Acknowledging Anger

Another memoir about the event that transformed my life - the death of my young husband after just one year of marriage.

Henry died on February 24^th 1990 and I was catapulted into a very strange world. Back then, we weren’t at war with anyone in particular so there weren’t pictures of young widows on the news and there were only four TV channels with no reality TV. Yes, people were still being widowed all the time but it was a lot less publicised and it had never actually happened in my circle. Friends and family didn’t know what to do with me which was hardly surprising because I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I lived in the media world, where people often didn’t see each other for six months to a year, so many of my former colleagues didn’t even know I’d got married, let alone that Henry was dead.

So I’d get people saying, ‘Wow! You look terrific! You’ve lost so much weight. What’s your secret?’

Those who did know said, ‘Don’t you think you’re wearing too much black?’

Or: ‘I don’t think you should be seen out with Alan/Bob/Fred dear. What would people think?’ (Alan, Bob and Fred being old boyfriends who were being non-invasively supportive).

Because I was trained to be nice I didn’t think I got angry. But, I started bitching at shopkeepers who kept me waiting and those poor souls who tried to commiserate with me. One girl, who’d never met Henry, said the dreaded ‘I’m so sorry about Henry’s death’ and got a ‘Yes, I was pretty hacked off myself’ in return.

If you’re a habitual victim and terminally nice, it gets imploded. And I was incredibly angry — with Henry, with me, with the world, with Jesus, with God, with life, and mostly with the stupid, stupid doctors who hadn’t even noticed that the chemotherapy they gave him was destroying Henry’s stomach even though I tried to tell them. It was easy for me; all I had to do was sit in the medical section of Foyle’s and read up on the DTIC they were giving him (which turned out to be mustard gas); they had whole wards and dozens of patients and dozens of different chemos to deal with and important suits to wear.

They got so narked with me that they wrote ‘Beware the wife, very well informed’ on his notes at the end of the bed. As if the journalist wouldn’t read them! And they got cross when I asked them what they would do at the critical two-week point when Henry’s stomach would be affected and said it wasn’t important.

My greatest moment of defeat unwittingly came from a kind and considerate young registrar. His name was Oliver and he said: ‘If it’s any comfort, Henry is dying from the chemotherapy that’s destroying his stomach, not from the cancer. It’s a kinder death.’

So he died from chemotherapy, not cancer. But they didn’t put that on the death certificate. And that made me angry too.

The bad news

I think most of us experience a strange, surreal feeling when we hear terrible news. It’s like when people say ‘Where were you when President Kennedy got shot?’ Or ‘Where were you when you heard about 9/11?’ Everyone remembers because the hugeness of the event blazed a tear in their psyche. You stand numb, disbelieving, with the whole world that was in full working order just one minute before, destroyed.

I was at home; in the living room in my terraced house in Birmingham. A part of me seemed to be outside myself looking inwards; a second me was inside and screaming and the final piece of me was saying, ‘Well of course. Why wouldn’t this happen to you?’

I think all of us have got them: the watcher, the victim, the critic — and many more personalities besides. They shape our lives without our even noticing them, creating, destroying and fouling up. For most of my life I have been at war with myself through those characters. Even now, some of them only have an uneasy accord but they don’t attack the way they used to do.

Psychologists would point to Jungian archetypes, others to astrology, the Enneagram, Human Design or upbringing and environment. Some would even call them demons. I call them Sefirot from the Hebrew, meaning sphere or sapphire and each one of them represents an aspect of my own, particular psyche.

Life is circular.  At least mine is. On good days it becomes a vortex where I climb higher with every turn. At this particular point in time it had become exactly the opposite kind of vortex; from happiness to disaster.

The caller on the telephone was my husband of just six months, Henry Barley. He had been for a routine six-month check-up at hospital four and a half years after having had a malignant mole removed from his scalp. Every time before he had been clear and this time neither of us had thought anything of it. 

Now, out of the blue, he had been handed a death sentence. A routine X-ray revealed tumours filling his lungs and lodged in his lower organs as well.

The consultant said he would be lucky to live a year — and that only with savage chemotherapy.

Of course it’s not a new story; many people face similar horror. It’s not newsworthy like the deaths of soldiers at war or tragedies such as murder or an air crash. It’s just two people who are struggling with the basics; the very basics of life. The struggle for survival.

I had three hours to wait until Henry got home. His appointment had been in London where he had lived before our marriage. For most of that time, I walked round and round in the empty shell of what, hours earlier, had been a happy home. It went through my mind again and again: Every one of those tumours had formed in the six months since we got married. It must be my fault.

Eventually, I picked up the Bible that had been given to us as a wedding present. I opened it at random, hoping against hope for some hope. It was one of those ‘draw a card and see what it says’ moments. My finger fell on a verse from psalm 122. ‘I shall not die; instead I shall live to praise the Lord my God.’

I thought it meant that Henry would live. I thought it meant that he — a steadfast atheist — would become a believer in God because of the miracle of his miracle recovery. I thought that it was a sign.

It was, of course. But not the sign that I was looking for. And even as I felt a surge of hope, the critic denied it. What I was hoping for did not happen to women like me.

I wasn’t a ‘good’ woman. I was ‘nice’ but that’s different. I was a stealthy doormat with an impressive repertoire of hiding in cupboards and running away when threatened and seething with resentment underneath.  I was also a bit of a trollop until I met Henry. Not a very successful trollop, to be honest; more of a would-be trollop really but there had been a fair amount of the floozy present. And now, after the feast, came the reckoning.

Henry Barley

Henry married me because of a hedgehog. I married him because of Steve Winwood.

I had long been cunning in my resistance to marriage, while believing all along that I wanted it.  With middle-class angst, too much puppy fat and enough training in not showing off to make me dull as ditchwater, I believed no one worth having would want me. I didn’t realise that my strategy of falling in love only with those who were unavailable was also an effective defence. I can’t say the men I languished over were commitment-phobes; most of them were seriously committed — committed that is to steam engines, amateur dramatics, their own reflection or their wife.

And yet, one day, at the age of 32, I found myself in the far reaches of China, being proposed to by an ordinary, unassuming, perfectly pleasant grey-haired man, nine years my senior, whom I’d met just seven days before. He had never even kissed me and I’d not looked at him twice (apart from asking him to lend me the money to buy a hedgehog).

We were in the far north east of China to make a documentary and he had just been out late that night to record something known as ‘wild track’ – ambient sound for editing into a documentary.

I heard him come in at about 9pm and took him a mug of cocoa — because I was nice, that’s all. I’d have done it for any of the crew. It was sub-zero outside; there was no heating in the motel and I’d travelled in China for long enough in the 1980s to know that sachets of hot chocolate were a survival aid, not a luxury. You could activate them with the constantly-present thermos of hot water left in every room for the ubiquitous tea.

Politely, I knocked on his door and waited.

He opened it, looked understandably surprised; accepted the metal mug and asked me in.

I went, diffidently. He asked me some questions about myself and indicated that I should sit down so I perched politely on the end of the single bed.

He said ‘thank you for the cocoa.’ And then said something weird that I didn’t catch about the rest of his life.

I said, ‘What?’

‘I’m asking you to marry me,’ he said.

In north-east China in 1988, there were no mobile phones, no email, no social networks and no normal telephones which I could have used to bolster up my defences by phoning a friend. I was as far out of my comfort zone as I possibly could be, filming a TV documentary with a herd of strangers who expected me to know what I was doing when I didn’t. I was cold, tired, terrified, disorientated, lost, lonely and out of barriers.

So I said, ‘Perhaps.’ That was because I was nice. It seemed rude to say ‘You must be out of your tiny mind!’ to someone who was either being very kind or who genuinely was out of their mind.

‘Excuse me, I have to go now,’ I added, politely and got up.

He nodded, smiled and opened the door for me.

Yes, I did look back down the corridor when I got to my room to see if he was watching me. He wasn’t.

I didn’t have any experience of marriage proposals and I was more perplexed than anything. I slept perfectly well until about 6am and then was wide-awake for no obvious reason. It wasn’t the light; that morning was dull and overcast. It wasn’t the birdsong; you don’t get much birdsong when the local population has eaten all the birds. I had politely eaten sparrows on many previous visits to China though I never managed to cope with sucking out their brains bit which was, according to my interpreter, a delicacy.

It was murky and cold so I clambered into every layer of clothing I could find and went out, as bulky as the Michelin Man, for a walk in the birches and aspens of Jilin Province. We were filming at a forestry railway at Shan He Tung and staying in temporary rooms that the lumbermen and railwaymen used while they were chopping trees, replanting and extending the line.

It was only very early autumn but already the trees were mottled with gold and we were high enough for the sun to be rising across the valley below me. It was not going to be a particularly dramatic sunrise; there was too much cloud and the sky was dull grey rather than silver. I walked, my mind full of that day’s filming and whether, as a first-time documentary director, I would be able to continue to fool the rest of the crew that I knew what I was doing. I wasn’t thinking about Henry’s proposal — in the cold light of day, that was plainly ridiculous. But I did have my Walkman on, mostly because the aforementioned lack of birdsong was rather depressing.

Once I was warm enough, I stopped walking and sat down on a log to watch the dawn. I changed the cassette and the introduction to the first track of the often-listened-to Arc of a Diver by Steve Winwood began to play in my headphones.

I put the previous cassette in the pocket of my anorak. And, as I did, I kid you not; a tiny sunbeam broke from the dark clouds and flowed across the fingers holding the cassette recorder. As I looked down at the unexpected warmth, it began to expand, widening until the light shone right into my eyes, making me screen them with my hand.

I stood up, the better to see the emerging dawn and, as I did, Steve began to sing:

‘Stand up in a clear blue morning, until you see what can be. Alone in a cold day dawning, are you still free? Can you be?



‘When some cold tomorrow finds you; when some sad old dream reminds you; how the endless road unwinds you. While you see a chance take it. Find romance, fake it. Because it's all on you.’

‘It’s not a clear, blue morning,’ said the critic. ‘You couldn’t be that stupid!’ it added as my thoughts turned to Henry Barley, still asleep in the basic accommodation below. But I knew, I knew that Nemesis had found me. I knew that I would go back down that hill and say ‘yes’ to marriage to a man I barely knew and certainly didn’t love. It was time. It was time to surrender: to learn how to love a real human being and to learn how to be loved in return.

Henry and I were married four months later. And one year, sixteen days, eight hours and twenty three minutes later, I was a widow.

Returning to a Life of Miracles.

I began this blog several years ago to write stories of my life of miracles. Over time it got diverted into writing articles on prosperity consciousness but, this year, I'm being brave.  I'm going to return to writing stories of my life.


Even more, I'm writing my memoir of a Life of Miracles.


I told one of my best friends this, yesterday, and she said, 'Why?' She genuinely couldn't see the point.


Ten years ago my (now ex) agent said, 'Nobody wants to hear about you dear.'


Well, it doesn't matter if they don't want to hear, because I have a voice and I've realised that I want to speak. We all have a voice and we all have a right to speak. It is in the speaking that the power resides and it is in the overcoming what they think that we can begin to thrive.


I want to talk about being engaged at 32 and widowed at 33. I want to talk about having a life-changing encounter with a giant barracuda. I want to talk about riding on the back of a Bengal tiger. I want to talk about emigrating to Montana for a whole 11 months and being the first person in the world legally to get a dog from the USA to the UK without quarantine.


I want to talk about giving up my home and losing all my money, about working through debt, getting through divorce, loving again and about learning to round myself out and owning myself. I want to be amazed at all the miracles (and tragedies) of my life and to share them with anyone who might just want to hear about me.


And I want to talk about God. And how, in the midst of tragedy, dispossession and grief, I knew that I was going to find God, nail His shoes to the floor and ask Him what he meant by it all. I had to understand why and how all this made sense. 


I am not going to blame, bitch or push against. It is what it is and it's wonderfully okay.


If you want to join me, you'll be very welcome. But I'm going to write it anyway.

Prosperity Teachings of the Bible Made Easy - free chapter

Here is a excerpt from my new book Prosperity Teachings of the Bible Made Easy.

This is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

Chapter Four Life and times in Biblical days. 

© Maggy Whitehouse 2012.

It’s not easy to understand the Bible with a 21^st century mind. For a start, we bring so many of our beliefs and projections to the contents. If we have learnt that God is cruel, we will see a cruel God; if we believe that God is good, we will justify or skip over any apparent opposition to that view. If we are Christian, we will read the Hebrew Testament through very different eyes from those of a Jew, an agnostic or an atheist. It is important to understand that we cannot remove ourselves and our beliefs from what is thought to be the world’s best-selling book (six billion sold according to Bookseller World and countless others throughout antiquity). And if, as most of us do, we have specific beliefs about money, wealthy people and authority, then we will be reading through those eyes also.

It is also important to realise that people in ancient times did not think the way we do. The people whose stories are being told did not comprehend our great cities with their rush-rush mentality. The population of Rome at its height was approximately one million people, about the same as 19^th century London — then the largest city in the world. And Rome is not where the stories take place. They happen in mostly rural societies where the night sky was regarded with awe and fables were told to explain the purpose and the meaning of existence.

People in Biblical times did not experience the news in the way we do. Details of events from another part of the country — let alone another part of the world — could take weeks, months or years to arrive. There was no entertainment such as books to read. In fact, even in cosmopolitan Rome in Jesus’ time, ninety five per cent of the population could not read or write; if anyone needed to send a letter, they hired one of the five per cent, usually a professional scribe, and the recipients the other end would hire another scribe to read the letter to them.

Even those who could read text did not do so silently as we do; they read out loud so that others could share the information. That is how people were taught to read — the concept of reading quietly was unknown in Roman times or before. Roman villas even had private reading rooms where the literate could read out loud to themselves without disturbing the rest of the family. It was only in the time of St. Augustine (354-430) that we hear about the first silent reading developed, perhaps, from the requirements of monastic life

Without easy access to information, the only entertainments available once work had finished and supper was eaten were music or stories. And the music generally involved stories. So a travelling storyteller or holy man with new tales, teachings or ideas, most likely, would have been a very welcome guest in a village. Of course, some of them might have been controversial and sent away with their tails between their legs but even that would be an event to be debated for months in places where very little other news occurred.

This aspect of literacy is important in the discussion of Biblical wealth as

Jewish religious teachings were preserved in sacred scrolls which were written by professional scribes, just as they still are today in the Torah scrolls in any synagogue. Sacred work could not just be written out by anyone; it required an expert who would take a great deal of time and effort to copy out the whole of the Sefer Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Testament) and every version had to be perfect. It could take a scribe 18 months or maybe even more to complete one scroll, during which time he could earn no other living. Therefore, wealthy benefactors were required to pay for religious writings whether that payment was in kind or in silver or gold.

This applied to a certain extent in the Christian world, also, in that benefactors gave money to monasteries, where monk-scribes would write out beautiful, illuminated copies of the Bible. However this practice decreased dramatically with the invention of the printing press in the mid fifteenth century. Also, the Christian scribes were men who had made vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and lived in celibate communities. In the Jewish world, the scribe, like the Rabbi would have been married, with a home and family to maintain. This distinction is very important in assessing the differences between the views expressed in the Old and New Testaments; the idea of a celibate, community life was very foreign in pre-Christian days where God’s commandment to “populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it.” (Genesis 9:7) was taken very seriously. It still is by orthodox Jews. In ancient days, the exceptions were the inner circles of the Essenes who lived in Judea and a group called the Therapeutae who lived outside Alexandria in Egypt.

In early Biblical times, society depended mostly upon trade between individuals. Money, as we would understand it, was rare. It was first used at all approximately 500 years before the birth of Jesus. So, in much of the Hebrew Testament times, no coins were used and people bartered goods instead. The aristocracies and royal courts used jewels and precious metals as a form of currency but everyday people dealt with a more practical form of exchange such as swapping one produce for another.

As societies became more and more influenced by Greek, and later, Roman civilization, this like-for-like barter was replaced by weights of precious metals and then by coins. Generally in the Hebrew Testament, when an amount of silver or gold is given, such as 10 shekels of silver, this refers to the actual weight of silver, not 10 silver coins. Pre-weighed metal coins, which were given the same names as the weight units, became a more convenient means of exchange as soon as travel became more commonplace and easier with the expansion of the Roman Empire.

Therefore, a great deal of the riches mentioned to in the Old Testament referred to a more general prosperity than a financial one. Signs of God’s favor were seen in happiness and health as well as in business dealings. People as far back as Abraham and Sarah’s times were just as frequently wandering cattle-keepers as they were tillers of the ground so they would not necessarily have houses full of possessions in the way we do. In a nomadic, rural society, your wealth was pretty much everything you could carry or herd.

However, in Genesis 13:2, Abraham is described as being “very rich in livestock and in silver and in gold” so he is being portrayed as an aristocrat among men in a society where precious metals were deemed as valuable as they are today and were often worn in jewelry as an outer sign of wealth.

With the Roman conquest of Judea, money became much more commonplace and was, quite possibly, associated with the hated invaders. Those who collaborated and traded with the occupying force would also have been hated and despised, as has been the case in every century since. Therefore it is entirely possible that Jesus and his followers might have looked upon hard cash with a jaundiced eye.

However, this view does sit at odds with Jesus’ tolerance of, if not friendship with, tax collectors. These people (as is often still the case) were disliked by their fellow men, especially the Pharisees and the scribes. Tax collectors to them were “especially wicked sinners” (Matthew 9:10-11; Luke 15:1-3; Mark 2:15). Reputedly, the collectors were allowed to gather more than the government asked and keep the excess amount.  Some of these tax collectors were Roman but others were Jews.

Jesus set a startling new precedent by mingling with the Jewish tax collectors.  He ate with them (Mark 2:16), showed them mercy and compassion (Luke 19:9), and he even chose a tax collector (Matthew) as one of his disciples (Matthew 9:9).  Jesus even compared their willingness to repent of their sins with the arrogance of the Pharisees and scribes (Luke 18:9-14; Matthew 9:11-13).

Jesus himself is customarily assumed to have been poor although, I would suggest, much of this is reading of the Gospels through the eyes of a later-developed Christian poverty consciousness (see chapter eight). Popular opinion certainly sees him as a poor, itinerant preacher, despite the fact that, in the Gospel of Matthew, it’s stated that the Magi brought him incredible wealth in the form of gold, frankincense and myrrh which were three of the most valuable commodities of the time.

He was also fond of eating and drinking with his friends. “The son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!” (Luke 7:34) so, although it would appear that early Christianity embraced the ideas of poverty, chastity and martyrdom with fervor, Jesus himself appeared to like having fun and good food. His very first miracle was turning water into wine so that there would be enough to make everything merry at the Marriage at Cana (John 2:1-11).

Much of the poverty consciousness that developed may have been due to St. Paul’s teachings and his acceptance of all-comers to the new faith. Paul indicated strongly that he believed that Jesus would return very soon and that both belief in him as Lord and a life of great goodness were required in advance of the Day of Judgment. There would be no point in amassing riches as it was all going up in smoke very soon.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:2-11, Paul wrote: "For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober."

The stories of saints and holy people within Christianity have always emphasized that they walked away from both marriage and money; that martyrdom was seen as holy and self-denial sacred. This is still seen even today in allegations that Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta believed that suffering would bring people closer to Jesus. The Lancet and The British Medical Journal have both criticized Mother Theresa and her staff for their failure to give pain killers. Sanal Edamaruki writing for Rationalist International claimed that in her homes for the dying, one could “hear the screams of people having maggots tweezered from their open wounds without pain relief” adding that Mother Theresa’s philosophy was that it was ‘the most beautiful gift for a person that he can participate in the sufferings of Christ.”

So, again, we see differing views on worth or prosperity in interpretation of the Bible’s teachings. Jesus and those who followed him lived at a time of great revolution in social affairs — a change as great as the invention of flight in the late 19^th century. However, we also see that Jesus did not automatically judge those who were wealthy — or even those who were thought to be misusing wealth by the general populace.

You can purchase this book in physical form or Kindle on Amazon.com or or Amazon.co.uk.

The New Year Re-Solution

As featured on Unity FM - Touching the Stillness with Rev. Paulette Pipe.                                                                      
 
Click here to go directly to Maggy's website.

The most important thing to remember about New Year Resolutions is that the part of you that makes them is not the part of you that has to keep them.

The part of you that has to keep them is not, as a rule, remotely interested in the intention behind the resolution. It didn’t make the promise so it doesn’t see any reason whatsoever to remind you to keep it or support you in keeping it. It doesn’t want you thinner, fitter, smarter or more adventurous. Its entire purpose is to keep things the same as they were.
Why? Because you’re alive. The human ego’s job is just that: to keep you alive. It’s the part of our psyche that works with the tribe to keep everyone going and working together. So far, it’s been doing okay (you are alive aren’t you?). It’s really not interested in whether you’re actually happy or engaged in self improvement because both of those may threaten the tribe or make you an outcast.


The ego is all about ‘better the devil you know’ because the devil you know hasn’t killed you yet. It may have allowed you to be depressed or despairing, experiencing great highs and lows or just experiencing a gnawing low-grade unhappiness. It knows that those are the normal human condition — after all, that’s what it sees over and over again as ‘the truth in the workplace, the TV soaps and the media.


Pretty much everything in the media now tells us that everything has gone wrong and that there’s still a recession and there’s so much to moan about (and there are so many more smart appliances with which to spread the moans!).

The communal ego-consciousness is about expecting others to make it better, not about seeing that it is all a reflection of our own psyches.

We’ll do our bit by giving to charity (which gives us a temporary feel-good effect that the ego is happy with because it fits in with the tribe and it won’t last). We’ll intend to make 2013 better and we’ll start off consciously and with great hope. And sometimes we’ll make it. If the thing we want sorted is genuinely threatening our life, our relationship or our health, we may well summon up the courage (cour-age, of the heart) to persist and to achieve our goal.

And that’s the secret. The heart level of the human psyche, is also the soul-level. If we want, from the soul, to make a change, then we will have wonderful good intentions. But this level is the one that initiates rather than maintains. The ego is the one that maintains.


And of course, if we don’t make it, we have a wonderful weapon for beating ourselves up and getting ourselves right back to the starting point with even less courage to try again.

If you want to change life for the better this New Year, you have to work from heart and soul. And this can, truly, be the best indicator you can have to whether you really are working from the heart and soul. If you don’t find the discipline to achieve your goal, then you are not. You are still being run by the ego.

This is not wrong; it is not bad; it just is. But it’s very definitely worth knowing. So many people say they are ‘coming from the heart’ but the non-development of their lives shows that this is the ego deluding them. It likes doing that. The ego is very good at fooling you into thinking it’s your heart.

Working from the heart level means that you can, will and do apply self-discipline. Discipline or, in the Kabbalistic system Gevurah, is part of the soul’s formation.  Spiritual growth is not comfortable and rarely convenient and you can’t do it without self-discipline.


But what you can do is engage with the ego. Then it will help you and that makes it much easier. Instead of joining that gym or going on the crash diet which will make you ‘perfect’ by Easter, try small, achievable everyday goals. Things that you can re-commit to every day rather than resent doing and then forget to do.

For example, perhaps you’d like to increase your knowledge of your subject or line of expertise. But you’d also like to be thinner and fitter. So how about you sit yourself down and talk to yourself kindly, so informing the ego instead of just imposing a rule on it. Firstly, thank it for keeping you alive up until now. Usually we shout at ourselves for being where we are but the ego’s done its job so it’s both daft and self-destructive to complain at it for doing what it was created to do.

Then, appreciate all that is good in your life  ... every little thing from being able to have a cup of tea and go to bed in your own bed at night to being able to see and hear (actually these are not ‘little’ things!). Then think of four things you’d like to make a resolution about such as sorting out your work, getting a new job, research, slimming, exercise, five-a-day etc. etc. Then decide that every day you are going to do one of those four things, including the appreciations. So, you are going to either think of ten appreciations a day or take 15 minutes exercise or cut back on your food for the day or read an improving book or watch an instructional DVD every day.

That will be more like play and it’s much easier for the ego to agree. What’s more, you have to make a conscious choice which one which always engages the soul level. On most days you may find yourself doing more than one of the intentions. And even if you forget all day, you can still do ten appreciations at the end of the day and you still haven’t broken your promise to yourself. That will help you feel good about yourself and that’s the key. Help your ego to help you and to move at a pace that doesn’t feel threatening and you really could find a whole new you by Easter. Or, perhaps even better, you could be deeply at peace with the you that you are now.

Wishing you a wonderful, peaceful and plentiful 2013.

Reclaiming the miracle of Christmas

 'What the festival of lights really stands for today is a reaffirmation of hope, a renewed commitment to friendship and goodwill, and a religiously sanctioned celebration of the simple - and some not so simple - joys of life.' The Times of India.

The quotation above is about Diwali, the Indian festival of light. The festival celebrates the victory of good over evil, light over darkness and knowledge over ignorance. It’s almost exactly the same at the mystical root as the Solstice welcoming the new year and Hanukkah, the miracle of the lighting of the menorah in Judaism.

Never is this more important than when we think about Christmas...!

The trouble with Christmas is that it’s a bit like the phrase: 'When you’re up to your neck in alligators, it's easy to forget that the initial objective was to drain the swamp.'

This time of the year people start complaining about the expense and commerciality of Christmas. This year, with the continuing belief that there is something 'wrong' going on in the world's finances, you may be dreading the expense of Christmas. But to name something is to give it power, and what have we done? We gave the financial situation in the UK a cute, alliterative name – “the credit crunch.” Worldwide it’s 'the recession.' So we have made it real.

Don't doubt for a minute the power of humanity to make thing real - a truth is only a belief held by a certain number of people and passed on to others who, in turn, believe it. By believing it, we make it real.

Yes it may seem tough to change your mind in the face of such widespread external belief but it is possible. It is our choice.

Right now we have to decide whether to give 'the situation' more energy through moaning and complaining and believing what is said on the News or we can choose to look for prosperity, health and joy in the coming of Winter. By looking for the hope and the glory we can change the world from within.

It's not them who controls our lives, whatever we may have thought, it's us.

So perhaps the real secret of Christmas this year is to use the idea of a “recession” for good. To simplify something that has got out of hand ... this is the perfect time to say 'No!' to anything you don't truly want to do at Christmas. Commit instead to something that would have meaning instead of a season of angst and worry.

Only we can reclaim the miracles and mystery that have existed at this time of the year for thousands of years - way longer than Christianity has been in place.

I’ve often wondered whether, without women, Christmas might be a much happier (albeit slimmer and drabber) affair. It is horribly likely that, without the duty and fervour of women, the majority of blokes would probably be happy to pick up whatever’s remotely turkey-like that’s still in the local supermarket freezer on Christmas Eve, some beer and a bag of party poppers.

Maybe they’re right...We seem to run ourselves ragged with all the preparations to the extent that we overspend, over extend ourselves, over-complicate things and try to live up to some incredibly unrealistic standard of hospitality and catering...not to mention the horrors of some members of the family visiting —or events that we long outgrew but are still expected to attend—and make our children attend ‘because it’s traditional.’

Don’t get me wrong, I ‘do’ the whole Christmas thing – there isn’t a single part of the ritual that I don’t love. But it took me years to learn to re-engage with the magic that does make it such a special time of year – whatever your faith.

'But I can't have a simple Christmas because of the children,' you may say.

Perhaps the worst misuse of Christmas is the idea that ‘it’s for the children.’ In a way that’s true but only in the way that we too need to be children again in order to see the miracles and magic of Christmas in us. That saying of Jesus’s about having to become a child again to enter the Kingdom of Heaven is the answer. The ‘child’ is the part of us that expects miracles and magic. It’s also the ego – and for most of us, it’s been overwhelmed with ‘duty’ and ‘shoulds’ and other horrors for so long that it simply dreads the word ‘Christmas.’

It is the ego of the child that demands the same presents as everyone else. It's the ego of we adults that thinks that we have to give those presents in order to be 'good' parents. But what about giving an experience of spirit instead?

So what is this Christmas miracle all about? It’s about the rebirth of the real you; the peeling off of the outer layers that hide the gold within; the sloughing off of all the past year that you’d like to leave behind and a commitment towards creating a better, happier life.

You don’t have to be a Christian to see the wonderful, deep inner meaning of the Winter Solstice. Nowadays, we tend to focus more on the New Year as a new start to life (and use that for a guilt trip too!) but, in fact, it’s on December 25th that we have the first, visible evidence that the sun is returning and that spring will come once again.

From the day we first started appreciating the cycles of nature, humanity has celebrated the Solstices. The Winter Solstice heralds the coming of the Light; the return of the Sun—or the birth of the Son—and I believe that there is a deep primal need in our animal soul to celebrate it whether our busy, social, disbelieving selves deem it relevant or not!

The Winter Solstice is a kind of choice between life or death. We may know that the sun returns because it happens every year. But the ancient celebrations are just as much about our willing our own inner source of light to rekindle at this time as they are about the external sun.

The dark days of winter are when the roots go down and consolidate for new growth. One of my sacred rituals this time of year is planting prepared hyacinths which must be kept in the dark and cool for at least a month so that they can develop roots. Then, after Christmas, they will grow and give beautiful colour and scent to herald the often long-awaited new life of spring.

Nearly all the major religions have special symbolism around this time. It’s often said that the birth of Jesus was placed on December 25th because it was the ancient celebration of Saturnalia and that Christianity ‘stole’ a great deal of the pagan symbolism.

Two main theories compete about this - one claims that in A.D. 274, the Roman Emperor Aurelian inaugurated December 25th as the pagan "Birth of the Unconquered Sun" celebration, at the calendar point when daylight began to lengthen. Supposedly, Christians then borrowed the date and devised Christmas to compete with paganism.

But William Tighe, a church history specialist at Pennsylvania's Muhlenberg College, puts forward the exact opposite theory —that Aurelian created a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Tighe says that the pagans-first theory only originated three centuries ago in the writings of Protestant historian Paul Ernst Jablonski and Catholic monk Jean Hardouin. Tighe acknowledged that the first hard evidence of Christmas occurring on Dec. 25 isn't found until A.D. 336 and the date only became a fixed festival in Constantinople in 379.

Whichever it was, there have long been a series of religious festivals going into—and out of—the darkest days and it’s a wonderful reclamation of Christmas to do something personal and spiritual to mark the ending of one year and the resurgence of the light in you for the coming year. Who knows, it might make the rest of the celebrations fun? And, even if you still think Christmas is going to be hell, perhaps one of this year’s resolutions could be to promise yourself that next Christmas you will actually do what you would like to do...

Christmas/Solstice rituals:

Plan a little time on your own – or with friends if they want to join you. Find something that represents the ‘old you’ of 2011 whether it’s something you’ve grown out of or something that represents a difficult time that you have gone through and then create a little ceremony of release (including burning the symbol if that is possible). Dress up in something you love to wear, light a couple of candles, and take a few deep, connected breaths. As you let go of the object, say something like ‘I release this representation of pain to the Light and move forward to my Higher Good.’

Then take a moment to ask your Higher Self, Guardian Angel or the Source of All to watch over you, protect and guide you to a happier life in the next year.

Fill an atomiser with water containing a few drops of refreshing aromatherapy oils such as lemon or grapefruit plus some Flower Remedies – such as Rescue Remedy, Walnut (protection from outside energies/help with change), Willow (dissolves resentment), Wild Oat (for uncertainty about your path in life) or Holly (anger and hatred) and spray around the whole of your home saying ‘In the name of the Source this room/house and all that is in it, is blessed, cleansed and filled with light.’

Make a prosperity wheel or dream board. This is a montage of all the things, experiences and happy times that you would like to draw to you. Instructions on my website (www.maggywhitehouse.com). This works by reprogramming the subconscious to look for what you want instead of what you don’t want.

Write a letter to a friend the other side of the world (or to someone closer if necessary - but someone with whom you only correspond infrequently - someone without email probably!). Date this letter 20th December 2012 and in it tell them of all the wonderful things that have happened to you throughout 2012. And invent everything you could possibly want from a perfect home, partner or job to living in the Maldives.

Don't worry about seeming grasping or greedy - that fear is probably what has held you back for so long. There is a reason why Luis Vuitton bags are made and houses and cars are built –so that people can enjoy them. And if you are wealthy, you can do SO much more for others. To think that you can't be rich because of the starving poor is an argument full of holes. If you are wealthy you can donate; teach and offer time to ensure that they too learn how to be prosperous like you.

And if you're now saying 'but my friend would hate me if I sent him/her a letter like that' then I’d suggest that you find a friend who wouldn't. And that's probably the best task you could set yourself this year - to be with people who allow you to be prosperous. If there's no one, then plan to send it to me, via Facebook, because I'll be SO happy for you!

The letter will work best if it's full of enthusiasm and acknowledgement of the good in your life. It's great if you can start off with something that you actually know IS going to happen. That gives you confidence.

Will it happen? Well, it's got a better chance of happening if you do write the letter than if you don't. If you put it away somewhere safe and forget all about it, the chances are pretty high that at least 60% of it will either be with you or on its way by the date you put on it. My letter last year came 65% true...no complaints about that!

Wishing you the perfect Christmas time...