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
