{"id":1243,"date":"2019-02-07T07:20:19","date_gmt":"2019-02-07T12:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/?p=1243"},"modified":"2019-02-07T07:23:37","modified_gmt":"2019-02-07T12:23:37","slug":"this-and-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/?p=1243","title":{"rendered":"This and That"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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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<\/a>, the astrophysicist and television host, and am currently reading his book Astrophysics For People in a Hurry<\/em>. 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>\n\n\n

[p.32, p17]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Tyson’s broad-minded view, “accepting our kinship with \nall life on earth is a soaring spiritual experience.” (Cosmos, Episode 2<\/a>, 27:25)

\nI also follow Thomas Keating<\/a>, a Trappist monk and brilliant spiritual teacher whom I had the great pleasure of meeting at St. Benedict’s monastery<\/a>\n in Snowmass, Colorado. (As I write this, Fr Thomas is very close to \ndeath.) He, too, is a lover of science and feels strongly that religion \nhas to listen to science because science is giving us up-to-date \ninformation about who and what God is. By Keating’s definition, God is \n“Is-ness”.

\nYogic philosophy also informs my spirituality. I teach yoga and bring \nthe spiritual teachings to my classes as well as sharing the physical \npractice. This weekend I will be leading a workshop called Yoga, Meditation and Self-Realization<\/em><\/a>.\n Self-realization is waking up to who we really are. “We are stardust \nbrought to life,” writes Tyson [p.33]. Our very essence is Cosmic. \nWhatever you choose to call that Essence, be it God or the Universe or \nAll, It is the very nature of who we are. I Am That.<\/em>

\nBut even though I Am That, I still have to be this human being. I still \nhave to be Celia on a daily basis. I am a person with a busy mind and an\n imperfect body. Self-realization, or enlightenment, in my view, doesn’t\n mean sitting on a cloud. It means understanding that even though we may\n not be<\/em> our busy minds and imperfect bodies we nevertheless have to live with them both.

\nHow do we do that? How do we hold both truths that we are human and<\/em> we are this Cosmic Oneness?

\nIt takes practice. And willingness. It’s easier to shut down the truth \nof who we are and just grit the teeth and get this \nbusiness-of-being-human over with. But look how much we’re suffering. \nWhen we bring the reality of our inter-connectedness into our individual\n realities our perception will change. If we are not separate from one \nanother or from the Creative Force of Life then why would we ever hurt \neach other? We would only be hurting ourselves.

\n“How do our eyes even see everything?” When my nephew asked that \nquestion with such sincerity and openness, he was in a state of wonder. \nHe was also self-realizing. There is something else going on here<\/em>.\n We are participating in an astounding phenomenon we call Existence. And\n we are not doing so in isolation from one another. The more we awaken \nto this truth, the deeper our human healing will be.

\nFrom the fires of love,

\nCelia
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[974,972,952,975,980,729,923,834,973,971,978,907,299,481,910,924,953,919,908,976,979,372],"class_list":["post-1243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-astrophysics","tag-child-wonder","tag-cosmic-oneness","tag-cosmos","tag-existence","tag-god","tag-healing","tag-meditation","tag-neil-degrasse-tyson","tag-non-duality","tag-self-realization","tag-snowmass","tag-spiritual-awakening","tag-spiritual-direction","tag-spiritual-journey","tag-spiritual-not-religious","tag-spiritual-practice","tag-spirituality","tag-st-benedicts-monastery","tag-thomas-keating","tag-universe","tag-yoga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1243"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1247,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243\/revisions\/1247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}