Christmas Jewels – Lesson 6 – Food

Today is Boxing Day, also known as the Feast of St. Stephen – the day on which Good King Wenceslas looked out.

Want to hear the song with a good Irish accent (and sung by the Irish Rovers)? Click here for a YouTube of Good King Wenceslas by the Irish Rovers – bright and sprightly, and with nice visuals to match!

Sort of sets the mood of the season:

Bring me meat and bring me wine,
Bring me pine logs hither,
Thou and I will see him dine,
When we bear them thither.

 

Food (A Good Part of the Christmas Magic)

Yesterday’s Lesson was a bit abstract and ethereal. Prayer. Reflecting the magnificence of God. That sort of thing.

Today, let’s get a lot closer to home.

For you to feel loved by yourself, there is a lot of inner work to be done. Working to peel back and dismantle the various negative thought-forms that have become attached, identifying and diminishing the blurts that connect you to the negative thought-forms, and overall just dis-engaging your pain-body.

We’ll be back on this subject tomorrow.

We’ll also get back to the positive disciplines – spiritual and energetic – that help us retrain our minds, which allows us to love ourselves more.

But today – Boxing Day for many of us (if you started with Lesson One on Winter Solstice eve) – let’s get really down to basics. As in – food.

Up until now, no matter how we tell ourselves to take it easy (get rest, nurture ourselves), up through Christmas Day, things are a bit of a blur. Way too much to do. And expectations that are really unrealistic for this time of year, when we are caught between a craving for emotional warmth/connectedness, and a desire to simply hibernate for six more weeks.

But here’s the bottom line.

It’s hard for any of us to feel loved if we are:

• Tired – and cranky, stressed, and overall just overwhelmed,
• Hungry – because even with all the Christmas parties and extra food, our schedules get slipped something fierce this time of year, and
• Cold – particularly, if our feet our cold.

So today, Boxing Day (or whatever day it is for you on Lesson Six), your tasks are to:

• Get some rest – or at least schedule more rest, if you can’t take a nap right away, and also schedule some down-time with yourself,
• Make food – this includes (re-)starting a healthy eating habit and schedule, and
• Putting on more socks – yup – literally.

One of the biggest tweaks that I’m making right now is to make the day’s soup (and often the day’s salad) before settling into the day’s writing assignments.

This actually is a bit of a shift for me.

Being an early-morning person, and very focused on whatever my goals are, I tend to wake up – and often with a bare-minimum morning routine, settle down to serious writing early, tea or coffee in hand.

And then I just keep going until the job is done.

So often, writing is an immersive task – and if there’s a certain unit that I’m trying to get out – a chapter segment or even a substantial blogpost (or web page, such as this) – then by the time I’m done, I’m groggy and energy-depleted. And thirsty. And hungry.

And when I’m doing a real writing push, everything else recedes into the background. Until, that is, it comes to the foreground.

Such as coming up from a writing-immersive, being hungry, and not having anything ready to eat.

This is not good self-love.

Now, I’m back to (most days) making the day’s food before I start writing. This could be biscotti. (I’m experimenting with recipes, will post favs after Household reports on the taste-tests.)

Today it was split-pea soup.

My cat is crying. She wants to be fed. She wants milk. She wants attention.

Actually, there are several cats. (An embarrassing number of cats.)

Let’s close for now, shall we?

I’m going to attend to cats.

Later, there will be soup. Recipe is similar to this one from Kayln’s Kitchen, but I recommend adding a bay leaf and some oregano (preferably fresh from the kitchen oregano plant). Also, I use a meaty ham bone instead of ham base. I saute my carrots, and also a bit of celery, along with the onion. And I add a chopped up potato.

But hey, soup is soup. Hard to go wrong.

And now my cat is on the computer desk, purring and putting her face in mine. She is really seriously canoodling for something.

So connect with you tomorrow, okay?

Till then – much love – Alay’nya

P.S.

Okay, I figured out what Miss Kitty wanted. She was smelling the ham bone in the pea soup. Miss Kitty has a serious thing going for ham. I scraped some off the bone for her. Now she’s happy.

Cats are not subtle, mystical, or complex. They just want us to think that they are.

 

Christmas Jewels: The Workshop

Sometimes it’s easier to work through these lessons in a small, safe group – with someone to guide you through each step.

Christmas Jewels – the workshop – is your opportunity. For full details, go to: Christmas Jewels Workshop: You are the Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus.

 

Previous Pages in the Twelve Days of Solstice: Falling in Love with Yourself

• Day Three: Pausing
• Day Two: The Barrier
• Day One: Stillpoint

http://www.alaynya.com/christmas-jewels-day-4-blessings/

http://www.alaynya.com/christmas-jewels-day-5-magnificence/