My daughter gave me Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth for Chistmas last year. And some rose lotion. I was more excited about the lotion. After I opened the package, I looked up to see her smiling at me. She said “Enjoy it Mom. It’s one of my favorites”. I honestly had a hard time getting into it. But eventually, I was caught up in all of it’s revealing insightful delightful words. It took me six months. I became conscience.
One day I was showing a friend some of the latest decorating in a guest room and she zeroed in on my book on the night stand. So I picked it up and said I recommend this book. It is like my bible. It seriously had curled and tattered corners and looked like it was an old rag. She reached out and took the book from me. I almost didn’t let her have it. She looked it over some, nodded and tucked it under her arm. Oh my God. Then I teased her and said I wanted it back asap. I felt foolish. Didn’t she realize how attached I was.
The next day, I told Jenny what happened and waited to hear her disappointment and admonishment. She just laughed pleasantly and said that she has given away more than 10 to her friends. Some find their way back and some find a home. She said not everyone understands it. Not everyone is conscience. One by one, everyone in her life will be exposed and the world will be a better place. One person at a time.
Christmas is next month and I hope I get another book. And some more lotion.
[This was originally posted as part of this conversation. ~ Eds.]
What’s the best holiday present you ever received?
How funny....i only very recently (within last week) read the coconut oil articles on the web. (100 uses, 80 uses etc.) so i bouht some and ordered some from amazon. (Im a stockpiler.)
Have started trying some of the uses. I tried using it a
My first microwave. I was in the middle of finishing my bachelor’s degree, I was trying to fit 48 hours of “things to do” into 24 hours. I was exhausted. We had small children. My husband was so perceptive of my plight. He said he tried to think of ways to make my job as homemaker easier. So he bought me one of the first Amana Radar Ranges. I think that was in the 70′s. The thought behind the gift increased its value a 1000 fold. That microwave still works.
That was a very thoughtful gift in deed. I remember my first microwave. Huge and 10 times more expensive. But I loved it.
I’ve also read A New Earth. It was a gift to myself. I joined Oprahs weekly interview series with the author, they were so good. I read every page with such great expectations. When I was through reading I was angry. Not because the book reading was over but because the message stirred in me some feelings of not being true to myself. I began innately applying some of his principles and in a few months the whole idea of “loving myself” became so vibrant and real that I felt I’d been blessed. For years I had kept asking myself why certain people acted the way they did. Or why did certain people treat me and disrespect me the way they did. I GOT MY ANSWER. It was so simple. I’ve gone back and read parts of the book again to see if I understand them differently. It has been a great experience. I think that I will give the book as a gift to friends. What a great way to spread consciousness.
So true. Whenever I would start to talk about “things”, she would mention my painbody and it would stop me. I didn’t even know what she was talking about but it sure took the conversation a different direction. I learned that my ego wouldn’t have it’s way while we were talking. I just spent a wonderful time in Colo. with my Daughter and her family.
It was hard for me to get into the book because he would say “that is to say” way too often. It annoyed me and my ego was trying to make me lose interest in it.
Don’t you think that the world needs more conscious people? There’s a negative influence out in the world that thwarts any effort to make it better. Some would call the influence the devil. So we have to stay focused and help others all we can to make a difference.
I believe that everything is connected. When we do or think positively or negatively, it has a direct impact on our surroundings and on ourselves. We may not always see it but it’s there. The devil is the summation of all negative and evil things and it has several faces. One is the devil which I think is the scariest one. We need to have a face for everything. Have you noticed that? We can’t just be, we have to give substance to everything so we can identify and control it. One thing I have learned is that we control very little. Because everything happens in the now, we can’t control it. We can go with the flow, feel it and learn from it and move on. Anyway, I know you asked a rhetorical question and got this. I could write alot of this stuff and words could never really explain it, why? The more I write something down, the more I identify with it and the more it controls me. The ego gets in the way again. Now, that is to say, (lol) we learn from our actions and do things based on our experiences. So the ego controls us in that respect. If we could make more decisions based on our being minus our painbodies, wouldn’t the world be a better place?
You explained that very well . . “The devil is the summation of all negative and evil things . . . We need to have a face for everything.” Yes. That is so true. I like the way you think. I’ve often thought that our need to explain things has brought this idea of our existence to a level less than it is because there are no words to really explain it. I would add to “going along with the flow, feeling it, learning from it and moving” on a knowing that comes from the experience. The world would be better if all of us could come from the place of being in the now.
Amen! What is so amazing about the now is how we don’t live in the now. It’s the only thing that counts. Time is wasted thinking about the past in negatives. It’s over. Time is wasted thinking about negatives in the future. Why borrow trouble. Ever notice how things almost never turn out how we imagined it would?
Things never turn out how we imagined from both a good and a bad perspective. I learned a lesson when raising my “challenging” daughter. She would start on Monday making all these far out plans for the weekend with me constantly saying oh you can’t do that or something along those lines. Her plans never materialized and soon I learned to keep my mouth shut till she was walking out the door. Then I would ask who, what, where, when and why and kabosh what I needed to. It sure saved me from a lot of fear of the future moments. I think now that I don’t “anticipate” so much and just allow my life to unfold I hardly ever have times when something is a disappointment. I like that. And the negative stuff? I just acknowledge it and begin to act on changing it. So far it has worked for me. But I always look for more understanding and greater wisdom about life. Nice sharing thoughts with you.
It seems like it’s always someone we love who helps us learn. Good and bad. My children have had there fair share of problems. I think I’m the problem child in the family though. My kids are really close and they talk over things when they need to. Since so much of this is new to me, I’ve been experimenting on ways to deal with problems. You know, the ones I let become problems and I’m finding that my shift in perspective makes a positive difference. What comes to my mind is just recently at work, I have an issue with one of my co-workers. She is so self centered that it annoys me and others. Within the first 30 minutes after I walked in the door, she did 3 things that were so disrespectful to me that I was boiling. Wallowing in my painbody. I consciously made myself think of her in such a positive way, believe me, it took every ounce of civility in my being to do it. When I got control of my thoughts, the most amazing thing happened. She walked into my room and was the pleasantest person she has ever been to me. So much so that I started looking for a doppelganger. My lesson confirmed to me how really connected we are. We have the power. I think of it as shifting. Think I’m crazy yet? Coincidence? Don’t think so. I’m enjoying this too.
If you are crazy then I’m crazy too. I’m not sure that being crazy or whatever we are is bad. It is working for us and that is all that matters. Good job, keep it up.
I heard something from my first female minster several years ago that I try to meditate on “you are the total sum of everyone that ever loved you and everyone that didn’t”This helps me stay more positive.
WE were children on a farm,in upstate ny. WITH CHANGES OF SEASONS. I DID & DO ENJOY EASTER TIME BEST !
WE DIDNT NEED HEAVY COATS OR BOOTS! (AND WE GOT NEW CLOTHES & SHOES FOR EASTER!!)
I looked forword to them each year.!!
THAKYOU TO ALL,THAT MADE THEM AVAILABLE TO US. GOD BLESS
I remember that at Easter too. Fresh start. New clothes. Seemed like we got a lot of clothes for Christmas which is why I never gave too many to my family. But we really never had much so it was the way to make dollars stretch. We appreciated it too.
The best gift I ever received came from my sister Pam, when we were both in our mid-twenties, and Pam was suffering from end-stage Cystic Fibrosis.
Christmas was coming. We each knew it might Pam’s last. We wanted to give each other something very meaningful.
Pam sat at our parent’s kitchen table with needle and thread as snow fell on the frozen stream in front of the house, and softly graced the pine boughs. Tenderly, with her slender fingers, she smoothed the soft gold cotton she had chosen. She unraveled the measuring tape, considering the many inches, and carefully marked the fabric. She lifted the shears and slowly, meticulously, cut the cloth.
Miles away in the city where I lived, I threw my windows open to the cold. Sleet glistened on the sidewalk. I removed the lampshades and turned the tri-lites up to their brightest wattage. I spread newspaper on the living room parquet, and knelt before my grandmother’s old wooden hope chest, rescued of late from her backyard shanty. I put John Denver (Pam’s favorite) on the stereo, vacuumed the chest’s innards, donned a pair of rubber gloves, dipped a brush in paint remover and stroked the surface of the wood with great affection. The finish creased and bubbled up. Fumes stung my eyes. My lungs ached as I inhaled. Flecks of remover splattered and burned the exposed skin in tiny spots on my wrists and cheeks.
Pam sipped her tea and smiled at the squares of bright cotton paisley she had trimmed, knowing how much I loved the colors brick red and teal. She turned their edges under one by one then pressed them flat with a hot iron. She dropped a spool of thread onto the sewing machine, pulled the strand and licked its end with her pink tongue, winding it around and down. She stopped to cough, then contemplated the eye of the needle, deftly poked the thread through, and gently pulled. With careful concentration, she ran the edges of each square beneath the sharp, flailing tooth of the machine.
I scraped the tar-like finish from the chest, imagining my sister’s face on Christmas morning. I took the steel wool in my hands and rubbed the naked walnut until it glowed. I glued and clamped the broken leg. I threw on an extra sweater and made myself a cup of tea. The frozen sleet had turned to snow and back again. Colored lights twinkled in the twilight from other balconies. I oiled the hinges and removed the cellophane from the package of fine-grade sandpaper.
Pam draped the soft gold cloth across her knees and turned the compressor on to have her mask. She basted on the paisley squares by hand in two neat rows. “It’s looking good,” my mother said.
Pam smiled. “I hope she’ll be surprised.”
With tender care I brushed new varnish on the wood, and gently sanded when each coat had dried. When that was done, I polished the warm, golden finish with flannel cloths and lemon oil until it glowed. “It’s looking good,” I told my mother on the phone, and smiled. “I hope she’ll be surprised.”
Pam unrolled the fluffy batting and smoothed it into place between the lengths of fabric she had sewn. By hand she knotted strands of soft green yarn between the paisley squares on what had now become a quilt, and hand-stitched the finished edge.
On Christmas morning we exchanged our handmade gifts.
“This to keep you warm,” she smiled.
I smiled right back. “This is to fill with hope.”
Pam passed away at the age of 26 in September of 1980, but almost thirty years later her precious, hand-stitched quilt is still keeping me warm.
http://www.sixtyfiverosesthebook.com
Your story touches me deeply. Thank you for sharing that. She is alive in you and in that special quilt. God Bless and Merry Christmas!
My best gift ever was my first grand-child. I didnt think so @ first, my daughter was a senior n highschool. I remember saying over an over “Oh my GOD”! My life @ that time wasnt clear-I was just living 1 day @ a time. He woke me up an made me look @ myself again-I love him dearly-he is my heart-I would not change anything if I had 2 go back. He is 5 now an I still love watchin his face-he is my angel.
And he’s very lucky to have you!
3 yrs ago I received a dark lilac couch throw knitted by a coworker. It was made out of the softest yarn and so inviting until I smelled it, ugh..yuck..cigarette smoke. She was a wonderful knitter but chained smoked. But her heart was certainly in her lovely creation for sure. So I washed it on delicate and fluffed it dry. It came out lovely! Well on that Jan 3rd only a week or so after Xmas I slipped in the shower and broke my knee cap OUCH! And the whole time I was recovering I would cover myself in that throw and feel so toasty. That was a wonderful Xmas gift!!
Your co-worker really values your friendship. Can you imagine the hrs of knitting that went into it? A great gift indeed. Sorry about your kneecap.
I know my best holiday present I received is actually 2. The first was the year my son was born. 1983. I was living in NC and he was only 6mos old, but the best part was it snowed and it was beautiful that night and my husband and I took him out doors and our neighborhood had done the lumaries and it was just beautiful. The 2nd was when my 2nd and present husband came down from Bflo., NY a week early to celebrate the holdidays with me and my 2children. You see I had just gotten engaged at Thanksgiving up at Niagara Falls, NY. It is special because I was widowed and raising my 2 kids alone down in NC. It was a complete surpraise the night because he wasn’t suppose to get her til the following morning. But he had worked 12 hrs. and drove straight thru to surprise me . It was so special I have tears falling down my face. My kids were so happy to because he came with lots of gifts from his family so it was like Santa came early. Happy Holidays
serval years ago we had hardly any money and i went to costco shopping and i found a gift in the parking lot, I turned it in. But they said you can keep it. I was very happy because it was a table set that i needed. It was a small gift, but earlier i was praying to my believer and said” I need a sign please send one and he did
My engaement ring, and a few years later my second child, on Dec. 15th….nothing like a new baby at Christmas
My granddaughter will be one on the 15th. She was a great present too.
My first and only daughter borned on the sixteenth. What a gift!
It was December 2004 when I got the best Christmas Gift ever. But it was a belated Christmas gift.
On Christmas day of that year the only actual gift I received was a web cam from one of my sons and his wife. They would soon be moving across country and wanted me to be able to talk with & see my grandkids on line. It was a wonderful gift with wonderful love behind it. Little did I know at the time that there was a greater gift in store for me.
Later Christmas day I tripped and fell, hitting my face on the Travertine tile floor (NO I do NOT drink alcohol …LOL). I split my lip, broke my nose, blackened my eyes and the phone I had been talking on hit between the floor and my left collar bone and left a huge burse. I looked like the bad end of an ally fight. By the time I got out of the ER my upper lip hung down almost to the bottom of my chin.
2 days after Christmas I received what I believe to be my greatest Gift. I met my wonderful husband Gil. I had been listening to country music in a yahoo chat room, talking with a couple of friends when he IM’d me and started asking a few strange questions. “When did you change your yahoo ID?” “Why are you here in this chat room.” After I told him I had always had that ID and ask what business it was of his if I was in a chat room it hit him that I was NOT his step daughter. You see part of my ID was ‘llacey’ and his step daughters’ real name is Lacey so he had assumed that it might be her.
Well as they say the rest is history… But I will tell you that I lied to him that first meeting. He asked me if I had a web cam so he could see what I look like. I lied and said NO. #1 I know that there are creeps out there that want to see you nude in front of the web cam… That wasn’t going to happen. #2 Would YOU want anyone to see you if your face looked like a Mac Truck had played hop scotch on it? I think not. I e-mailed him a recent photo of me and called it good. Later I did tell him that I had a cam and WHY I had lied to him (I hadn’t told him about the face plant into the tile floor until this time). He forgave me my fib and we still laugh about it today.
It’s funny how things turn out. I don’t believe in coincidence.
Neither do I …what I didn’t say was that he was using his sister-in-laws computer and she had goofed up the color on her web cam….the first time I saw him he looked like the Jolly Green Giant…he was all green.
I will also tell you that when I saw gim I reconized him….no we had never met here in this life…But I knew we had been great friends in the Spirit world before this. Maybe thats why I looked beyond the green face.
Like I said, it was meant to be. My husband and I met very early. He was still in HS and I was 19, already married once and had it annulled. We got married in April and he graduated in May. When we first laid eyes on each other, there was this unexpected total acceptance we both felt. I balked at the swiftness of how everything happened. Even said, sure let’s get married in a year figuring that if it didn’t last, and we broke up, well one bad marriage was enough. We were married 7mos later. He’s my soul mate and it was meant to be. Looking at our 4 children, how else could it have been?
a guava tree from a coworker. IT came from Colombia. It was a little bitty thing. Now is big and it grows the best, sweetest guayabas or guavas.
How fun. I don’t have a green thumb so I wouldn’t last in my home. I do love them though.
this thing grows anywhere. But of course i live in So. Florida, that helps!
Maybe. It’s pretty green around here though. Even the fish has a green thumb. there’s green stuff growing in it’s bowl.
this thing grows anywhere. But of course i live in So. Florida, that helps!
The man in my life said “I Love You.” Totally unexpected.
Condgrats. I know the feeling.
My first Christmas with my man (to whom I am married now..
4 years ago: I have a daughter who lives in Missouri, and I live in Washington State. She has 4 children, 3 of whom I had never met, and one who was 18 mo. old when i last saw them. (He was 10 that year) I earn enough to survive, but not enough for extras like plane fare. For Christmas he bought me a plane ticket to go to Missouri to see my girl and meet my grand kids. It still makes me teary, and that’s also when I knew if I didn’t already love him, that would have done it!!
He is most definitely a keeper. That had to be the reunion of the year for everyone. God bless!