Has Christmas been lost to commercialism? To Santa Claus and expectations about gifts? To the stress of getting the right present, sending cards, decorating the tree and your house, fixing a meal that everyone enjoys? Have we lost the birth of Jesus Christ and His message for the world? Are we focused on what other people think of us– like the gift we gave?
Do you realize that your idea of God will determine your life? That who you are is more powerful than what you say? That what others think of you is not your business? Listen to my discussion with Ernest Hendricks.

“Your idea of God will determine your whole life.”—Emmet Fox

“If you pray and meditate and sit quietly in silence,” replied Lydan, “if you empty yourself sufficiently so as to die to your self, if you give up knowledge and power and can be just who you are, then one day it may happen that you will awaken from the dream to enter a new and wondrous world. Your life will become eternal, as it has always been; you will live in infinite space beyond the confines of dimensions; and you will never again experience reality for what you once thought it was. Your body will no longer live in fear of death, and your soul will become cosmic, understanding mysteries you never before knew existed, and standing in awe of mysteries you could never before allow yourself to see. If you lose your superiority and your self-centeredness you may realize that you are one with all of life, with every creature and every presence in it, from the greatest to the least. There is nothing that you are not and nothing that is not you. The life you have sought outside you has forever been within you.”

King Theo felt moved by the glow in the sage’s eyes, and by the sincere tone of his voice, as well as by what he said. Following a long and thoughtful silence he responded: “I am afraid if I give up my hopes and ambitions, and learn to accept what is, I will stagnate and stop changing.”
“On the contrary,” responded Lydan, “what could be a greater change? Is that not why we all resist asking God to help us want what we have? Instead, we ask Him to help us have what we want.”
King Theo nodded with understanding. “I am also afraid,” he said, “if I don’t work to change my kingdom the people will consider me selfish, and accuse me of doing nothing.”
“It is one of the great illusions of mankind,” responded the sage, “to think that demanding others change is selfless and doing something, and that changing oneself is selfish and doing nothing.” Lydan looked affectionately at King Theo as he said: “Change yourself, and you will change your kingdom.”
Feeling challenged the King questioned the sage about his style of life. “If the life of the Holy Spirit is all you say it is,” he inquired, “why do you not preach it to all of our citizens?”
“I have preached to the people about the Holy Spirit,” replied Lydan. “I learned that while it can be taught it becomes real only through self-discovery. Those who have not experienced the Holy Spirit cannot understand it, and so they consider anyone who speaks of it to be crazy or soft-headed. Many are called but few are chosen because few choose themselves. Rather than try to force my views on others, I prefer to let people come to me, to hear from each of them what he or she is ready to learn.”
“But that is so slow,” objected the king, “and sounds so ineffective!”
Lydan laughed. “I know it may seem slow and ineffective,” he responded, “but I know that people change one step at a time, through growth within themselves. When any two of us touch in an encounter of our souls, it is like a pebble dropped into a pool of quiet water. The rings grow and grow as they spread across the surface, touching and creating yet new rings. How many will eventually be touched this way, I will never know, yet that is not my concern so much as making myself available to each individual I encounter.”
More time passed in further discussions and in silences between King Theo and Lydan. With time, the king found that silence no longer seemed a waste of time to him, but instead the beginning of relaxation, serenity, and inner peace.
One day King Theo found himself moved beyond description by an experience of ecstasy and serenity he could not fully comprehend. He felt as if the light of the whole world had appeared before him, that he had entered heaven momentarily and become one with God and the universe. Through this unfathomable experience, he felt that his eyes had been opened for the first time to the real world. What he had previously taken for reality he now realized was an illusion.
When the experience had passed, King Theo broke the silence to say to the sage: “I have been coming here to meet with you for how long I don’t know anymore, for it seems like I have always known you. With your help I no longer take myself so seriously. I no longer strive so hard for things I once thought were right. I now realize that my attempt to enforce equality on my people destroyed their freedom, and it didn’t make them feel like equals in their hearts.”
The king paused and then continued: “I have died and been reborn. I have lost my self, and in the process I have discovered who I am and always have been. I no longer feel I am so important to this world. Should I die, I now know there are others who will come to do what I am doing, perhaps even better than I. This greater reality I have seen cannot be extinguished–it lives forever in the soul of man and cannot be silenced. I now know that the soul of man is eternal, as is the greater Truth.”
King Theo dropped his glance momentarily, then looked into Lydan’s eyes. “I have discovered,” he continued, “that fulfillment comes not from outward possessions, including rank and riches, but from inward expansion, so as to absorb yet more. I am no longer so full of desires, ambitions, and hopes, for I am at peace with life, as I am with myself. I accept it, all that has been and whatever may come, as I accept all parts of myself, including those I dislike and the fact that I have conflicts. I find now that I have no need of hopes, for what is there I need to hope for? Indeed, I feel neither hopeful nor hopeless. I just am.” Looking skyward as he extended his arms upward King Theo said to Lydan: “I am all that, and so are you.”
Lydan smiled a deep smile of love, one that used to frighten King Theo because it embraced him so totally. “You have awakened from the dream,” he said. “You have fulfilled yourself, and have become a most fit ruler for your kingdom. Now all things in your kingdom may be affected by you, and yet no one need be dependent on you. Your influence will be there to sustain and support all things. A true leader stands under his people not over them–he genuinely understands.” After a pause the sage concluded, “You are indeed right that you have no need of hopes, so now you may let others rest their hopes in you.”

Doug Welpton, M.D.

For other postings like “Am I Going to Heaven or Am I Going to Hell? and “Matt’s New Job” see my blogsite: http://www.adviceinloverelationship.com.

And so it was that for many months King Theo visited each month with Lydan, telling him first about the problems of his kingdom, then about his troubles with his counselors and the Court, and finally about his difficulties with the queen and his family. When the king ran out of things to say Lydan encouraged him to pray and taught him the art of daily meditation. Even though he enjoyed looking at the sights from the top of the mountain it was difficult for King Theo to endure the silences, for they made him feel like he was wasting time. He reminded himself of how painful a journey he had made, only to find himself sitting silently with the sage.
When the king complained of wasting time, Lydan attempted to comfort him. “The road to peace is difficult,” he said, “as is the way to self-fulfillment. We can find it only through unburdening ourselves rather than taking on more, through stillness rather than through activities, through developing patience rather than racing against time, and through giving up hopes rather than generating new ones.”
King Theo found himself perplexed. He complained to the sage: “I do not understand. I came here with great ambitions to fulfill myself as a king, and with great hopes to improve my kingdom by ridding it of all evils. I hoped to make my people share their wealth, so that they would respect one another as equals and care for others, not just for themselves and their profits. Now you tell me I should give up my hopes, and stop my rush to accomplish my ambitions, and I am confused how your advice will help me.”
Lydan all too painfully understood the confusion of the king, for he had known many times the difficulty of explaining to men those truths they find almost beyond comprehension. He took a deep breath as he spoke to the king: “I am sorry I have confused you, for that was not my intent. I must admit, in all honesty, that what you have said likewise confuses me. If equality and humanity are invisible things,” he asked, “how can you hope to accomplish them by visible means? How is it possible to enforce humanity and equality on people, when these are feelings within people that cannot be legislated or enforced? When you force people through laws and taxes to practice equality, for example, that is not true equality, but only its superficial appearance. When you sacrifice freedom for material equality what have you gained? And how can anyone make people care, as in caring for others, when the idea of coercing care is a contradiction?” He looked at King Theo as he asked: “If your people have nothing more to care for than profits and possessions, is that not a symptom of their poverty which inflicts its own punishment?”
King Theo experienced the ring of truth in the sage’s words, although he did not like their implications. “What about my hopes and great ambitions,” he protested, “what is going to happen to them?”
“Is it our hopes and ambitions that make things happen,” responded Lydan, “or do they happen when we align ourselves with universal laws? Like the law that says we reap what we sow. Or another law that says what you believe in your heart is what you bring into your life.”
At this point the king grew exasperated, and decided to confront Lydan with his hardest questions. “If you do not live for hopes and ambitions,” he asked the sage forthrightly, “what do you live for? If you do not wish to rid the world of evil, and to do what is right, what sustains you? It is obvious that you do not cherish material possessions, and yet you appear content.”
The sage gazed toward the mountains for a moment, before he looked at the king and replied, “If you live for hopes, you live for tomorrow, but not for today. As for me, I do my best to live for now, which means I must accept all that is, both good and evil, even though I prefer what I consider good.” His eyes engaged King Theo’s. “If you are going to work for change,” he continued, “you must first accept what is, which is the greatest change of all! I am content when I accept life as it is, which means that I must continually grieve and absorb and expand inwardly to digest life’s disappointments, if I wish to replace wrong with right, or hate with love.”
The sage’s voice grew deep and solemn, and his eyes took on a brilliant glow, causing King Theo to tremble as he listened. “As to what it is I live for,” Lydan continued, “there is one thing that surpasses all else, and yet I hardly know what to call it, much less how to explain it. For want of better terms I call it the life of the Holy Spirit. It is the understanding that transcends words and explanations, the golden light that may enter into a man’s life and elevate him somewhere between heaven and earth, giving him vision where before he had just sight.”
“You are describing what I have been seeking,” said King Theo, “how do I find it?”

If you want to learn how Lydan helps King Theo with his spiritual journey part 3 will be posted next week on my website: http://www.adviceinloverelationship.com.

I graduated from Stanford University, Harvard Medical School, and the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. I began to develop my expertise in family therapy starting with a two year Clinical Fellowship at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, MD following my residency training in psychiatry at Harvard, where I was a Teaching Fellow in Psychiatry. I joined the faculty at Tufts University School of Medicine where I headed the training program to work with the families of hospitalized patients and I became an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry. Additionally, I trained personally with Dr Harville Hendrix as a Workshop Presenter in Imago Relationship Therapy, with Pia Mellody in Post Induction Therapy for Codependence, and with Drs Hal and Sidra Stone as a Voice Dialogue Therapist.

I began a private practice in 1968. I have counseled people from all walks of life with problems that effected their ability to create the relationships they wanted in their lives. Each of them, while suffering their own personal issues, had one thing in common: negative mindsets. They were holding onto belief patterns that kept them from achieving what they wanted. We hold strong beliefs about how much money we can make, sex we should have, and love we should feel.

If those beliefs work against us, we wind up creating a life we don’t want. We attract what we are afraid of, instead of our bliss. We create lives of quiet desperation, rather than abundant, prosperous, pleasurable lives that are deeply fulfilling.

I have written a book called “Attract Love, Intimacy & Money. Use Your Mind To Get What You Want.” It is based on years of experience helping individuals and couples change what they had to what they wanted. The book shows you a system so easy, you can’t fail. You can find and keep the passion in your life. You can create connection, have the intimacy, and live your bliss.