• What the H?

    • February 29, 2024 10:07 am

    Dearest Readers,

    The other day I was speaking about self-care with a resident in the Long-Term Care home where I work and in the middle of our discussion I said, “Most of us need to have a self-care plan at the ready before we cross the line into–”

    “Hell,” he said, finishing my sentence for me.

    That’s not what I was going to say but I laughed out loud because he nailed it.

    Yesterday, I started to watch a video on YouTube about a woman who “Met God and Saw the Future”. She’d come back to life after having a Near Death Experience (NDE) with a new understanding that the afterlife is actually “Home” and life on Earth is, in fact, “Hell.”

    Then, last evening, I had a meaningful conversation with woman who lives with pretty intense mental health issues. She talked about her struggles and her suidical ideation, summing it all up by saying, “Life is hell.”

    Okay, three mentions of “hell” in as many days? I thought I’d better write about it.

    I’ve never subscribed to the idea of Hell as a place we go after we die. But this idea that Life is Hell? Certainly in my darkest hours I have felt it to be true.

    People who have NDEs often experience a state of “overwhelming, unconditional love” (as the woman in the video did) and so it makes sense that life here, with its pain and suffering and confusion, would seem like Hell in comparison.

    Yet life on Earth includes this phenomenon called Beauty and despite the hell states of war, tragedy, depression and illness, Beauty is everywhere.

    And the one generator of Beauty that we all seem to agree on?

    Nature. Nature gives us so much Beauty.

    As I was driving home the other day, a luminescent split in the darkening sky was spilling forth the brightest light imaginable from a towering wall of black clouds.

    Despite the fact that this heavenly hernia was nearly blinding me and black spots in my vision were making it difficult to see the road, I kept turning my eyes back toward it.

    It seemed an apt metaphor for how human beings seek Beauty. We want to look at it. We want it to blind us. We want to be dazzled and blown away by it and reassured that it exists, that we can see it, that it is there for us.

    And it is. Beauty is everywhere. This is an undeniable, indisputable truth.

    With three mentions of Hell and two more of “the End Times” (that’s another Letter), it’s fair to say that we are living in an extremely challenging time in history. For those who are in the trenches of war (actual and political), it’s truly Hell. For those of us feeling powerless to make a difference in these situations and in our own lives, it’s hell.

    And yet Nature continues to abide and bedazzle us all, continually striking us with this mysterious paradox: Life is Hell and Life is unfathomable Beauty.

    Somehow we go on, knowing both.

    Blessings to you on your Healing Journey,

    Celia

    The Missing Link

    • November 2, 2022 12:16 pm

    This Blog was published first as The Healing Journey Letter. Click here to Subscribe.

    Dearest Readers,

    I was recently given the gift of an online course with Pema Chödrön, quite possibly the most famous female Buddhist monk in the world, and have been lately digging in to her teachings on love, compassion, joy and equanimity.

    Ani Pema (as she is called) used to teach kindergarten before she was a monk and her instruction reflects that: she’s patient, caring and funny. I love the way she bravely owns her sh!# and humbly shares her shortcomings with all of us.

    One of the more personally enlightening pieces in the course has been the focus on self-compassion. I’ve had a couple of pretty big revelations about it and would like to pass them on to you.

    The first one is a quote I wrote and posted on social media the other day:

    “It is easy to say, “Have self-compassion,” but it actually takes years of practice.”

    Kind of self-explanatory.

    The second revelation came when I was talking about the teachings with the same friend who’d gifted me the course. I was resisting the notion of “shifting attention from self to others” and feeling like I was being fed yet another organized religion’s doctrine about self-sacrifice being the path to heaven (or, in this case, freedom from suffering).

    Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for thinking of others. In fact, I took the practice to such extremes that I acquired an illness a year ago as the direct result of over-giving and determined self-sacrifice. My resistance is well-founded.

    But as I watched myself getting worked up with my friend, and heard my “out loud” struggle with the Buddhist concept, the fuller meaning quietly and gently dropped in.

    It suddenly dawned on me that the teaching doesn’t start with compassion for others, it starts with self-compassion.

    Maybe I’d gotten the order wrong?

    “Have I been giving all this time without a foundation of self-compassion?” I asked my friend.

    In a flash, as she nodded her opinion, it came to me that I undoubtedly had.

    “The missing link!” I cried.

    The missing link.

    In order to “shift attention from self to others” I actually have to start with the self. My desire to serve, to respond with compassion to the suffering of others, has to begin with serving my needs and responding with compassion to myself.

    Whaaaat? It sounds so SELFISH!

    That’s the problem. I tend to think any focus on myself is self-centered. But without that compassion for who I am and where I’m at, I’m probably just running on empty. You might get filled up but I’m left depleted.

    I don’t think I’m saying anything new here. It’s the old “put your own oxygen mask on first” analogy, but it feels new, like I’ve been working on a giant puzzle and I just found one of the pieces that got knocked under the carpet.

    From the fires of love,

    Celia