| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"V" |
| Date: |
12 Dec 2006 09:27:25 AM |
| Object: |
Do you still do Christmas? |
On a simple living forum the question was asked if the members still do
Christmas? My response was: "Yes, I still do Christmas, but the
difference in my life is that Christmas doesn't 'do' me any longer."
Many addicts lose sight of their recovery programs around the holidays.
The very time they need their program most is the time that they do not
make use of it. Crazy, isn't it...but, that is the addicts way. We seem
to forget to put enough time in our program consciousness and instead
put excessive time into thoughts of expectations, demands and
complexities with our ever faithful friend of 'perfection' right by our
side. Entitlement sickness is another pitfall for us. Are we entitled
to get everything and do everything we want at Christmas as well as in
life? No, we are not entitled to a thing in life except a peaceful and
serene existence...if we work a good recovery program and are sober,
abstinent, solvent and living within our comfortable means. Remember
that expectations are pre-planned resentments.
Looking towards perfection as our 'fix-all' is where many of us get
lost instead of practicing gratitude and accepting of our comfortable
means and abilities in life. Losing ourselves in perfection helps boost
our ego and pride as well as provide a distraction to the unbalanced
and painful life we have created for ourselves and our family. Giving
ourselves over to acceptance and gratitude requires humility and faith
and the way to do this is to start small and see that positive results
can come about from changing the direction we have lived in the past.
The law of opposites - go in the opposite direction from the one you
have been going in for so long. (Provided of course, you are not
satisfied with your current life and are looking for a new direction.)
The holidays are a signpost for me to be careful and I have to be on
guard no matter which holiday it is, but for me the Thanksgiving -
Christmas - New Years season up to January 6 can be the most
treacherous. I make it a practice to stick extra close to my recovery
programs and also try to relax more in my outside of program life as
well. If your feeling stressed at this time of year try something new.
What have you got to lose? You can bring pain back with ease if you
miss it. Try scaling back, relaxing some and sticking close to your
favorite support group. Try living well within your means, whether it
be your financial means, mental means, physical means, spiritual means,
recovery program means and comfortable space means.
Make this year a year in which you consciously strive to do less and
thus have more time to enjoy the holidays with less stress eating at
you. Learn to say NO to demands, mindless rituals and people robbing
you of your life. You are not recovering until you start refusing - as
soon as you start refusing your sick past life you start recovering a
new healthy one. Just producing more debt, more clutter and more fat
only leaves you feeling sicker and depressed, so try another route this
year. Going further down the wrong road will never lead to the right
destination, you just keep getting further away from where you want to
be.
For the last seven years I've had a very enjoyable Christmas season and
hope this season will be number eight. Prior to this, I used to dread
the holidays and really hated this time of year. You have to wonder
what joy I could find in the holidays if I hated and dreaded them
coming and couldn't wait for them to be over? Planning the 'perfect
holiday season' requires one to live in the future a lot of the time.
The future and the past is a common place for addicts to live in ...
everyplace other than the present. After all, the present life is the
life they have created for themselves and is not a pleasant one, so
they get lost in hope for better times ahead or in reminiscing about
the past. How much of our life is wasted by living in the future. We
need to balance the future and the past with the present to live
healthy lives, but need to be aware of how much of our supposed
happiness is being put on hold until some future date that never seems
to come. This is what fuels the 'Cult of Next' - you know - I'll be
happy when I graduate or happy when I lose my weight or happy when I
get my new car or happy when I move into my new house or happy when I
find a new wife or happy when I take my vacation. We postpone our
happiness until tomorrow.
Early in my recovery career, I read a post from an addict that wrote in
how bewildered he was that his family had such an unhappy Christmas
even though he had gone into debt to finance it and had bought such a
giant tree that he could not fit it into the room unless he hacked a
portion of it off. (Chevy Chase's movie "Christmas Vacation" comes to
life!) He said that after the holidays the family split up and the wife
left him. I guess there were more important things that needed
addressing in his marriage other than "How big a Christmas tree can I
buy?" This tells me two things: The first lesson is: "one thing, no
matter how fine, only goes so far with giving a person a good life."
The second lesson is: "when a mans mind is concentrated he is blind."
If you have read my posts you will hear me repeating certain concepts
over and over. This is because these are the simple concepts I use to
recover with. I repeat them for two reasons; to plant seeds of recovery
in others and to constantly remind me of their recovery importance. If
we want to enjoy good recovery, we must be pointed in the direction of
recovery at every turn throughout the day. Addictions never take a
holiday or coffee break.
What I have just told you; "One thing, no matter how fine, only goes so
far in giving a person a good life" and "When a mans mind is
concentrated he is blind" cost me many hundreds of thousands of dollars
to realize for myself. This is my holiday gift to you. Balanced living
is much more valuable than unbalanced excessiveness, always remember
that. As humans we tend to look towards 'the more the better' way of
living life and get stuck in looking for inner fulfillment though outer
possessions. With this false idea of happiness ingrained in us, we can
naturally extend it to the holiday season. Addiction is always about
excess and power. We take the good and turn it into the bad through
excess. Now, this excess seems to be part and parcel for addicts as
well as most humans. The difference is the normal people can stop easy
enough when things get out of balance, but addicts cannot stop -
addicts lack stopping power.
In my early days of online recovery, I thought that maybe the root of
my holiday blues was caused by not spending enough money on them?
Reading that addicts story of his holiday woes as well as recounting my
own excessive spending experience got me wondering what is required for
me to have a happy Christmas season if money was not the most important
prerequisite? Over time, I could see that money was not the missing
link to my happiness. In fact, the more money I frantically threw at
trying to buy the perfect Christmas, the worse the holiday season was
for me. Then it became clear that once the necessities of living were
taken care of, that money had little to do with my holiday happiness or
my happiness for the rest of the year for that matter. I had learned
that joy is in us and not in things and that happiness is always an
inside job.
We see some people get lost in lights and decorations of all sorts,
excessive cooking, spending, alcohol consumption and other rituals of
the holiday season. People nowadays seem to clutch onto the idea of
'perfection' and 'best' as a self image builder. After all if they own
he best should they not be the best as well? Zig Zigler asked, "How
many couples spend more time planning the wedding than they do the
marriage? How many people spends more time planning their vacation than
their lives?" If the perfect wedding or perfect vacation gets rained
on, then they are devastated. They lost their hopes of reaching
perfection, they lost their pre-planned happiness. They could try and
practice mindfulness and grateful acceptance to find happiness in the
moment and still have a good wedding or vacation; but if they have
always looked for happiness in the future and have never found it in
the present this will be hard to do. We can only really be at one place
at a time. If we are not in the present we are not really living fully.
As the book, "The Miracle of Mindfulness" says; "If while washing
dishes we think only of the tea that awaits us...then we are not
'washing the dishes.' If we can't wash the dishes, chances are we won't
be able to drink (enjoy) our tea either."
I had to learn to accept that I could not 'buy' the perfect Christmas,
but I was able to 'make' a good Christmas for me and my family,
irrespective of how much money I spent. The choice was always in me to
have a nice Christmas as well as to be happy in life and this happiness
was never dependent on the size of my bank account. A major
breakthrough with enjoying the holiday season arrived as a pre holiday
present for me many years ago when I picked up one of Elaine St. James
little simplicity books and read what it had to say about simplifying
life with my special attention pointed towards the dreaded upcoming
Christmas season. I thought I would try something new and I officially
joined the simple living movement. I now made a conscious effort to do
less at the holidays and not more. Sometimes this translates into not
so much less, just different uses of time and money.
For an example, instead of ordering $340 of chocolate truffles from
around the world by FedX and putting on 10 more pounds fat as I did the
previous holiday season, I could spend some time with my wife walking
in the snow and feeding the geese and ducks at the frozen over pond or
relax and watch a Christmas video sipping some spiced cider. Other
times it means cutting things out 100%, such as I do not put up outside
lights or outside decorations, just a Christmas tree and a Santa
needlepoint inside the house. Now I can have time to take my son
skiing, tubing or snowshoeing or spend some time going to Christmas
concerts. Whatever the choice is on how to spend my time and money, it
is now my choice and not some pressured, unwanted choice that is heaped
on me...and most important I now have time to relax and be mindful of
my recovery programs needs.
In my previous life, I couldn't wait until the holidays were over so I
could try to recover from the debt I ran up and lose some of the fat I
put on. My thinking capacity was taken up with such worries, so how
could I use my time to reflect on the season when I had no peace in my
own life. Now I look forward to the holidays in their proper
perspective and enjoy them without negative effects to my wallet or
health. I do only what is comfortable for me and even try and do LESS
each year. I know this does not go well with those suffering from
'Martha Stuart Syndrome' or the 'Cult of Next' but giving up those
expectations of perfection helped me find peace with life again. I like
to do good work, but perfection had to go if I wanted a new life.
Anytime I start thinking perfection or outdoing others, it is a
signpost for me that I am headed for problems in my life.
With perfection you are always concentrated on and living in the future
as your perfection requires great planning. Generally, people suffering
from perfectionism have no peace. If you rate how good your holidays
are by 'outdoing last years under the tree gift count' or 'outdoing the
Jones's dinner party' or outdoing anybody or anything for that matter,
your self worth is ego or pride based and is built on externals and not
internals. As such, your self worth is artificial and not sustainable.
Your self worth and happiness will be as elusive as a breeze. If you
get something new you have artificial self worth for a day or two if
you are lucky, but then it wears off, as all drug fixes do. Sometimes
the high wears off when driving home from the store after a spending
binge, but sooner or later you are off looking for another external to
build your fix back up...the cult of next.
Most of my previous addicted life was lived in this world of the cult
of next. All my self worth was purchased and I had little of my own
true self worth. If someone had something that I perceived as better
than I had I was envious and jealous and would set out to outdo them.
You can see how shallow and unattainable a life this is. You can never
come to a peaceful end, as someplace, somewhere there is someone with
something better than you have and your self worth suddenly becomes
deflated when this fact hits home. Suddenly your artificial self worth
loses its luster...as your perfectionism is lost. Most important, this
perfection we strive for when me make perfection our god lies outside
our self; and so goes the self worth associated with it; as our self
worth has little to do with our insides and everything to do with the
rest of the world outsides. Many people fall into this trap of
confusing their net worth with their self worth.
Where does my self worth come from?
My self worth is in how well each day I live within my means,
comfortably fit within my space and gratefully accept my current
position in life.
Once we can take our concentration off of everything we don't have and
put it on what we do have we can develop much gratitude in life. Simple
living helped me by cutting down on my unsatisfied demands and allowed
me to be mindful in this area of all that I do have. When I put
relaxation, contentment and happiness as my goals for a Christmas
season I am a success. When I concentrate of commercialism, and trying
to buy my happiness or outdo others as my goal for the holidays I fail.
Learning to practice a program of grateful acceptance was required
before I could find any peace. If I had little gratitude, my thoughts
were always concentrated on what I didn't have. I became grateful and
suddenly I could be thankful for everything I did have and had little
time for being envious and jealous of others anymore. I had learned to
accept my comfortable means and became grateful for the ability to live
well within them.
Now, I do have some nice material things in my life, as I seek to live
a balanced life, but these things are not the foundation of my self
worth. They were added after I had good, rooted self worth that could
stand on its own. I also must have the real feeling that I can have or
not have any of my possessions with equal ease. I had to develop 'a
take it or leave it' mentality and be able to gratefully release any of
them with a moments notice, otherwise I am a slave to people, places or
things. Too much perfection, dependence and attachment in any one area
whether it is clothes, houses, cars, interior design or even my body
helps me become enslaved to it. Once I am enslaved I lose my peace.
A good test for self worth is this: take away a persons possessions,
luxuries and material things and see how they stand on there own. If
there is nothing left of self worth and happiness when the externals
are removed, then it was all material based and artificially built. A
person with true self worth can stand naked and still have their self
worth intact. They may be a little chilly with no clothes, but they
still possess real intrinsic self worth. How many times have we seen
wealthy people commit suicide once they loose their fortune? All their
self worth was artificial and locked up in the bank. Now that it is
gone, there is no self worth inside them to fall back on...nothing left
inside of them to live for? If you are ashamed of your body, then start
there and build up a body you can be proud of; a body that is the best
you can do with what tools you have to work with. Start from the inside
out, not the other way around. Again, do not try and build a body like
your dream idol has, build up a body that YOU can comfortably have.
Remember, recovery is all about what YOU can do.
Success with any recovery program requires that we do not constantly
stay on the edge of disaster, but allow us some breathing room for
safety. If we are always on the edge with stress and problems, it is
easy to slip off. We need to step back some and have a safety cushion
from falling off and the holidays is notorious for slips so we must be
extra mindful of our recovery work at this time of the year. Sure, I
get overextended sometimes, but pull back when I see what direction I'm
headed in. I work hard to live within my means and am mindful of what
those means are; whether they be financial means, spiritual means,
mental means, energy means, health means, ability means, stress means,
recovery program means or my comfortable space means. I am reminded of
a lecture I once heard from Thich Nhat Hanh, a famous Buddhist monk. He
said that Buddha is represented sitting on a lotus flower as a symbol
of peace and serenity. In contrast, many of us sit on hot coals and
wonder why we have no peace. We have too many projects and things
grabbing at us for peace. Instead of sitting on a lotus flower we are
sitting on burning coals.
So, if you want to start afresh this year with the holidays and stop
sitting on burning coals for a seat, you might tear down all the old
rituals and complexities of this season and add them back on a one by
one, invitation only basis after you have deliberated long and hard as
to their true impact on you and your happiness. Remember what Thoreau
wrote in Walden about possessions..."it is much easier to acquire
possessions than to get rid of them," so it goes complexities and
stress. They are much easier to acquire than to rid oneself of. I will
not lie to you and tell you I am perfectly happy and perfectly serene
all the time. (There is that word 'Perfect' again!) But I can honestly
say that I am peaceful and serene most of the time as long as I am
working my program, being mindful of the present, practicing grateful
acceptance and working my recovery programs to the best of my ability.
Yes, I am most content with my life. With peace comes happiness, as you
cannot be happy without having peace and you cannot have peace without
being happy.
I will leave you a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh and the way to peace.
"There is no way to peace - peace IS the way. This means that we can
realize peace right here in the present moment with our look, our
smile, our words and our actions. Peace work in not a means to an end,
each step we take should be peace. Every step we take should be joy.
Every step we take should be happiness. Are you massaging Mother Earth
every time your foot touches her? Are you planting seeds of joy and
peace? Enlightenment, peace and joy will not be granted by someone
else. The well is within us and if we dig deeply in the present moment
the water will spring forth. If we are determined, we can do it. We
don't need the future. We can smile, breath fully and relax Everything
we want is here in the present moment. Peace is every step...shall we
continue our journey?"
Wishing You a Serene and Happy Holiday Season!
V (male)
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| User: "Robibnikoff" |
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| Title: Re: Do you still do Christmas? |
12 Dec 2006 03:28:29 PM |
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"V" <vfr44@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1165937245.859726.120750@16g2000cwy.googlegroups.com...
On a simple living forum the question was asked if the members still do
Christmas? My response was: "Yes, I still do Christmas, but the
difference in my life is that Christmas doesn't 'do' me any longer."
We exchange gifts and eat a nice meal, but that Jesus ***** is right out.
--
Robyn
Resident Witchypoo
#1557
I think religion is so popular because even the village idiot can feel like
Einstein without any effort. - Denis Loubet
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| User: "AZ Nomad" |
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| Title: Re: Do you still do Christmas? |
12 Dec 2006 04:23:53 PM |
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On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 16:28:29 -0500, Robibnikoff <witchypoo@broomstick.com> wrote:
"V" <vfr44@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1165937245.859726.120750@16g2000cwy.googlegroups.com...
On a simple living forum the question was asked if the members still do
Christmas? My response was: "Yes, I still do Christmas, but the
difference in my life is that Christmas doesn't 'do' me any longer."
We exchange gifts and eat a nice meal, but that Jesus ***** is right out.
I always work this quote into a thread about this time of the year so here
goes:
"Christmas, with its spirit of giving, offers us all a wonderful opportunity
each year to reflect on what we all most sincerely and deeply believe in - I
refer, of course, to *money*." Tom Lehrer
I don't think the christians have been entirely successful in appropriating
the winter solstice holiday.
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| User: "Robibnikoff" |
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| Title: Re: Do you still do Christmas? |
13 Dec 2006 02:16:21 PM |
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"AZ Nomad" <aznomad.2@PremoveOBthisOX.COM> wrote in message
news:slrnenuavp.n4h.aznomad.2@ip70-176-155-130.ph.ph.cox.net...
On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 16:28:29 -0500, Robibnikoff <witchypoo@broomstick.com>
wrote:
"V" <vfr44@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1165937245.859726.120750@16g2000cwy.googlegroups.com...
On a simple living forum the question was asked if the members still do
Christmas? My response was: "Yes, I still do Christmas, but the
difference in my life is that Christmas doesn't 'do' me any longer."
We exchange gifts and eat a nice meal, but that Jesus ***** is right out.
I always work this quote into a thread about this time of the year so here
goes:
"Christmas, with its spirit of giving, offers us all a wonderful
opportunity
each year to reflect on what we all most sincerely and deeply believe in -
I
refer, of course, to *money*." Tom Lehrer
Hahahaha! Good one :)
I don't think the christians have been entirely successful in
appropriating
the winter solstice holiday.
Hmmm, me either ;)
--
Robyn
Resident Witchypoo
#1557
I think religion is so popular because even the village idiot can feel like
Einstein without any effort. - Denis Loubet
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| User: "Mark K. Bilbo" |
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| Title: Re: Do you still do Christmas? |
13 Dec 2006 08:45:53 AM |
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On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 22:23:53 +0000, AZ Nomad wrote:
On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 16:28:29 -0500, Robibnikoff <witchypoo@broomstick.com> wrote:
"V" <vfr44@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1165937245.859726.120750@16g2000cwy.googlegroups.com...
On a simple living forum the question was asked if the members still do
Christmas? My response was: "Yes, I still do Christmas, but the
difference in my life is that Christmas doesn't 'do' me any longer."
We exchange gifts and eat a nice meal, but that Jesus ***** is right out.
I always work this quote into a thread about this time of the year so here
goes:
"Christmas, with its spirit of giving, offers us all a wonderful opportunity
each year to reflect on what we all most sincerely and deeply believe in - I
refer, of course, to *money*." Tom Lehrer
I don't think the christians have been entirely successful in appropriating
the winter solstice holiday.
Sure they have, they've incorporated their true god into it...
(Just take a look at our money sometime, they identify their god clearly)
--
Mark K. Bilbo
------------------------------------------------------------
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace
alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing
it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
-H. L. Mencken
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| User: "NC" |
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| Title: Re: Do you still do Christmas? |
12 Dec 2006 06:03:02 PM |
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I fixed your post for you!
"V" wrote:
[I] lose sight of [my] recovery programs around the holidays.
The very time [I] need [my] program most is the time that [I] do not
make use of it. Crazy, isn't it...but, that is [my] way. [I] seem
to forget to put enough time in [minding my own business] and instead
put excessive time into [obsessive rambling posts] and complexities
with [my delusions of grandeur]. Entitlement sickness is another
pitfall for [me]. [Am I] entitled to get everything and do everything
[I] want at Christmas as well as in life? No, [I am] not entitled to a
thing in life except a peaceful and serene existence...if [only I
wasn't so obsessive and delusional]. [My] expectations are pre-planned
resentments. Looking towards [obsessive posting] as [my] 'fix-all' is
where [I] get lost instead of practicing [sanity]. Losing [myself] in
[delusion] helps boost [my] ego and pride as well as provide a
distraction [from] the unbalanced and painful life [I] have created
for [myself] and [my] family.
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| User: "Al Klein" |
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| Title: Re: Do you still do Christmas? |
12 Dec 2006 10:44:37 AM |
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On 12 Dec 2006 07:27:25 -0800, "V" <vfr44@aol.com> wrote:
On a simple living forum the question was asked if the members still do
Christmas?
Who cares? Atheists don't "do" religious holidays, and some of us
were never Christian, so the "still" has no meaning. We never "did"
Christmas.
Post this ***** to a Christian group.
--
rukbat at optonline dot net
"I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be under-
stood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can
comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of
humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism."
- 1954 or 1955; quoted in Dukas and Hoffman _Albert Einstein the Human Side_, p. 39
(random sig, produced by SigChanger)
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| User: "Hollis Brown" |
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| Title: Re: Do you still do Christmas? |
13 Dec 2006 02:18:17 PM |
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V wrote:
On a simple living forum the question was asked if the members still do
Christmas?
Yes, but only if she buys me dinner first.
HB
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| User: "Mike Painter" |
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| Title: Re: Do you still do Christmas? |
12 Dec 2006 07:50:41 PM |
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V wrote:
Aren't you the one who was going to leave if enough people asked you to?
Can't you count as high as the number you requested?
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