December 2, 2012

Samuel: Greetings, dears.

Hello, Samuel.

S: So, how many turkeys did you save? And on behalf of turkeys everywhere, thank you. How are you doing?

Great.

S: This is a slightly squeaky night? The little . . . (feedback) speaker squeal or something.

I think it’s great to have the place just filled with two legs, and four legs, and wings, and halos. And . . . unseen—those are the wings and the halos.

A lot going on this month, and this is the month I usually like to use to talk about the holidays in one way or another. I’m going to start this particular holiday discussion a little bit differently than I usually do. I want you to think back, back, back . . . think back. And if you have a paper with you, write down your answer because you may not remember all of this. My question is, what do you enjoy most about the holidays? What do you enjoy the most about the holidays? And think back. One part of this is, when you were a child what did you love the most about the holidays? And next, as an adult, for those of you who are adults, what do you enjoy most about the holidays. So although it’s two parts, the question is, what is it that when you think holidays, what is it that makes you smile, feel good? Now before I move to the second question, I want to ask you a couple of things about your answers. All right?

What did you enjoy most when you were a child? What are the kinds of things you enjoyed?

The element of surprise.

S: The element of surprise.

I liked that the whole family came together at my grandmother’s house.

S: Grandmother gathering.

I liked the excitement the night before, anticipating Santa Claus coming, the excitement that you felt and getting up way too early.

S: Excited anticipation.

I liked getting out of school for a long time.

S: Holiday break.

And presents.

I liked the way Santa always ate his cookies and in my family, we gave him ginger ale because I think Santa was a little lactose intolerant. But I would always run up to make sure it was gone.

S: Santa only drank reindeer milk, if it was going to be milk, so ginger ale would be appreciated, I’m sure.

[. . .]

S: How thoughtful.

I really liked the celebration of the time. It seemed that all the houses become decorated, the lights, and it was just such a festive time of year. It was just very special.

S: Now, as an adult, what is it you enjoy about the holidays?

I love bringing people together, the warmth of having fun, laughing, playing games, whatever it happens to be. It used to be calling out for pizza but we don’t do that anymore.

S: Somebody’s got to open a vegan pizza shop, don’t they? There’s at least this many people that would keep them in business.

So, the gathering together. All right. You again.

I have to admit to being a little bit of a scrooge about the holidays. But every year there is a moment although it doesn’t last forever, but there is a moment where I feel that magic.

S: The magic. The magic.

There’s sort of two things. Having younger kids, there was a great joy in setting up the magic for them and seeing it reflected in their faces when they came down on Christmas. Now that they’re older, they’re . . . it’s not the same. You hand gifts, trade money, but it’s getting together with the family and knowing that we all care about each other.

S: The gathering.

I like carrying on the traditions. What I really enjoy the most is all the holiday preparation, whether it’s picking the tree, trimming the tree, hanging the lights, just enjoying the process.

S: Continuing transitions, enjoying traditions, and even the work that’s involved in making them happen. Pretty unique.

Jess.

For me, it’s the same. What I’ve always enjoyed most about the holidays was the giving. As a child, I was so excited to give a gift to someone and I was always much more excited than to receive a gift from Santa Claus or someone else. I remember one Christmas when I dropped an ashtray that I had made for my mother and I was devastated because she didn’t have my gift. And even now, when I lived in Boca Raton, I made it my mission to give a smile to everyone I saw in the holiday season, and try to un-grumpify them. That seems to be a consistent thing for me—the giving—because people are taking at this time of year.

S: Yes, yes, nice.

The time for reflection is one. The other one is, this holiday season you get to become a spectator. It’s sort of a spectator sport. As a musician, I enjoy the ballet, the Messiah. I was listening to Chanticleer on the way over here. Religion is a spectator sport.

S: Unfortunately, yes. How many of you find that what you enjoyed as a child isn’t so different than what you’re enjoying as an adult. On the other hand, some of you will find that it’s radically different. But I think more of you will say that really they’re not so far apart. See if it’s the same with my next question.

My next question is, when you were a child, what did you not like about the holidays? Maybe it was getting pinched by your grandmother. Or maybe it was the kind of food you had to eat and the clothes you had to wear. Or maybe it was the stinky sweater you always got from some great aunt you never knew anyway. Somebody in here got that? When you were a child, what was it you did not enjoy about the holidays? And then of course I’ll be asking you the same question about what is it now that you do not enjoy about the holidays. All right, what did you not enjoy as a child? A lot. Let’s see. Ooh, lots.

December 26. Everything. I didn’t like Mass. I didn’t like getting presents for my mother. She was ungrateful, couldn’t mask displeasure with her gifts. She wasn’t good at receiving them.

S: Never fun for the child, never.

Other people’s stress at the holidays.

S: That’s good.

We had to show every gift to every neighbor that came in, including the underwear. You had to pick it up and say, “I got this.”

S: You got underwear for Christmas? Is that pretty typical? So the kind of stuff you’d have to get any other time of year got wrapped up and shown to the neighbors? Nowadays they’d arrest those people. That’s a scary thought there.

Lillibeth, Marilyn, Janet, and Bobbi.

I didn’t like everybody going around saying, “What’d you get for Christmas.”

Piggy-backing on Don, I didn’t like the end of Christmas because the next Christmas was one hundred years away.

There were eight kids and we were pretty poor, and I never wanted Mom to accept the gift basket of food. I just didn’t want her to do it.

S: Yes, yes.

I didn’t like the same thing I liked. I liked getting together with family, and all the activity and joy that went into Christmas, but I became overwhelmed. It was like an over-stimulation for me. It was kind of overwhelming.

S: Makes sense.

I hated the fact that my mother left the price tags on everything.

I never liked putting up the Christmas tree. It was always the worst chore of the year.

My mother hated my father’s side of the family, and we always and had to go there, and I felt very, very uncomfortable.

I had a very un-Guardian-like thing about thank-you notes.

S: What about as an adult? Janet and David, and Vicky, and Gwen, and Gayle . . .

The pressure that is there with families—a big family—for everybody to try to schedule their family’s family’s family to have their Christmas whenever we have to have our Christmas for our family. It’s craziness.

S: So you have an immediate family gathering and a great family gathering.

Yes.

S: So you’re having to schedule three holidays. I can see how that could be tricky.

I would say buying presents for mother but I stopped. Ever since an adult at twenty-one, I have not liked snow. As far as I’m concerned, I’d like to have Christmas on Waikiki.

S: Where was it you served on the Coast Guard?

Waikiki.

S: So the snow part. Aye.

I didn’t . . . don’t care for the stress of, as an artist and craftsman making everything. Making gifts because you love to but also it was a lot of stress with the shopping, decorating, having to do everything in a short amount of time—baking, cooking wrapping. Stressful.

The commercialization of the holidays, it’s just so sad.

S: Big difference now.

Getting so you see Christmas decorations in June. All the magic and loving family things gets under that. We as consumers have to buy enough so that the people in business have their day or amount they’re shooting for.

S: . . . or you’re not being a patriotic American.

Whatever. It seems so awful. And it gets worse and worse every year.

I have to echo Gwen. My biggest complaint is, as we become more spiritually evolved, the less excited I am about the commercialization. And I find it a real intrusion. It is such a sacred time. And this incredible soul came to the planet, and I came to appreciate what he did; what he accomplished was huge. It’s boiled down to the commercial aspect and it breaks my heart.

Being a cultural transplant is really hard. In a culture that’s . . . coming from a culture that celebrates festivals in a very different way, which when I was a part of the culture I didn’t appreciate culture at that time; I was a rebel. I came here and I was very happy to not have to celebrate one hundred and fifty festivals in a year. But then the one holiday season that happened here I could never connect. I’ve been here in this country for twenty years and I could never connect. The only thing I connect in the holiday season is time with you. And I still have trouble with that. We don’t have a tradition at home. We are not part of a family where we are invited to share that tradition either, so what ends up happening is we get with our Indian friends and we do an Indian party. But it still feels like cheating, or it still feels like left out. So it’s half my life I’ve lived here but I still feel like I don’t belong in India and I don’t belong here. I feel sad about it sometimes.

S: And Diwali doesn’t quite fit. You can’t even say it’s like the Jewish Hanukkah that they kind of say is a Jewish Christmas.

Diwali falls on a week day and we just go on celebrating our everyday stuff. We’re not really celebrating Diwali.

S: Kathy.

I don’t like the fact as people age they have an inability to do what they did in the past but they won’t give it up. It’s hard for them and yet they do it, and they are miserable and checked out. The rest of the family feels peripheral to the whole thing; or maybe I just feel peripheral because it’s in-laws. Makes it a duty rather than a pleasure.

S: We have to do this, we have to do it this way.

All the years of knowing time is short, you know you’d think, and this is your brother, this is your sister, and this boy’s going to grow up and get married in two years and you won’t see him hardly, you know? Find out what’s going on with him. But instead it’s just so hard physically on the ones who do it, and they don’t give it up. It just doesn’t seem sane anymore.

S: Traditions that have lost their meaning.

( . . . ) what drove Steve crazy is, “That was an old tradition. What are we going to do this year?” It was very hard on him. So I do see that I may be a little prejudiced.

S: Holiday seasons, no matter what you are celebrating, no matter what holiday it is—and this month has several that are attached to it—no matter what you are celebrating there are always traditions—here is going to be really wise statement, ready for this?—that either must be kept the same or are changing. But the point is, you want to keep the tradition, but as you change does the tradition change? And ultimately, I would suggest that when you look at your list of what you liked the most at both times of your life and what you like the least at both times in your life, it has to do , one way or another, with a response to, or a participation in, or your part of, a tradition. Coming together, enjoying it, not enjoying it, enjoying the “give presents, receive presents,” not enjoying when it’s all over.

[The word] Traditions has a word that goes right next to it: expectations. And what that means is “the holidays create expectations” is the tradition. If, as is the case with every expectation in your life, if it’s working for you, you enjoy it. If it’s not working for you, you’re not enjoying it. When it comes to holiday traditions that involve other people—and they don’t all—but when they involve other people, as you have changed, the expectations need to also change. The expectations you had of coming together as a child should not be the same ones that you have when you are coming together as an adult. And you run into trouble when it has not changed.

The things that you enjoyed so much as a child, or hated so much as a child, have to do with your response to a particular tradition, and the childhood/adult version is about how you have allowed those expectations to change. What you did not like as a child may well be what you still don’t like as an adult. But when that’s the case, you need to take a look at yourself. What can you do to make it work for you? And more than any other time of the year, it may be vital that you remember that you cannot change other people, you can only change yourself. Heed that part. The things that you love about the holidays are the things you want to amplify, to do more of, to make a point of allowing to happen.

The things you don’t enjoy so much are the things you don’t spend so much time with. And again, this sounds so, “Wow, what kind of wisdom is this?” But because you believe tradition means no change, you don’t allow it to shift as the people have. Looking for ways to negotiate a tradition could be a very vital aspect of keeping yourself sane and happy through the holidays. What means the most to you? If it’s a family thing and getting together with all kinds of people, maybe you want to find out what everybody enjoys the most about the holiday and focus on those things and not the thousand other pieces. Maybe everybody is expecting you to make it all work. And that’s important for you to realize you’re getting something out of that or you would have said by now, “Let’s negotiate this.”

Holidays are a time of celebrating, and the greatest of the celebrations all have to do with internal change. The ancients celebrated the return of the light, and that’s why at the solstice—well the Sunday before the solstice, actually—we’ll be celebrating here the Festival of Light. A time in which, after the days had become darker and darker—and the theory is, I can tell you, may have been true somewhere but it’s not true everywhere—the poor, stupid ancient people thought that it was just going to get darker, and darker, and darker, and the sun would never come back again. However, it was a recognition of a time of fullness coming about again. The light that feeds the seeds, that feeds the seeds within you, and for those of you who have been to the LifeScapes of late and listened to me talk about that crystalline seed and doing the sun gazing exercises, you are learning the sun feeds the seed within your brain causing you to have a very addictive response to the pleasure it floods you with—interestingly enough, eh?

The Festival of Light is a celebration of the return of light and always is a recognition of a new beginning within and without. The Christian holiday Christmas is the story of the birth of Jesus, who was here to bring great change into the world—to change the old way and bring about new light into the world. And I often enjoy going through the Christmas story and playing with you through the story, mainly because it’s pretty good to play with. Hanukkah, although not part of the Christian celebration and not Christmas, is still a holiday generally around this time, and it too is about light in the world; a story of a miracle created by those who kept hope inside that created the miracle outside. I’ll even go with the commercialization of the holiday with Santa Claus, who was originally a philanthropist, right? Giving gifts, having a feast, helping those who had need, and eventually become known all over the world as giving gifts to children everywhere. I have a whole lot of fun with that story. The whole idea is, what is inside is changing. The light that has come into the world to bring about a great change is coming to your world right now.

The light that extends the days and brings fertility to the fields and plenty to all is coming to your side of the world, soon! Are you ready for light in this world? Are you ready for a world to start moving out of darkness? It’s going to require you to be that light. You are the miracle of Christmas. You are the point of manifestation. You are an opportunity for a new way of seeing and thinking and being. You are the hope. You are the light in a world that has grown ever darker. Because the common thing in all of those stories is not getting together with friends and passing out Christmas gifts; it’s not decorating for the holiday. It’s not any of those things. The common thread in all of the stories is, “change is happening.” The light is coming, is here, is on its way. And for well over two thousand years the light has been on its way. The world has been waiting for a time in which enough people recognize that the old must pass away and something new must come of it. Two thousand years ago it was a baby, and two thousand before that it was a baby, and two thousand before that it was a baby because all of the world’s ancient religions talk about a bright light coming to the world and creating change. The son of God. But it’s different now.

Yes, it is true there are no . . . um . . . obese elderly magical people flying in sleighs with reindeer and tiny elves. (Elves are not tiny. They’re very, very tall, actually.) It’s not the tiny baby born in very impoverished circumstances. It’s not a temple needing to be scrubbed clean of the old. The world is that temple needing to be scrubbed clean.

You are the light coming into the world. And you are the hope that what has been for so long will change, because you are a creature of the light. You are a being of Source love, and it is love that shines through all of those stories: love as hope, love as promise, and love as power. Love as hope, the temple. Love as promise, the child. Love as power, the light returning.

And you are in this world, as you have known forever, to help it. To help it change. To be a positive force—had to work on saying that, you know: a positive force. But here’s the bad news: If you’re not a force for change, nothing happens. And I think especially in this season, when everything is about tradition, I think it’s very easy to forget that change is needed. Simply spouting holy platitudes isn’t enough. Simply sending positive thoughts isn’t enough. Being a force of change. And what does that mean to you?

If you look back at your list of things I asked you about in the beginning, what is it you really enjoyed as child and what did you not enjoy; and what did you enjoy as an adult, and what did you not enjoy? What you have an opportunity to see is what motivates you and what distracts you. To use David’s example, he found it just wasn’t fun to give gifts to his mother, because she just did not receive well. As a child of course it was exactly that. As an adult, what you did not enjoy as a child is a symptom of a sick society. And if you can let yourself look deeper to what it was you wrote as what you did not like, you’ll give yourself some information about something you can help change. For instance, not that this is what David would come up with, it might be realizing that allowing others to give and being loving and cheerful and delighted about it is as much a gift as giving a present. And you determine that you want to make a point then of recognizing the many ways that you have been receiving and to be gracious about it, happy for it, to recognize it. Do you see what I am saying? You see what motivates you when you look at those pieces of things that you enjoyed. Getting together with family and enjoying the laughter and love?—and many of you said that. Then you want to create opportunities in this holiday time to get together with people or to help people get together. Or maybe it’s not resisting a gathering. Maybe it’s more important than putting one more string of lights in front of your house this year. You’re motivated by those things that make you happy. So put some happy into your holidays. Make changes to spread that happy.

It’s often said that the holidays are for children. Another thing that David said . . . well, I’m quoting you tonight, aren’t I? He said how much pleasure he receives from watching children receive. Many of you enjoy that. The child enjoys receiving; the adult enjoys giving. But before you get too stiff an upper lip, I want to remind you that there is a child in all of you that still enjoys a bit of receiving. So allow, all yourself the pleasure of giving and receiving. But the change is that it doesn’t have to be wrapped in pretty paper. It might be more to do with time and less to do with money. It might be something outside of the usual tradition that creates an opportunity for a new change to come about.

When I had my dancing schools, at Christmas time I would give each class a little Christmas party toward the end of their class. I would remind them that we don’t exchange gifts, that we’re just going to sing some songs and play and have some treats. But every year the children would come with a gift for me, and I got so many gifts over the years. But there are two gifts that I remember. One was a little girl about six years old who saw all the other children bringing me gifts. And she came up and told me, she said, “Miss Haley, I have a gift for you, too, but I’ll do it after class.” So she came up to me after class and she says, “I’m ready to give you my gift.” And she sang “Silent Night” for me. I remember that of all the gifts. And there was one other one, but I won’t bother with that story right now. That girl—I remember her every Christmas singing that song. She’s a grown up lady now and probably has children of her own. But that was her gift.

S: A little non-traditional stuck more than the traditional. What a lovely story.

I’m going to add an addendum. I think, hearing what you said about going to my in-laws and not worrying about whether they can change or if they’re having a good time, I think I’ll take a game that’s not real personally involved. They don’t like to talk to each other. That they can have fun with, like Apples to Apples, that will give an opportunity for community that doesn’t leave them out of their comfort zone. So, thank you.

S: Lovely. Creating small changes where you can opens the door for big changes even in those places you think you can’t reach. You are the light of the world. And although it’s definitely not the Christmas story, and it’s definitely one you have heard over and over and over, I am going to tell it again because it’s so important that you remember it.

When you walk into your house, and you know it gets dark so much earlier than you’re used to, and you don’t have it in your head to turn on those porch lights, or the lights in your living room on, so when you walk into that dark front door, what is the first thing that you do? Reach and turn on the light. Do you have to pull out your flashlight and look around the walls to look for where that light switch? No, you pretty well know where it is, don’t you? So, you reach out to where it is and something magical happens. You prepare yourself, you get yourself grounded, you get your energy worked up. All right, ready? [Gestures] “Light!” Nothing happens. So you know then, “Wait, I’ve got to do a double anchor. I’ve got to be grounded to the earth and grounded to the stars both. Double anchor.” And then you visualize. “I visualize this room filled with light. It’s coming from my heart. Here it is, I feel it moving up, through my heart, out my heart, out my mouth!” Again, nothing happened.

You forgot the 528-hertz chime.

S: Maybe that was it. Or maybe it was just reaching over and flicking the switch. You don’t think about it. It doesn’t require a lot of mental preparation. It’s not a magical act. Well, sure it is. It’s just an easy one, so you forget how magical it is. Trust me—light at will, pretty magical. You flip the light on. And there it is. The room lights up. So you go through the house, and turn on lights. You get up towards your bedroom and you step in the door and reach to turn on the light, and as soon as you turn it on, you hear this awful groaning, “No! What have you done? No, no, no!” And at the same time, you also hear, “Wow. How did you do that? Can you teach me what you did?” And that’s because when you do something that’s right for you, there will always be those who liked it better the other way. You make a change, there will be those who groan about it. “What have you done? I liked it better the other way. I had just gotten used to the darkness and I found my own peace there. And you went and ruined it all.” Change does that. That’s why you’ve got be very, very careful that the changes you make aren’t done for someone else. Because when you’re making a change for someone else’s benefit, the first “Oh what have you done?” immediately is going to cause you to question yourself. “I’ve done something wrong. This is bad.” You turned on light because you did not wish to tolerate the darkness any longer, so you did what was a very natural and easy thing for you to do, which is how, when you are doing what is the right thing at the right time, it usually feels very natural, very right. There are the complainers. Be ready for it.

If you have done what was right for you, if you have done best where you are with what you have at the time, then the complainers are simply giving an opinion, they’re not creating a decision.

There are also those who say, “You are magical. How did you do that? I just can’t get over that incredible thing you did. Will you show me how?” And once again, turning the light on because you are tired of the darkness creates an opportunity for you to puff up and be proud and say, “Right! That is a pretty tricky thing to do, isn’t it? I had to do a lot of schooling to learn how that works. I’ve had to work out every day to have the strength . . . to flip that switch, or push that button. I will teach you how. You can do it. But you must do it my way.” Or you can say, “Look, it’s a light switch. They’re everywhere. It’s not rocket science. You just turn it on. But I did it because it was right for me. Maybe it’s not so great for you.”

A season of light means a season of light switches. A season of decisions about are you going to turn the light on, risk change, or stay in the dark because it’s easier. You get used to it after a while. Don’t want to make waves. Saves money.

It’s time for change, and I will tell you change is coming. Big change is coming. And you’re going to lead it and help bring light to this world. Or you’re just not going to want to make waves and let things stay the same. And your holidays and the decisions that you’re making now about how you’re going to be managing the rest of this month is all the microcosm of that much greater macrocosm.

Everything you do matters. Everything you think and say, matters. Every intention you put out there starts a chain of events, and you are so needed now to make sure that those intentions are about love and unity, are about hope and the right use of power and the promise of love. You are standing at the crossroad.

And you have a decision in front of you: What’s the rest of your life going to be like? What’s your world going to be like? You have a say. And I will tell you, you also have a commitment and a responsibility. Make this holiday and this world better than it’s ever been before. Lead the way. Make it happen.

Now, I have a puppy to attend to. This, my friends who may have not met him, is Quinn. Such a mighty name. And as those of you who know me know, I do have a very soft spot for dogs. Quinn dear, how are you? Do you not look like a good little Irish lad? I’d say you have some Viking in you, don’t you? You’re just about as red as they come. Do you trust me to hold him?

I trust you. I don’t trust him.

S: Are you going to leap, are you? Let’s see. Hi, there, little guy. And so, what do you want for Christmas? Look what I’ve got up here? You like that Noki, eh?

There’s your friend, there’s your friend. And [to Cam] you’re the proud papa, are you? You’re lovely. Let’s do a little touch here. There you go. Right. You’ve got a good baby here. Thank you for that. I needed that little guy, I did. Yes, Yes. You’re getting little too heavy for that, aren’t you? I’m good now. Now he’s going to drop off. He says, “I heard the rules.”

Glochanumora. Thank you, Mary Claire. It’s my pleasure.