A Satisfying Way to Spend New Year's Eve

Christmas 2013 is but a happy memory. It was a day full of activity, but the activity was focused around people we love, making it one of the best days of the year.

Now, we are turning to another favorite holiday: New Year’s Eve. I love this day because it presents an opportunity to reflect on the past twelve months – what worked, what didn’t – and make changes as we enter the New Year... 

It’s like cleaning the slate to set our intention on what we really want to see happen in our lives.

Such powerful stuff – but only if you take the time to do it. Set the priority, do the homework, and see the results.

The Center for Spiritual Living Capistrano Valley is offering a really cool tool to help with that process of reflection and intention: a Burning Bowl and Labyrinth at the Center on Dec 31.

Here are the details from the Center’s Facebook page:

For many of us, New Year’s Eve is a time to turn inward and reflect. We examine our lives and explore those parts that no longer serve us — preparing to release them. At the same time, we look ahead to the New Year, allowing our ideas and thoughts to form a picture of our lives as we intend them to be — welcoming in the wonderful newness.

This year, the Center is hosting a Burning Bowl Ceremony and Labyrinth Walk to assist you in this spiritual practice. The sanctuary, with Labyrinth will open at 7 p.m. on New Year’s Eve beginning with the Burning Bowl.

For this segment of the ritual, you will meditate at your own pace, and write on a piece of paper all of the things that no longer serve you. You release these thoughts, placing them in the Burning Bowl. As you then walk the Labyrinth, enter with the energy of surrender. As you approach the center, you approach illumination. As you walk out, you embrace your new life.

The sanctuary will remain open and available until midnight.

It starts at 7:00PM, so those of you who have other plans will still have time to go out and ring in the New Year. Alternatively, the sanctuary will be open until midnight. 

What better way to welcome 2014 than in the midst of spiritual practice?

Either way, I hope to see you there!

A Christmas Letter from Dr Ernest Holmes

Christmas is for remembrance. The love manifesting through our gifts to each other typifies the offering of Life, the giving-ness of Spirit to its creation. The hands of the Eternal are outstretched through our hands, and the heart of the Infinite beats in the human breast. But the giver must give of himself, for "The gift without the giver is bare".

It is not, then, in lavish gifts that we find true giving but in the sweet simplicity of remembrance, in the kindly thought, the tolerant mind and the gentle act. Love alone can give love, sympathy alone can sympathize and only goodness can really do or be good.

The one who gives for reward does not give at all; he seeks to bargain; to trade for spiritual gifts, hence he senses loss on his own giving and finds no completion through the act. But he who gives half his meat to the hungry, feels justified and is warmed by a real sense of comradeship. He has established an actual unity between himself and other offspring of creation.

Great causes succeed when there is a giving of humanity. With the check must come the one who wrote it, his interest, his enthusiasm, his love. The check must be a symbol of his desire to impart himself ~ then shall it multiply its benefits and do good. Charity is cold but love is warm. When heart speaks to heart a divine conversation has taken place, a heavenly discourse.

Each of us has something to give. Let each see that he gives of his best. If we are bringing out gifts to the altar of love, nothing less than the best will be acceptable, nothing less than all is enough.

May the real spirit of Christmas ~ the giving of self to life enter and abide in you now and through all time.

And So It Is!

Dr Ernest Holmes

Christmas Eve Service in San Clemente

Christmas Eve Service in San Clemente. 

Doors open at 4:30 and caroling begins at 4:45.

Come and join us to celebrate the beauty of the season with our annual candle lighting ceremony. Take time to find that place of peace, silence and beauty within. 

Where ever you are on your spiritual journey know that you are welcome here. Namaste.

The Christmas Wish

It's Christmas time! I love the hustle and bustle of people being in stores looking for gifts, shopping and planning for family feasts and intimate gatherings of close friends. Collaborating and negotiating time with family and friends. The lights, music, traditions and sacred moments in prayer inspire me.

The movies, commercials and stories are all aimed to inspire us to remember the Spirit of Christmas, 'the reason for the season' with tales of forgiveness, redemption, the power of love and self-realization. Billboards, songs and blogs are all reminding us that it is Merry (joyful, happy) Christmas. And it is! I love it when a good commercial, movie or song brings me to tears of joy and awe. It doesn't really matter to me if they are "true" or not. It's how they make me feel. If I could, I would share all of my favorite Christmas movies right here with you,but since that is not practical I offer the most recent inspirational video I have seen this year.

You may be one of the 30,409,928 viewers who have seen this video of the power of Christmas spirit and the power of  your Christmas wish. This year I am asking for beautiful connections with my family and friends, I am asking for an even greater capacity of my heart to give and receive love, and I am asking for my senses to be enhanced so that I see, hear, feel, taste, smell and intuit the beauty and perfection that this One Life is in an even greater way. It is my wish to be uplifting and to see the good in all as all. 

There's One Power working through Santa, parents, friends and all of us. If you knew without a doubt that your Christmas wish would be granted what would you wish for?