CHRIST-MASS

 

Edition 1 Issue #11

A Joyous and Happy festive season to all; it’s Christmas, one of the biggest holidays of the year and the celebrations have been going on for months, especially the shopping.  Since Black Friday and Thanksgiving we are immersed in a frenzy of buying and shopping and festivities.  For some of us it is a time of great joy and family gathering and re-connecting.  Reconnecting with friends and acquaintances we haven’t seen possibly for a year.

Why is Christ in Christ-Mass? Well it’s a Celebration, a Mass or Ceremony honouring Christ the Lord, son of God who manifested in human form, like us, to teach us the path of the Spirit, the principles of right living, Christ Consciousness, or Universal Laws. Enjoy the Celebration, and remember: whatever you conception of God, this story of a child of God being among, his story, is symbolic in it depicts the right consciousness to achieve Enlightenment, and he promised it was possible for any and all of us to achieve this. The Grace of God is right here for us at all times. We don't need to do anything special, or be anyone special to deserve it, we only have to recognize it and accept it is ours for the taking. Period!

Holy Night

Recently I was listening to a sermon and the theme was the song “Holy Night” and the metaphysical power this song has.  The pastor mentioned the WW1 Christmas Eve when this song, “Holy Night” sung on Christmas Eve from both the British and the German side created a ‘ceasefire’ or truce, and the troops actually engaged on the front line exchanging gifts and possibly even had a football (soccer here in North America) match. 

What Greatness GOD Creates when we allow this.  GOD allowed us, his children, the power of choice.  And with this power of choice we chose to create ego-mind  (read about EGO-MIND in January 2015 right here, tune into this station.  Or better yet, subscribe to our newsletter to be sure to get the latest blog delivered right where you can get it every week!)  and when we are in our ego, or otherwise explained as the hamster running on the wheel in our heads, the constant chirping and ideas which are killing us, but we can’t change the default, no matter how bad it gets it’s our ‘comfort zone’, our natural state of consciousness returns to the ‘default’ settings until we make up our minds to do inner work of healing and “reprogramming”.  We found the 12 step work of AA, or other affiliated programs (World Services of Alcoholics Anonymous says there are about 160 active 12 Step Programs derived from the original AA, and there have been over 300 “12 Step” groups of all kinds formed aver the years since AA was formed in 1935) including narcotics Anonymous, Weight Watchers Anonymous, Co-Dependants Anonymous, etc.… We can go on, the point here is the 12 Steps works for not only alcoholics and addicts but would be beneficial to all who feel the need for change and find a Spiritual Solution.  Here at Beyond the 12th Step we share the road to Enlightenment, the path to salvation and Peace.  Individuation or Self-Realization are other terms for the path we seek, as well as the Red Road in North American Aboriginal culture. And remember Sigmund Freud informed us many years ago that “Native North Americans are some of the most Spiritually developed peoples in the world”.  In future blog posts I will describe my experiences with the First Nations Tribe: Esktem’c Peoples at Alkali Lake up in CANADA. They have a strong community and have just celebrated 40 years of sobriety, the whole reserve is now dry (read in the 90 percentile or so at last information. A community, who did not have a sober member 50 years ago and was known as “Alcohol Lake”, see the documentary “Honour of All” for more information and an amazing store of healing.)

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LONELINESS

For others it is a time of loneliness, of regret, of remembering the lost connections, the wreckage of our past the harm we have done to others and/or the separation we were victim of or which we created.  Disassociation from friends and family as our alcoholic, or addiction worsened and we sever ties.  We sever ties with not only friends and family and all those expressing Love for us, usually because it stands in the way of our alcoholism and addiction.  We allow our families to celebrate Christmas and other holidays without us and in our denial think we are hurting no one but ourselves, oh how wrong we are. The people love us the most we forsake, just as we forsake our Creator and cry foul saying God has forsaken me, oh woe is me… When it is us who create separation, separation from the Sunlight of the Spirit and all that is good.  We are so in denial, we think we aren’t harming anyone else, and is we keep away as our behaviour worsens it’s better for everyone.  Not realizing this causes great harm, loss and sadness to our loved ones and families.  We don’t realize the pain we create thinking we are the only ones suffering.  Justifying by telling ourselves no one really cares, no one really understands we are so alone and we need to continue on this journey of self-destruction… Until we crash and burn so bad, until we harm ourselves or someone else irreversibly and wind up in jail, or hospitals, or institutions.  Or maybe an intervention occurs, at first causing us such grief and pain, but for some this creates a realization we are harming our loved ones, they really do care and only recovery and a re-connection to a Power Greater than ourselves which restores us to sanity, and health, is the answer.  For some of us it could happens relatively easily, for others much more challenging in the journey. 

A friend was sharing the fact he broke his neck and was on his death bed was not enough to make him stop drinking.  He shared how he lived to drink, and on his recovery journey, having survived breaking his neck, he still couldn’t stop drinking because the conditioning and habit to drink is just too strong.

DEFAULT

I relate this to our ‘default’ setting, and the story goes like this:  Have you ever had a computer of a smartphone, cell phone, where there was some program or setting you changed.  Then all of a sudden it was back the way it was, you take all the time and technical skill you can muster and change the setting again.  Like, let’s say the ring tone has a default, really annoying ring’ so I figured out, in the settings, and then in ring tones and then more settings and then how to download, for me this is days and days’ worth of research and work…  I get the ring tone changed.  Plug the phone in and later when my friend calls it’s the ‘default’ ring tone!  I go back in and change it again, only to have it default back to the initial annoying tone. Human condition: changing the default is only achieved through careful inner work and changing of habit form, over time it works, it really does. But only if it carefully and honestly worked at.

Well our alcoholism/addictions are like this for a lot of us.  We do some work, we try and stop, we get into a program of recovery, we make up our minds we really have had enough of hurting and hurting others and of the wreckage and on and on.  We have had enough, and do the work.  Only to have the default setting bring us right back where we started off.  In the grips of our illness:  And ill-ness it is, dis-ease at its worse and most aggressive is when we are in our heads, and in ego-driven

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Look for next week’s edition, the first of the New Year, on “FAITH”.  And be sure to subscribe to our weekly newsletter to receive it directly to your inbox, you won’t miss a beat.