I love Christmas. I love that we are celebrating Jesus’ birthday. I love the giving and receiving of gifts. But when I think about it, I realize that every day is a holy day because it is filled with gifts for me. Each person I meet today gives me the opportunity to love him or her completely. If I choose to take advantage of this opportunity, I will be given the gift of feeling completely loved. It is the law of giving and receiving. As I give, so shall I receive.
I don’t always give and receive wisely. I was thinking about something that happened when I was married. I wanted to buy something for my son at Christmas, but I knew if I asked Greg about it, he would say no. So, I didn?t want to ask. I just decided to buy what I wanted. It cost too much money and I felt guilty. It felt dishonest, and like a betrayal. It also expressed a depressing lack of trust in God as my Source, so I felt guilty for not having faith. I didn?t like this feeling, so I decided it wasn’t my fault.
All those feelings of guilt and betrayal felt so bad, I wanted them out of me so I just spewed them all over Greg. This is called projection. I projected the guilt and betrayal out of me and onto Him. Now I could imagine he was the one who was guilty and had betrayed me. Whew! That?s better. I prefer all that stuff be outside my self.
You might wonder how I managed to make this his fault. I decided that if he were a more loving father he would have wanted Toby to have this gift. If he were not so selfish and self centered he would have been ready to sacrifice for his child. After all, wasn?t I prepared to sacrifice? I must be the better parent. When you really look at it, I am the good guy here, and he?s the one who is wrong. My only option is to be sneaky, underhanded and dishonest. He made me do it. It?s all his fault. I have every right to act in my own best interest and every right to blame him for putting me in this position.
Wow! Am I clever, or what? I was able to completely exonerate myself from my bad behavior and at the same time place the blame outside myself. And, putting it outside me was the whole point. I think that if I project it out of me, I have gotten rid of it. It doesn?t actually work, though. It seems to be on him, but it remains in me, (remember the rule of giving; what you give you receive?) where it is now hidden and grows in the dark out of sight. It builds up and gathers other sins to it until I finally think there is no hope for me, leaving me believing I am a sinner, dark and evil, but no longer remembering why this is true.
This was an example of choosing to listen to the little ego voice in me. This voice always directs me against God. It is the part of me that thinks I betrayed God and it is very afraid of God. My ego self wants only to stay in this delusional state where, like an ostrich with its head in the sand, thinks it is safely hidden from God. It plays the same projection game with God, placing the blame for this sorry state of affairs on Him, by reasoning that it must be God?s fault that we are separated; that God is angry with me and wants retribution for all my imagined sins.
I don?t have to listen to the ego?s voice. I have two voices in me, because regardless of the ego version of things, God never left me. He placed His Voice, the Holy Spirit, in me so that I could always find my way back home to Him. I can decide for God. I can choose to listen to the Voice for God. I bring my anger and frustration about the gift to God. I tell Him the whole story; how I want this for Toby, how I know Greg will veto it, how angry I feel about this, how frustrated and trapped. I know there is another way to see this, and I ask the Holy Spirit for His vision.
This is hard to do at first, because I can?t imagine how a different outcome would be better. I have convinced myself that my happiness and the happiness of my son depend on the outcome. So, I start out by telling God what His answer should be, and then wait to have my desires granted. When that brought me no peace, I finally gave up. I was tired of feeling miserable and I wanted peace, so I told the Holy Spirit that I was ready to listen to Him. It was like I had unlocked the flood gates in my mind, and new ways of seeing this came pouring through.
I saw that I had decided in my own mind how Greg would react. I then reacted to my version of circumstances as if they had actually happened. He might, after all, decide with me on this, that Toby should have this gift. I might be robbing him of an opportunity to express his generosity.
I also saw that I had decided that Toby needed this particular gift. I made it such a big deal that I had lost sight of the fact that I didn?t even know for sure he wanted it. I saw that even if he wanted it, if I bought him something I couldn?t afford, I would be teaching him that things are important, more important than people and relationships. I would be teaching him that one more present is all he needs to make him happy.
These thoughts are not radical and I don?t know why I didn?t think of them before. I think it must have been that the power of my wanting was a like a clog in the floodgate. It was so firmly set in my mind that I needed this gift that nothing else could get past it. When I finally wanted something else more (that is, my peace of mind), the passage way to other thoughts was opened, and they came flooding in. Suddenly, I could see that projecting my fears onto someone else wasn?t the way to be rid of them. It was much more effective to look at these thoughts in the light and to allow the Holy Spirit to show me a different way to see them.
There are so many opportunities to bring my everyday life to God. Sometimes life seems so complicated. It seems there are endless choices to make and endless variations to decide from. In truth, there are only two choices; I can choose to listen to my ego, or I can choose to listen to God. I will know which I chose by how that choice makes me feel. If I choose God, I will feel joy and peace. Any other emotions indicate that I have chosen wrongly. Of course, as I become aware of the error, I am always free to choose again.
Dan Joseph, who wrote “Inner Healing”, spoke of love as a free flowing river that runs through all of life. I don?t have to do anything to keep the river flowing. Flowing is what it does. However, there are things I can do to slow down or block the natural flow of love. I can choose against God by choosing against love. I know I have done this when I feel anger or fear or guilt. With each wrong choice, it is as if I placed a boulder in the river and now I am getting only a trickle instead of the strong flow I had before. It doesn?t mean that the river dried up and ceased to exist, but that I blocked its flow and am no longer aware of it. If it stays blocked long enough, I forget that it was ever available to me.
It happens as it did when I projected my unloving feelings onto Greg. I felt guilty about what I was doing, even when I didn?t consciously think about it. While I felt guilty, I didn?t feel loving toward him. I was too busy making him the bad guy to love him. Can you imagine how this might have played out? I have now convinced myself he is a selfish, self centered person who is intent on ruining my Christmas and my son?s Christmas. Do you think I could treat him in a loving way? Could I afford to feel love coming from him?
If I allowed myself to feel his love, I would have to reassess my reasoning around the Christmas gift, and then I might have to acknowledge my guilt and all my carefully constructed projections would be undone. So plop, another rock dropped into the stream, blocking my awareness of the endless flow of God?s love.
So, my job is to undo my blocks to love. If I choose to listen to the Voice for God, I could start doing this. I could see a new possibility and approach Greg with my intentions. Perhaps he would hear my reasoning and decide with me. Or perhaps he would, indeed, recognize that it is an extravagant gift we cannot afford, and veto the idea. But now, without the ego?s voice to muddy the waters, I see his point and recognize there are other gifts that will work as well and be better all the way around. I have removed the boulder from the stream and love flows freely.
I gave Toby a great Christmas gift that year, but no matter how terrific a gift is, it is just a thing, a material object with no real meaning outside what we give it. It has no lasting value of itself. There was a true Christmas gift, though. It was the one I gave myself, and by extension, my family. This was the gift of love. I chose God when I chose to listen to the Voice for God over the ego’s voice. I chose love. I chose peace. Those are real Christmas gifts.
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