 Hi, welcome to We Are Only One. We have a very exciting show today. It's called Spiritual Rules of the Road and we have the author Bill Anglehart who is coming to us from Marin County, California. And we're going to be learning some practical tools as we drive through the journey of life from him. Today's guest is Bill Anglehart, author of Spiritual Rules of the Road, also Senior Minister of Unity in Marin County. And I must say that Bill is a renaissance man. More I've learned about him, you have a black belt in karate and you are a car enthusiast as well as a black and white nature photographer. So today I believe we're going to hear from the car enthusiast in large part. Could you give us a scoop on Spiritual Rules of the Road and what brought you to write a book like this? Well, thank you, June, for having me on your show. It's really a pleasure. For me, writing this book was really an evolution, it was really an evolution of understanding myself and when I did that, I looked at three things that I really enjoyed and one of those things was spirituality and the other was humor and not the least of which is cars and so I decided to put something together that combined all three of those things but I remember a couple of years ago when this idea came to me and I started to research it, I said I wonder if anyone else has written a book about humor, cars and spirituality and I googled it and came up with absolutely nothing. So I figured, well, that might have dissuaded someone else but for me I felt that that was really the call but this is what was mine to do, was to take spiritual principles to be able to explain them in a way that I think all of us can understand and appreciate because we all have experiences with cars and at one level or another, whether it's car ownership, car repair, buying a car, getting broken down in a car, all those kinds of things that happen and if we look closely enough at it, we can discern spiritual truths and those spiritual truths are what I tried to denote in this book, the spiritual rules of the road. I really felt that when I got my driver's license many moons ago that you had to go through the driver's ed program and you had to study the book and you had to go take a test at the Department of Motor Vehicles to really prepare you to be able to drive a car and I thought that was all well and good but as I grew older I started to recognize that it would have been really nice if somebody would have given me a book about the spiritual rules of the road. So when I face challenges in life or I face difficult decisions that I have been prepared at least as much as I had to prepare for my driver's test when I was 16 years old and so that's why I put this book together to be that kind of a manual and actually to make it about this size that you can see so you can actually fit it in the glove compartment of your car instead of being on a bookshelf somewhere because the way it occurs to me is that when we really are looking for some kind of insight we're generally on our way somewhere. Maybe we're on the way to the hospital to visit someone who's ill or maybe we're going to have a difficult conversation with somebody and we are looking for some insight or there's a challenge whatever it is that if we're in the car and it's already there it's the kind of book you can flip open go to that chapter and give yourself a little bit of a spiritual tune-up before facing some of those challenging situations. So I believe it is one of the first books if not the first book other than an owner's manual that was actually written to be kept in the glove compartment. One of its many claims to fame, Bill. I want to say I'm in New York right now and I'm enjoying reading it on the subway but I have also kept it in my glove compartment in my car when I'm out west and it what I really like about it is you have so many practical tools that one can get at a glance it's the kind of book you can pick up and if you're in traffic and you're stopped for a while you can read a quote and read half a page and you're nourished by it and I love something like that because we don't always have time to sit and read a hundred pages at one time and I just I had a really great time reading this and I want to hear more about its development and your intention with it if you would share some of that with us. Sure well my intention again was to really be able to look at spiritual principles and strip away the dogma and ritual that has surrounded so many spiritual practices in the past and it's been kind of kept behind smoking mirrors and put into difficult words or where you might have to be a think you need to be a theologian to really understand spiritual truth and what I try to do is really pair all that back be able to get down to a truth concept that we can all understand and again using this analogy and and I like I said I believe humor is a is a great way to get a message across because if we remember the humor in it then we're more likely to remember actually what the principle is and I give you an example I think one of the things that stands out for me as a car owner I've been driving cars since I was 16 years old I bought my first car when I was 16 and I remember back then it was a 1974 Pontiac Grand Prix and it had like 50,000 miles on it and back then that was about the life of the car at 50,000 miles everything falls apart you have to rebuild the whole thing so it's that was my tutelage into understanding cars and one of the things from grown up in Chicago I had to learn about right away is this thing called rust and free from New York I'm sure you're familiar with rust as well that that was kind of a mechanism even if you kept the car running for many years that sooner or later they would rust out from under you unless you took really good care of it and so of course my car had rust on it and every year I'd be getting out Bondo which anybody's ever worked on a car it's this pink goo that you you mix together and you bond onto the car and then you sand it and you paint it and you do all these things to cover up the rust but as rust never sleeps which we've heard that before and it doesn't that every year I'd get a new chance to go back and redo that Bondo all over again and again and again and I was thinking about this and thought well what kind of spiritual principle underlies this kind of idea of rust and covering it up and and I started to think about the concept of forgiveness or actually the concept of unforgiveness and to me I'm forgiveness is really like rust it's one of those things in our consciousness that never sleeps when we're unforgiving it's as if the it's the equivalent of rust on a car and it just continues to eat away and eat away and eat away at the metal and the structure of the car and it's up to us to be able to not just cover it up which I think many of us do when it comes on forgiveness we don't think about it or when we do or get upset about it we don't want to actually move into forgiveness or maybe we haven't spent enough time figuring out how to do that and the longer we're in unforgiveness the rust grows and grows and we may patch it we may put something over it temporarily but just like rust on a car it's going to come back again and again and again and eventually what that does to the car is it really degrades the structural integrity of the car so if you're again an accident or something else that where there's rust there's not the strength that was in the car before and I believe that's really a perfect analogy to the whole idea of unforgiveness when we carry around that unforgiveness in our consciousness it's as if we're carrying around this rust that's just growing and growing and growing and it's really undermining the integrity of who it is that we are because we're spending mental energy on this idea of not forgiving someone and maybe part of that unforgiveness is we're not forgiving ourselves but either way the only way to fix truly fix rust is to cut out the metal that's around us and to be able to patch it with brand new metal brand new steel and when it comes to our forgiveness the only way we can really forgive is if we're willing to let go of the past if we're willing to reconcile with ourselves that it's healthier for us and for the whole situation for us to be able to get to a place of letting it go then that's really the repair that's needed in our own consciousness as well as in our own cars and then our car will run a lot better on it when we're not harboring that rust of resentment and anger and whatever else the ego can put on the car that's right that's that's great forgiveness and rust that's a great I heard and I'm sure many people have trying to get revenge is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die you know and how how much lighter we feel when we do get into the forgiveness space and the letting go and the realization that really no one in the spirit level can really harm us that's right and the truth is forgiveness isn't for the other person it's really for us because we're the one that's carrying around that burden as you drew the analogy about taking the poison we're the ones that have taken the poison and it's really the cure the anecdote the antidote for us is to be able to really be in forgiveness and again it's really for us it's not so much for the other person that's our willingness to let go of that burden to be able to put it on the side of the road instead of carrying it with us wherever at wherever it is that we go because that's draining mentally emotionally physically and it's going to show up in all three of those areas the longer we hold on to it and that's really kind of a novel concept I think even though it's I know the film wars have been around a while and the unity and the new thought movement since the late 1800s but in my childhood if someone had said to me you forgive someone for yourself that would not have made sense you know but now it really does because you do feel so much better when you do and that's where the spiritual truth that you know really comes through it's something that we all intuitively know we know when we're carrying around on forgiveness it's not hurting the other person one iota they can care less they may not even know that we're upset with them but every day we can't we wake up with it we're the one that's carrying that burden around and so for me to be able to lay that burden down to be able to bless it to release it that's just a real joy and it really improves the life that we're living right now it sounds like of forgiveness is one of the key ingredients to a GPS system in our car what do you think I have a GPS system I have one of the earlier ones and whenever you went off track if you didn't follow the direction of what I'll always say recalculating which to me just sounded like a nice way of saying hey stupid it took the wrong turn so now I have a GPS that if I go a different way it just it doesn't say anything it just recalculates automatically so I think it's forgiving me but they are so handy I mean I I've been driving maybe 30 years and I only got a GPS three years ago and it's kind of for me a parallel to the spiritual reawakening I had with unity and universal truth principles I lived a lot of my life without that and then boy what a difference you the journey you can go anywhere now you're free to choose as opposed to a very strict map if you will that didn't work that's right and when it comes to the GPS system as I've reflected on that and spiritual insights that we can get from that on the GPS we can enter in our destination and we can say I want to go to direct route I want to go by the highways I would avoid highways I want to go on freeways you know pretty much there's all kinds of different routes that you can take and that's very true with our life we're the ones that get to decide do we want just the direct route or do we want to take the senior crowd you know those are options for us when we're going from play place A to place B how is it are we going to get there we can lay out a plan but even with the best laid plans we can run into detours we can run into changes that we had not expected that may take us off the highway of life and put us on a side road and we can complain about that and we can say well I wanted it to be done in a shorter amount of time which I think it happens often as a big part of why we get upset at life and spirit at God because things aren't happening in the time frame with which we think it should happen and I think when we get into the GPS and we run into a detour and it takes us on the side road if we can just accept that this is the best situation right now that this is going to be the best calculation it's going to get me where I need to go then we kind of let go of that anxiety we let go of that upset around the road changing when we didn't expect it now one of the things that I've it's really hit me hit me right in the consciousness is when I what I think of GPS and I think if it says turn right I turn right if it says turn left I turn left whatever it says to do I just do it now do I trust God do I trust spirit as much as I trust my GPS because when we get that intuition about doing this or doing that or doing this kind of work versus that kind of work or being in this relationship or ending a relationship or whatever it is do we really listen to that that's a question that really came up for me when I just no matter what the GPS said I just did it but when spirit speaks sometimes I think I know better don't we all unfortunately it's a good learning and that's a great analogy I've one I heard someone mention GPS as a God's positioning system you know or grace and I'm going to remember that because when we do get out of our own way we really are in the flow and I think sometimes we go places that we wouldn't have it when we're flowing better places and if we can enjoy the journey which is a big part of my book here I talk about enjoying life it's not about how fast we get to the end of the road it's about enjoying the road that we're on yes if we get put on a side road or we get caught in traffic and we just have to sit there for a while then if we can look for the good if we can say there's something good for me and I know there's many times I've been knocked off the highway and I end up going through small towns and the middle of Texas or somewhere else that I found really interesting things that I wouldn't have found if I'd have been on the main road on a super highway we're just going 70 or 80 or higher speeds that's it's on the side roads of life where we go slower where we can enjoy the view and we can learn more about ourselves when we face the unexpected we face those challenges when we're on those detours of life it's really an opportunity for us to really understand ourselves more and take really experienced life because again life is not just about getting to the end of it as quickly as we can that's not it at all it's about really enjoying the journey that we're on and recognizing that maybe my plan isn't God's plan in that moment and that there's something greater for me in this and that makes the journey so much more rewarding than just being upset that I'm out there at a certain point in time oh I couldn't agree with you more whenever I let go and trust it always unfolds so much beyond something that I've planned myself and I think with this conversation I'm going to be mindful every morning to just have a moment with God and say okay it's your GPS where we go in today but it's so true the most magical moments have been the unplanned ones that unfold when we let go when I let go and yes that's that's a blessing it's a blessing to to let it go and to trust because we're really not in charge that's right we're not in charge of the things that happen to us I mean and around us the only thing we're really in charge of is how we show up to those situations and circumstances and that's the and that's the real growth that's the real challenges that we face is to know that we're the ones that are really coloring every situation in circumstance one way or the other and it's not the power is not in the other person and the situations or the circumstances and life or even in the detours it's in how we interpret that fact a few weeks ago and I did a Q&A session for a Sunday service and people submitted questions and one of the questions that came in turns out was from a woman who was upset that the a son that she wanted to have reconciliation with wanted having a relationship with was totally not responsive and she'd been praying and praying and is wondering you know my praying wrong what's going on how come my prayers aren't answered and as I explained I said well here's here's the challenge the challenge is about that idea about timing is that we think our prayers may not be answered because they don't happen at the time we expect them to happen but I pointed out to her I said you actually have a relationship with your son because you're praying for your son you're holding your son in the light and when and if your son calls you you are going to be ready and you are going to be willing to engage in a relationship no matter what the past was and so again I talked about releasing the attachment to time and just even releasing the prayer God knows you've made the prayer you've set the intention you're ready when and if it happens you are going to be ready and willing and able to step into that relationship well I know sooner got done with that answering that question when the woman who submitted the question they're all anonymous and I didn't know this was the woman she raised her hand and said she'd actually submitted the question and she wanted to let me know that on Thanksgiving Day her son called and they had a reconciliation beautiful and to me is just another example of a week before it was my prayers aren't answered and again it's about that timing and or it didn't show up in the way in which I think it should show up and to be able to see that all things are working together for good and if we can hold to that truth then life gets to be so much easier for us even though in that situation it was very challenging not being able to have that face-to-face relationship with the son in the past when now things are starting to turn sense yeah that's beautiful it triggers in me a reminder not to get attached to the form what something looks like but to trust that the essence the deeper sense is is what is unfolding and we do get so attached to form with humans you certainly do I know I do you know want things to look a certain way or if we want a car or we want transportation and that but we might say well that needs to be a 1974 that is Corvette Stingray and then if somebody shows up with a with a Mustang or a Camaro or a Mitsubishi or something else we don't even see it because we're thinking it only is going to look like this one form and so what I try to do is to say well I want the right perfect transportation and I'd like it to maybe be a 1974 Pontiac Grand Prix or a 74 Corvette but this or something better and so when I say that it kind of really opens it up so then I'm more alert to when my good shows up that I'll be able to identify it instead of being just tunnel vision that it has to look a certain way and it has to show up within the next week and if it doesn't then I figure out it's never going to happen and if I have that consciousness then I'm never going to see it even if it does have so again it comes back to what's really going on and in our own mind in fact it reminds me of this is a true story anybody who's worked on cars will be able to attest to this that said there is a time when I was scrubbing off the battery there's like battery acid they used to build up on cars I'm sure probably still does it's white and it's gross and you know wire brush out and scrubbing it off yes and my brother-in-law had come along and he said Bill why don't you give me a coke and so I thought okay he's thirsty so I gave him a can of coke and then he poured the coke on the battery acid and it just dissolved it immediately and the first thing I thought of was I drink coke all the time I'm wondering what is in this stuff but it could to do that to battery acid that the the second thought I had later on upon reflection to that is what kind of things am I putting in my body you know if the coke could you know do that to the battery acid what's it doing to my body well that's one way to look at it but the physical way to look at it is also what thoughts am I carrying around in my own consciousness because they can be equally destructive in fact more destructive yes carrying around negative forms and have a patterns it can be very destructive I find that being in traffic with drivers who challenge one's manner system really bothers my chi it is one of my strongest spiritual tests of where my head's at if someone cuts me off what do I think do I think expletives or do I think maybe this person is going to the hospital maybe this person you know giving them the benefit of the doubt or do I immediately get into anger and ego indignation you know it's very telling how how we respond in the car two different situations I think it really gives you quite insight into your psyche at that moment oh I think that it does and this is just occurring to me right now but when we think about all of us driving down the road and we're in our little bubble that we call a car and we think the world is just what's in our car and then we see that all these other people drying around and maybe everybody's car is just their consciousness and so we all think that we're separate and then we think that what we do is it affect anybody else when in fact it does when you cut somebody else off or there's an accident that we're actually having an effect on each other wouldn't it be wonderful to recognize that even in traffic everyone these people is actually part of a greater whole of consciousness that we're all like strands in a web of consciousness and how we treat each other is going to come back to us because we're creating a a race consciousness a human race consciousness that's beautiful imagery because we really are all one and and the car can create that illusion of separation this is my car this is my world as opposed to our world right our highway of life and people say things or they may you know give gestures on the car that aren't always very polite that they would ever do in person to somebody else if you're just walking on the street you bumped into somebody who would be yelling it's very mannered you know saying expressives to them but in the car it's as if we feel just so isolated from each other that anything goes you know it's not a good model this is true so being mindful of the spiritual rules of the road very key very key we're all on a spiritual path together yes we are i heard you refer to um Christmas as a as a road trip i wonder i think that's a first along with your book oh and i think about uh mary and uh joseph as they were going uh to get counted in the census that was really a road trip that they were on and uh i'm sure that's uh joseph never would have expected that they get to town his wife would be just ready to give birth he couldn't find a place to stay at the end he ends up in the manger i'm sure he he was running maybe he's running this script about how could this be that i need to take care of my wife and my firstborn child and in the best i can do is a manger and this seems like a huge detour from what his plan probably was which was probably anything other than having the baby in a manger rather the last thing he was thinking was going to happen for the birth of his firstborn and so he's on i look at that and say wow he's on a road trip that i'm sure he thought was going completely awy that this was not not what he thought it was going to be right and but what happens that Jesus is born and then you have the shepherds coming down and they're singing and then the the wise men show up and there's gold and frankincense and myrrh all these wonderful gifts and all these people saying these wonderful things about their firstborn i'm sure that shifted entirely his experience about what was happening and again it was that wasn't something i'm sure he expected either that those great things would happen at the same time so maybe that's a lesson for us as we're on in the christmas season right now and whatever path we're on or however fast we're running to buy presents or to connect with people or write cards or whatever it is that we're doing can we recognize in all that hubbub and all the parties or other things that we may be getting involved in that maybe it's not looking exactly how it is that we thought it would look but there's some good that's going to be here and i find winter is just the perfect time for us to have some self reflection to be able to look at ourselves to be able to rest and not just be caught up in the endless running here and there if we could really rest if we could spend some time in reflection not unlike nature at this time of year when winter starts if we don't if we don't remember that this is a season for rest and reflection we just have to wait for the snow and when the snow comes and lays a blanket of snow over everything remember growing up in the midwest and that that's that's just a really a metaphor for it's a time of quiet there's a time in the spring time when things will blossom in the summer when things are just wonderful and then in the fall where it's time to harvest but we have to spend time in the silence we have to spend time in some reflection so i guess i'd say as we go through this holiday season if we're running on an idea of of love and connection if that's our fuel for the car and the road of life if we're filled with love and we're connecting with other people that's a really good spot to be in if we feel like we're running on empty as the song says then i think it's time for us to to pull back and to say the presence or the parties etc is not as important as my own peace of mind as my ability to connect with friends and family in a loving way those are the things that are really going to make this a transformative season and honestly most of us won't even remember what gift you got from who by the year from now but you're not going to forget the connection that you have with each other and so during this season this is a great time to have the connection oh i i totally agree and i had the privilege of hearing matthew fox speak this last sunday and he talked very much about how important it is to be still at this time of the year and that ancient times chose christmas because it was a season of reflection it was close to the shortest day of the year the solstice and that it's very important for us to be still and to meditate to get in touch with the inner birth of the christ consciousness inside of us and with the holiday hubbub which i mean i love i love new york has a lot of energy there's a lot going on the lights the windows the just the fun you don't have to spend money to have fun you can just enjoy each other the company and just the the joy of being alive really but it it it really was very important to focus in on the stillness inside to welcome that birth inside of us and to commemorate that and i i think that christmas is very challenging for many people too you know if if the form does not take if it's not perfect you know people unfortunately we sometimes buy into the commercialism which runs rampant and if you don't have the whole perfect life that the cards you know and perfect everything then then it's it can trigger some depression for people and and i think you know what you're saying the love and being together and and being quiet inside yourself and enjoying simple pleasures is is very important and is really i think what's happening in the changing structure is going away from the materialism and the the external and more the internal values coming up and sharing with each other and and i i do i'm glad we're talking this came up because i i have some friends who have a very hard time with the holidays and and i think what we're saying is is really good to share with people it's okay too it's okay to be a little sad you know and honor your truth that's absolute that's absolutely right and especially if you've experienced some kind of a loss whether it's a friend that's no longer in your life or someone has made their transition from this physical manifestation to whatever comes next that the feeling of loss and emptiness is very real around the holidays and so being able to connect with other people going into grief support groups to be able to talk with other people about what's going on with your feelings and and know that that's okay and that's part of life to me that's really a healing that can happen and in fact one of the reasons i wrote this book is that i was really hoping that it would be a an opportunity for people to have a real dialogue about spirituality and to be able to have it with whether it's a husband or a wife or a friend who's having a challenge to be able to give them something like this book that shows spirituality in a way in which they have probably never experienced it before that it opens up an opportunity to have a dialogue about what's really going on with each other and you hear it all the time well you're never supposed to talk about religion or spirituality or politics well i think that if we leave out that part of our life our spiritual part of our life that we don't fully share or explore it with our close friends or family members or people that are having a challenge that they're really missing out on a part of life that can be very rewarding and really help them through some of the darkest days and the darkest challenges and so part of my my goal with this book was really to open up a dialogue between family members or friends in a way that again is not about any one spiritual practice it's just about universal spiritual principles it's humorous and it hopefully will open up a dialogue where we can actually talk about spiritual things and spiritual values and how does that show up in each other's lives and to me that's the most rewarding thing that i can think will come from from this book is to be able to create that kind of dialogue among each other well i i want to share with you i've given this to to several men friends who are car enthusiasts like yourself who um will probably not uh read a book um with spiritual in the title and they absolutely loved it and i think the way it's written um is it it engages many readers and i think it and i'm going to give you a shameless plug here i highly recommend it as a christmas present um because it really is unusual and practical and it does inspire conversation and sharing and it's it's both practical and takes you traveling into different different high places the high watch you get to the high watch through the road to some majestic views really i'm i'm i'm loving it and um we have some more time so i wonder if you could um share some more about um what if people are being challenged with their car uh in their car being being themselves perhaps um what would you can you give some advice on sure you use on the car is an analogy one of the things that i i look at is and a question i've asked myself how well do i take care of my car and being a crazy car guy i take very good care of my car and i don't eat in the car and i don't like to keep you know i'm keeping messy at all i really try to take very good care of it wax it and wash it and make sure all the maintenance gets done or i do it and uh so i've been really good care of my car over the years but then i asked myself the question how good am i taking care of myself and if i use the analogy of the car it would be well am i cleaning out the trunk as it were am i uh clearing out my consciousness am i resting am i taking care of myself am i um getting spiritually uplifted what are the kinds of things that i'm doing for myself at least for the car you have like a maintenance schedule if you follow it you you know exactly when to change the oil on the spark plugs and everything else but again we don't have a manual for ourselves until now where we can start to ask ourselves those really fundamental questions about how well are we taking care of ourselves and are we taking care of our car are we taking care of maybe other people but are we really taking care of ourselves what are we doing to rest and rejuvenate what kind of things are we doing to really help ourselves because you have to help yourself before you can help somebody else where they say in the plane when they're explaining about the oxygen mask you know you're going to put it on yourself before you help a small child or somebody else near you and i think many times in life we can be thinking about other people and not thinking about ourselves and i don't mean that the selfish way but i mean it in a way in which we really do have to take care of ourselves so there weren't a position to be able to be in service and to be able to take care of other people and so the whole idea of the car is you know do we have air in the tires are we getting good gas mileage yeah and there's all kinds of things that we can look at about taking care of our car and i'd say that the other part of that is to really look and say how well am i taking care of myself do i have air in the tires am i uh am i making sure that i'm eating well and i'm sleeping that i'm able to engage in spiritual conversations and to really be real with myself and with other people and i call that being in the conscious relationship and i really be in a conscious relationship with myself and with other people if we can do that then life is really deep and it's really really that's where the meat is on the bone as it were is to have those kind of relationships versus just being on the surface and you know that's where we spend a lot of our life it's just really on the surface but again the meat of it is really in being present to who we are getting a kind of connection with who we are internally the spirit within and being able to share that authentically with each other that's really to me one of the greatest gifts that we have the opportunity to take advantage of in our life i agree thank you um i think it's a good good season to remind ourselves of that too because it does become outer directed quite often and getting in doing for others um and watching the clock and it is so key to take care of ourselves first to because if we're not if we don't do that then we can't be present with others and i think you're right our our our presence is our biggest present to others that's well said and if you think about it if you get a call from a friend who wants you to run over to help him and you jump in your car and you haven't maintained the car and the car doesn't start you're not going to be able to get over there to help them and so if we're not doing our own inner work to really prepare ourselves and to know ourselves then we can just be trying to jump into a car to into our consciousness it's not going to be in a place to help other people and so it really does start with looking at ourselves and giving ourselves our own spiritual tune up yes spiritual tune up i love that i really do it's great i wonder if you take us on a kind of a prayerful um journey for the season and i do want to mention your website um can you share that with us i know we have it on the screen but it's unityinmarin.org so that's u-n-i-t-y-i-n-m-a-r-i-n.org and if you go to that website then just scroll down right on the homepage you'll see a picture of the book and if you'd like to purchase it for yourself or for someone else for Christmas or any other occasion you can just click on the link and it'll take care of it online great thank you you're welcome and um wonder if you could take us on about a five-minute journey meditation sure thank you let's do that let's let's collect ourselves right here now no matter where it is that y'all no matter where it is that you may be tuning in just take a breath so that we could center ourselves we center ourselves in the holy and sacred space of the present moment fruits within the present moments that everything occurs we release the past any anxiety any thoughts of anything that preceded this now moment and we set those aside and we also set aside any thoughts of our to-do list what we're going to do after this time together for we know that will take care of itself so now that we've let go of the past and the future we can be fully present to this moment right here and right now and it's in this moment that we're reminded of what the christmas season is all about the birth of a new consciousness within us is available to us and we're reminded of it in no uncertain terms during this christmas season and we each can have our own birth of a new consciousness of a new you the new me it may be during times of struggle that this birth is taking place it may be time of great joy that this birth is taking place whatever prompted it let us be grateful for it and know that spirit is bringing us gold and frankincense and worm on a metaphysical level to welcome us into this new consciousness this new rich way of living and be is at hand so as we walk through this time the lights and the trees and the presence let us be reminded gifts of spirit that are with us every day waiting us to lay claim to and so without hesitation we lay claims to our gifts whatever they may be and know that we're guided and protected welcomed and directed so we give thanks for it all whenever we say merry christmas this year or during this time and it be a reminder of this truth of the new consciousness being born in us and so it is amen amen well bill thank you for being an original wise guy here and bringing your gifts of the spiritual rules of the road and your creative insights really enjoyed our time together and i for one will be ordering several copies for friends and i wish you a very blessed joyous happy time merry christmas and happy holidays to you too dear to all your listeners blessings thank you blessings and blessings to everybody who's tuned in today as bill was saying every time you say merry christmas that's saying merry christmas to yourself first and the birth of the christ consciousness in you and in our inner divinity and sharing that with the world have a beautiful week and a beautiful holiday season you're celebrating hanukkah happy hanukkah happy kwanzaa and just happy day happy life many blessings to you