The Magic of Christmas

A few weeks ago I wrote about egregores.  If you have not read this yet or need a quick refresher you can find it here: http://iwanttoimprovemyself.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/egregores-and-personal-development.html

As mentioned in that article, an egregore is a thought form created by a group of people aligned in a particular direction.  It can be good or bad.  The larger the group who have created and feed it, and the more closely they are aligned, the more powerful it becomes.

It is now time for you to start using the power of an egregore in your personal development.

The magical power of the Christmas spirit is enormous.  This thought form has been fed for hundreds of years by millions of people.  It is also especially pure, with much of its power derived from innocent young people.  People who want to believe in the magic of Christmas.  A magic that is closely linked to feelings of love, joy, kindness, compassion and goodwill.

You do not need to be a Christian in order to align yourself with this immensely powerful spirit and to benefit from that alignment.  Of course, if you are a Christian you will find it easier to do so, but this spirit is so powerful you can tap into it and align yourself with it even if you are from a different religious persuasion or have no religious belief at all.

By aligning yourself with the Christmas spirit you will not only be helping yourself and those around you, but will also be adding greater power to that spirit.

How can you align yourself to a thought form like the Christmas spirit?  It is remarkably easy.  Begin first with the symbols associated with it.  These will probably vary according to your background culture.  In the west, images of snow, holly, mistletoe and Santa Claus are good symbols to begin with.  Also Christmas carols and other Christmas music.  Focus on these symbols, perhaps having Christmas music playing in the background.  As you do so, start to feel love for all mankind.  Let that feeling grow.  Feel grateful for all the gifts you have been given.  Not simply in a materialistic way, but also for the gifts of love others have given you.  Allow these feelings and emotions to fill you.

You can also help this process along by reading books with a Christmas focus, for example "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens, or watching "Christmassy" films.

Allow these feelings to build within you as Christmas day approaches.  But when Christmas is over, don't simply allow the feelings to disappear, as so many do.  Don't let there be an anti-climax to your Christmas this year.  Instead, make the Christmas spirit part of your every day attitude to life.  I don't mean keep singing Christmas carols and leave your Christmas decorations up all year.  But hold within you the true spirit of Christmas.  Each year, add to it by following the above exercise again, but also each year keep within you more and more of the true spirit of Christmas.

I wish you a Merry Christmas, and I wish you the love, joy and compassion that comes when you truly embrace the Christmas spirit!

Silent Night

Happy Christmas One and All!

If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you and your family are enjoying this wonderful day.

But whether or not you celebrate Christmas, I would like you to take just a few minutes out of your busy day to watch this moving video:

Simon and Garfunkel wanted us to experience the incongruity of our celebration of Goodwill and Peace to All against what was really happening in the world.

But it doesn't have to be that way!

I believe passionately in the power of visualization.  So on this day of Goodwill and Peace to All I am going to visualize exactly that: Goodwill and Peace to All.  Taking all the feeling that has built up in the days leading up to Christmas.  The emotions triggered by the tear-jerker movies I have watched.  The feelings that have welled up as I have sung about peace and love.  I am taking all of this and pouring it into a 2 minute visualization for Goodwill and Peace to All.

Please join me in this right now.  No matter whether you are Christian or Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu, Sikh or Jain, Shinto or Wiccan.  No matter whether you believe in God or not.  It simply does not matter.  All that matters is that we all join together, all over the world, and visualize Goodwill and Peace to All.

As we visualize, so shall it be.

Thank you one and all, and may you enjoy the remainder of the festivities!

Goodwill to All

For many of my readers we are now very close to Christmas.  For those of you who are not Christians, don't worry.  I am not about to start talking about the birth of Christ or trying to "convert" you, and I would also remind you that the origin of Christmas is not Christian anyway.  In case you are interested in the actual origin of many of the things that happen in the Christmas holiday, I wrote an article about this last year, and you can find it here.

What I want to focus on today is the feeling of goodwill we should all have at Christmas.  Well, to be honest, the feeling we should have all year round!  But we have to start somewhere, and if we can elevate our goodwill during this season then that is a great start for spreading the same positive emotion through the rest of the year.

Charles Dickens gave us good reason to do this in his immortal story "A Christmas Carol".  My favourite quote from that lovely novel is "I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!"

Spend some time in the next few days reading something Christmassy.  You could do far worse than reading "A Christmas Carol" itself.  Watch some of the tear-jerkers that tend to appear on television this time of year.  Virtually all of them have good and powerful messages if you will only open your heart and listen to them.

Begin this way to work on yourself, improving your own character.  Only by each of us changing and improving ourselves can we change and improve the world around us.  In fact, not just the world around us, but the whole world.  When we change ourselves we are changing the whole world.  As the poet John Donne said in the early 17th century "No man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."  So what happens within us also starts to happen within the world.  Make what happens something good, an increase in goodwill for all men (and women).

On Christmas Day I will post another short article around this theme.  But in the meantime can I ask you to do this one thing for me, whether or not you are able to log in and read my article then.  Remember how I asked everyone on Remembrance Day to spend two minutes visualizing world peace?  Well this time I want you to visualize goodwill.  It is actually the same thing - peace can only come from the goodwill of all people and all nations, and if there genuinely IS such goodwill there can only be peace.

Do this visualization for just two minutes on Christmas Day.  I know it is a busy day for most of us.  We have family around us, perhaps young children busy playing with their presents.  A big Christmas meal.  Yes, we are very busy.  But all I am asking is two minutes.  Just 120 seconds.  Is that really too much to ask?  You will find the time if you try.  And the more of us who try, the more goodwill we will spread throughout the world this Christmas Day.

Please do this even if you are not a Christian.

If you are a muslim for example, you will not be performing some infidel rite.  You will just be doing what the Qu'ran bids you, spreading peace.  "And make not Allah, by your oaths, a hindrance to your being righteous and observing your duty unto Him and making peace among mankind." (Qu'ran 2:224)

Whatever your religion I am sure it welcomes the spreading of goodwill and peace throughout the world.  So spread it on 25th December, when all of us who have read this will be doing the same in unison.

If you have access to the internet on Christmas day, visit my blog again and you will find a further article expanding on this and repeating my plea for a visualization for peace and goodwill.

Peace be with you!

What is Christmas?

This week most of us have celebrated Christmas.  But what exactly should Christmas mean to us?

Most of my readers probably know Christmas has its roots in pagan religion.  It is a celebration of the death and then the rebirth of the sun – hence the date just after the Winter Solstice, when the sun is the lowest in the sky and then gradually rises higher and higher.

Ancient druids decorated trees with fruit and cakes.  Their custom was much more sustainable than ours.  They left those “Christmas trees” living in the wild rather than cutting them down to brighten a room inside the house for just a week or two.

Kissing under the mistletoe may also have been an ancient druid custom.  This may be because the white berry of the mistletoe was considered to represent the semen of the sun, and therefore kissing under it could perhaps increase the chances of fertility.  If you are attending a late Christmas party where there may be sprigs of mistletoe maybe you should remember this before kissing!

The idea of feasting and exchanging gifts comes from the Roman festival of Saturnalia.  During that festival, which was usually full of revelry which would make most of us blush, those with wealth and power were expected to display some humility and serve those with none.

The original Father Christmas, or Santa Claus, was St Nicholas, who lived in Myra in what is now Turkey – not, I am afraid, at the North Pole.  This real Santa Claus was a wealthy man who gave away his wealth to help the poor around him, particularly young girls who might otherwise have drifted into prostitution.  Santa Claus was particularly fond of and protective of children.

Christians have adopted, and adapted, these early celebrations to create the festival we now know as Christmas.  Celebrating the birth of someone who wanted us to renew our lives and become better people.

Whether you are Christian, Pagan, of another religion, or of none, you should perhaps wish to take the inner meaning of all these early elements of the season.  Reverence for nature, love, humility, charity and generosity all feature in the festival.  A festival of renewal and rebirth.

As John Lennon said in his “Happy Christmas” song, “So this is Christmas, and what have you done?  Another year over and a new one begun.”  A time for renewal.  A new chance to change and create a better life for yourself and for all around you.