January 2 - The Ninth Holy Night - The Need for Boxes

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.

December 31-The Seventh Holy Night - The Need for Grief

We need grief, the little griefs, the medium griefs, and the great big griefs of life.

The great big griefs, the tsunamis of the soul, are not the griefs I want to explore in this message, although what is necessary about grief is true for griefs of all intensities.


I write about the small daily occurrences of grief - the forgotten appointments, the misunderstandings, the altered plans, the missed opportunities, the coulda’s, woulda’s, shoulda’s and the “if only’s”. These are all losses that we cannot retrieve. They are all little griefs. These minor sufferings cause us minor shock, minor anger, minor disorientation, minor reorganization, even minor loss of identity and connection. All these are aspects of grieving.

Rarely are we taught about grieving and its importance. It would be wonderful if as small children we were taught simple grieving rituals. I still feel grief over some events in my childhood. I let go of a balloon and it floated away. I lost a beloved cat on a family vacation. I lost a necklace that my godmother gave me. I lost a best friend when I was suddenly moved from my father’s home in Brooklyn to my mother’s home in Florida and never got to say goodbye and write down her address. My heart still aches because no one encouraged me to grieve. No one explained to me all my feelings were grief. No one suggested I create and follow a ritual that would allow me to revere my loss.

Everyday we experience loss and, instead of grieving, ignore or diminish our feelings. There is nothing foolish about grieving small losses. Yet, we feel foolish and cover up our truth with dysfunctional thoughts, feelings and behaviors. When I was sent to Florida, I was happily reunited with my little sister, but I fought horribly with my sister for months in my ignored state of grief. Even now, I can be irritable, sad or exhausted in the evening of a day when I misplaced something dear or a client missed an appointment - unacknowledged loss and ignored grief over something small.

A healthy soul grieves consciously. Tonight, the last night of 2008, honor your little losses over the last 365 days. Grieve sweetly and deeply. Imagine a grieving ritual for your little losses. If each night before you fell asleep you thought about the day’s losses, felt your grief, perhaps, journaled for five or ten minutes, your soul would awake the next morning more bright and open. Once a week, a month, a season, a year celebrate your losses. Embrace your grieving over little losses.

Grief resolves loss. Grief makes us ask deep questions. Grief allows us to find new meanings, new purposes, and new significances. Grief gives our hearts strength. Grief purifies corruptions and heals wounds. Grief points us in new directions. Grief liberates.

Grieving is the necessary response to loss. By responding to the loss we become responsible. Being responsible to losses removes the perception that we are victims. Life is seen as a ongoing cycle of which grieving is the ending of one cycle and the beginning of the next one.

Teach yourself to grieve everyday. Talk about little losses with your good friends. Especially, bring the meaning and process of grieving little losses to little children, particularly when they’ve let go of a balloon and watched it float away from their reach.

Then when you find yourself in the force of a great grieving tsunamis, your soul is strong and pliant. You will not drown.

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Because of the economic crisis, many of us will lose aspects of our material existence to which we are attached. We will need to grieve our losses. Beyond the practical adjustments, let your soul attend to the grief in a sacred way. Honor the experience appropriately.

December 30-The Sixth Holy Night - The Need for Arousal

A calm soul seeks arousal. It wants to be awakened and turned on to life, to nature, to divinity, to others and to self.

Most of us read the word, arousal, and think of sexual arousal. Yes, arousal calls out for intimacy, for deep knowing and deep connection. Arousal is a heightened desire for fulfilling engagement of any kind - sexual, spiritual, intellectual, artistic, practical, playful. Sustained arousal supports commitment, loyalty, sacrifice and authenticity.

Arousal is the potential for being love. Physically arousal increases the beating of the the heart. Blood flows with more energy. Spiritually, a feeling of destiny appears. We feel embraced by the gods.

Arousal can seduce us if our soul is not calm. A calm soul experiences arousal consciously and harmoniously. Arousal awakens and directs your calm thinking, calm feeling and calm willing into the future. If you have a calm soul, you will be able to ask yourself, "Is my soul both calm and aroused?" Sadly, arousal can take over our consciousness and all self-questioning and objectivity disappear. Without calmness in the soul, arousal can become prejudice, addiction or fantasy.

Arousal births devotion in a calm soul. Arousal gives the calm soul such a vibrant, joyful sense of self-fulness that deeds become free of self-seeking and self-serving agendas. We are able to ask ourselves if truth, beauty and goodness are the cause and the result of the arousal.

In nature, arousal sensitizes us to the seed about germinate, the rain about to fall, the rabbit about to jump out from the bush. In divinity, arousal lets us see imaginations, hear inspirations, and act on intuitions. In a social context, arousal awakens us to the the heart of strangers and keeps us discovering new meanings in long-term relationships. In our own lives, arousal lets us see the paths we want to walk and the goals we want to achieve.

If arousal appears in an agitated soul, the impulses become selfish, obsessive, dangerous, even destructive. Arousal in an agitated soul is like an itch that cannot be soothed, an inflammation that can not be cooled or a thirst that cannot be quenched. It cannot be satisfied and come to an end. Remember the sounding of the word, calm, with the beginning, the middle and the ending.

The Hans Christian Anderson story, The Red Shoes, tells of a young girl who is deeply aroused by a pair of red shoes. She must wear them and in her vain need for the shoes, she neglects everything around her. The shoes are enchanted and will not stop dancing once they are on the girl’s feet nor can she remove them. After much suffering, she has the shoes and her feet chopped off and seeks the calm inner life she lacks. After much struggle, peace comes to her soul.

In my work as a counselor, I have listened to the despair of those whose souls can not be aroused. They do not feel alive. Their deeds are dutiful, but unfulfilling. Here, too, there is a need to calm the soul, first. Then, with patience and perseverance, a wisp of growing arousal can be found and warmed.

Tonight, look back over the year, or over your life, for the presence of arousal in your soul. What turns you on in ways that give you a strengthened sense of self? What new ideas, new feelings, new activities have you engaged in with enthusiasm? Seek the truth beauty and goodness living in each experience of arousal.

If you have feelings of arousal that cause you to lose your sense of self and lack real truth, beauty and goodness, why is your soul agitated? How can you calm your soul? The Holy Nights are a powerful time of year to ask that question. Just listen to your inner voice - not the screaming voice, the quiet one.

If arousal rarely appears and does not last, who can you ask to help you calm your soul and warm your interest?

Our calm souls require arousal. But arousal requires self-insight. When we can calm our souls and stimulate arousal consciously, we find true joy in our humanity.

December 26 - The Second Holy Night - The Need for Divinity

Your soul needs to be certain of divinity.

Take a few still and soft moments to let the words “certain” and “divinity” bring their meaning to your consciousness. Don’t read any further until you have done this exercise.

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Let me share some of the random thoughts that appeared in my soul while I was still and soft...

I find I cannot rely on my intellect to define either meaning. Both “certain” and “divinity” evoke feelings, not words, in my soul.

My feeling of “certain” is what my body feels when I am standing on firm earth on a beautiful day. The earth meets my arched foot with strength, supports the balanced uprightness of my entire skeleton and keeps my head floating atop my spine reaching up to the sky. All is unquestionably the way it is designed to be. My soul is certain when all feels radiantly right.

My feeling of “divinity” is a feeling of total illumination, of dwelling in pure light, a light that hallows all it shines on.

My soul seeks the hallowed design present in the object of its attention. I may be paying attention to what I experience as myself or what is not me. I may be paying attention to something small and immediate or something incomprehensibly huge and distant. With the divinity in my soul, I am able to feel the divine presence in what I observe. The divinity in my soul is the source of my attention.

My soul needs divinity in order to seek and to see, to suffer and to surrender, to know and to love. My soul needs Divinity in order to heal, to be free, to evolve and to resist. divinity inspires and empowers my “yes!” and my “no!”

My soul needs divinity in order to forget myself and know you.

It is the presence of divinity in my soul that lets me compassionately illuminate my life, my life’s surroundings and circumstances, and my life’s deeds and intentions.

Without divinity, my life would be a morally gray wasteland. I would not be able to see any design and my life would feel aimless.

My soul needs the light of divinity, the way my eyes need light to see.
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On this second of the Twelve Holy Nights write down your feelings about certainty and divinity.

Try not to put a name on divinity. Stay with your feelings of and for divinity within your soul. Named divinities feel external to your soul.

If you find you must name divinity - Jesus Christ, Buddha, Allah, Yahweh, God, Brahma, or Gaia - here is a helpful exercise. Imagine the named divinity asking you what He or She feels like in your soul. What is your answer? Why does your soul need this divinity?

On the other hand, if you are someone who finds the naming of divinity too limiting, you might try this exercise. Right down all the names you know for divinity. There are many names. Now go through the list and describe what each name signifies, distinguishes and contains for you. I wrote down seven names in the previous paragraph. Each of the seven represents a different gesture of the divine to me.

If you have the time, do both exercises. You will find your soul’s light growing with this work. Even if you are very articulate about all matters divine, you’ve read all the sacred texts and all the works of great masters, these two exercises will take you in to your own soul and it’s own need for divinity. Do this with the innocence of Nativity. See what lives in your newborn heart.

Make a list of twelve aspects of divinity, such as love, truth, beauty, compassion, power, judgment, etc. For the coming year of twelve months, focus your inner work on one feeling each month.

Tonight open yourself up to the divinity in your soul.