• 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

    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

    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