“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends.” then we read “But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.”  One of the questions you were asked to answer last week was to take something relatively significant that has happened in your life while you have been following along this blog and evaluate how you reacted or how you responded to that event. The idea was to see if you are to the point where your actions are creating more good for the general public beside serving your own interests.  I have listened to many Ted Talks and You Tube talks where psychiatrists, doctors or therapists talk about how our brain//emotions/actions are like paths worn into the woods. We have acted in such a way for so long that a conditioned response becomes the easy response for our brain to execute because the path is well worn. It’s almost “automatic”.    For that to change, we need to work on establishing a new path and adding obstacles to the old path. I created my own personal exercise where I think of the situation that I don’t like how I react, and I instruct my brain for a new path. It is a bit of a meditation state that I put my mind in and I keep repeating…. New paths… new paths…

Your past does not need to define your future. You, like Scrooge, can come to the point where you can realize that your way of acting in certain situations is not helping you. Going forward, things have to change for the end to change. That’s the story for Scrooge, and that is the story for all of us.  There isn’t much left to the book but like many good stories, there is a lot in the ending.  The lesson of all lessons for this book is as noted here; Men’s courses foreshadow certain ends but if the courses be departed from the ends will change. Don’t just read passed this and set it aside. Take this to heart. You took several weeks to get to this point. Nurture it, dwell on it and internalize it until it becomes part of your own personal operating system. Like many truths their simplicity and obviousness does not make them easy. The value is not in the knowing. The value is in applying the knowledge.

 This Week’s Talk

“I am Not the man I was…”so says Scrooge to the sinister specter of the Ghost of Christmas yet to Come.  Scrooge realizes he has changed… or at least is conscious he needs to change. We have not seen him be tested yet so it is hard to tell if he really has changed. Going back to the book, we heard Scrooge say, “I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse.” Scrooge realizes that the ghosts intervening on his life and his resulting altered consciousness, made him a different man. I find it interesting that Dickens writes this as “the man I must have been”.  This kind of reads like Scrooge still doesn’t wholly buy into the idea that he was not a good human being.  In the actual book Dickens writes “Your nature intercedes for me and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!” Scrooge is now starting to see that what he was originally fighting against and resisting ( the spirits visiting him) could now alter his life to the better. Isn’t this true for many of us? What originally, we perceive as a negative or a setback, is actually a positive. You don’t get the job you really wanted… and then find out a year later that the business closes. The house you wanted gets an offer before you can go see it… and then a house comes along that is even a better match to what you wanted.  There is no shortage of these events in life. What could be a negative actually works out to help move you to a better place.  Since I seem to like using song lyrics … this week we will use lyrics from Garth Brooks: Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. Make lemonade when you are handed lemons. One man’s junk is another mans treasure…

This Week’s Assignment

It’s a short push to the end of the book from here, and an end to the first phase of this blog.  Scrooge tells the Spirit, “ I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all year. I will live in the past, the present, and the future. The Spirits of all three shall strive within me.”  I believe that new traits are easier and faster to adopt when we displace old habits. Obviously, some new skills and new knowledge are additive but I think in this case, at least for Scrooge, we are seeing more about him changing. Most of his lessons are around looking at who he was or wasn’t and how that led to his pitiful demise. Your assignment this week is to figure out what that means for you.  What does having all Three spirits alive within you mean to you? What have you learned from each? What new skills have you developed?  Work on setting these into your consciousness and establishing new paths for you to follow.

See you next week…