A New Holiday Story

It’s interesting to observe how the holiday season can make us feel more alone. For those of us who feel its bite instead of its embrace, the idea that we “should” be happy, prosperous, and share meals surrounded by friends and family feels like a fairy tale. Even when we do enjoy rewarding relationships, engage in our holiday rituals, and have the pleasure of the company of friends and family, many times, it’s a fairy tale as well because our friends complain or get too drunk or share too much personal information and our family is often more challenging than pleasurable…so we pretend. The effort involved can be exhausting.

Because the holidays are not always holly or jolly, it’s important to guard your energy during this season. Take your time (it’s yours to take) to give yourself the gift of serenity.

I am a huge proponent of the process of Contemplative Writing. It is where I find my peace before beginning my day. It never fails to help me understand, on a deeper level, why it’s important not to give in to commercial pressures (black, red, cyber, or any other gaudy, commercialized day of the week), to focus on those who truly love me, to spread the love as best I can, and to find pleasures in small things.

So far, so great.

I’ve learned to still myself and listen to the words of my Constant Traveler…the most honorable, compassionate, and elegant part of me that I can possibly imagine.

Today I asked, What message would be appropriate today? I discovered a wonderful thought that works well in this chaotic environment, and applies to every day of the year:

Everything you think is for you. Everything you say is for you. Everything you write is for you. Everything you do is to help yourself first.

It’s never about anyone else. The interesting thing about the urge to help other people to heal, to share stories and experiences, options, and solutions is always to help yourself. There is no other on your specific energetic frequency – it’s not you or me or even us or them – it defies labels or categories.

Healing, in this regard, is reconciliation. It is the reconciliation of the memories that have been skewed by our separate thoughts and the urge to protect ourselves from the pain that holidays can bring.

Give the gift of helping yourself this holiday season. Why? Isn’t this selfish?

What if helping yourself is the exact opposite of what you have been conditioned to believe?

When you help “yourself” you always help others because you are contributing to the ancestral healing of your lineage as well as the reconciliation of painful events for the whole of humankind – the human energetic collective has one less shadow (impedance) because you have freed up your thoughts about it – reconciled it within yourself.

Keep in mind it’s an ongoing process. The practice of reconciliation is not the religious process of forgiving wrongdoing. This, as I see it, is a misguided perspective based on the idea of sin, and you must extricate yourself from that tradition (a global mindset) to experience true reconciliation. Fore-giveness is for you and is delivered by you, but it isn’t yours. Give others goodwill, blessings, and the benefit of your doubt before you meet them. Fore-giveness is designed to be given away. Give it away to keep feeling it.

When a human submits to their programming, they will feel the urge for reconciliation but interpret it in a limited manner…many times a severely restrictive manner.

We may be as clear a filter as humanly possible, but we are a filter, nonetheless…

Considering that a past event is now a memory, the impact of the hurt self takes over – the part of you that feels compelled to right a wrong that, in truth, cannot be righted because it does not exist anywhere but inside of you. This part of you cannot accept the fact that it was hurt, and by doing so, prolongs the suffering. To alleviate the hurt, the hurt self tries to reconcile with others by broadcasting it…to make it feel real.

It can become a mission to save those who hear this broadcast, a misguided attempt to understand the mechanics of healing in a way that, instead, proliferates the injury and allows it to flourish.

You are not expected to be anybody’s savior. The story that you must act like a savior to be saved is not your role.

You are your own. Always your own.

Everything you write is for you, so you can get over yourself.

Everything you say and do is for you, designed by you, for you to transcend the hurt self.

Trust in the process of reconciling all things to yourself by doing everything you can to care for yourself, in all ways.

This process can be shared, but it’s not your role to correct the steps of others. Focus on your own restrictions to release them in the best possible manner.

If this doesn’t work for you, you can always fall back to the other option – tormenting yourself mercilessly for things beyond you. It will never end because it’s not yours to reconcile.

Explaining and justifying the impact of the memory is keeping it active. Wishing it undone is like a fairy tale that keeps you focused on it.

The hurt self holds the memory of the wrong. The small self that was done wrong cannot let it go. The confusion lies in the fact that it did happen – that the memory is based on fact. However, it is not happening now. To move away and on from the intense focus it generates, you must fore-give yourself, reconcile to yourself the urge to replay this memory, and keep it alive, if only within your own mind and body.

Why not focus on reconciliation? Fore-giving yourself peaceful, loving, encouraging thoughts directed to the heart of the matter, your heart?

Focusing on healing the heart heals the human. ONE INSTANT OF RECONCILIATION, OF MOVEMENT, IS ENOUGH.

Keep writing…keep moving your pen, your fingers on the keys. Use your storytelling abilities to enter the flow of imagination and reclaim your power to be free from these restrictions. Follow your relief, not your attempts at distraction. Relief is freedom.

Your story can change to one of claiming what has been lost, of coming home to yourself.

There’s a candle in the window and a hearth waiting to warm your weary bones…

This, my dear friend, is a holiday story worthy of retelling.