Finding Daily Inspirations: Darkened Dangers of the Holidays -- A Need for Daily Inspirations and Spiritual Enlightenment

In my experience, the Holidays are filled with hidden emotional traps and snares which can steal many of the gifts of God’s Presence from the Holidays.

The Christmas Holidays are reportedly the producer of 70-85% of the retail sales of stores and businesses. So success and survival of most retail businesses are ultimately connected to the outcomes of the Holidays. With billions of dollars, millions of jobs, and thousands of businesses at stake, the Holidays produces a glut of the best, and most persuasive advertising genius and effort. To survive and succeed retail businesses must majorly impact the American public’s perceptions at this time of year.

Advertising and marketing have a basic dynamic and goal of influence. First, it creates or exaggerates the perception of some thing or some situation being necessary for happiness and well-being. This message creates an involuntary mental and emotional tension around the object or situation.

Then advertising implies -- tells the involuntary part of our brains -- that the objects or service they offer will relieve the tension. This tension is actually a type of emotional pain experienced in the perceived absence of something or someone, which the brain will actively pursuing a means of relief -- frequently unconsciously.

So what advertising and marketing does -- to satisfy their clients -- is to create and intensify people’s perceived “need” for -- dependency on -- certain material objects or situations. Then it attaches the involuntary expectation of relief -- happiness and companionship -- to receiving the material object or outcome.

Essentially what they are creating and amplifying is a conditionalism: there is good and bad, right and wrong. We can control the outcomes of our relationships and the Holidays, if we do the “right” thing. We will be happy only if we meet certain conditions and criteria. Unfortunately, under the scourge of conditionalism, our lives will always become victimized by shame and abandonment -- we will never good enough.

Some try to control this situation by divorcing themselves from materialism and its conditions, only to find that they are no better off that anyone else. Anti-materialism is actually still materialism and conditionalism -- like a T-shirt turned inside out is still a T-shirt. It assumes that if one does the right thing -- avoids materialistic participation in the Holidays -- they will be able to control the outcomes, and be happy, relieved of inner tension -- not abandoned by others and God. Not true! We will end up abandoning ourselves anyway.

We have options -- not choices. Left to my own devices, I cannot change my perceptions, and the outcomes of the Holidays -- no matter how much effort or avoidance I may use. If I want choices, I must start with accepting and experiencing my powerlessness -- my total inability to control the Holidays or my perceptions of them. Anything less, and I am plunging deeper and deeper into the Holiday Abyss.

From this point of realizing and accepting my lack of power and choices, I need to turn to the God of my experience in others. I experience an energy -- a higher Presence when I listen to my God in the voices and experiences of others. This Presence begins to change my “insides” -- the involuntary and voluntary processes of my brain. Instead of intellectually analyzing and reasoning in order to find answers, I begin to intuitively live the solutions.

Then, in my experience, I need to act intuitively with active trustful confidence in my God’s loving and unconditionally Presence. Sometimes it is as simple as breathing consciously. Sometimes it involves asking for and seeking help from others. And many times this faith requires a conscious willingness to feel and experience deeply the humanness of my life experiences -- heart and heart with God.

What occurs this Holidays will, I believe, be my God’s perfect plan for me. The real gifts of the season is the Presence my God is offering in every event and every interaction, in every outcome, and in every perception and reaction I have.

When I experience some form of pain and fear, it will be a reminder of areas of my mind and life where I need to improve my conscious Presence with Them (I experience God as “Mom and Dad“). When I practice the spiritual principles I have described, as daily inspirations and spiritual enlightenment, I have an increasingly intimate Presence with them, and my life -- not just the Holidays -- becomes amazingly more wonderful -- and loving.

Where there is Presence, there is Peace.

And with the angel was a heavenly host of angels praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the Highest -- PEACE ON EARTH AND LOVING KINDNESS TO ALL MEN” (and women).