• 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

    Have Faith?

    • August 18, 2021 8:02 am

    Dearest Readers,

    A number of years ago, when I was just at the beginning of what I would now call the conscious spiritual journey, a friend said to me, “Have faith,” after I bombarded her with a fearful tirade of controlling remarks.

    Have faith.

    Her words had the right effect. I calmed down and took a breath. I knew I had to let go of whatever was causing me anxiety in that fraught moment and this little phrase helped me to do that.

    ‘Have faith’ can mean anything to anyone, really. It can mean believing in God but it can also mean trusting in the human spirit.

    I work with a lot of people who have either lost their faith or simply don’t have any to begin with. Some of them once believed in a God that was ‘good’ but because they see so much ‘bad’ they no longer do. This makes sense. ‘Belief’ is fickle. It can be too easily eroded by the ‘thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.’ (That’s Hamlet.)

    Having faith requires trust and trusting is different than believing. In what do I trust?

    I trust that I am not the Power Making the Planets Spin.Ā 

    I trust that the Spirit of Goodness will prevail. It may take a week, a month, a year, century or a millennium but eventually things work out. This quote sums it up: ‘If it ends, it ends well. If it doesn’t end well, it’s not over yet.’

    I trust that the Universe knows what It is doing. When looks like the world is going to hell in a hand basket I remember that a heck of a lot has happened before now and a heck of a lot is going to happen after now. We are still evolving. I trust that.

    Have faith.

    It’s easy to say. I could have had a different reaction all those years ago when my friend said those words to me (f*ck off comes to mind). But she wasn’t being flippant. She was reassuring me. And because I do have faith, not blind-everything-happens-for-a-reason-spiritual-bypassing-faith, but faith in the stars and the sun and the moon, in the galaxies and the entire cosmic dance, in the grass growing and the trees blowing and the unfolding of history and the miraculous present and the uncertain future. I have faith in the steadfast spirit of the animals, in the perseverance of people who continue to fight for justice and equality despite staggering injustices and inequality, in the kindness of strangers and the generosity of neighbours and, finally, in the Transformative, Radical, Unconditional Love that seems to permeate Everything and defies logic and intellectual understanding.

    Have faith, she said. I listened. And I let go.

    And I’m still listening and I’m still letting go. Because I still like to hold on. And I doubt and I question and I fear and I rage. And I have faith.

    May we all have faith right now. Not faith that ‘everything will be okay’. But that everything will be. Because it is.

    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

    Good Lock

    • July 27, 2016 3:34 pm

    Recently, I got locked out of the house. It wasn’t my house so I did not know all of its little intricacies including the one about the front door bolt sometimes slipping down into the catch on its own. So I went outside to do a chore and when I came back the door was bolted shut.

    At first I didn’t believe it. It was impossible. The bolt had to be physically turned from the inside to lock the door. In my disbelief I began to pull on the door shaking and rattling it to force it to open. It was definitely locked. Then I growled and noticed the panic rising. I had a full day that included a list of other chores before making my way to the airport to catch a plane.

    Going around to the back of the house to see if I’d left the back door open was futile because I knew I’d locked it five minutes earlier when I’d let the cat out. I did it anyway. Then I checked all the windows and found one that could be opened if I forced it. I stopped trying when my arm began to bleed.

    As I returned to the front of the house to escape the burning late-morning Florida sun I said a prayer. Well, barked one, actually. “Okay, what am I supposed to do about this?” Maybe I even said, “What the hell am I supposed to do about this?” I was highly aware of my resistance and lack of calm.

    With that awareness I took a seat on the shady front porch and started to listen for the answer. I was locked out. What could I do? Not much. Did the rage help? Not a bit.

    A lizard about the size of my hand sashayed out of the shrubbery and stopped a couple of feet away, watching me out of the corner of its eye, its tiny sides expanding and contracting rapidly with breath. That lizard did not have a big agenda. It moved again, stopped, moved again. Each time it stopped I stayed with it, with the power of its total presence, its utter lack of agenda. The lizard eventually moved on and I thanked it because it had brought me into the here and now.

    Reflecting on my anger I saw that it had come from the fact that I was not going to be able to fulfill my agenda. My agenda had not only been meticulously planned (go inside, finish chores, accomplish tasks, eat some food, take a spiritual direction call, get to the airport and fly away), I was counting on the fact that it was all going to take place. I was upset because the future I’d planned was not going to happen. But that future was not my actual life. My actual life, my unfolding life in reality, was sitting on the porch, locked out of the house in +35C heat, learning life-lessons from lizards. There was nothing else. All the other stuff was just a bunch of thoughts that I had allowed to become expectations.

    To commit to the spiritual journey means that when any challenge comes our way we stay open to the transforming opportunity being presented. I closed my eyes, went within and listened.

    Let go. Wait. Trust.

    Letting go of all my plans and seeing that the world would not come to an end by doing so, I went and picked some starfruit from a tree in the yard, thankful for the moisture it provided my thirsty mouth. With that action came an intuitive thought: Maybe I could knock on the neighbours doors? Fear rose up. I sat with it and then followed the prompt. Within minutes, two generous men were walking around the house with me looking for a spare key or a way to get in. Then one of them got a screwdriver and jimmied a window open. Hallelujah! I climbed into the cool, air-conditioned house, relieved and dripping with sweat.

    As the rest of the day unfolded and the agenda got accomplished I kept meditating on a deeper question that came out of the experience: Where am I “locked out”? Or what am I “locking out” of my life?

    Exactly one week later, while leading a retreat on the ashram in the Bahamas,Ā I went to leave the little beach-side room where I slept to go to a yoga class. But when I turned the door handle and pulled, the door remained shut. I tried again. Nope. I was locked in. You know what I did? I smiled.

    After trying a couple of tricks to jimmy the latch I pulled the screen off the window, lifted myself up over the sill, did a modified handstand to climb out, and went to reception to tell maintenance. Later, after the local man who repaired it explained that the salt-air had corroded the latch (happens all the time), I had the opportunity to do some more spiritual inquiry. Two episodes with locks in one week? Kinda hard to ignore.

    Okay, so where was I “locked in”? Or what am I currently “locked into”?

    There was temptation to go into shame. I’m doing something wrong. I’m being punished. This attitude will only keep me from looking deeper. A gentler approach prevailed: How did I respond to what unfolded?

    My reaction to being locked out was rage, which came from being overly attached to my agenda. Fair enough, I had a flight to catch. But to assume I’m going to get to complete my plans at any given time is to deny the unpredictability of life. When I am attached to an agenda I am locked out of being present to life’s unfolding and I am leaping ahead of reality.

    My reaction to being locked in was to smile. Made easier by some free time, certainly, but also by a willingness to accept what comes with an open mind and an open heart. When I am detached from my agenda I am locked in to reality. Life is unfolding before me and I am following with curiosity, presence and interior freedom.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: May we all open ourselves to following the unfoldment of our lives rather than trying to leap ahead.

    Willing to Live

    • August 29, 2011 9:12 am

    Dearest Readers,

    This post is for you if you are feeling overwhelmed, run down by life, paralyzed by fear, stuck in a rut, cynical, helpless, hopeless. I would like you to know that you are not alone.

    Before I go on, I would like to preface what I am about to say by telling you that I have a great life. I am young, healthy, talented, loved, and pretty cute. AND I struggle with anxiety and fear. So despite the fact that I have enormous amounts of abundance and opportunities for joy in my life I go to bed some nights and wake up some days in cold, naked, fear.

    Last night was one of those nights and this morning was one of those mornings.

    When I went to bed last night I told myself that when the cat pounced on me at 5:30 the next day I would not go back to bed after getting up to feed him. I would do the morning routine and embrace the day. I was determined because I knew that if I didn’t, if I let the fear plague me it would end up driving the bus of my day and I would sink deeper into the mire.

    So this morning at 5:30 a.m., right on schedule, “Pounce!” The cat jumped on me and began his mournful sing-song to waken me. Guess what? I ignored him. I pulled the covers over my head and stuck a finger in my ear.

    Fear: 1, Celia: 0

    Now because I am aware of my shortcomings, because I am aware that I rebel against my Highest Good, because I well know that I get in my own way more often than I care to admit, I did not stop there. I did not let the fear win.

    Despite myself, I began to ask for help. Buried under those covers with a finger in my ear listening to the cat cry for his breakfast I began to pray like a motherlover.

    “I don’t want to get up. I don’t want to face the day. It’s too much. Please help me. Please forgive me. Please give me the strength and courage to pull my covers off and sit up and get up and feed the cat and start the morning routine and live the day. I don’t want to because I’m afraid but I’m willing. Give me the courage, please, I need strength, please help me.”

    I kept on like that for some time. I just kept on. Then out came the finger. Off came the covers. I sat up. I got up. I fed the cat. I splashed water on my face and drank water. Life-giving water. I felt relief.

    Celia:1, Fear: 0

    I began the morning routine, entering into deeper prayer and meditation. I did a yoga practice. I WENT FOR A JOG. IN THE RAIN. When I got back I picked raspberries from the bush in our yard for breakfast.

    Miracles all.

    Somewhere around the five-minute mark into the jog (those of you who have been following this blog since the beginning will be most impressed for I began hauling myself up an outdoor staircase two years ago to build cardio activity into my life and nearly had a heart attack) I began to feel better. The fear began to lift and I could feel my energy changing. Hallelujah.

    For a person who is gripped by fear or anxiety the most difficult thing in the world to do is to get up off the proverbial couch. And yet it is the absolute solution to the problem. We must get up off the couch and step into our lives for the fear to lift, for things to change, for the miracle of thankfulness to overtake the dread. And yet how? How do we do that when we are paralyzed?

    Ask. Ask for the strength and courage. Beg for it if you have to. It will come. It. Will. Come.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: I am willing to live despite my fear. I am willing to move forward with love in my heart. I’m terrified of what lies ahead and life feels too big for me to handle. But I’m willing because I trust the shift will come and when it does I will be returned to thankfulness and inner peace, which is my true state of being.

    Thank you, Moses

    • August 26, 2010 7:50 am

    Dearest Readers,

    This morning I feel like singing Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. I feel like the Red Sea has parted and I’m walking along the cleared, dry path to freedom. I’ve had a breakthrough.

    There is still some processing I need to do so I won’t get specific and the details are not actually what’s important. It’s not about what happened as much as it is how it happened.

    Stick-to-it-iveness. Perseverance. Talking it out. These are some of the tools I employed to find my way out of the mire and into the clearing. When I felt like giving up I didn’t. When I wanted to withdraw I put myself out there. When my fear told me to isolate I told someone about it.

    These inspired actions coupled with some pretty deep prayer and meditation kept the process moving forward and eventually afforded me the “a-ha moment” that I had last night.

    A very short time ago I was in emotional turmoil. My energy was really blocked. I didn’t know why and I simply could not figure it out in my head. The confused mind cannot solve the problem. It’s confused!

    The answer must come from a Deeper Place. The Heart. The Gut. The Great Spirit. Anywhere but the mind, where the difficulty originates.

    So, my friends, the words to a sweet, sweet song by Van Morrison are swirling around inside me today. “Yes, it feels like a Brand New Day.”

    That and Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Halle-lu-jah!

    Inspiring Message of the Day: When I am confused or my energy is blocked I will not try and solve the issue by thinking about it. I will use the Greater Methods of the Spirit to make my way to the other side and I will trust that Clarity will eventually come.

    Burning Desire

    • July 22, 2010 8:05 am

    Dearest Readers,

    Yesterday I was telling my Spiritual Director about the burn and recounting the story of how it happened and as I described to her the subsequent events that arose from the incident I remembered the absolute grounded Presence I felt on that day.

    Talk about the Power of Now.

    With first and second degree burns covering most of my thigh I was rocketed into the Present Moment where I remained for the rest of the day until I fell into sleep that evening.

    The only other times in my life when I have felt that connected to Reality was when I was on hallucinogenic drugs back in my wild child days. And lemme tellya, the day of the burn was wild. (Right, SP?)

    Believe me, I am not asking for more pain and suffering but there was something so profound about that experience, the awareness I felt, the sense of feeling utterly connected to the moment and totally fused to Life’s unfolding, that a part of me wishes I could return there.

    The good news is I can. In fact, I’m already returned there. Because there is Here. This is the Teaching of the Burn. This is what Eckhart Tolle is talking about. It’s Now. It’s always Now.

    So why is it so f’n challenging to live in the Now? What is so difficult about Be-ing? Shouldn’t it be the easiest thing in the world? After all, we are. Why can’t we just be?

    Well, there’s that baggage we carry. It’s heavy. And there’s that damage we experienced. It’s hardcore. And there are those wounds we suffered. They’re deep. And don’t forget the wrongdoings we committed. They’re shameful. And then there’s the Intellect. Why this, why that? Figure it out, analyze it. Let me understand.

    Sheesh. It’s a wonder we make it through the day sometimes!

    The day after the burn was the day I flew out of New York to Montreal. I was leaving my good friend, who had been with me throughout the whole experience, and I wanted to extend my time with her for as long as I possibly could. I began to plan the day according my my wishes, going hither and thither, busy as a bee.

    Well. “Make plans, God laughs.”

    Before heading out, my friend and I did a little meditation session to start the day and thank goodness we did. Taking the time to get quiet and go within was the best thing I could have done for myself. This is what I heard: “Listen to the Burn.”

    I changed my plans. My friend and I said good-bye and I went early to the airport where I could sit and rest and take care of my leg.

    Listen to the Burn. In other words, live in the Power of Now. Connect to the Great Reality. Embrace the Experience of Being.

    Start now. Or now. Or now. Or now. Or now. Or now…

    Inspiring Message of the Day: When I forget that Life is Happening Now I will bring myself back Here. I will listen to the burning desire of my heart, which is always longing to Be with Great Presence.

    Swami Sense

    • July 3, 2010 9:22 am

    Dearest Readers,

    This morning I opened a message from the Sivananda Yoga Retreat and contained within was a quote from Swami Sivananda.

    Here it is:

    ā€œThough surrounded by pleasurable or painful objects to disturb your equilibrium of mind, remain immovable as a rock, receiving all things with equanimity. Be always cheerful. Laugh and smile. How can a mind that is gloomy and dull think of God? Try to be happy always. Happiness is your very nature. This is termed cheerfulness. This spirit of cheerfulness must be cultivated by all aspirants.ā€

    Exactly what I need to hear. So challenging to do!

    My surroundings are currently jammers with pleasurable and painful objects, my equilibrium of mind most definitely disturbed. Ā I am doing my utmost to remain immovable as a rock and practicing diligently the art of receiving all things with equanimity. Some moments are better than others.

    Happiness may be my very nature but self-centeredness is my default operating system. Itā€™s all about me all the time and when things donā€™t go my way or when Iā€™m trying to make things go my way I have completely forgotten about cultivating cheerfulness and the trusting theĀ Higher Path. Gloomy and dull, indeed.

    What if it really were that simple? ā€œBe always cheerful. Laugh and smile.ā€ I actually think it is. I make it complicated. But this and but that. I like my misery thank you very much. Perpetuate the suffering. Prolong the winter of discontent. Reject glorious summer.

    Old BS (belief systems).

    Am I willing to let go of them? Am I willing to allow new ways of thinking to come in and take hold? Am I willing to surrender my old ideas? Yes, yes and yes.

    Back at home I have a photograph of Swami Sivananda in the meditation room. He is smiling serenely with the look of pure love on his face. The embodiment of cheerfulness. The True Nature of Happiness. Iā€™m practicing it right now, Swami S. See me?

    Inspiring Message of the Day: I am willing to practice cheerfulness despite my disturbed mind. I will remember the Great Teachers who have come before me to show me that my True Nature is Bliss Divine.

    Post 611

    • June 26, 2010 12:40 pm

    Dearest Readers,

    In yesterday’s post I wrote about having a grieving session for all the pain and sorrow in the world. Last night, a woman I’ve come to know over the course of this last week on the ashram gave me the gift of one her hand-painted cards as a token of our new friendship. The card depicted the image of Guan Yin.

    On the back of the card it reads:

    “Chinese Goddess of Mercy and Compassion. Her name means ‘She who bears the weeping of the world.’ She takes away our anguish, our sorrow, and our pain. She watches over the children of the earth and answers our prayers.”

    When I was crying so deeply the other day I was experiencing the strangest sensation of bearing the weeping of those who could not weep. By doing so I felt as though I was somehow helping to take away their anguish.

    Now I am in no way suggesting that I am Guan Yin but perhaps I was channeling her Energy. When my friend handed me that card it certainly felt like something Greater than a simple Celia sob session had taken place.

    The ashram is like that. Things happen Ā to make you go “hmmm” all the time. The Yogis would say, “Of course.” The Vibrations are very high here. Makes sense.

    Does it make sense to think that there is a Chinese goddess watching over us and answering our prayers? Perhaps not. But who needs sense when you have Guanyin on your side?

    Inspiring Message of the Day: When we allow ourselves to experience real grief we are allowing a Greater Power to work through us. Often, this Truth will be revealed in the aftermath through a coincidence. I will allow these moments of Mystery and Connection to deepen my trust in Higher Guidance.