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
