Yes, boxes. Our souls need boxes.
Boxes bless our souls with boundaries and limitations. Boxes are containers for everything in our souls.
Boxes have six sides. Top, Bottom, North, South, East, West.
We can build our own boxes or we can let others build our boxes.
We can take everything out of a box or put everything into a box.
We can wonder what’s at the bottom of a box.
We can have a box of things to keep, a box of things to give away, a box of things to throw out.
We can have a Jack-in-the-Box that plays music and surprises us.
We can have music boxes, toy boxes, button boxes, tool boxes and treasure boxes.
We can have junk boxes.
We can have gift boxes.
We can have magical, mysterious, miraculous boxes.
Boxes organize our soul life and keep our souls from getting overwhelmed with clutter and chaos.
You can build a box big enough to live in, to be your hut, or your tabernacle.
On this ninth Holy Night, contemplate your soul’s need for boxes. Your soul does not come with limits, boundaries or containers. It is up to you to find or create the boxes your soul needs.
Remember, boxes surround volume, a space to fill. Do you build your soul boxes, large enough for all your soul needs to contain in them? Or small enough to keep the contents from rolling around dangerously?
How do you label your soul boxes?
Do you have a box labeled Questions, Thoughts that seem True, Feelings that seem Harmonious, Deeds that seem Good, Relationships that seem Karmic, My Regrets, My Prejudices, My Addictions, My Destiny and so on?
Tonight and through the year - build boxes, label boxes, open boxes, close boxes. Pay attention to your boxes.
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Remember to flatten the boxes you throw away so they can be recycled!
ReplyDeleteHi Lynn,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the Inner Christmas messages again this year.
The soul needs boxes? This truly gives me food for thought. I do not quite get it! In my heart and soul i do not feel any overwhelm with clutter and chaos. On the contrary, coming from heart centered Oneness and Beingness is my norm.
Thank you, Lynn, for this year's wonderful, deep and rich journey though our essential soul's needs. I have been very (happily) busy, and didn't start reading them till today. Interestingly, I didn't initially feel as much resonance with the need for boxes. I wonder if this is because it is something I need to explore further, or because I am a pretty organized person and perhaps tend to make my boxes readily. What I do want, and find increasingly easier as I get older, is to have every box filled with spirit, resonating with and illuminating whatever is in the box. Spirit filled box of joy, box of renewal in nature, box of "my depression", boxes of family love and family needs, box of aggravation at little things, box of the ugliness in the media that I don't want any more of, box of things to be done, box of holiday practices and rituals, box of the music I play only at Christmas.... I know spirit does fill them all, and also surrounds and connects them. I remember a film I saw years ago of Mararishi Maresh Yogi, saying in his rather endearingly accented English, "Bound-ries and boundless!" I don't know how to make the computer underline the "and", but it was underlined by his voice. Christmas boxes waiting to be unwrapped, boxes of junk to be taken to the dump (which is of course another container), boxes filled with something dark and thick like coal dust, boxes with flames and stars bursting out of them. Boxes whose sharp edges and container quality dissolve under the imagined microscope into the ever-moving flow of the stuff of the universe. Boxes that make everyday life possible and box-less-ness that is the matrix of everything.
ReplyDeleteThank you again. That was fun.
When I was a teenager I started calling for drawers in my heart. I used to say that some precious moments should be kept in special places, like pearls in little boxes. And I used to say to my friends that they would go to my drawers.
ReplyDeleteAs I recently moved and finally had some time to go over some "real" boxes and organize a little bit my new house, I totally relate to the topic of this night meditation. It's time to check the drawers in my heart and make space for the not so beautiful, but also special contents that need to be kept, as they are also part of me. Does it count to have a box called Miscellaneous? ;)
Thankyou for giving us food for thought, Lyn, and for focussing our hearts and minds on the job in hand,viz.why am I here ,what am I doing with my precious life, where am I going, ultimately - the Perennial questions which dear Sweet Jesus was born to help mankind resolve, if we would but listen ?
ReplyDeleteSo you have lead me to mention radioactive Nuclear Waste and will there be a Box thick enough and a place deep enough to contain it safely for millions of years? God help us.
Thank you for the chance to laugh out loud as I read the title of today's meditation! My family is preparing to move so we will need many boxes!
ReplyDeleteJust as the boxes that we will use to move us from one house to another are temporary containers to help us with the task, so, I imagine, are the boxes of our souls - temporary containers, temporarily labeled, to help us as we move through this lifetime.
This is a useful and surprising meditation. Thank you.
I Dec. '08, I had just moved back into a house. I had given up hope of ever living in my own house again and had therefore, let go of a mountain of belongings. The remainder went into storage for 3 years. Friend and my mother died in the same week of Jan. '08. Now I have so many unpacked boxes in the new family room. I have been feeling guilty for having these boxes...filled with sacred items...thanks to your insight of January 2nd, I now feel it is a good thing, there is a lot of lost "me" in storage, it is a form of abundance...I feel good now...Bless you.
ReplyDeleteFrom Shelley in Victoria, B.C.
Hey, that was great insight! It shed light on my 8-year old's chaos which drives me nuts all the time! Now, I understand that she has not set her limits yet; that she is still truly open and limitless. I will be more gentle in reminding her to get organized. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteNow 7 weeks into my mothers death...I relate to boxes.Boxes of pictures,mementos,letters,jewelry...all so precious to her and now to the ones who recieve
ReplyDeletethem.This meditation was wonderful!Blessings to you!!
This meditation along with the grieving of losses go together very well for me. So, like pearls, I will encourage my Grand daughter of 2 1/2 years to openly feel whatever grief she feels and honor that feeling with special boxes to place the sweetest ones in. I will also practice the same.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of boxes is much freer than compartmentalizing, although there are still boundaries and limits, with boxes it feels clear and sacred.
Thanks Lynn.
Dearest Lynn
ReplyDeleteBoxes are our Life... In them are all our Joys and Sorrows!
My boxes are always OPEN never closed. I dance around, in and out
them... To embrace all that is in them... I live in the present each
box is a present.
I have a passion for boxes. Not the moving boxes that can be flattened and discarded but unique boxes that are decorative as well as functional. My boxes come in many shapes and sizes. I have ornamental boxes, lacquered boxes, wooden boxes, antique boxes, glass boxes, wicker boxes, silver boxes and boxes made of bone. My boxes were found in bazaars and shops and at flea markets and yard sales all over the world. It brings me much pleasure to see them and to use them. The boxes in my soul are also treasures. They are made of waves light and envelop the beautiful memories of my life. SCS
ReplyDeleteWhat comes up for me around boxes is that they need maintenance! There are things I haven't put back in the right box (so to find them again without looking). Some boxes need sealing away and some need to be rummaged through to find that missing jewel/tool.
ReplyDeletePutting the boxes in order goes right along with putting away the Christmas decorations, and whatever other clutter has undoubtedly taken hold of the house, if not from the holidays, then from all the remainders of the year.
The mid-winter hibernation is a usually good time to tend to this chore, but not just yet. As much as it satisfies the orderly impulse, I'm not yet ready to tackle it. I'd rather linger in the turn of the year, because the organizing might signal an ascent into acting out the new year.
Part of me just wants to linger beneath the Christmas tree in the chaos of wrappers and presents and ribbons, to pause in the warm afterglow of what, the Christmas orgasm, I suppose?
I tuck into my new book, and let it snow...
It has been said that if we could create a perfect cube, angels would inhabit it... Something to contemplate for those working in projective geometry. (Robert J. Gilbert of The Vesica Institute for Holistic Studies shared this at one of his lectures at RSC.) Can't leave this subject behind without saying something about Frank Chester, artist, sculpture & geometrician out of San Francisco for a truely transformational view of Form and Spirit.
ReplyDeleteIn Gratefulness for the Spirits of Form,
A Fellow Traveler