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January-March, 2016

My Thanksgiving Crash

by Rev. Barbara Goodman Siegel, O.M.C.

I am ashamed to say that my day after Thanksgiving crash is as predictable as Thanksgiving. It has been a personal “tradition” for as long as I remember. Every year, I vow that this will be the year it won’t happen. This year, like so many years past, I think I have guarded against it, but, alas, I awaken this day after Thanksgiving and here it is.

The story that precipitates the crash is pretty much the same each year. Here are the highlights: No kids of my own and my step-children go to their mother’s house for Thanksgiving. Relatives ask us to join them for Thanksgiving and it feels like a “pity” invite. I feel like a fifth wheel as they are surrounded by their children and grandchildren. In Course words, my ego screams: “Separate, separate, separate” and I get up Friday morning depressed and feeling alone in the world.

I realize that this “Poor me, I have no children that love me” is my go to victim story. It is my ego’s comfort zone. As much as I tell myself: “I will not go there again this year,” here I am.

Contemplating this, I realize that somewhere deep down I made up the belief that “Pity” translates to love and by being the “Pitiful victim” I will at least receive some kind of love from the relatives who include me (and my husband) at their Thanksgiving dinner.

So what does the Course have to tell me? The first obvious answer is that I have given this Thanksgiving story all the meaning it has for me. I know this Course lesson well. I understand it and I feel it deep in my heart, but a permanent antidote for the Friday morning after Thanksgiving seems to have eluded me.

Well, as fate would have it, (please read that with air quotes) today, Friday, November 27th, I am on Lesson 323 — “I gladly make the ‘sacrifice’ of fear.” As is my daily ritual with the Course, not only do I read the lesson for the day several times, but I also write affirmations for each lesson (which I hope may someday be made into a book to help all Course students). I pick up my pen and I wait to “hear” what affirmations to write. I write the following:

Lesson 323:
I gladly make the “sacrifice” of fear.

1. I gladly give up all suffering.

2. I gladly give up all sense of loss and sadness.

3. I gladly give up all anxiety and doubt.

4. I freely let God’s Love come into my awareness.

5. I freely accept God’s eternal joy.

I take deep breaths and repeat the affirmations over and over again. As I do so, I feel myself releasing my “victim” thoughts. I smile at the self that thought it could be unloved. I smile at the ego that so enjoys this after Thanksgiving tradition. I feel my Higher Self looking with love and compassion on the self that felt so alone and separate. I hear It tell me: “No one is unloved! No one is a victim! No one is or can be alone and separate. They can create the illusion, but that is not the Truth and only the Truth is real.”

I decided to write this account of my Thanksgiving crash (or perhaps crashes would be more appropriate) because it is something I am ashamed of. After all, I have studied the Course for almost 20 years; I am a Pathway’s of Light minister; I teach and I write. What would people think if they knew how far down the rabbit hole I could go with my ego thoughts and emotions? But, I have come to realize that shame is one of the ego’s most dangerous tools for keeping us small. It keeps us in hiding, and it keeps us from living up to our full potential by repeating the age old story: “If they only knew the real you…” Shame is the ego’s way of blackmailing us and this is how it keeps us from being our true Self.

I no longer want to be the prisoner of shame. It has kept me small for many years. I think when we expose our “shame” it takes all the energy out of it. So, I am telling you, dear reader, this story. It is not my only “Shame” story. I intend to expose them all, maybe some in writing, maybe some with a friend or in a trusted spiritual group, or maybe just by going to one person and saying: “I am ashamed of how I acted, please forgive me.” However I expose my “Shame” stories, I intend to get them all out. Then I will be free of them. Then I will be free to be my authentic Self. What could I be more thankful for then that? I intend for 2016 to be the year I freed my Self. I invite you to join me.

© 2015, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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