freedom to love
Freedom from Necessity ©2017 Joan M. Newcomb,
Thanksgiving Day is the beginning of a month of expectations. Let family and friends gather together, let there be an abundance of food and gifts. That everyone is supposed to be warm and loving to each other.
Freedom from Necessity by Norman Rockwell
My family of origin lived up to those expectations for the first fifteen years of my life, until the patterns began to break. And we had pretty high expectations. My Great Uncle Jim McCabe is in the iconic Norman Rockwell painting.
My earliest memories are of big holiday meals, although we lived abroad for most of those years, so we sometimes had goose instead of turkey.
The family began to unravel when I was sixteen, and perhaps I initiated, contributed to, or reflected that unraveling… I was hospitalized for depression in an adolescent ward of a psychiatric hospital during the holidays that year.
The following year, I just remembered, I had Thanksgiving with my great-uncle’s family in Connecticut (after visiting him in Vermont). I was at university and my parents were in Sweden. My father left my mother soon after; I don’t really remember any Thanksgiving with them after that.
As an adult, I valiantly tried to create holiday meals like the ones I had had in my early childhood. But the family I created split up when my children were young. Since his father was a gourmet chef and I had never cooked a turkey, I built it into the parenting plan to spend every “big meal” day with him. I had no idea that he set me up to be alone for all those vacations.
At some point my kids found out from their cousins that they had two Thanksgivings. The cousins would see both sets of parents on the same day. Since my cooking skills couldn’t match his father’s, I had our Thanksgiving meal the previous Sunday, which avoided competition and meant they ate my leftovers before going to his father’s house for the rest of the week.
During every Thanksgiving, for years, he would always fight to be “adopted” somewhere to eat with other people. It was always a painful and lonely time.
When I remarried, our first Thanksgiving together, my mother-in-law was insulted that she had my husband and his job in the turkey. After that, we would go out for Chinese food.
When you look at Thanksgiving from the perspective of Consciousness, you see the tangles of expectations and dysfunctional patterns that actually create separation and lack.
You can be with family and lots of food, and if it’s full of assumptions and craziness, you’ll feel far removed from any sense of connection and abundance.
Thanksgiving is not about the big meal. It is not about the gathering of family and friends. It’s not even necessarily about gratitude. As Awareness, it is about appreciation.
Appreciation is the neutral form of gratitude, because it comes from the sense of the creator rather than the recipient. Since we exist as Consciousness and in body, we can experience both, but it is important to note the difference. Gratitude implies appreciation for or of something outside of yourself. Appreciation acknowledges and enjoys creation. That can even be the creation of chaos and discord.
When you shift your perspective from your body/personality to yourself as Consciousness, you know that you already have everything you desire.
As Consciousness there is no separation. You are always connected, even with loved ones who have passed away. As Consciousness there is no lack, because Consciousness is the Source of all creation. As Consciousness there is no discord, because Consciousness is essentially love.
This year, my husband and I are at that midway point, where our parents have passed away and our adult children still have no offspring of their own. A son is in Spain; We won’t see it until Easter. Another one is in Vashon, with his dad. We’ll do our lunch on Sunday (I cook salmon instead now).
I appreciate having good relationships with both my children and my husband. I can create new patterns instead of transmitting the historical ones.
This holiday season, when you feel caught up in the craziness, take a moment to change your perspective (this may require leaving the room). See it all from Consciousness, appreciate this playground of a planet and watch your reality transform!
