Search the Community

Welcome to the 2020 Holiday Challenge Mini Challenge. As those of us in the Northern Hemisphere approach the winter solstice and the dying of the light, we find ourselves waiting for the challenge that has been 2020 to end. More darkness than may be explained by the length of day and night has spread thorough out our world. No need to belabor this point exists. But we have not abandoned hope. We are not some pack of navel gazers content simply to let the world happen to us. We do not accept shadows on a cave wall are the extent of existence. We do no tolerate the imposition of darkness. We are the Rebellion, and rather than letting the dark win or waiting for the days to lengthen, we will be the light ourselves when all other lights go out. Virtually every faith or spiritual tradition on the planet uses imagery from the juxtaposition of light and dark. We as The Rebellion will come together and do the same. We will not surrender to the darkness, we shall banish it by shining as brightly as we can. Join us in the mini challenge as we do our part to bring Light To The Darkness! This is a guided challenge meant to be something extra to do in addition to your own goals, should you wish to participate. Head on over to the handy-dandy spreadsheet and sign up. Each week will present a different Mindset goal which you can choose to incorporate into your own challenge. Week 1: Draw In the Light In order to shine, we must first draw light into us. As powerful as our wills and spirits may be, they can always be strengthened from without. To that end, in week 1, we will draw light into us. We shall do so by meditation. Light is often a theme in meditation, and we shall meditate on drawing light within us from without. Meditation can be daunting, but don't panic. There are no rules this week about how long a meditation must be, no penalties for not getting meditation in all days this week. The entire team simply gets a point for each day you do meditate, and you decide what that means. If you have a prayer tradition that incorporates meditation, here is a perfect place to double dip and do both. I have updated the spreadsheet with a Week 1 Sheet. Each day you meditate, put a 1 in the box for that day next to your name. The sheet will calculate our progress for us. Feel free to choose your own meditation, though I do encourage you to use a light based one. Here is one I found that is relatively short and light based. I know with the international date line some of you will see this Sunday and some of you on Monday (I'm posting it at 11 pm Saturday night my time). This isn't a competition, so I ask that you let your day one be the day you read this, rather than worrying about days of the week. That means someone joining the challenge in week 2 can still complete the week 1 task. Let's gather that light Rebellion! Week 2: Well, week 1 is behind us. Here is your week 2 task. Please feel free to participate in week 2 regardless of what happened in week 1. I will say that week 2 won't be required for week 3 participation, but it will make it easier. You have drawn the light within you. Now we will focus and hone it. This will be done with gratitude. Think about that for which you are grateful, and make a list. This list can be electronic or physical, but it must be in words you can read. You can share it or not. Each day, make a list. It can be the same from day to day, as long as you type or write it out each day. When you have the day's list, count up the number of items and record it in the Week 2 Tab on the Spreadsheet. There is no upper limit. Again, you can totally make a list on day one (as with last week, let your day one be the day you read this, or the next day if you read it towards the end of the day and want to start in the morning) and re-write it each day after that. Week 3: Well done everyone! As of writing this update our score is over Eleven Hundred! That's a lot of meditation and gratitude! Now we have drawn in the light and focused it. Now it is time to let that light shine! Remember when I said the list from week 2 would be useful? Well its so we can express that gratitude. This will probably be a bigger challenge than just listing the things for which we are grateful. Also, we may have been grateful for the same thing on multiple days. Let me say you are not limited to the things you wrote in week 2, any expression of gratitude counts, but unlike week 2 they do need to be unique things each day. For that reason let's not try to compare our week 2 and week 3 scores; the tasks are different and the scores will be to. You may have to get creative, for example, if you are grateful for a tree, how do you express that gratitude? Do you thank nature, a deity in which you believe, the memory of the person who planted it (if it was planted by a person at all)? For that reason, there are no wrong ways to express you gratitude, I simply ask you try your best to do so in a way that makes the world brighter in these dark times.