• 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

    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.

    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

    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

    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