Happy Holy Days
Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.
Alice Walker
It is the holiday season and people around the world are celebrating, but what exactly are we honouring? Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Muslims, Hindus, Humanists, and Pagans all take time to observe this time of year. When we look at the etymology of the word holiday we find it comes from the Old English hāligdæg meaning holy day. Holy comes from the heilig, which means both blessed and whole! So you could say that this is a time of being grateful for our blessings and finding wholeness in our lives.
For many of us, it is a sacred time of prayer, meditation, and contemplation. But for others, it is a time of year that triggers old wounding, pain, separation, loneliness, and mixed memories from the past. We often indulge in overeating, drinking, and using our credit cards to buy gifts that will stretch our budget and end up in a landfill. What would it take to make this holiday season truly holy, to lead us to live and love more deeply, and feel more connected to ourselves, others, and the world around us? In other words to be our most authentic, loving, grateful, and fulfilled selves...
For many of us, it is a sacred time of prayer, meditation, and contemplation. But for others, it is a time of year that triggers old wounding, pain, separation, loneliness, and mixed memories from the past. We often indulge in overeating, drinking, and using our credit cards to buy gifts that will stretch our budget and end up in a landfill. What would it take to make this holiday season truly holy, to lead us to live and love more deeply, and feel more connected to ourselves, others, and the world around us? In other words to be our most authentic, loving, grateful, and fulfilled selves...
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To be natural is to be holy; but it is very difficult to be natural. To be natural is to be at home with your own nature. If you are outside yourself, always reaching beyond yourself, you avoid the call of your own mystery. John O'Donohue |
So many people from all religions, places, and walks of life come together to worship what is holy, and yet we continue to kill each other because our beliefs differ. All suffering in the world emanates from the lie of separation. Yet we all want the same basic needs and desires fulfilled: Clean air to breathe, water to drink, and food to eat. We want health, safety, and education for our children and families so that we can sleep peacefully at night. We want to love and be loved. And yet we live in a fragmented world of separation, isolation, and disconnection. Can you imagine a world where these essential needs become the basic rights of everyone? Please notice the “Yeah buts” that come up when I suggest this possibility.
In an “out there” world they seem impossible, a utopian fantasy that is out of touch with reality. But if we go inward and listen deeply we can know that it is not only possible, it is the emergent future that our collective evolutionary impulse is calling forth. This is not a journey to change the outer world, it is an exploration of the vast interiority that connects us with the sacredness of all life. To heal the world means to turn inward and embrace our own fragmentation, to dissolve the barriers, boundaries, and limits of our own consciousness. In this way, every upset, challenge, trigger or difficulty becomes the next thing to love into wholeness.
In an “out there” world they seem impossible, a utopian fantasy that is out of touch with reality. But if we go inward and listen deeply we can know that it is not only possible, it is the emergent future that our collective evolutionary impulse is calling forth. This is not a journey to change the outer world, it is an exploration of the vast interiority that connects us with the sacredness of all life. To heal the world means to turn inward and embrace our own fragmentation, to dissolve the barriers, boundaries, and limits of our own consciousness. In this way, every upset, challenge, trigger or difficulty becomes the next thing to love into wholeness.
Listening moves us closer, it helps us become more whole, more healthy, more holy. Not listening creates fragmentation, and fragmentation is the root of all suffering.
Margaret J. Wheatley
Margaret J. Wheatley
What does it mean to listen? The first thing to notice is that for the most part, we don’t. We are too busy deciding if we agree or not, or we are preparing our rebuttal or we get distracted or triggered by something the other person said or the way they said it. True listening is a whole-body phenomenon - it means listening with all of our senses - and presencing what’s actually happening within and without. To do this we need to slow down, limit the myriad of distractions and quiet the chat room conversations of the mind. The mystic’s tools for this are meditation, prayer, and contemplation.
This is the real challenge; to be fully in the holy temple of the body, to wholly feel our emotions, as well as the parts of us that have been numbed by trauma and dissociation, to find authentic congruence and alignment between body, mind, and emotions, and to get still enough to hear the whisperings of our soul and the soul of the world around us. The holidays are a perfect time to do this with friends and family. By doing this we make every day, everyone and everything holy, whole, connected, and blessed.
This is the real challenge; to be fully in the holy temple of the body, to wholly feel our emotions, as well as the parts of us that have been numbed by trauma and dissociation, to find authentic congruence and alignment between body, mind, and emotions, and to get still enough to hear the whisperings of our soul and the soul of the world around us. The holidays are a perfect time to do this with friends and family. By doing this we make every day, everyone and everything holy, whole, connected, and blessed.
To describe the human body as the temple of the Holy Spirit recognizes that the body is suffused with wild and vital divinity.
John O'Donohue
John O'Donohue
My dear friend John O’Donohue had a wild and vital spirit that was infectious. He was always true to his own nature, allowing himself to feel and explore the darkness. His life was his message and when you were with him you experienced the sacredness of life itself. He didn’t turn away from pain or suffering and his writing and his love live on in all he touched. He loved without abandon. To me his light is a reminder of the luminescence that we were all born into, and that cannot be extinguished. We will find it there if we wholeheartedly seek it.
I hope you will join me in these holiest of days to take some time to be still, calm the inner holy wars and feel the inner source that lightens and sanctifies our lives throughout the year. This is a time to embrace and cultivate our original goodness and honour our inter-being with all of life.
With infinite love and blessings,
Michael and the Well of Light Team
I hope you will join me in these holiest of days to take some time to be still, calm the inner holy wars and feel the inner source that lightens and sanctifies our lives throughout the year. This is a time to embrace and cultivate our original goodness and honour our inter-being with all of life.
With infinite love and blessings,
Michael and the Well of Light Team
Upcoming Programs & Events
Leaning Into the Emergent Future
A Free Master Class with Michael Stone
New Year’s Day 2021 12-2 pm Pacific
The ability to shift from reacting against the past to leaning into and presencing an emerging future is probably the single most important leadership capacity today.
Otto Scharmer
A Free Master Class with Michael Stone
New Year’s Day 2021 12-2 pm Pacific
The ability to shift from reacting against the past to leaning into and presencing an emerging future is probably the single most important leadership capacity today.
Otto Scharmer
Studies by neurobiologists, cognitive psychologists, and others indicate that from 40 to 95 percent of all human behaviour—how we think, what we say, and our overall actions are habitual. In other words, for the most part, we are living into the past, rather than the future. What would be possible if we could consciously go beyond the limits of our preconditioned thoughts, behaviours, and ways of seeing the world?
In this master class you will learn:
In this master class you will learn:
- How to unfreeze embodied pain and trauma from the past and open up a new possible future for ourselves, our families, and our communities
- Why we keep doing the same things over and over again expecting different results and how to heal the wounding behind these patterns
- Ways to take a leadership role with our lives and make a difference regardless of our circumstances
- How to move from reacting to responding when confronted with difficult situations
- What is possible when we pierce the illusion of time and become more fully present
We hope you will join us for the stimulating and thought-provoking class. Michael will be sharing tools, processes, and guided meditations to reimagine the year ahead.
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Michael Stone is a spiritual author, mentor, shamanic practitioner, radio host, producer, and trauma integration facilitator who co-creates individual and group environments and experiences that support people in transcending the myth of separation and experiencing deep and profound interconnection with others and all of life. He has been teaching and leading experiential events, classes, teleseminars, and workshops on Organizational Development, Embodied Shamanism, Moving Meditation, Personal Growth, and Spiritual Fulfillment for over 40 years. www.WellofLight.com
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