What’s Real in Us This Holiday Season

Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.
A Course in Miracles

The question then becomes: what’s real, and what does it mean for something to be unreal? Our ego has definite ideas about what is real and what is not. Our heart, however, knows the truth. We can feel what’s real if we remember to look. Our love for another being, the awe we feel when we look at the sunrise, those are real things. They come from the spiritual plane and are invisible, yet they impact us profoundly and calm us down.

How the Ego Pulls Us Away from What’s Real

Our ego, on the other hand, is hard at work, convincing us not only is there something wrong with us, but in fact we are wrong all the time. And we believe that wholeheartedly and suffer as a consequence. When we think we are not enough, when our focus is entirely on us and not our world or others, that is a product of the ego in overdrive. When we accidentally come upon something real, our hearts fly open, our breathing slows down, and all seems well for the moment.

Finding Our Way Back to What’s Real

The good news is that we can choose that openhearted feeling or at least be willing to know that the ego’s story about us is not true. In the space of knowing the ego is lying to us, we can choose to be willing to have a different perspective, which gives us the ability to have all kinds of new choices available in our lives. These then support us and bring us back to joy that makes us light hearted. This is the work of being human.

What I love about the holidays is the permission it gives people to see the best in each other and in ourselves. It really doesn’t matter what religion we are or if we have any religion at all. As the days shorten and we focus on giving and celebrating, there’s a certain clarity of how life is actually wired that surrounds us in a big enough way that we often experience this holiday season differently than normal life. However, if the season becomes only about giving any gift, attending every party or feeling very lonely, we miss the opportunity to connect with each other and see each other’s unique and special qualities. Gift-giving, as one of my friends so ably said, is either about giving a gift you would want and hoping they like it or listening to their life and figuring out what would genuinely delight them. Then we get to bask in true heart connection and experience that all is well.

This holiday season, try being willing to give up being hard on yourself. Delight in the permission we have to bring joy to others right now. Just be willing — you don’t have to know how to do this. Just pay attention to how tense you are, or not. Notice if you are feeling tense or overwhelmed and remember, those feelings are illusions from your ego telling you you’re not doing enough you’re not being enough in fact, you are not enough. And refuse to believe that.

Happy holidays, Merry Christmas and may you all know how spectacular you are.

If you liked this article, I talk more about this in: When Ego Thinks It Knows the Truth.