Need a Little Simplicity This Holiday Season? (WD)

Dear Jake, As nature quiets down this holiday season—snow covering the treetops (in parts of the world), animals hibernating—you may be feeling busier than ever. Let’s help you maintain your spiritual connection amidst the busyness and add more joy, love, and inspiration to your days with these words from Dr. Wayne W. Dyer:
	Joy A hectic schedule crammed with non-purposeful activities precludes an experience of inspiration; we feel joy draining from our body and spirit. When the calendar becomes frenzied, full of unnecessary turbulence because we’ve failed to simplify, we won’t be able to hear those long-distance calls from our Source . . . and we’ll slip into stress, anguish, and even depression. So whatever it takes to feel joy, we simply must act upon it. Regardless of our current station in life, we have a spiritual contract to make joy our constant companion—so we must learn to make a conscious choice to say no to anything that takes us away from an inspired life. This can be done gently, while clearly showing others that this is how we choose to live. We can start by turning down requests that involve actions that don’t correspond with our inner knowing about why we’re here. Even at work, we can find ways to keep ourselves on an inspirational agenda. Opting for joy involves giving ourselves time for play instead of scheduling a workaholic nightmare. We deserve to feel joy—it’s our spiritual calling. By giving ourselves free time to read, meditate, exercise, and walk in nature, we’re inviting the guidance that’s waiting patiently to come calling with inspirational messages. There’s also no law requiring us to be at the continual beck and call of our family members. I see no reason to feel anything but joy when we know it’s right to choose to do what we’re called to do, even when it interferes with another family member’s calling. Love Thoughts or actions that aren’t tuned to love will prevent inspiration from getting through to us—we need to remember that we come from a Source of pure love, so a simple life means incorporating that love as one of the three mainstays of our material existence. Just as love is the priority in the final moments of life, so it must be as we simplify life now. We can go toward a clearer life by examining and purifying our relationships with those we love, with ourselves, and with God. What we’re looking for are connections that keep us in an energy of love, which is the highest and fastest energy in the Universe. If we organize our life around love—for God, for ourselves, for family and friends, for all humankind, and for the environment—we’ll remove a lot of the chaos and disorder that defines our life. This is a way to simplify our life, but more than that, it’s a way to attract inspiration.