Life is a rollercoaster at the best of times. When times are good, we feel the elation and fun of being here, and we want to share our joy with the world. When times are bad, either we do not want to face anyone, or nobody wants to face our misery.
Where do we find our solace and peace during the down times? And why do we only seek solace during the down times?
I grew up in a culture where we were taught that during the worst of times, we can find solace in the church. When I hit my first adult crisis, I went to the church and found an empty, cold building. I went to the people of the church, but they chose to avoid me. I became an outcast because I was getting a divorce. I then went to the church minister for the solace that I so desperately needed, but the reception was cold and hostile.
That was not solace. I kept searching.
I became a psychologist and memorised every theory about changing behaviour and thoughts. I applied these theories and they worked as long as people really wanted to buy into the constraints of the theories and shared a particular reality.
But then a company that I worked for experienced a low in the economic cycle and could no longer afford my expertise. I had to find another job. This is not a big deal in itself, but it took me seven months to find another job. In my culture this was a definite sign of failure, and as a result I could not share the path with anyone else. None of the theories worked for me. I needed solace.
At the same time a friend looked at me for help in dealing with a very personal crisis. None of the theories worked for his situation either and I had to pretend to be strong while I desperately needed solace. Not from the church, not from knowledge of psychological theories, not from family, not from friends – none of them could provide any for me.
That is when my search for solace started in earnest. In desperation I did a thing that was regarded as a big sin – I went to see a psychic. She gave me the hope and courage that I was looking for. She told me about the job that I would get, and everything turned out as she had predicted. I was impressed. I wanted to know more.
I had a glimpse of solace, but the new job and the friend that challenged every paradigm that I grew up with took that away again. I discovered that it is much easier to lose inner peace than to find it.
It also did not feel quite right for me that I had to pay another person to look into my future and provide solace to me. What if that person was not available the next time? What if I went to another psychic and that person gave me a different version of my future? What peace would that leave me with? And where did they get the information from anyway? I wanted to bypass the “middlemen” and go straight to the source.
But where and who and what was the source? My quest led me to reading about spiritual issues. I discovered the difference between faith and religion. I understood why, for me, the whole concept of religion and the external control that went with it was quite disturbing.
As part of my journey I discovered my own psychic abilities. For many years I helped other people find solace in that I could read their past, present and future, and give them moments of peace. The peace they got from listening to the messages I conveyed probably was also not lasting, and they probably are also still searching.
However, that journey taught me so much about our inner world. I discovered that we all share the same inner world, no matter what our challenges in life are. That inner world is governed by a particular structure and a number of laws that are always the same.
The laws include things like “you cannot pour from an empty jug, and it is your duty to keep your inner jug full” and “there is no bad or good, there are only challenges, and we only get the challenges that we are ready for”.
I learned from the lives of my clients about the spiral. We begin life at the bottom of a spiral, and through various life experiences, we manage the slow, arduous climb up the spiral. Eventually we reach the top of the spiral, and life is rosy –we have solace – and we have an inner peace and a tranquillity that is so lovely to experience.
And the life happens again and we think oh no, not again – just when everything is going so well. We look up and all we see is the long arduous climb up the spiral, and that we have to do it again. However, we forget to look down and see where we came from and how much we have already achieved. We do not notice that while we are at the bottom of the new spiral, we are in fact at the top of the previous spiral. We never slide down. We just keep climbing, and as we climb up our legs just grow stronger.
Did these insights help me in my journey? Yes, they did, in the sense that I now understand a process that we all go through in many different ways during our lives. And no, they did not, in the sense that I can easily tune in to my clients and give them insights into their lives and inner peace, however fleeting, but for a long time I did not get the same insights for myself. That was quite frustrating, because I wanted to know more about my own future than about the future of my clients. After all, how much is a gift of being psychic worth if you cannot use it for yourself?
Then I experienced the next eye-opener. I wanted to know about my own future because I had all kinds of fears about what was waiting for me. I wanted to know whether I was good enough for what was ahead of me. Was I equipped for the challenges? Would there be enough money? What if this, what if that?
I learned to do with the fear exactly what my clients are always advised by means of their messages – break the fears down in the same way that you built up the fears – brick by brick, illusion by illusion. Where there is no fear, there is clarity, and instead of being blinded by the fear, I can now be guided by the vision.
Do I still have moments of fear? You bet. Do I break them down quickly? Of course, because my vision is clear.
My journey has also taken me to solutions and methods that I use to help people find moments of balance in their lives rather than look at the future with fear. I can then help them to understand that we only experience moments of balance, and as long as we are aware of them, we will strive for them.
However, there are ways to speed up these moments and live a more balanced life in general. We can identify our view of the world and understand how and when this view was shaped. We can then bring perspective to those crucial moments and find the balance in everything that happens to us. And there is solace.
Inner peace is not a sanctuary where we go if we want to hide away from a cruel world. It is rather a moment where we win, having played the world at its own game. Then we move on to the next level and we aim to win that level as well. Inner peace is the prize that we work for, and we learn to find more and more moments of inner peace. We also learn that days of inner peace are not realistic or challenging enough when we have this zest for life. We accept the fleeting moments of solace with gratitude and we accept the challenges that come our way with gratitude.
We realise that we are in the driver’s seat, and that always provides a moment of bliss along the way. That is what makes the journey worthwhile.
What would you say if I told you that I stopped reading the Bible years ago because it contains too many tales that are beyond belief?
For me the Bible is one of the reference books in my library – one that I stopped regarding as a credible source because it had been rewritten too many times with too many personal and political agendas. The other reason why I would rather read Harry Potter books is the endless and seemingly mindless violence that to this day is used to intimidate people into believing the contents of the Bible or else bear the consequences like the people in the Bible . . .
For example, Lot and his wife were instructed to leave Sodom and Gomorrah and not to look back. Then Lot’s wife dared to look back and she turned into a salt pillar that crumbled and left nothing of her. People don’t normally crumble into nothing just because they are curious. Surely there had to be some cause.
I grew up with the notion that if you do not follow God’s will (as pronounced by the all-knowing minister or vicar) you are too curious and you will be punished – like Lot’s wife, or like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
The real story of Adam and Eve is for another day – fascinating stuff.
I recently discovered material about the Sumerian clay tablets. These tablets were discovered in the Middle East, and scholars have been transcribing and translating them for about 200 years. The contents of the tablets not only confirm many of these biblical stories, but also provide the context and background that is not included in the Bible.
When I discovered that Lot’s wife was a victim of radiation, her “crumbling” made more sense. She and her husband were warned to vacate the area, because the people who instructed them to do so intended to use a form of radiation to obliterate Sodom and Gomorrah for their own reasons. She went back because she did not understand the reason for the warning, and she was also hit.
It appears that at the time there was a higher civilization present on earth, and they used weapons of war that are now available again to mankind.
Why would people have recorded this information on clay tablets 5 000 years ago? Did they really have the imagination to conjure up such tales? It makes more sense to me that they recorded the facts of their daily life and the things that were important to them.
I still don’t believe blindly what is in the Bible, but I do leave open the door to the possibility that those “fairy tales” in the Bible have a logical explanation and that a lot of important information was deliberately left out of the Bible.
I am still reading – and the more I learn, the more I realize that we are mere speckles in the bigger picture of Creation.
I am fascinated by all the myths around bonding between people – not only parents and children, but also friends.
One myth is that a mother has difficulty bonding with a baby after a caesarean section. Another one is that all parents must bond with their children, or they risk being branded as bad parents.
What is this bonding? For me it is a feeling of “knowing” a person. You know that the person resonates with you and you want to be in their presence, or you know that the person is bad news for you and you do not want to be in their presence. This has nothing to do with family ties. It has everything to do with the energy vibration that we all exude.
I once experienced a feeling of repulsion with a new-born baby for no reason at all. Over the years that baby turned into an attractive, intelligent young person who has always treated me well, but that did not do anything to dissolve that feeling of me wanting to run away when I am in the presence of that person, despite my best sermons to myself about Loving thy neighbour.
I recently talked to someone who feels a similar sense of repulsion for a young person that I get on fairly well with. I was not sure which was worse – the disgust for a well-educated, well-groomed but slightly overconfident teenager, or the self-disgust because they could not find a logical reason for their dislike of the person.
There is no rule that says people have to love their children. It is quite possible to have a child and not like the child, even when they are new-born babies.
Sometimes people can justify their dislike. For example, my mother was quite disgusted to find herself at the age of 18 with a baby who destroyed all her dreams of achieving something in her life. Of course she was quite brilliant and had all the opportunity to achieve her dreams at a later age, but she chose to fixate her emotions on me and blame me for being born and destroying her life.
She did not feel the same brooding anger towards my siblings, because in her mind the damage was done when I was conceived, and there was no reason to blame my siblings for the damage that my presence did.
I grew up knowing that my mother did not love me – she did not even like me, despite my best efforts. She saw all my achievements as a threat to her dwindling dreams, and when I did not achieve she found the proverbial stick to beat me up with for being lazy. No matter what I did, I could not win and the emotional abuse never stopped.
I was well into my thirties before I realized that nothing I could say, think or do would make her change her mind about me. By that time she was an alcoholic and drug addict, and every time she went for another unsuccessful treatment, I got the dreaded phone call from the health care professional about my “cruelty” towards my mother – while I just felt incredible sadness and confusion about the situation.
After my mother’s death, I knew I had to make peace with the memory of being unwanted. The alternative was to label myself as “I am Elsabe and I was an unwanted child”. Thank goodness I realized that the way she treated me resulted in me finding my worth inside of myself rather than in the approval of others. It took me years to look at the face in the mirror, and even more years to learn and later love that face and that person. This is not a narcissistic self-admiration, but rather self-acceptance and getting comfortable in my own skin despite how other people treat me.
When you look at the way waves of different frequencies react when they collide in nature, you will realize that some waves fit together perfectly because they share the same wave-length. Other waves clash and the result is fragmentation and chaos.
People consist of energy, and we also respond like waves. With some people you communicate easily because you are “on the same wave-length”. With other people you clash because you share incompatible frequencies. The behaviours of people are no different from the behaviour of energy waves in nature, because people consist of energy waves.
The difference with people is that we have agendas for our existence here. When we clash with people, their agenda is to help us make peace with those parts of ourselves that we disown. They have this agenda because it is part of the contract that we enter into with various people before we incarnate.
This is what works for me: when I discover that a person does not resonate with me, I grin and bear it until I am able to put into words what it is that I find repulsive about the person. Then I do introspection until I am clear in my mind on exactly how and when I display that same repulsive trait. This does not suddenly mean I discover an unconditional love for the person and we get on well from there onwards. It does mean that I understand what it is that I need to accept in myself, and that I am reminded of any residue of self-rejection every time I meet with that person.
Whenever I discover and accept another part of that self-disgust that is reflected in the other person, a quantum of light is formed and my own bodily vibration changes to a higher frequency. Rather than outright rejection, I am then able to display tolerance towards that person.
If life was uncomplicated, we would not have bothered living on this planet.
I want to give you an example of the damage that can be done when you refuse to acknowledge the world you live in and the worlds of other people.
This is an extreme example, but maybe it will shock a few people into saying “OK, from now on I will listen rather than jump to conclusions.” I have to tell you that this is a true tale – I heard it from the victim and confirmed the details with her.
A black woman obtained her nursing qualifications in Lesotho, a small, beautiful, mountainous, independent country surrounded by the provinces of South Africa. She was courageous enough to then want to live and work in England. She had her qualifications assessed and recognized internationally, and obtained the necessary visa.
With her work ethic and intelligence she was a popular employee. Every year she returned to Lesotho for her annual holiday, and to spend some time with her fiancé.
One year (this was about 8 years ago) she was returning from Lesotho to London after her annual holiday. She had a connecting flight in Madrid, where she was detained by security staff because she “had a false passport”. Of course there was nothing wrong with her passport, but the security staff at the airport had never heard of Lesotho.
Because she was black, they assumed that she was from South Africa. They had never heard of her country, and the fact that she had South African border stamps in her passport confirmed in their minds that she was a South African citizen travelling with a false passport. They had no idea that the only way to get from Lesotho to a country other than South Africa was to travel through South Africa.
The lady asked for an atlas so that she could show the police where her country was. They searched their offices, could not find an atlas, and decided that her request was a ruse to get them off the trail of her “deception”.
She asked for legal representation, and they provided a solicitor who could only speak Spanish – and who confirmed that since he also had never heard of Lesotho, such a country could not possibly exist.
The security police then destroyed her passport – which of course contained her work visa – and put her in detention with drug smugglers and people travelling with false documents.
Of course she did not sleep a wink – she was concerned about her own safety and found the situation quite stressful.
The next morning she was deported back to South Africa – of course she was black, and therefore she could only be from South Africa. She could not possibly have been from any one of the other 51 African countries that have black female citizens.
As part of the deportation process she was escorted last onto the waiting plane – in clear view of all the other passengers who drew their own conclusions about this “criminal”.
In South Africa she was escorted off the plane first – for the “safety” of the other passengers, of course – and into the waiting police vehicle.
The two police officers who were sent to fetch her were born respectively in Lesotho and in the Free State – one of the South African provinces that borders on Lesotho. She told them her tale and they were astonished at the whole charade. Their instructions were to provide an armed escort for her to Lesotho, but they used their common sense and suggested that she book herself on a plane from Johannesburg to Bloemfontein, where her relatives could meet her.
Of course this was the end of her holiday, and she had to borrow money from relatives to buy the plane ticket.
Her fiancé met her at the Bloemfontein airport, and took her straight across the border and to the Lesotho Ministry of External Affairs. The minister himself got involved, because those ignorant Spaniards had destroyed her passport – an official government document.
Meanwhile the lady managed to get a message through to the company in London that had employed her for over three years. Guess what their response was? “If she could falsify a passport, she could also falsify her qualifications, and she should not bother to come back.” I suspect that there are not many atlases available in England either, and they ignored the fact that she was a star employee who could not possibly have faked her knowledge and experience for three years without suspicion.
Getting a new Lesotho passport was the easy part. Then she had to get her qualifications verified again, and apply to the British consulate for a new copy of her work visa in her new passport.
It took the lady six weeks to get the paperwork sorted so that she could return to her job – which was given back to her after her country’s government got involved to vouch for her. I wondered how she would have been treated if she was a white African woman.
When was the last time that you said to someone “Your view of the world must be wrong, because it does not fit in with my view of the world”?
Of course not everything you learn in life will resonate with you, but if you open your mind and learn new things, at least you will be in a position where you can decide what you want to accept and why. Investigating new things and then deciding what to accept and reject is a step higher than rejecting something in principle because you are afraid of being wrong.
Here is a puzzle that has kept me awake for a few nights, and the answer is still eluding me.
The kaballah (Jewish Mysticysm) teaches that every letter of the Hebrew alphabet has three values. For example, Aleph (A) is the first letter of the alphabet. It also has a numerical value of 1, which reflects unity. Aleph is also represented by the head of an ox, as a representation of purpose and the generative power of nature.
All the letters of the Hebrew alphabet have these triple meanings, and they capture the essence of our existence here. These letters have many other meanings, but these three meanings (the alphabet, the numerical value and the symbolic representation) are the most significant ones.
I understand the meaning of the numeric values and the significance of each number. I have also read a number of other works that explain the meaning of numbers. A book that I can really recommend is The Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe by Michael S Schneider.
He explains how each number has three levels of meaning.
The first level is secular: 1 and 1 = 2.
The second level is symbolic or philosophical: numbers are represented in shapes, such as a circle, triangle, square and so on. These shapes form their own symbolic language, called geometry.
The third level is sacred: when you understand 1 and 2, you have embedded the meaning unity and division in your consciousness. Both Plato and Pythagoras wanted all citizens to learn the properties of the first ten numbers as a form of moral instruction – to understand and learn to respect the magnificence of the Universe. I would agree with that.
The significance of the numbers are also captured in tarot, where the numbers form part of the meaning of each card. I have a huge respect for tarot as an encyclopaedia of life, and I understand that the meaning of the numbers are part of the Universal language of Life.
That is one side of the puzzle.
The other side of the puzzle is the application as reflected in numerology, specifically related to birth dates and names. Let’s say my birthday is 3rd August 1978 (a girl can dream – why not?). I was born at 4.45 in the morning. In terms of numerology that date and time is significant to predict trends in my life. Add to that the numeric values of the letters in my name (or even my nickname if I am not known by my name), which also supposedly predicts trends in my life. There seems to be more than one system for allocating numbers to the letters in the Western alphabet, and the number of letters in the Western alphabet differ from the Hebrew alphabet.
This is the part that I am trying to figure out. My date of birth is in terms of the Gregorian calendar. Would my destiny have been different if I applied the Jewish calendar (which is still in use)? The time of my birth was in South Africa. Would my destiny have been different if I was born in Russia at the same time (which is in fact in a different time zone and therefore numerically not the same time as in South Africa)? Time is not a constant – it is what we make of it.
And do the trends in my future and my destiny really change if I change my surname or if I am known by a name other than my birth name? I know that when I got divorced and reverted back to my maiden name, I felt significantly different – free and back to my true self again. However, it is possible that my feeling was more the result of my mindset than the result of my name change at the time. There is no doubt in my mind that changing my name changed my destiny, so maybe there is some truth in that application of numerology?
I may be quite wrong, but for me it feels like using numerology to predict people’s lives and future would be similar to doing personality profiles based on the flowers a person randomly picks in a garden. The flowers were meant to please the senses, but that basic purpose got lost in an application that turns the fragrance and texture of a rose petal into a diagnostic tool. As that guy who could not spell said: ” A rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet”. Why try to change it? Or why pretend that it is something else?
The more I know, the more I realize how little I know. There is much truth in numbers, but I still have to learn much about the application of numbers and the nature of time.
I have lovely neighbours. They will probably not read this, because they know very little of what I do, and we do not visit each other’s homes. But we do look out for one another.
We meet and chat in the street, we keep each other informed of our movements and absences, and we share hard times and good news – like shovelling snow and protecting our cars against accidents in winter, the baby that arrived recently, the new conservatory, the kids’ karate class and the baby that is overdue.
Once, when my one neighbour had the flu and was really feeling sorry for herself, I took her some flowers and meals to heat up. When an unknown car was blocking our way, we asked around and eventually found the culprit. On another occasion other neighbours chased people away from my car, because they see who visits me and they knew that these people did not belong there. And I look out for their children and wave a crooked finger at cars driving too fast around the corner in a quiet street.
On another occasion I had a hectic day, and rushed home to grab something before rushing off to another appointment. About three hours later a neighbour called to say that she saw my front door open and the key in the door, and she noticed that my car was not there. She had locked my door and was calling to tell me to come and get my key when I get home. How cool is that?
Why do I tell you about these good people? OK, I am not a Christian, but one of the commandments in the Bible that makes sense to me is “love your neighbour”. And to me that does not only mean the lovely people in my street – it also means the people that I deal with every day, including my clients and my friends.
What exactly does loving your neighbour mean? Does it mean getting on with everyone around you at all times? Of course not – that would not be realistic. To me it means accepting the challenges that they present, because these were placed perfectly to provide challenges to me and help me grow. They have different backgrounds and habits. They think in ways that may feel or sound strange to me. They are there to broaden my horizons and to teach me valuable lessons.
Having grown up in a society where there are still pockets of strong artificial boundaries between people, I clarified for myself at an early age that my neighbour is everybody that I come into contact with, not only those people that share my skin colour.
On a more intimate level, loving my neighbour also means loving my body. I am not my body. My body is a container of my essence – my spirit. When you get into a car, you do not become the car. You become a passenger in a separate entity, namely the car. In the same way, when you are originally conceived, your body is formed around your spirit. Abusing your body in any way would be like being abusive to your next door neighbours.
Loving my body means appreciating my body, just like I appreciate my lovely neighbours. This means watching what and how much I eat and drink, and getting regular exercise.
There will be another dip in the economy, and then the financial outlook will increase towards the latter half of the year. This increase will continue in the next three years. A significant and viable alternative to traditional banking will gain favour like a wildfire towards the end of 2011 and put some of the world’s largest banks out of business within two years.
There will be a tsunami that will permanently change the landscape in Europe – specifically the UK, France, Portugal and Spain.
There will be two volcanic eruptions. One will have a minor impact on the airline industry, but not nearly as serious as the one in 2010. The second one will not have any impact on the airline industry, because it will happen in a remote area away from air routes. However, the gases from this volcanic outburst will cause a number of deaths and crop failures, and that will have a significant impact on the world economy.
There will be significant changes in the governments of both the US and the UK, and these changes will have ripple effects on the political situations in all their neighbouring countries. The change in the UK government willbe prompted by a natural disaster that will not be managed well at all by the current government. The change in the US government will be prompted by the death of a very influential politician, and this death will reveal secret activities that have been escalating for about 15 years. This has to do with greed rather than conspiracy.
A massive scandal will result in the demise of a significant section of the Christian church and much confusion among its followers, because they will want to continue to follow and there will be a number of contenders for the position of leadership that becomes available. Many people will be left disillusioned with religion, even more so when a financial scam that relates to another religion (not Christian) makes headlines.
There will be a much stronger awareness of growing telepathic abilities, and there will be new technology that will enhance these telepathic abilities and impact positively on people’s health. This will counteract a disaster in the pharmaceutical industry where people will die in masses from untested drugs that will be marketed illegally.
If I ask you to make a list of the things you value, I would bet that most people will start their list with things like respect, honesty, and the usual list of fluffy, woolly words.
My next question would be how you apply these values in your daily life. Again I would probably get quite a few “you know, we just do it” answers and a vague wave in the air, or maybe even a few noble textbook answers.
We have a lovely saying in Afrikaans, which can roughly be translated into “between the hand and the mouth, the porridge will drop to the floor”. This means that you may start out with an intention, but in taking action the inconsistency between your thoughts and actions will show.
The creation process consists of four steps. First you feel the quantum vibration. Then you turn that vibration into a thought. You add filters to the thought based on your own biases and prejudices, and then you act on the thought.
The inconsistency between thought and action happens because you add filters that twist the original vibration into something that cannot easily be recognised.
Let me give you an example. You work for a company that claims respect for their clients is very high on their list of values. This respect is expressed in many different ways every day when they deal with clients, and that is what has given your company a good reputation and a competitive advantage.
But what happens back at the ranch? You have a new employee who needs to submit weekly progress reports. You hand the report template and an incomplete example to the employee, and say “here, this is what you must hand in next week”. That is the only instruction.
The employee hands in a progress report the next week, but it does not nearly meet your expectations. You don’t say a word about it, because you do not like confrontations.
The employee hands in the second set of progress reports, based on the same original instructions, and of course it is a mess again – as expected. This time you demand that the employee puts in overtime to re-do the progress report, and this time you give complete instructions. You explain that although the headings say “blue blocks” and “red blocks”, the company practice is to use those blocks to fill in the days of the week. You indicate all the other elements that were missing from your instructions and from the half-baked example you provided. You even offer to sit next to the employee and go through the reports line by line, because obviously the problem is not with your cock-eyed instructions, but with the employee’s lack of ability to second-guess years of crossed lines in the company processes.
Did you respect the employee’s time and intelligence?
This is just one example of values that are used in promotional material but never thought through and explained well. Company values are not only there for promotional purposes and for having a professional façade in place. They are meant to guide every move that is made in your company. Where you act against your company values, no “yes, but” and no deaf ear will undo the internal damage.
And where one such discrepancy is allowed and not challenged by everyone from the management team down, another discrepancy will happen, and another. Very soon you get a company culture where challenging any incongruence between values and actions are regarded as disrespectful. Ship sinking fast, captain leaving first!
Love and Light
Elsabe
PS: I am The Intuition Coach. I help people who lack clarity, vision and purpose to remove their blocks, discover their intuition and achieve their goals. What is consuming all your energy? Visit www.TheIntuitionCoach.com for a FREE New Start Quiz.
If you believe in and celebrate Christmas, I wish you a merry Christmas. You may choose not to read the rest of this article, because I respect your choice and wishes and have no desire to change you or your beliefs.
If you don’t believe in Christmas or you have not made up your mind yet, read on – I may have some interesting information for you.
I am not convinced that a person called Jesus ever lived. I have read widely on the subject and can put forward a convincing argument that Jesus did exist, that he spent a fair number of years travelling the world (including countries as far away as India and the current United States, that he eventually was crucified and survived that, and then got married to Mary Magdalene. Apparently they had three children and then got divorced, and Jesus was last heard of when he was still alive and well into his seventies.
On the other hand, I can also put forward a convincing argument that Jesus was a resurrection of the myth of a virgin birth, and the ruling tyrant wanted the baby dead. He was worshipped as a saviour and put to death on a cross between two thieves. He then rose from the dead and ascended to heaven. Other mythical characters that had exactly the same history include Bacchus, Narcissus, Zoroaster, Cadmus of Greece and a list that is too long to repeat here.
It also makes no sense to me that a monotheistic religion such as Christianity then breaks down their one God into three gods which includes this figure, Jesus.
I was impressed at how flexible and adaptable religion is, and how big an impact the Christian Jesus has even had on other religions, when I discovered what the Hindus did with Christmas, which is not a traditional Hindu holiday. In 1985 a five-day festival named Pancha Ganapati was created by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami along with elders of various Hindu groups.
During the festival of Pancha Ganapti Hindus create and decorate a shrine in the main living room of the home. The focus if the shrine is a statue of Lord Ganesha. Every day the children of the home dress the statue in a different colour. On 23rd and 24th December, the third and fourth day of this five-day festival, presents are handed out. Now the Hindu children can also receive presents and not feel left out when the rest of the world goes mad on tinsel and sanctimonious songs
Apparently the tradition of having a Christmas tree is rejected as a heathen practice in Jeremiah 10:2-6: “Thus saith the Lord, learn not the way of the heathen…For the customs of the people are vain; for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.” I know many Christians who ignore this part of their Good Book but insist that the rest is true.
Why does Santa Claus always dress in red and white? Because he works very hard on Christmas Eve delivering gifts to children all around the world, and when he gets thirsty, he stops and drinks Coca Cola out of a red and white can. Yes, that company decided that Christmas was really about the spirit of Santa Claus, and they decided to dress him in company colours.
And to think all of this started with a PR job that was commissioned by the Christian church 2 000 years ago.
I wonder if they would be willing to take on the PR for my new book?
Are you fed up with conflict in your family? Do you want everyone to have peace? Read this article and discover how a peaceful family could in fact be a dysfunctional family.
A wise man once said that if you have a family with no strife, no issues, no conflict, you should be seriously concerned about the state of affairs.
This was brought home to me again when I asked about the feeding of my new grand-daughter – is it breast or bottle? I deliberately asked the question because I wanted to encourage the mother to exercise her personal choice. I believe that a mother instinctively knows what is good for her and her baby.
I recently heard about a matriarch – a mother of five (including twins) and grandmother of a handful – who is the oracle on motherhood, and nobody in her family would dare contradict her on how to raise a child. She had obviously missed the point that no two children are the same, unless you wear blinkers.
When a recent great-grandchild arrived, this oracle of motherhood insisted that the baby had to be breastfed. As a result the poor new mother was forced to sit with the new baby for seven hours so that she could learn to breastfeed.
Can you imagine that anyone can be so cruel and destructive? This matriarch likes to brag about how tight-knit her family is, and how they gather around her for all high days and holidays. Whenever a decision needs to be made by a child, the oracle is consulted – or rather they approach the matriarch for her verdict, which is followed to the letter, for fear of the consequences.
One person dared to contradict her and refused to follow her instructions, and was “excommunicated” on the spot and ignored by the rest of the family who are victims of mass hypnosis and would never question the judgment of the matriarch.
Then rather give me a family where the characters and their likes and dislikes are miles apart. I love to meet with my siblings whenever I can. We think in different ways, we have developed different cultures in our immediate families, and we represent extremes. This means we always have something to explore, and our arguments always end in love and understanding.
Every family needs balance, and you cannot possibly have balance when everyone sits on the same side of the see-saw. And when the matriarch sits on the high side of the see-saw and the rest of the family sits in worship on the low side of the see-saw, there is no balance.
The only way for that family to have any balance, is to have a common “enemy” which is the rest of the world. Anyone who dares to say that for example breastfeeding is an option rather than the only option becomes part of the common enemy. Where a family agrees on everything, I would wonder whether the family is really a healthy family.
With Christmas and the inevitable family gatherings coming up, please remember to appreciate and love your family because they are different from you.
Love and Light
Elsabe
If you want to discover how to grow from the conflict in your family and have better family relationships, click on the links below to obtain your
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