As the Days Shorten

December is here once more, and with it come the shorter winter days, the longer winter nights.

Indeed, in the Northern Hemisphere, December is the month with the shortest daylight hours of the year.

Yet even these shorter days can be a source of joy -- if we allow it.

It really is all in the attitude.

Those of us who are early risers can choose to enjoy the peaceful, quiet pre-dawn moments and then watch as the transforming light discloses another fresh, brand new day.

It is another wonderful opportunity to live and to be alive.

Yet, if we look a little closer, we might find that this peace, this joy is not really there in the dawn itself -- it is in our attitude, our response to the dawn. It is in our response to the opening of another opportunity, another invitation to live. It is inside us.

Because the simple truth is that inside each one of us there is peace and there is limitless joy. They are not there in some of us but not in others.
No divine hand has allotted these things to some but not to others.

No-one has the option on joy or peace, any more than any one has the option on truth or love.

They are there inside each and every single one of us. In fact, they are each one of us. They are our very nature.

Awakening to this is awakening to life.

And the only reason that we are unaware of this is because we have been hypnotized to believe otherwise. We have bought into the fiction that we are our past, that we are our limiting beliefs, or what my friend Gil Boyne calls ' the greatest fiction of all ' -- that we are unlovable.

We have been deluded into believing that we are something less than our wonderful, gifted self.

Yes, we can choose to let the darkness frighten us; just as we can choose to be frightened by the light that is there, within each one of us.

We can do that. Or we can simply choose to let that light shine.

When we truly understand that the joy and the peace we seek is already here inside us, then we become free to live in and be guided by that light.

And in allowing our own light to shine, we automatically and subconsciously give permission and encouragement for others to do the same.

We return to our birthright. We return to our self.

And when this happens, we live as we were intended to live -- in peace and in joy.

So this is my wish for you, this holiday season:

May you live in peace and in joy, sharing your light with your world and with everyone in it.

Happy holidays!

" An age is called "dark," not because the light fails to shine
but because people refuse to see it. "
James Michener