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Welcome to Soul Decodes. Join us as we wander off the path to find the ideas that fascinate. We talk about spirituality, the mind, the ego, wellness and hidden history with tips, travels and tales. Charms for a better life.
Hello everybody and welcome back. This is our real, our real holiday special. My name is Dr. Tia Julie Phillips. I'm with Sarah Teary and we had a false start on our holidays.
I got sidetracked. My attention got pulled away from the bones. Mine gets pulled away from me and it's me doing it.
So you're listening to Soul Decodes. If you want to listen to us on different, different places, you can go to souldecodes.com.
There's a menu item that says listen and you can find out all the places you can hear our show. But Sarah, welcome back and it's getting to be an exciting time.
Yes, I love it. The holidays are here. The holidays are here. What does that mean to you?
I'm not sure what it means. I have some ideas. So I'll start. Yes, for me, it induces a very childlike state. It's excitement, expectation. I'm quite a materialist, so I love giving gifts and receiving gifts.
I'm a hedonist, so having too much sherry at Christmas is very appealing. I love Christmas trees and Christmas lights. I could stare at a Christmas tree, a well decorated Christmas tree for an hour.
I love holiday music. It's just this massive childlike experience I get year after year and I'm 57 and it started in my childhood.
So one of the things I've written some notes. So Christmas is loved as a result of cultural conditioning.
So I've been conditioned to feel like this as a result of what I was told about Christmas as a kid.
And it was all it was better everything than normal, better food, better TV shows. You got time away from school. You got gifts.
Everyone was in a good mood and that was what my experience was. And then on top of that, we have this fantasy of Santa Claus.
And it was funny because I was at your house last weekend and Robin and I were talking about Santa Claus and how my eldest son was 12 when he first realized it wasn't real, which was pretty old.
And I had this big thing about wanting him to experience Santa Claus as being real. Now, I just went along with that because I thought that's what I wanted to do.
But it's kind of fucked up in a way because you're asking the child to believe in something and then you put the brakes or they find out from their classmates and then they question you.
Is Santa Claus real? No, darling, he's a hoax, but I thought it was fun for 12 years. But then you've lied to your child.
And we've done the same thing with the Easter bunny. What's this whole thing about the Easter bunny?
We have the crucifixion of Jesus and then we're celebrating his exit from this world.
But we've now got this Easter bunny, which is apparently from a German tradition of a hare that can lay eggs. Well, hares are like rabbits. I have some rabbits. They don't lay eggs.
So why are we blending like really weird fantasy into Christmas when we have the religious aspect of Christmas?
The religious aspect is that Jesus died for our sins. And so, hmm, Mithramis. Let me just read this out because this was interesting.
It's just a little paragraph. This is taken from my book, Is This the Best God Could Do?
I enjoy the traditions, decorations and the social aspect of the holiday, but I don't participate in the religious aspects. Read from Is This the Best God Could Do?
Now, in that, it was Mary Mithramis because Christianity is a copycat religion in that it has come from older religions.
So this was Mithra's birthday and we decided in 325 that Christmas was going to be on the 25th of December. And that was around the time of Constantine.
So look at Is This the Best God Could Do? And go to what I talk about Christianity being the copycat religion.
Now, I'm not going to go off at this tangent. I'll just save that. But this is to do with I think that's what all religions do.
So we've got this massive blend of lies, what we're told to believe and this religious conditioning.
And it's all kind of blurred into one. And I can't really make sense of Christmas, although I love it and I participated. I think it's all slightly weird.
So for those of you listening, Sarah's mentioned a couple things. Like you mentioned, Is This the Best God Could Do?
For some listeners, that might be the first time they're hearing that reference. But tell us what is that reference? Is this the best God could do? What is it?
So Is This the Best God Could Do is a polemic and I pull apart in 20 chapters the idea of God being separate.
This is a book that you wrote?
This is a book that I wrote. Is This the Best God Could Do? And I asked that and I said this to God because I looked at the world.
And I think I've read the back cover out. I could do that again. But it basically I say on that. Is this the best you could do?
And I questioned God like, fuck this shit. This planet is a joke. Is this the best you could do?
So that was the premise of the entire book. And you wouldn't actually have to read the book. Just understand that I completely contest the idea that God is who we've been told he is.
And I explained that in 20 chapters. So one of the chapters that I'm talking about, it was how Christianity has taken old religions and just revamped it.
And just taken old observances and practices and pulled them into a new canon of beliefs.
And I'm actually okay with that because I think I want to create a religion. We've talked about that. I want to start a religion.
I think it's getting old ideas, the best of the old ideas, and then bringing new ideas in from the quantum sciences.
So I'm fine with that. I wasn't fine when I wrote it, but this whole copycat policy, I'm okay with it now.
So but Christmas is it was used by many cultures prior to Christians using it. It's not Jesus' birthday. It was Mithra's birthday.
Also we're told, but it could have been someone else's birthday.
So for those of you who want to push back on that, please do so. But do it from a position of respect and also your own research.
Because when you look at all of the different traditions of how many times there was a story of a virgin birth about a God that's got three figures, three aspects to God.
Loads of saviors prior to Jesus. Loads of saviour cults.
Dozens of saviours. So these stories have been told and retold and repackaged for really millennia, as far back as we can go.
As far back as we know. Longer. It's just repackaged and repackaged. And so really the question we have to face is what does this mean to us?
How do we take the best of what's presented to us and make it better?
Yes. So pluck a pluck older, solid, loving ideas, incorporate them into a new religion, but then update the ideas as well.
And get rid of anything that's second rate. There's a lot of second rate horror show for me in the Bible.
So let me just interject real quick because when somebody says the word religion, I'm sorry, but my skin.
Yeah, you gank. My skin crawls. My skin crawls.
There's so many wars are fought because their God's more important than your God.
Well, that's because, yes, but that's because people have downgraded God.
If you upgrade God, religion can be useful to people.
And the way that I would like to create a religion is a place that people can physically go to understand how their minds work and then understand spirituality from a higher perspective.
Understand that their God's in the making, that God is not separate.
So I would have churches where they can read books. You can learn to meditate.
You can have all sorts of massages, whatever you want that nurtures your spirituality.
So my church wouldn't be like a pious place that you will go to and, you know, confess your sins.
I don't even believe in the concept of sin.
So I believe I believe what you're saying is that religions have such a bad rap, but it doesn't have to stay like that.
You can have a good religion that's really useful to your spiritual growth.
You'll be centering that religion, you, there's not an outside God.
I do see religions as I do believe that they have an important function.
Like if you have no belief system, you have nothing to hold you like.
It's like basic training.
Religions are basic training for your soul.
But what about the community of going to church and be around other soul seekers?
And that's fine. But I'm saying if somebody has like they need a jumpstart on belief systems or asking questions or what or even the basic community.
Like if you go to a church, especially nowadays, the vast majority of the time, it's just an experience.
There's really nothing deep and soulful.
No, it's just a social experience.
What you apply to it now that could be the lovely, holy music.
It could be the choir. It could be the stained glass windows.
It could be the Holy Spirit coming and finding peace with it, with you within that building.
So there's aspects that you can create yourself by being in a very holy environment.
The church that I was in last week, I went to a funeral, it's a thousand years old, this church.
And I had this peace and holiness going on.
It was a different level.
And it was some I don't know whether it's a thousand year old church.
So you've got all the energy of people have been going there century after century.
But there's something quite holy that wasn't available outside that church.
It wasn't out in the parking lot. It was inside.
So again, we're going to go into this in another episode.
But I've really been talking a lot about our ancient history that's lost, about tartaria, about frequencies.
But when you look at the stained glass windows of those ancient churches, you look at the shapes and the...
When you look at the diagram of the circle of the stained glass windows, and then you make holy frequencies,
you take sacred frequencies on water, they make the same pattern.
That's right. We've talked about this. That was an interesting one.
So when you look at those patterns, they actually represent much more to you.
We tend to do religion up in our brain, up in our cerebrum here.
We think of it in terms of our linear experience.
What are we thinking? What are we perceiving in this three dimensional body, this avatar?
But I'm going to say that the actual experience, that deep spiritual experience is way deeper than just your brain.
It's a connectedness to the fluid of your body, to your DNA.
It's not something you cerebralize. It's not something you think about.
Five senses.
It's actually something you experience.
That's what it was. It was an experience in there.
So I want to take you off track, but I think that this discussion of what churches are,
the frequencies of the bells that were rung, those frequencies are healing frequencies.
I'd have bells.
I want bells back. Bring back the bells.
All of that's coming back.
And the sacred geometry and the stained glass, it would have a very, very old reverential feel to it,
but it needs to nurture. It has to nourish the people going to there.
And if I were to create a religion, I'm still planning on doing this.
It's in its loose stages, but I think it's a good idea.
I would just take the aspects, the best aspects from all world religions and not leave any out.
So we can do Islam, we can do Christianity, we can do Judaism, we can do Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism,
we can do all the Native American traditions.
Atheism.
Yeah, atheism, just not a secular perspective.
Humanism.
Yeah, and just bring all these ideas together. And it's not your ideas wrong.
It's an amalgamation of good ideas and flush out the crappy ideas.
And so the church would represent a whole body of thought throughout history
and bringing in the quantum sciences in.
It's very important that we merge spirituality with science
and we're understanding that we're to some degree we're in a matrix here.
I like it. I want to go to the church.
You can definitely come.
So I went to a church when I was in West Palm Beach.
It was a universal Unitarian church.
And the people there were beautiful, but they biased themselves.
They fancied themselves on being open and accepting to all people of all faiths and all this stuff,
which is great on paper, but when you get there,
and if you didn't buy into their narrative, which by then was very political,
they may have changed by now, but when I went there it was very political.
If you didn't vote for their political candidate, then you're kind of an outcast.
So it's like, well, wait a minute.
Yeah, you're not embodying what you're telling us we should be.
Are you open to people who don't believe your way?
Or is this like a club? Is this a cult?
Yes.
So I like your church better. I totally want to help you do that.
OK, good.
Yeah, this is great.
So after we finish the Christmas episode, we'll go on to do the New Year's episode.
We'll talk about this.
You have a bunch of bullet points.
At some point I've got a little gift for you.
Oh, have you? I love the packaging.
Let me just give this to you.
I like to support local business.
And this is a girlfriend of mine.
There's just a little something for you.
There's a lump of coal in it.
I love the little pocket.
I don't look at it as a lump of coal.
I look at it as a pre-diamond.
So it's just a little something.
I just like to support local business.
What is it?
Her business card's in there.
What is this? A room spell?
Oh, you have to read the label and stuff.
I haven't got my glasses on.
Oh, it's oil.
It's an insecticide. Don't breathe it.
Don't breathe it.
What a witch.
Lovely. Thank you.
If I collapse, I'll tell you about my stash of money, isn't it?
Go and get it.
Sarah, if I don't bust on you, who's going to?
That's beautiful. It's very lovely smelling.
It's going to work on your cannabinoid system.
There's some...
It's got some eucalyptus and lavender.
You can read the label.
It's lovely.
It's very nice. It feels very silky.
And also, before we leave, on my back porch, I've got a whole bunch of plants.
You wanted some of those plants that climb up the trees?
Yes, the vines.
The monstera?
I've got like seven or eight different varieties.
Oh, lovely. I want to plant them up my oak tree.
I want to propagate. If you pick one of them...
I mean, there's a few of them are ready to go. I can give them right now.
Can I just stick them straight into the ground?
Yeah, I'd probably wait until after the... make sure there's no frost.
So just keep them in water, keep their roots.
Barely even water. They require almost nothing.
Just like me.
Just like me too.
Yeah, like you don't need nothing, right?
So, but just go whenever you pick one or two, pick some of your favorites.
Oh, thank you.
And then those just start growing up your tree as they'll be beautiful.
And then every Christmas, I'd think, you know, that's about three feet bigger.
Oh, no, it's going to grow faster than the tree.
I've seen them on Lakeshore, really.
Oh, these things grow fast.
Oh, yeah, because the oak tree is very slow to grow.
I've seen them on Lakeshore Drive and they're just massive.
And then there's a tree called Phatsia japonica is there.
I guess that sounds Latin, doesn't it?
I see you in your big words.
I know. And it's just got massive gray and they're variegated,
which means they're green and white.
And they just grow up the oak trees and they're just unbelievable.
Well, I don't have any of those.
Isn't that what you're talking about?
Well, you'll have to see.
They're called monsteras and they're the classic... the shape.
When you think of tropical vines...
Yeah, that heart shape.
... it's the tropical vine.
Yeah, I think my mic...
It's got almost like a fig leaf shape.
I've got different shapes and sizes.
Some of them have holes in them like Swiss cheese.
Oh, yes.
So this is really cool.
It's probably from the same family.
But I want you to grab the ones that really call to you.
OK.
And I want that to be a gift too.
That would be nice.
And I'll film their progress.
Every three months I'll take a picture.
This is when she was just a baby.
I talked to this one. It's growing more.
I didn't talk to that one.
I didn't give it any attention.
And it's small and withered.
And the one that I nurtured is really, really big.
I get a science experiment.
So you have a lot of bullet point.
Yes, I do.
So you're always taking me off point.
Yes.
So let me...
I owe you that.
That's good.
You owe it to me.
So this whole thing of mixing up this fantasy and reality.
And I don't understand the human need to do that.
Yet I participated in doing that.
Why was it important that I talked to my children about this fictitious thing called Santa Claus?
And then they're also trying to understand it through a religious perspective.
And we've got stories and fantasy amalgamated with some historical truth maybe,
but some religious connotations of what God is.
And it's just a weird blend for me.
And I don't understand why we do it.
Well, I love what you're doing because you're asking questions.
And you keep asking me questions when I bring stuff up that's kind of out there.
You're like, why is that important?
But I think it's important that we ask those questions because
what if the things we're doing are sorcery or witchcraft?
Or what if they're keeping us in this certain spot that's keeping us from developing?
Like it's really important that we question these things.
So do you think it's not that great that we're bringing these horrendous fairy tales as if they're real?
Now, my grandfather, when I was a kid, this was going on when I was a kid.
He was in his 60s at the time.
He's a very live, skinny guy.
And my grandparents lived in this big old farmhouse.
And there were my cousins and my uncles and aunts.
Now, they were at a similar age.
So it was like brothers and sisters.
It wasn't like aunt and niece.
So we're all these young children.
And we came outside.
It had been snowing.
My grandfather had climbed up on the roof and he'd left massive boot tracks going up to the chimney.
And we're all like, Jesus Christ, Santa Claus is real.
He was here last night.
And we're all just talking about it.
And my grandfather is up there in the middle of the night walking on a roof to let us know that Santa Claus has arrived and gone down the chimney.
And I still can't make any sense of it.
Yet I was doing the same thing.
I got rabbit poop once and I smooshed it together in my hand to make reindeer poop so I could show my kids that reindeers actually came to the house.
It's like, why am I?
I know it's kind of messed up, isn't it?
And I look back and I'm like, what was I even thinking?
Well, it's so Robin and I had...
It was benevolent. It was definitely love and humor and they were really into it.
But I still can't...
I'm just trying to work that out now.
What the fuck was I doing?
Well, I think we do ourselves a disservice with children because I think instead of telling them what we think we know, we should be asking toddlers, two year olds, three year olds, four year olds, because there are new arrivals to this space.
We should be asking them what their experiences were, what they perceive, what they're imagining.
Let them tell us.
I think we're going to get a truer sense of our world around us by asking them in their wrongness.
Now, they don't have complicated ego structures.
There's no bias.
Well, they're pure.
We start getting it building our egos, what made maybe age six onwards, maybe, maybe a little earlier, but that they're pure.
So you're asking a pure soul to communicate whatever it is that they're thinking about without these ego structures that we're going to grow with.
So one of the books I've read, like it didn't have pictures, but I still read it.
And it was called Soul Survivor.
Soul Survivor.
And it was appealing to me because I'm an aviator.
And this was the supposed reincarnation of a World War II pilot. And this little boy was born and he was having these tantrums in his crib and he wasn't able to speak.
And he was the mom was a Baptist, they were Baptist, dad, mom and dad were Baptist.
And they're like, this boy is possessed.
And they had all these, this belief system, this archetype that says this child is possessed.
There's a demon.
There's an emotional problem.
There's whatever he's in pain, whatever.
I don't want to spoil the book.
Actually, I will spoil the book because the book is not well written.
But the story is the story is compelling.
The punch line is this little boy grows up and what as he's learning to color, he's got his little crayons, his piece of paper and he's coloring pictures of an airplane that's crashing and the tail's on fire.
And there's another airplane with a Japanese zero on it.
This child has never been exposed to war, never been exposed to Japanese.
They don't know what the rising sun is, but it's there's a so then as the child grows up, you know, he's in his crib.
And when he wakes up, he's saying things like, save little man, save little man.
Right. So fine for him.
So he's he's he's come into this earth's base and he's realizing something that happened previously.
As he gets older and again, I'm skipping a bunch of stuff.
Yeah, but the problem you have with this with Christianity, I always thought that I just had one life.
If you had a belief system, the parents say if I had been my son and he was talking to me about this and all the all this stuff about a previous life, I would have actually been able to be of some help because I do believe in the
because I do believe that my children have lived prior to this lifetime and me.
So my belief system would have been useful to allow him to express himself.
And then you could have probably concluded with your child.
You're remembering something from a previous life and this is your new life.
But when you believe that you only have one life, then the parents just going to think, well, nothing came before.
There was no previous experience.
So they're just going to see this child is having nightmares, bringing something up from a dream state.
And there's no clarity about that because your belief system is so smushed down.
Well, you're going to love this because the mom and the dad really had a problem with this because they were very entrenched in their religion.
But the mom said, wait a minute, there's something here.
Just like you're saying, wait a minute, there's something here.
When the boy was just a very young, like three or four, I forget that it's been years since I read it, but he was very young.
His uncle took him to the museum, the Aviation Museum, and they're walking around and the curator is looking at this young boy and he's walking around a an F4U Corsair 2.
It's got the inverted golf wings.
It was a World War II pursuit plane, a fighter plane in World War II.
And this young boy, his name was James, walked around the airplane and did a perfect preflight.
In fact, the curator of the museum went to the uncle and said, I am so impressed you taught this young man how to do a preflight on an F4U.
This is amazing.
And the uncle's like, I don't even know what you're talking about.
I get this kid just did it.
But James used to sit down in his car seat and literally pull the straps over.
And he did like a five point check and check for his mask.
I mean, he was doing the muscle memory stuff in his car seat.
And fast forward, the there was this the dad was beside himself.
He's like, this is no way this is happening.
So he says, we're going to solve this once and for all.
So he took the child to a World War II like they're all 80 plus years old.
Right. There's a World War II reunion like a squatter in reunion.
The boy, James walks up to one of the old ladies, recognized her, knew her name, knew her husband and recounted a time when she and her husband were out with him and his former wife.
They did a double date and he recounted with this girl the details of the date.
So these are things that I wonder what that's going to be.
It sounds very advanced to be able to amalgamate two lifetimes. I don't have any memory of a previous life at all.
None at all. But that's maybe that's where we're evolving into to have the ability to have memories from a previous life and then also proceed with our new life.
Maybe that's a higher state of evolution that our consciousness is aspiring towards.
Right. So I bring this up because we have to acknowledge that we don't know.
There's a lot more that we don't know than we do know. So we're trying to find connection.
So when you experience things like you'd said, well, why did I do this with Santa Claus?
Why am I trying to perpetrate fraud upon my child? I know.
Well, because that's what you're taught. Yes. It was all conditioning.
So instead of but that's a being taught something is up here in your cerebral brain, your monkey brain. Yeah.
That's being taught something. Yeah. It was brainwashing.
We have to get away from that into the place where we're communicating with our hearts. Right.
So so what I'm saying is when we listen to these young children, they're pure and they're coming from a heart position.
They're here. They're brand new arrivals. They're here because they maybe they're brand new souls, but maybe they're coming back to teach us things.
So why would we teach them? Why would we teach them messed up? Why would we teach them jacked up stuff about?
Yeah. Why do we take this stuff and Easter bunny that now we do?
And what do we do? But I but I but I look back with fondness.
I look back and it was beautiful and there were beautiful connected moments.
We're all living in this fantasy realm. So it's nothing I don't regret it.
But I just puzzled me. And more so recently, this Christmas, I've just reevaluating all this.
So I don't know. I think what you and I should do, we'll have to think about this as a concept.
Maybe we should interview some young children whose parents are willing to perhaps.
I mean, if they believe that they the children have lived before or they've lived before, maybe maybe I think that would be really, really nice to have have and have it filmed.
And what what can they remember of their previous lives?
I mean, had you been able to ask me at age five, suppose my mom had come to me and said, Sarah, do you remember anything from your previous life?
I might have been able to. But I wasn't given that construct, that reality.
So anything that I did remember was kind of just just wasted away. And then my ego structure started taking place.
And but I don't know. I think that I think that we should start talking to our children from the premise that maybe they do have experiences they want to share,
which is a residual memory from a previous experience.
And maybe that can tie into the life that they're choosing now and then have a conversation about a much bigger reality.
Well, that's what you just shared is central to my Earth Angel Academy concept, where as early as we can possibly determine the child's basic core skills or interests,
avocation, even even at a young age, that we begin to identify that nurture that not just in some sort of a Montessori method, but Montessori times one hundred where if somebody say got a proclivity towards singing as a vocalist or as a piano player,
that we take a very well established player or vocalist and let them kind of coalesce. Pick out early what's the natural inclination.
We can get them a jumpstart into the areas that they have not only an interest, but also skills.
And it brings them joy because for me personally, when I look back at my very first memories, I knew I was going to fly something.
I knew I was a flyer, an aviator of some kind. But I was also very interested in I found myself drawing geometric images all the time.
Like when you if I had my notes from when I was my youngest memories, I was doodles. I was my doodles were all geometric images. Interesting.
Were they placed in patterns? Yes. Yeah. All like everything I drew was patterns there and I would literally even I would color them and I would like if I made a star within a circle or made a square within a I would just do.
And I remember doing layers of squares and when you enter my my house, you see that flower that's called the flower of life.
So as soon as you enter by but it's all it's got all sorts of rainbow colors and stuff. But those types of geometries, I used to do those all the time.
I wonder what your job in a previous life might have been some architect. I have no idea. Interesting though. We need to get you regressed.
I would love to do that. So we did some regression therapy. You'll have to be there with me because you'll have to bring me out of it if I'm starting to get distressed.
I started like shooting people or something. But even when I went through commando school, I was amazed at the skills I had that I was never taught.
Yeah. Like tracking or disappearing where people would let like if the aggressors were hunting us, they were the aggressors are trying to find us where they would literally almost step on me and still not see me.
Right. So there are certain skills that you can have from and it makes sense, doesn't it? Why does a child have where? Where did that come from? Where's the bigger picture here?
Yeah. So there's I think there's some intuitions. So this is again, we never know where these conversations go, but you still have some bullet points. Yes.
And I have a couple of things I want to cover to you. Right. OK. So on the outset of this conversation on the first one, which we didn't get to this one, but on this one as well.
Well, what does Christmas mean to me? I'm not going to go to drones, baby. So Christmas, I was very fortunate, my husband and I, because we had plenty of funds.
So we could always spoil the children and get whatever we wanted. But there is this horrible pressure on this. We got to buy this, buy that.
Now, children, they want what their other kids at school have. And they can mean children get kind of resentful if they're not given what it is that they think they want. So there's a horrible pressure on parents to buy and give.
And that must be awful if you don't have the money to do it. Right. You can maybe afford a twenty dollar gift and you may be able to have enough money for a turkey.
But if you don't have enough money, then Christmas in America could be quite depressing time of year because you feel that you have to spend a lot of money, perhaps go into debt.
And that kind of sucks. So that's a feeling I have about Christmas. It doesn't. I mean, although I celebrate every year and I love it, there is there is a darker side to it.
I agree with you. If there's one negative side I feel towards the holidays in general. And it's not just Christmas. It's Valentine's Day. If you don't buy this piece of jewelry, then you're a piece of shit.
What kind of boyfriend are you? Right. And it's the whole commercialism. It's just consumerism driven. If you love your graduate, you buy them a car.
And your children want this. They love it. And you know, you're kind of forced, compelled. That's kind of you're pulled into that. And I think that's kind of sad for people.
So let's let's bridge this into the idea of gift giving, because Robin and I talk about this a lot. There's different languages of love. And again, there's a there's a book out there.
It's really poorly written, but the idea is good. And it's called the I think the five languages love languages or something like that. But the idea is very novel.
It's that we tend to love people in the way that we want to be loved. So instance, like Robin's big she loves giving little gifts. She's she makes the reference to these penguins.
The penguins like if I if you're a penguin, I'm a penguin and I love you, I'm going to bring you a pebble. They bring you a like a shiny pebble. Yeah, that's very cute. So Robin and I we talk about pebbles.
Yes. And when we talk about pebbles, we're talking about just tiny little gifts, little just little things you can do for other people like they not do for them but give them. Yes. Now I'm a doer.
Yeah, this girl that was in the accident we talked about. She was t boned and just like November 13 or something. She's she expressed to me she's out of the hospital now she's got a whole bunch of broken bones and ribs and clavicle and all this.
She expressed that her house plants are her old house. It's downtown Orlando and she now lives up in north of towards the villages. It's an hour away. She has no way to get her plants. They're going to die. She loves her plants. So you're going to get them for her.
I'm going to go I'm going to saddle up, take the trailer, go get her plants. Tell her her tenant. Hey, help me load these up. I'm going to pull all of her plants and go take them to her. Why? Because that service gift. It's a gift.
She's she already told me she's why I'm going to pay you. Well, the gift is the preservation of plants. She says well I'm going to pay you. I'm like no you're not because if you pay me. It's not a gift. Yes, it's not a good arrangement then isn't it.
If you want to do something pay it forward. Get yourself healthy. Get yourself powerful. Become vibrant and then do something amazing for somebody. And then take some cuttings of the plants and give the cuttings. Pay it forward.
And we need to. So my world is a gift of service. Also there's touch. Like you're not a big touchy person. Like you said you're not going to hug me. Okay, I'm a big hugger. I always I ask permission first. But if somebody wants a hug or needs a hug. I just give it to them. I can give a hug. I was raised British and there was not there was much there's a barrier. But I don't know whether that's conditioning. But I can give a hug and I do. But it's not it's not a greeting for me necessarily. Yeah, so there's but I know which one's
like when I go to a networking meeting the people who they speak the language of love and hugs. They come right to me and they collect their hug. Right. And it's just there it is. Yeah. So there's other ways to there's there's words of affirmation. Right. That's important. There's some people who live for those. Maybe it's a bit of everything though. That would be amazing. But I just love your body. You know, you write all those words those positive. I love your smile. You're so beautiful. And those positive words are very important. Some people.
So and then the experience is like just having a good experience together. We stopped when the children were you know in their early teens. We we pretty much stopped the gift giving. We wanted to kind of break that cycle of giving gifts. So we decided we give them a choice. Do you want a gift or do you want an experience?
Ah, interesting. So we started gifting them. Did they say to you what is the experience? Did they try and rationalize it before accepting? I don't remember because it's been like more than 20 years. I'd go for the experience because that's very adventurous. But it was surprisingly they all went for the experiences always. And our idea was. And what would that mean like a day out hiking or something or doing going somewhere they haven't been before just anything that was novel? Well, I mean, an example we take them to the you're familiar with the Rockettes.
The the the on Broadway they would have these the the New York. I'm so the Rockettes. They're the ones that have legs like yours and they do the dancing and the high kicks and it's all a musical and it's Christmas and it's like a Broadway show. It's the the Radio City Rockettes.
And they would they would tour to major cities. We go see them. But also we go see like the musicals like West Side Story or we take them to see Wicked like all of these broad. But it was these experiences and they don't remember the cheap plastic toys. They don't remember the.
They don't remember the toys. They remember the experiences and going out to dinner after or going to lunch before and having these novel conversations. Do you remember how that costs money? So you're still giving a gift, but you're buying an experience other than an Xbox or some plastic crap.
And now we're to the point now where the kids are out of state. The grandkids are out of state. So it's about us going and creating experiences. So maybe we we rent some bikes and bike through the Garden of the Gods or with grace and we're thinking about picking them up and going to Alaska.
Are you so we're going to love that. I bet you he'd love that. How old is he? 23? He's 25. 25. That would be great. These are things. Yeah, it's not really up to us. It's up to them because we put what's kind of what's kind of orchestrated. It's kind of both. Yes. But once they're not going to say no to that once they buy into if he says no, I'll go to Alaska with you and Robin. I'm going to tell him that. Yeah.
We're going to Alaska. He could spend Christmas with Tony. Grace, you'll have a really strange experience. What inspired me was back when I was a captain for JetBlue. I would go to places like Aruba.
And these these people would be there. The 65 74 70 year old retirees, the business owners, and I would talk to them and they would just go to Aruba for three or four weeks and they would tell all of their kids, their grandkids. They'd say, OK, look, y'all, we're going to be here for these dates.
If you want to come, tell us when and we'll get to the tickets. You come visit with us. If you don't, that's fine, too, because at some point there's a lot of people, they live for their kids. So you want to be available to them, but you don't want to live and surrender your life to your kids.
You want them to the best thing you can do for your kids is move on with your life to set the pattern for them to demonstrate to them that your life is yours. It's not about just having kids and then dying. Yeah, it's about having kids and then getting started.
That's right. I like that. Yeah. And model that. Yeah, totally. So I admire that guy. So I like this idea of buying an experience rather than a gift. I think it's all about. Yeah. And they will remember it. Yeah. But it's very memorable.
I've actually gone through my list here because it's come out in the further conversation of what I wanted to talk about. It was a confusion to do with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. It's a consumerism. That's that's rough.
And but in experience, even if you don't have any money, you could just get on your hiking boots and you could go out into nature and just see what happens. You could start a bonfire, roast some hot dogs or marshmallows.
It doesn't necessarily mean experience doesn't have to cost money. You could find creative ways. I'm going to think about creative ways of having an experience without actually costing you much. Well, you mentioned coming to my home last week for the we called it the blood moon.
I got some pictures of blood moon gathering. Now the blood moon was not the full blood moon. No, it wasn't. No, but you did have to see it. I couldn't get it. I couldn't get it on my phone, though. But I could see the red in it for sure.
But we wanted to have a gathering, a pre holiday gathering between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was kind of a lull. And the idea was just to get people together with no agenda, no gifts. The gift is actually spending time together. Good food, good conversations, little music.
But the blood moon, when you do the research, it's a time for new beginnings. It's flushing the old and coming in with the new. That was the guide, the idea. I didn't develop that. Maybe that'll be for the next version of it. But but I want to just bridge in this.
You know, we talked about the Santa Claus thing, but let's back away from that and just talk about the overall traditions. Like, what's the value of traditions? Is there value? Because we can say, well, I want to come and make everything new and novel. But that means zero tradition. That means you're only looking forward.
Yes, you need to. But if you're completely and there's a this is a really cute, a cute episode. It's a it's a movie called I think it's called Deck the Halls. It's got Danny DeVito in it and Matthew Broderick. But this this movie is scripted really well because on one hand Matthew Broderick is only looking at tradition, only looking backwards.
Even though the kids are older, you have to wear these sweatshirts. You have to know we sit we all sit in front of the camera. This is the way we do it every year. So he's embroiled in this tradition. And Danny DeVito's his family's like, hey, it's another new year. What are we going to do? What's novel? What's new? What's different? And it's just it's the clash of new and novel versus tradition. And I think that every family has to answer that for themselves.
Robin and I really struggled with the whole Santa Claus thing because Grayson pulled this aside. I think it was probably like you said 11 or 12. And he's like, hey, so is Santa Claus real? Now you're not gonna lie to your kid if they ask you straight up.
Oh, I did. Well, we were my eight year old. Yes, course he's real darling. We answered this way. We answered this way. We said Santa Claus is a personification of something deeper. And it's the spirit. That's a good. It's the spirit of giving. So Santa Claus represents represents the spirit of giving. And it's very close to St. Nicholas. And the story of St. Nicholas was one of serving the children and giving especially to the girls who didn't have a dower.
The girls who didn't have a dower back in the day, you know, if you don't have a dower, you can't get married or anything. So what he would do is he'd have them put shoes, wooden shoes out in front and he would put dower in their shoes so they can get married. So that's the story. I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, it could be. We don't know. But I mean, it's quite depressing actually because I'm glad we got rid of dowries. So I think there's a we need to balance tradition with the novelty and the excitement. So there's seasons for everything.
Gift giving. We talked about gift. You can gift events. We can do different things. We talked about gift experiences. The one thing that we haven't talked about is greetings. Like here in America, a lot of people are Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, you know, all that stuff. But that doesn't mean anything to somebody that's not Christian. Right. So we hear people say Happy Holidays.
On social media, there's all sorts of people like even it's like, Oh, Jesus is the reason for the season. Well, the reason for it's your reason for the season. But there's other people.
Have different reasons.
That have different reasons. So what is your experience? Like how do you greet people during the holiday seasons? How do you greet them?
Ho, ho, ho.
Or if they greet you. Okay, so that's so your commercial Santa Claus.
I would say Merry Christmas. If someone was serving me in a store, I would say Merry Christmas. I don't use the word holidays. I'm very specific. And I say Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Birthday, Happy Easter. I'd be specific.
Yeah. And, and if you were to say that to me, if you were to say Merry Christmas to me, I would respond to you with Merry Christmas. Right. Because that's your, that's your greeting. That's your salutation to me. That's your term of love towards me. And I would say that back to you.
Now, if you said to me, Happy Kwanzaa, I would respond to you with, thank you. Happy Kwanzaa to you too. Yeah. Because that's my acknowledgement. You're giving me a beautiful greeting. I've acknowledged that that's your way of greeting me.
So I'm going to respond back. Yes, that's nice. If you just said generically, Happy Holidays, I'm going to thank you and say, thank you so much. Happy Holidays to you too.
And what would you do if someone said to you, I hate Christmas, Christmas sucks. Hello, anyway. I'd say, well, actually, I've never had that. But let's roleplay that. I would say, I would say, thank you. Happy Holidays to you.
I would say it sounds like you've had some bad experiences. Yes. Can I help you with those? No, but you asked me what I would do. I would say, gosh. Grinch. I hate Christmas. Some people are just cannot stand it. They think it's just a horrible waste of, I mean, I don't meet too many people like that.
But I have done and they can't stand it. They just see the whole thing as just a facade of bullshit. I'm actually pretty close to that. Are you? I'm pretty close to that because mostly it's the commercialism.
Yeah. And I've seen so many people break their necks because they're trying to accomplish this structure of what Christmas should be.
And they're not honoring the beautiful people around them. And they're probably not in their moment either. They're not in the awareness of just sharing a moment because they've got this to do this, to do this, to buy this, to buy.
Have to work overtime now, got to pay this credit. I mean, it's quite a big expectation, especially in America, I would say. We haven't even talked about the church aspect, but I grew up in the Ukrainian Catholic Church, which is not Roman Catholic. It's Byzantine.
So it's very Eastern Catholic, which is really close to Rome, to Orthodoxy. So I was baptized into the Orthodox Church where you stand up for three hours for the Christmas.
Like you literally stand up with a candle and three hours. There's no kneeling. There's no sitting. You're standing up. It was brutal.
But then we moved over to my mom's church, which is Ukrainian Catholic Byzantine. And so at least we're able to sit and kneel, but it was still really long. It was tedious. Plus it was spoken in Ukrainians were like, as a kid, you're sitting there going, I'm tired. I'm hungry.
It's hot in here because all these damn candles.
I don't know what they're saying because they're speaking in Ukrainian. And if I start to fidget and fight, I get thumped on the head because I'm not behaving. I just fainted. I just lay down. I would have done it.
But, you know, lay down, put my head down and rest. But again, these are these are experiences that were formative to me.
And for me, I'm like, what the hell are we doing? The child, the child is more important than what is pageantry. It's pageantry. And I got to say the pageantry is beautiful.
You know, not when you're participating in it for three hours as a child. Beautiful like the garments. But that's looking in on it.
You know, but when you're a child and you're just three, four, five, six years old, you're exhausted. It is torture, especially for like a midnight mass. So to me, you know, there's there's there's the great remember the memories of, you know, the excitement of the Christmas tree.
But there's also an equal amount of what that is this all about? What is this all about? Yeah. Why am I doing here? Why do I feel so? Yes. Tired and empty.
So, but so we talked about greetings. Is there anything else about the holidays that you want to talk about? Well, I just want to close with I do love the holidays. It's my favorite time of year.
I'm anytime the first of September is a big date for me because we're in the embers. And I love that. That's when we got this run up to Christmas and my birthday is two days after Christmas.
So that's that's there as well. So that's pretty good. And then you've got New Year's and we'll do a New Year's episode. We make a resolution. We've got a lot to talk about that. But Christmas for me is a happy commercial time and I'm good with it.
I think the special part to me about Christmas, you touched on a lot of it. I like the lights. I love I do like the like there was downtown.
We had this Christmas parade and others. I do enjoy that. I think it's important to see the community come together. Yeah. I'm not the commercial person. I do love giving little trinkets little pebbles.
But with my little big give you a little my penguin pebble. But but mostly I like the time together. I especially like the music. Yes. Now I don't like the words to the music. So given the choice.
I would like to listen to a beautiful. Have you ever listened to the pentatonix? No, I don't think so. They're on your link to their acapella. Oh, do you like acapella? Yes, I do. Oh my god. They're the greatest.
So they're acapella their Christmas albums. Beautiful. I like the group Chicago. Oh yes. Peter. Yeah, they're they have a Christmas album. That's right. Absolutely. Yeah, his voice was amazing.
Have you ever listened to the the lyrics? The lyrics of Jackson Brown? Jackson Brown. The the rebel Jesus. Oh, the rebel Jesus. Oh my goodness. I'm going to have to go online and have a look.
We'll open up the next one. All right, good. Maybe this will be a new year. Let's do the open up on New Year's. I'm not going to say the lyrics. Okay, good. Because I'm going to say the lyrics to the rebel Jesus.
And I think you're going to really love it. But the reason is I'm bringing this up is because I think the music is just amazing. I'm not big about choruses and choirs in the church and the organs and stuff.
But some of the depth of the frequencies and the songs, it's just so beautiful. But I want to turn you on to some of this really cool music that's especially the acapella Christmas stuff.
I put my lights on my Christmas trees last night. Now I have to decorate them and I have to drink champagne and listen to Christmas music. It's really, really important. I do that.
So you probably come into this house and we just have scant decorations. There's a sedent calm here. It's a bunch of heathens. In my house it's just like massive gregarious lights. But I love it. I love decorating.
You met one of the doctors that came to my house. She was gorgeous. She's such a corporate. I went to her house and I was helping her mother with some health issues.
I walk into her house and she has, as far as you can see, these bins full of Christmas decorations. And she looks exhausted. What am I doing?
I have said that. I've decorated trees and I've crawled into bed like why am I putting myself through this? But every time I'm asking myself that I have a smile on my face.
So it's pretty cool. But I get the whole bins of everything. Tony happened to get them out of my garage yesterday. They're stacked up. One falls down and it's just like why Sarah? Why?
But there's reasons for it. I think I love it for some reason. I love it. And I do think it's just conditioning. That's just residual in me. I've been conditioned to love it. And I'm going with that. I'm not going to try and break free from it.
I think you're going to be good for Robin because both of us, this is a good episode because there's so many people, so many families struggle with this. Where do I find the balance between the tradition and what's new and novel?
As the kids get older, shouldn't Christmas change as they get older? Maybe we do gifts. Maybe we do events. So I think that, and what happens when you're empty nesters?
Christmas can change depending on what your needs are. Just revitalize it when something new is necessary. Instead of 12 days of Christmas next year, I'm going to do the 365 days of Christmas.
Every day. I love that. It should be. Actually that's a great spiritual insight. Every day you could celebrate. Every day is a celebration. It's your gratitude. Great. Will you take us out?
Anything else? No, I'm exhausted now. Oh, girlfriend. I want to, we'll do the New Year's one and then I want to talk about the, my trip to England recently. So we'll make that maybe the first week in January.
It's your show. I'm just bagging. So yeah, and I've been to England three times and I'm kind of jet lagged and I've got to go back and do my trees and I'm going to have a nap. And then I want to listen to the Christmas songs that you're going to send me the link to.
Excellent. And I had a lovely time today. It was great. Thank you, Sarah. And for those of you listening, this is Soul Decodes. Please share with other people. We're getting some good followings. We're like, love it. Like a dozen countries now. Stay with us, babies.
Stay with us, share with everyone. But most of all understand that Sarah and I love you all deeply and whatever you're going through, whether it's good or bad or if you're lonely, understand that it's a season of your life, that everything's transient and it's going to get better. And it's all about the experience. Just embrace the season. Take the goodness that it offers. If it's not a whole bunch of goodness, let's make a decision to make next year better. Let's make this the best year of your life. And it starts right now.
Amen. I love that. That's really, really cool. Sounds good. Talk to you next week. Bye. Bye.
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