Happy day after Thanksgiving!
Are you participating in Black Friday? Working through a family hangover?
This is a wonderful season of opportunity to check in with yourself about the relationship you have with the holidays, gifting, money, family, schedules, boundaries, love, compassion, and emotional agility & flexibility.
While consumerism may not be a good thing, gifting can be precious. The holiday season can make us Santa as we make a mental list of those close to our hearts. It is an opportunity to give some thought to each of them: who are they, and what do they love? Have I been paying attention (and can I start now)? Is there anything they need or would really appreciate? Receiving Gifts is one of the 5 love languages equal to Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Quality Time, and Physical Touch, so it has value. It’s an exchange filled with blessing when someone offers something thoughtful to another person who then gets the opportunity to receive it and express gratitude.
Many stress over having to see family and the scheduling that goes with it. This season comes with the gift of tolerance. It’s a powerful word. Let’s look first at tolerance for ourselves and in our capacity to endure things that may not fit into our values and ideas of acceptability. Why feel so threatened? The world is filled with pain, and pain can misdirect and alter our projection; it’s all a big misunderstanding. Though it may not feel like it in the beginning, stretching ourselves to become more agile and flexible can only make us more prosperous and content.
While breath and meditation is excellent practice to center, calm, and ground, it is much more accessible when it has become a part of your operating system (aka habit). If this season is extra stressful for you, consider making this an early New Year resolution and turn breath and meditation into a regular practice beginning now -even if you don’t think you will need it once the holiday crazies are over – so that it becomes a part of you, and you become less rock-able throughout the year. Become the anchor that you want to be.
Stay connected with your spiritual community so that you can continue to remember compassion and stay elevated in your thoughts. Elevated doesn’t mean delusional or wishful thinking. It means in Truth and operating from your higher aspect of Self.
Make this season sacred… Divine… in making this the time to up your practice in paying attention, taking inventory of those you care about, giving, receiving, and expressing gratitude, tolerance, and self-reflection (not to be confused with self-rejection).
If you can’t see God in all, you can’t see God at all. — Yogi Bhajan
Savitree Kaur 