wisdom of our elders

Halloween, All Saints Day, Día de los Muertos followed closely by “the big” holidays here in America : Thanksgiving and the Winter Holidays.  The economy worldwide is shifting and values are resurfacing that were, only a few years ago, all but obsolete. These things are sending me down paths of traditional teaching and ancient ways of living.  Ways which honor our Ancestors and value the wisdom of our Elders.

According to recent statistics, our children are and will continue to be less affluent than their parents.  Unemployment is higher than it has been since the Great Depression.  Folks are generally way more stressed and considerably more depressed. The numbers of us on antidepressant medication is truly alarming. The remedies are so simple and so common they are often dismissed by our hi-tech, low touch society.

Smile.  Just smile. A smile changes everything within you and outside of you.  It is a simple gift you can give yourself and give to others.  It changes your brain chemistry and encourages the production of happy hormones even when you don’t feel it.  “Smile and the world smiles with you.”  How do feel when anyone smiles at you?  It quite simply feels good to both give and receive a smile – even a hug when it’s appropriate – it doesn’t “cost” anything (except, perhaps the funky mood you were in) and it offers so much.  Smile.

Count Your Blessings. Just Say Thank You.  Offer gratitude for absolutely everything you can.  Can you walk? Be Grateful.  No pain in your feet? Be doubly grateful. Good shoes to wear?  Be triply grateful. Have someplace to go? (like work, or to meet people you love and who love you)  You are blessed beyond measure. Act like it!  Drop the fear and anxiety like a hot potato and abandon yourself to Gratitude. You don’t even have to “find” the silver linings, you are surrounded by blessings: your life Right Now is imbued with abundant blessings. Notice them.  Appreciate them. If it suits you, thank God for them. All of them.

Take a Walk.  Get outside. Garden if you can.  One of the things that is sickening our society is a lack of connection with the Natural world.  Get to know yourself unplugged.  Connect with the natural.  There are many excellent studies that show a 1/2 hour walk outside, every day is a more effective antidepressant that any cocktail of pharmaceuticals a Doctor might prescribe.  It also supports your health and longevity.  When you put your hands in the Earth, something magical happens to your energetic field.  The earth absorbs the toxins, the tensions of your energetic field and then restores and renews it.  It is something that simply happens – a natural occurrence of which you need not be aware.  You are reconnected with Life on Earth.

Do something nice for someone else.  You troubles may pale in comparison when you give some time to the homeless or help serve a meal to elders or supervise children on a playground.  We are, I believe, hard wired to be happy when we are of service to one another.  The people giving feel better.  The people receiving feel better. People who hear or witness acts of kindness feel better, too.  Another natural and powerful antidote to depression… with no known side effects

As you take a seat at your Thanksgiving table, may I lovingly suggest that you take time to honor the teachings of your elders the wisdom of a life lived simply and consciously.  And perhaps, it is time to pass along the wisdom of our elders  to our children as we suit our actions to our words, as well.

If you want some more great info. on Giving Thanks and how it increases your happiness: check out Dr. Andy Weil’s article

www.drweil.com/drw/u/TIP04249/Good-Reasons-to-Give-Thanks.html

 

blogger bio

I began this life in what was at the time, Leopoville, Belgian Congo. (Currently it is Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo.) I started early to study metaphysics in the form of Astrology at age 8 and had my first existential crisis at age 12. I also began to work with Tarot at about that age, though I don’t think that the two are related. I continued to be drawn to metaphysics in its many various forms. I studied “Trance Channeling” (which I now refer to as Mediumship) in the 1980s. It was in the 80s that I found myself a home at the Healing Light Center Church under the direction of Rev. Rosalyn L. Bruyere. My spiritual guidance gave me a lifelong gift when it led me to her doors. I have had the great honor and pleasure of working as her student for over 20 years now. Ordained first in the Universal Life Church, I then earned a degree in Hands on Healing (Energy Medicine) from the HLCC and years later was ordained again – this time as a Healing Light Center Church minister. I have always believed that God doesn’t care what you call her, as long as you call . The seminary program at the HLCC taught me to work in and honor many spiritual traditions – Christian, Jewish, Bon Po, Goddess, Wiccian, Egyptian and the ways of the Native Americans or the Red Road. I later spent several years exclusively following the Red Road and studying with a Native teacher. I call my ministry a Gypsy ministry as I simply go where I’m called.

Contact information for Christina:
Works of Light (& Spiritual-i-tease, Inc.)
(661) 433-2700
Works-of-Light@earthlink.net
www.worksoflight.com and www.spiritual-i-tease.com