As Christmas approaches
December 8, 2009 by Ed Conley
Filed under The Practice of Being Happy
The Practice of Being Happy. #9. As Christmas approaches and the media hype builds in a symphony coming to a crescendo, find moments of silence to fall into. Remember the Silent Night of Christmas. You can find it in the spaces between the cars of noise that run through our mind like a Christmas train. Christmas is a great pair of opposites, great noise and excitement against the backdrop of the great stillness of a forest at winter. Nothing can be more silent that a forest after a heavy snow.
Today make it your practice to find these silent spaces. All our shopping, worry about getting this or that on time, fixing what’s broken, making sure there are no upsets is just our best attempt to control the energy of Christmas and make it meet our childhood expectations of wonder and surprise. The great forest of the silent night is the ground upon which this energy of life dances, so look for this silence between the moments of frantic Christmas activity. It’s there. it’s always there…like the ocean between the waves or the sky behind the clouds. You can sense it like you sense the immense size of a mountain or the vast space of a canyon. It’s right there as the open space in your own mind.
Ask for it. Seek it..and you shall find….yourself.
