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This Yule letter brings my heartfelt wishes for a truly joyous holiday season and an abundant New Year for all of you.
The Winter Solstice (December 21st in the Northern Hemisphere) is one of the most important celestial events of the year and it has always been a festival of lights in every culture. For the longest night, creating light with bonfires, torches or candles was a way to feel reassured in a time when there was so much darkness. For example, in Celtic societies, Yule was a time to gather in families around warm fires with Yule logs burning and in Scandinavia, Santa Lucia wears a crown of lighted candles. Focusing on light created hope.
In my last Samhain newsletter, I wrote about ways we can create useful coping strategies when we are facing specific situations that engender fear. My writing was in part because I am navigating my own personal “tiger” that could eat me. What I want to write about here is how to reach the opposite state: love. Just like fear, love is a state of being; a state of consciousness that engenders body sensations as well as emotional experiences. Love is something that radiates from within and affects all those around you. The more you practice love, the more it increases in intensity. When we are in this state, we are literally vibrating at a higher frequency. In 2012, I wrote about the shift we are experiencing which is this: those who choose love over fear are transforming the Earth.
What I am learning with my own experience is that we do have a choice. Even through my own struggle with mind-generated, fear-based images that in turn trigger very uncomfortable body sensations, I know this. Having helped many people through fear and panic states, I know it’s hard, and I am talking about choice from a deep place. Here are the best tools for shifting out of fear and moving towards hope, then gratitude and finally love. Much of what I practice comes from the Abraham Hicks teachings about the law of attraction; these techniques have been a significant contribution to my professional training. (www.Abraham-hicks.com)
First, realize that focusing on the specifics of the problem and imagining worst-case scenarios is not helpful. Your mind wants to return again and again to the problem with endless regret, but the vibration of the solution is a very different place. In the beginning, the best strategy is to choose to focus on general thoughts and images that create better feelings in your body. This is completely counterintuitive in our culture but the wisdom of the ancient cultures to focus on the light in the darkest time of year is a brilliant example of this principle. Recently I had an experience at a concert where the music infused my body with joy from head to toe; basking in that feeling, I imagined it filling every cell, the memory stored to use as a focus any time I needed it.
Once you are able to shift your focus most of time before thoughts take a stronghold, you can access hope; then purposely focus on feeling gratitude for the things that are working in your life. Deliberately stay with what is working rather than the problem until most of the time you are focusing on what generates positive feelings (pets, loved ones, nature) and then the feeling of love and joy become more prevalent. When you can hold these feelings for a period of time, then solutions will appear, either by talking to someone you meet, waking up with an inspired idea, or an image occurs that leads you to something helpful. Continue to practice; it is one of the most important skills you can master and you will attract all manner of serendipitous events.
Blessings of love and light to all of you, Linda
lindasavagephd@goddesstherapy.com
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