the Inner Lights
for Christmas
By Mila Reyes-Garcia
Board Member and Human Resources Development committee chair, SanibLakas ng Taongbayan Foundation. An accomplished writer of poems and articles.
This article was written for and published in the writer’s column for a December issue of Parents Magazine.POINSETTIAS are in bloom, vibrant in crimson red. The cool breeze dances playfully around, whispering “Christmas! Christmas!” The tree looks jovial and lovely, bursting with gleaming balls, floating angels, red-and-white candy canes, and multi-colored little lights winking gaily. The belen stands serenely in its usual place, and wreaths of green and gold with silver and red welcome all who enter our doors.
Here we are, all ready for Christmas.
But, are we, really? Are our hearts and minds ready?
.....We have dusted the tree and the balls and candy canes. Have we dusted off our cobwebs of negative thoughts and feelings? Have we checked out the little bulbs in our minds, the lights in our hearts?
Maybe we’ve been too busy to notice that they have dimmed, clouded over by layers and layers of our day-to-day worries, fears, and anxieties. And, oh yes, anger. Anger can cause a short-circuit and burn out the fuses of our inner lights.
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His greatest concern is the beauty
and light of
His home within us.
How can we truly celebrate the birthday of the baby Jesus with darkened hearts and thoughts of anger or resentment tucked under our mental carpets? Jesus is all love! That is why LOVE is the essence of Christmas. He may appreciate the beauty and glitter of our homes, but His greatest concern is the beauty and light of His home within us.
Let’s take a break from our frenzied shopping and spend some time to peek within ourselves. If it looks bleak and musty in there, we must do a general cleaning with our mental brooms and mops.
The nice thing about this kind of cleaning is that we do it sitting down, and with eyes closed. Shall we?
First, we choose a quiet spot where we won’t be bothered and where we can sit in peace for a while. Next, we kick off our shoes, sit comfortably, close our eyes, and relax.
We relax our eyes (to make sure they’re not tightly, tensely shut), our eyelids, our neck, our shoulders, all our joints. We just relax, relax, relax.
Then we surround ourselves with the color pink. Every color has its own specific wave-length and the frequency of pink is Universal Love. We need to arm ourselves with love vibrations to help us get rid of our yukky thoughts and feelings.
So, with eyes still closed in a very relaxed way, we think of the most beautiful shade of pink and imagine ourselves completely surrounded by it. We visualize the very air around us as pink, soft and sweet, enveloping us. And we’re breathing it in!
We mentally declare with authority: As I inhale, I am breathing in the pink air of love; as I exhale, I am letting out all tension, anger, frustration and fatigue. Then, slowly, we take several deep breaths. As we inhale slowly and deeply, we visualize the pink air penetrating our being; as we slowly exhale, we visualize the words tension, anger, frustration, fatigue going out of our system.
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We have dusted the tree and the balls
and candy canes.
Have we dusted off our cobwebs
of negative thoughts and feelings?
It helps to imagine each word floating out of our body. We do this as many times as we feel we need to.
Now we go deep into our selves. We take a long, hard look at the debris of thoughts and feelings scattered in there. We separate the trash from the treasure, the burned-out bulbs from the brightly-lit ones.
How do we do this? We visualize a big trashcan beside us. Each time we stumble on an unpleasant or un-loving thought or feeling, we picture this particular thought or feeling written on a piece of paper and we’re reading it very clearly. In our mind, we crumple it and throw it out, watching it go out of our body and into the trashcan.
We go on, searching in every nook and corner for anything unpleasant, selfish or depressing; picking up, reading out, crumpling, and throwing out. Sometimes, when we peek under our mental carpets, we find feelings of resentment we thought we had long ago gotten over but are actually still hiding there, rotting. We sweep them out with our mental broom, pick them up, read them out one by one, crumple them, and toss them into the trashcan.
We do this until we feel that we’ve done enough cleaning for the day. Never mind if we still see some dirt stubbornly clinging here and there, we can work on them next time (next day if possible).
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Now we go deep into our selves.
We take a long, hard look at the
thoughts and feelings in there.
We separate the trash from the treasure...
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We look around and happily see that it has gotten so much brighter in there. Now we’ll make it even brighter. We say a prayer: “Lord, fill me with Your light.
Let Your light heal me mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Lord, fill me with Your love that I may pass it on to others.”
And then we visualize a dazzling white light from above penetrating the top of our head and continuously pouring in. We watch it streaming in, filling our whole being, bathing every cell, every tissue, every organ until our whole body glows with this light inside out.
As we watch the light continue to pour in, we feel the love of God filling our whole being. The light continues to stream in, and we feel the love within us getting stronger and stronger.
Joyfully, we say “Thank You, Lord! Please let me radiate Your light and Your love wherever I go.”
We continue to watch the light streaming in, continue to feel the love within us getting stronger and stronger until we feel we are bursting with love.
We sit there, just enjoying this wonderful, exhilarating feeling, and then we open our eyes Now we can go through our chores glowing from within, emitting love to all who come our way.
And we can truly say “It’s Christmas!” 
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