In the Spirit of Thanksgiving, I would like to express tremendous gratitude to those I’ve had the pleasure of working with throughout the year. Individuals who invest in their Soul development are a rare breed! To do so benefits the world and all those whose lives you touch.
May your holiday be filled with love and blessings.
May you continue to explore your truth and live in alignment with your divine self-expression!
A Thanksgiving Day Contemplation (with a small dash of rant)
It’s hard to believe but here we are heading into the holidays and our final month of 2019.
My inbox is full of emails with various thoughts on how to give thanks and also take advantage of black Friday and cyber Monday deals. (and no offence to those of you who have done so!)
Perhaps I woke up on the wrong side of the bed but the recent consumer ‘addition’ to Thanksgiving gives me hives.
We are constantly inundated with the pressure to buy more. So designating two additional days in devotion to acquiring even more sh*t we don’t need, feels disturbing. And for it to be lumped into the week of Thanksgiving??
Can we have just one holiday that truly honors all that we have to be thankful for without an incessant push to acquire more?
The messages of ‘giving thanks’ and ‘expressing gratitude’ feel like a small blip in our week before we are thrown into the pursuit of spending money like drunken sailors.
And when we do express gratitude, it can often look like “I’m thankful because of all the stuff I have, thank you, Universe, now please give me more”. (More money, a better house, nicer clothes, a more successful partner, more clients, etc.)
Don’t get me wrong, I can manifest with the best of them. But ‘more, more, more’ just feels so flat to me. I’ve always been drawn to quality over quantity. Collectively we are desperately pursuing this trend but to what end?
I’ve been sitting with this question for most of this year.
Why?
Because as I look around, I see that humanity has ridiculously inflated the importance of having to the point that we define our value and worth based on how much money, success and toys we have. While at the same time, we completely ignore the quality of who we are as human beings and the quality of lives we are living.
Daily news reports like “Bleak U.N. Report on a Planet in Peril Looms over New Climate Talks” or “There’s something terribly wrong: Americans are dying young at alarming rates” fill our newspapers and airwaves.
As a country we have more wealth creation then we’ve ever had yet we are sicker, more depressed, suicidal and overwhelmed then we’ve ever been. All the while poisoning the very planet we live on to keep up with the insatiable demand for…more!
Shouldn’t that give us pause? Are we all so embedded in the illusion that some pretty white lights and elf dust can distract us from what is happening on a societal level?
Need guidance? Let’s take a quick peek at our elected leaders.
We have placed the traits of Narcissism, Arrogance, Corruption and Vanity front and center. Which means the majority of Americans somehow decided that we need more of these qualities in our culture, not less.
We celebrate sarcasm, rudeness, dishonesty and greed as traits we aspire to. What message are we sending to the younger generations who are swimming in this culture?
So I ask you, as I contemplate this for myself, how can we return to a genuine spirit filled with Thankfulness and Gratitude for all that we already have?
How can we cultivate our inner life to benefit the quality of the experience we are having?
Character and Kindness
The truth is our value as a human being isn’t determined by our bank account or what someone else has determined our value to be.
It’s determined by something that we alone are completely responsible for.
Something that we can nurture, expand and share with others.
Our value is actually determined by how much we value ourselves!
The funny thing is we can’t fool our psyche and Soul.
Narcissism and many of the traits I listed above exist because those individuals actually feel a huge deficit inside themselves. To fill the giant black hole that exists within them, they pursue ‘worth’ in the external world to make up for the void on the inside.
But how you feel about yourself will always show up in life in the way of your Character and Kindness.
At the end of our life, we will have regrets about our anger, our resentment, our self-destructive tendencies but we will never regret having been kind.
When we actively invest in developing our character, shifting our negative beliefs, integrating our shadows and communing with our higher nature, we create tremendous personal value and self-worth.
This is true wealth which can never be taken from us or diminished regardless of what is happening in our global environment or financial markets.
As my dear husband once said “One cannot advance the world around them unless they advance the world within.”
When we do the work to be a better human being, we are creating value in the way we relate to ourselves. We also create value in the world we live in by expanding our consciousness.
The current trend towards everyone wanting to be a Billionaire is obviously NOT sustainable. Nor does money make someone less toxic if they haven’t done their personal or spiritual development work.
What if we valued character in our world and respected those who saw fit to develop theirs?
My Wish
My new wish for the holiday is that we express gratitude for all that we have. Not just our physical possessions but also our integrity, kindness, awareness, loving hearts and open minds.
May we honor the sacredness of life and the precious gift we’ve been given with every breath we take.
Personally, I am grateful for who I am and who I have become. I invest in me every chance I get. I show up and I do the work. I am very grateful to my Soul for accompanying me as such a powerful guide on this journey.
As you think about all the things you have to be grateful for, I hope you also consider what makes you a better human being as well.
Happy Thanksgiving!