Since the most famously celebrated holiday is right around the corner, I thought I would reflect on a few words I once read from author Alan Cohen:
Heightened materialism during the season is the ego’s response to the increased spiritual energy on the planet. Rather than surrender to love, the ego tries to distract us from Spirit by dangling gold before us. But the real gold is within. You are the gold, and the game is to find the gold in your brothers and sisters.
Caught in a race to out-shop each other, out-gift each other, and outdo last year’s holiday, our minds are in a trance of shopping, buying, wrapping, and gift giving.
This trance of being lost in our conditioned minds—which is when our ego is given center stage—turns a time of spiritual reflection and shared love into a blind obligation driven by needs that don’t correspond with the innermost yearnings of our higher selves.
Since this is not the way we are naturally inclined to think or feel, a holiday meant for peace becomes a time of heightened stress in our minds and bodies and a lack of peaceful presence in our hearts. Our egos have once again distracted us from the real gold.
Wayne Dyer once said that the ego only edges God out. Ego serves a functional purpose in our early development so that we may better understand ourselves and the world around us, but once this goal is attained, it is best to pay close attention to when and under what conditions our ego surfaces so that we do not become controlled by it.
If we repeatedly ignore our ego, it can easily slip into the driver’s seat, where it then places emphasis on separation versus inclusion, competition versus cooperation, and, as we see each holiday season, massive, unconscious accruing versus awake, openhearted sharing.
Once the ego has taken the wheel, God’s presence takes a back seat until eventually we can no longer feel him riding in the car.
With the bombardment of advertisements distracting us on each screen we own, some days the pull is strong, and it just feels easier to follow the crowd. This becomes especially true around the holidays.
These ego-feeding machines know just when to crank it up several notches, and this seems to make it more difficult each year to ignore the dangling “gold,” especially when we must now grapple with the one-click purchasing power that effectively removes all friction.
Regardless of how we got to this place of rapid and unconscious purchasing, the challenge set before us is to awaken to our inner beings, put our egos in check, and remember where the real gold can be found.
Sometimes it happens unexpectedly—a sudden, life-altering wake-up call like the fictional character George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life or Ebenezer Scrooge in a A Christmas Carol. More often, however, these slow and incremental changes come about over time.
We might find ourselves learning about a local family receiving help from a charity in our area, or we may notice that the woman ahead of us in line is counting the change in her purse while at the same time carefully eyeing the number of items in her shopping cart.
This may prompt us to do something unexpected and use part of our holiday bonus to help a family in need or a stranger who just wishes to leave the store with her dignity and everything in her cart.
Without consciousness, none of this happens. We must be in a place of awake and fully alive awareness.
However, most of us unknowingly fall in and out of consciousness every day, and this is precisely why this is a challenge. Feeling tired, overwhelmed, under the weather, or consumed by stress, we fall short of the ability that each of us possess to operate from our higher selves in a state of pure loving awareness.
Managing our health and well-being alongside a dedicated self-care practice is instrumental to our spiritual livelihood and thus, our ability to see the real gold.
When we are no longer attached to our ego’s drive to tune out the spiritual underpinnings of the season, we seek a holiday that heightens our joy and innately calls us to be a more loving and open presence.
One that pays attention to others and not just those on our shopping lists. One that makes time for stillness and not continuous moments of holiday frenzy. One that allows us to become closer to the spirit that shines brighter during the season, yearning for a chance to become recognized and lovingly adored.
Earlier this week I had a doctor’s appointment. As I waited my turn to be called back, a woman exited the exam area, smiled at all of us in the waiting room and said, “I hope everyone has a blessed holiday. Merry Christmas to you all.”
Too busy to take in this sudden and unexpected act of love and kindness, I was barely able to blurt out the words “Merry Christmas!” before she walked out the front door. It took me several minutes to realize that I had just seen the gold in my sister.
The new iPhone 15 might glow, but it is not gold. The diamond necklace might glitter, but it too is not gold. These eye-catching trinkets and latest technologies that promise to give us more dopamine, more self-worth, and greater satisfaction will ultimately leave us dissatisfied.
This is precisely because our inner selves long for and deserve more. You and I are the real gold. When we slow down and become fully present, paying close attention to one another and not our phones or shopping lists, we embody the Christmas Spirit and feel the gold shining forth in ourselves and each other.
