no shortage in today’s world: shopping, sex, TV, booze, dope, chocolate cake. On and on it goes.

    Eventually those things stop working, too, and the Black Hole returns. What then? How do we bear the Agony of Nothing?

    By spending time with it.

    Yup. When when we stop trying to a-void the Void, when we make friends with the thing we fear most, it becomes transformed. Solitude is no longer lonely and Silence is no longer empty.

    It takes great courage to do this. Exploring the foreign territory of our inner lives can be terrifying. It is the Great Unknown, after all. I myself have uncovered a hundred forms of fear living inside of me. By getting to know these fears intimately and confronting my terror head-on, their power has been massively reduced. And I’m happy to report that I have been liberated by at least eighty-seven of them. Maybe eighty-eight.

    This is how healing actually happens. Interior freedom occurs when we walk through the fear rather than run from it, work with the pain rather than alter it. Entering fully into the Agony of Nothing creates, miraculously, the Possibility of Something. That Something is better than a puppy. Because it is, in fact, Everything.

    Thus begins the astonishing process of living from our Everythingness instead of from the agony of our nothingness. And it is a process. And puppies are most definitely allowed.

    From the fires of love,

    Celia