A week before Christmas and we’re well into the stressful end of the year and just waiting for it all to be over with. I just finished hearing from 4 friends, one after another, none of whom know each other, and it was the same conversation from each. These are spiritual people who are just overloaded with the commercial marketing part of the holiday season. They say how exhausted everyone they know is from pretending this is such a happy time of year. They say they don’t know anyone who’s really happy now, that it’s just a season to be filled with obligatory gifts, unwanted visits and flare-ups of family tension.
These are fairly conscious people. They know these flare-ups show what they really know and what they really believe. They show us how far we’ve come in cultivating unconditional love, when we go home again and the same siblings try to start the same arguments. But these gatherings allow us to respond differently, these gatherings give us the opportunity to test out our new skills of patience and smiling non-response. Not everything someone says needs us to comment on it. It can be a real yoga just withholding comment, when to do so would cause more discord than happiness.
My 4 callers also realize that since the holidays push their buttons, it is natural that they will attract people and circumstances for which that holds true, since they are all vibrating in the same place. They know there are really some for whom the holiday are fun times. But they point out that is not happening around them, and they can’t get themselves to a place where it can happen for them.
I know what they mean. Abraham-Hicks would say simply find a better feeling thought and work your way up the emotional scale. These four friends feel they are so busy with added duties right now, that they don’t have the few moments of silence of mind they need to self talk themselves up the emotional ladder to a better feeling place.
Of course, that is just another thought, and we are in charge of what thoughts we allow to pervade.
I am not a fan of the commercial aspect of any holiday season, and for the most part I don’t participate. I don’t put a tree up, I am not into gifting since it turns into a political decision making process, I’m not a big shopper anyway, it’s been years since I’ve been to a mall, about 20 minutes of traditional Christmas music is all I want to hear – per season. I can’t relate to any of the snow references. Bah, humbug right?
But in my own way, this is a very holy and special time. The years I worked with Psychic Friends Network and often did 40-60 readings a day, I’d always offer to be scheduled during the holidays. That was fine since most of the other readers wanted the time off then. I wanted to be there for the ones who felt alone and stressed during this time.
I counsel with so many people during the holidays who feel so pressured by it. Their children have been programmed by tv to want the latest and best toys, they feel obligated to buy what they cannot afford and feel they are digging themselves deeper and deeper into a hole. They feel frazzled, and like a combat victim they just want the bleeding to stop. The best feeling thought they can come up with is, “I’ll be so glad when January 2nd rolls around and life goes back to normal.”
Since that’s their thought of least resistance, what I can do for them is listen to what they want to do in the new year. Help them move their thoughts onto the topic of something more hopeful. Help them stay focused there long enough that they are moving up the emotional scale to ever-better feeling thoughts on their own. All I’m doing is holding the space for it to happen.
So, to me, that’s what the holidays are really all about. I hold the space to let them talk themselves into a happier new year. As I meditate, I hold the vision of a more hopeful tomorrow. Not just for friends and clients and family, but for all of us.
I believe it is true that there is just one of us here. It is just like reconciling all the various facets of our personality to make up who we are, all parts working in harmony to produce an individual who is happy and pleasant to be around.
So, while we have all kinds, we have the peaceniks, the tree huggers, the politicians, the haters, the manipulators, we also have the ones who know the power of their thoughts. These are the ones who choose, as a spiritual practice, to do what they can to help mitigate the fearful thoughts being put into the global mental field by those who do not recognize that we as humans are all one single organism. What we do to another, we do to ourselves.
Once we realize that, we can upgrade our thoughts and upgrade our behavior, which will then attract more desirable results. When people begin to see the cause and effects, more will believe it and find it to be true. The more who do it, the more who see the world and everyone around them in a more uplifted and joyful place, the more those thoughts begin to pervade the global mental field.
A line in a Hindu prayer asks “May noble thoughts come to me from all corners of the Universe.” The more noble thoughts, the more uplifting thoughts of compassion, unity and empowerment that we can think, the more we can affect the global mental field. The more we can permeate all corners of the Universe with hopeful and joyous thoughts.
You can make it part of your daily spiritual practice to just sit for a few minutes each day and hold hopeful thoughts for the planet. I have this poster of the Earth taken from outer space that faces where I sit in the living room. I see it every time I look up. It reminds me that we’re all in this together.
And what I want for me, I want for everyone else, too.
That’s how I move up the emotional scale.