It’s the Most #@*%*?!$! Time of the Year!
Ah, the holiday season!
Crowded malls piping nonstop Christmas tunes endlessly sing-songing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and insisting, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!” Angry motorists competing for spaces in overstuffed parking structures! Not to mention those happy-go-lucky family get-togethers! It’s enough to turn you into an abominable snowman.
Btw I’m writing this on Green Monday. What? When did that happen? It wasn’t enough to have Black Friday and Cyber Monday? No, now we have Green Monday too? What’s next? Red Wednesday? Purple Thursday?
When you’ve been waiting at Macy’s for over twenty-five minutes and you finally get to the front of the line and the cashier at your register goes on a break… When you’ve been patiently idling for a parking space for what feels like an hour and a Porsche-driving muscleman starts honking his honker to get you to move then cuts in front of you to grab the spot that finally opened and you want to get out of your car and punch the anger off his smug entitled face despite the fact he’s double your size and you’re a woman (an over-55-year-old woman, a “senior” in some circles), what do you do? … When Part X gets a hold of you so hard you’re at risk of becoming a tornado of rage that destroys everything and everyone in your path, what do you do in the moment?
First, take a breath. I know, so banal. Not even a Tool! But really, take a frigging breath. Now take another one. Already a little better right? Wrong? OK. Take another one. For god’s sake don’t get out of your car.
Most of us long-time Tools users are advanced enough or at least life-preserving enough to hold our tongue at Macy’s and avoid confronting the muscle man–but what about later? When you find yourself reliving the moment? When you’ve done Active Love for hours but you’re still righteously pissed off. When the relentless frustration and anxiety induced by the holiday season feels like an actual force in your body, manifesting in clenched jaw and tense muscles … In my experience this is not something you can meditate away. You need to actively transmute it. Give it a path for transformation! You need a Tool for that.
Luckily, we have a great one:
HUMILITY
Close your eyes and imagine you’re in a place like the Sequoia or the high desert. You’re atop a mountain on a clear night. A black sky full of stars. Now feel your anger, let it build inside you until it becomes a burning rage. Now SCREAM/YELL/BELLOW (in your mind—or not!) at that sky of stars. Imagine the anger leaves your body and is absorbed by the night sky. The stars glow and flash brighter as they receive the anger then absorb it. They transmute the anger into radiant peaceful loving white light. And the entire sky baths you in this light. Now you feel a sense of peace, ease, and well-being. The anger has left you. There is a sense of majesty and stillness. You feel your smallness as you gaze into the hugeness of that sky and you are a part of it. Another star. You are filled with a sense of humility and grace.
Still mad? Contact me for a private session and stay away from the mall!