• 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

    Communing with the Stars

    • January 21, 2011 8:46 am

    Dearest Readers,

    Yesterday I had the opportunity to interview Justin Trudeau for a new talk show I’ve created with the help of our local TV station Community Cable Nine. It seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and even though I had to cancel one appointment and be late for another I took it.

    The appointment I was late for was a session with my Life/Business Coach. She said, “I think that’s probably the best excuse for being late I’ll ever hear.” She also asked me if I wanted to debrief with her on the interview experience. I said, “Well, instead of looking at everything I didn’t do I’m going to just say to myself, “Good for you, Celia. You did a good job.” She validated that for me, as good coaches do, and we moved on.

    As the day progressed into the evening, however, those Voices of Dissent began talking to me in their insistent and pervasive way. They’re still at it, as a matter of fact, and it’s the next day. I figure I’d better give them a forum to express their regret since shutting them down flat doesn’t seem to be working.

    So here, Dearest Readers, is what I didn’t do in my interview with Mr. Justin Trudeau, MP:

    • I didn’t say, “Nice haircut.”
    • When he talked about individuals needing to make a mental change with regard to our expectations of what politicians can do for us I didn’t look at the camera and say, “A mental change, People. It’s up to us to make a mental change.”
    • I didn’t tell him who my brother-in-law is. They went to summer camp together and were chums.
    • I didn’t tell him I went to a movie with his Dad. Yup, one day Pierre Trudeau and I went to see the same film at the Egyptian Cinema in Montreal. We were both alone and we sat at either end of the same row. He died shortly thereafter.
    • I didn’t take a picture of the two of us. I didn’t give him my business card.
    • There were times when he was speaking that I didn’t listen closely because I was formulating my next thought/question.

    That’s quite a lot of regret isn’t it? How challenging it is to ignore these things and look only at what I did right. The mind, the ego, the pride, the desire to be perfect… all these parts of me jump in there and shout for their rights and sadly the message is this: You are not good enough.

    This is a message, I am well aware, that so many of us battle. I could write pages on where it comes from in my own life but I’m far more interested in how to overcome this self-defeating Belief System. This BS!

    The kind of self-validation I did with my Coach is a very good place to start. We can tell ourselves we did well no matter what happened. “I did my best. My best is good enough.” Say it a thousand times if we need to. I am good enough.

    Another piece that helps me is to let go of the ridiculously high expectations I have. “This was only my second interview for this new show. I’m just at the beginning.” This way I can learn from the experience. I can see opportunities for improvement and take those on for next time.

    Most importantly I can practice the Art of Letting Go. It’s done. It’s over. It’s the past. There ain’t nothin’ I can do to change it. Going back over it in my mind will not do any good. Bless it. Release it. Move on.

    This new TV show is called “Communion”. I called it that because the word can mean “the sharing or exchanging of intimate thoughts and feelings, especially when the exchange is on a mental or spiritual level.” Justin Trudeau talked about seeing the work he does as Service and he talked about trying to make the world a better place. He spoke about how he tries to use criticism as an opportunity for self-improvement. When I asked him if he’d rather be buried or cremated (yes, I did that) he took what felt like the longest pause in the history of interviews, his eyes looking skyward in deep and silent contemplation, and then finally responded with thoughtful meaning. (He wants an ecological interment — the worms can have him.)

    All of this means that I succeeded in communing with this man. I achieved the goal! The rest is history.

    And yes, his eyes really are that blue. Not that I noticed.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: Sometimes the process of letting go requires a few steps. If something is hanging on I will take the time to give voice to my regret. Once I’ve done that I trust that my freedom will follow more swiftly.