Christmas Cheer for the Whole Year
Posted: Monday, December 20, 2010
by David Robert Ord
Namaste Publishing.com
The Muppet's Christmas Carol movie brings out the difference between living in our ego and pain
Scrooge hasn't found the warm heart, and he's pretty well given up on even trying to put Christmas cheer in his life.
In contrast, Bob Cratchet, played by Kermit the frog, has little in the way of material goods, yet his home at Christmas is full of warm hearts. The warmth that runs through this family is so palpable as to even touch and transform the cold, calculating Scrooge!
How do we find the warm heart, the joyous and peaceful center, the caring spot?
Think back to a time when you told a lie, and you couldn't stop a blush escaping. It was an automatic reflex. Now if we practice enough, we can learn to dampen all bodily reaction to lying. Not only will we not blush, but we can even fool a polygraph. What's happening is that we are shutting down what is natural, automatic, reflexive.
We are shutting down our innate feeling self, which is just naturally warm, loving, caring.
Until we learn to shut it down, there is a part of us that quite spontaneously and naturally seeks to connect with even people we don't enjoy. We don't have to make an effort, it's just there. That is, until our defenses kick in. Then we start running all those mental tapes about this person, and the warmth gets suppressed.
The warm heart isn't something we have to try to have, it's a dimension of our being that's already within us. In any difficult, trying, tense moment, we can instantly access it if we are aware. It's a simple choice, once we are aware that this warm, caring person is who we really are.
It's this warm heart that is the source of Christmas cheer that endures throughout the year—even when, like Bob Cratchet, externally we have little to be cheery about, which is true of many in the economic times through which we are presently passing.
When you think warm heart, think Kermit as Cratchet. When we come from this place within ourselves, even the Scrooges of our life will have a hard time not melting.
I am talking about finding that one secure place within which allows us to reach out to people with a cheerfulness that isn't crushed when we are rebuffed. Because it is so secure, it allows us to reach out again and again. It's this aspect of ourselves, our true center, which is the divine image that's symbolized in the birth of Jesus.
To learn a way of being ourselves that is in love with people, a self that speaks most tenderly, is no more difficult than stopping the thoughts and negative emotional reactions that override what is most natural for us.
Finding the warm heart is a skill our world desperately needs, and it is likely to be something we will all need in the months ahead, as the possibility looms of the economic crisis deepening after the holiday season. When we are economically threatened, it's all-too-easy to be driven by fear and panic.
A warm heart is not soft-headedness. Warmth is not weakness. Caring that doesn't come from inner strength evaporates at the first sign of opposition. The warm heart is powerful and persistent, which is why it's also winnsome and persuasive, as Scrooge found when he was around Bob Cratchet.
An attitude of tenderness, born not of soft-headedness but out of our inner fortitude—this is the compassionate heart of the infinite Mystery in the depths of our humanity, which melts all belligerence, all animosity, and all anxiety.
It's the difference between buying Christmas cheer to pep up our life for a day or two, and allowing all the mythology, the music, and the symbols of Christmas to awaken and draw out the cheeriness that's already within but hidden.
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)This article is full of wisdom and truths. If only it were as easy as it sounds...Thank you for your comment Jennifer.
Very good article David, thanks for sharingThank you for taking the time out to read it David.
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