{"id":4020,"date":"2013-11-13T00:11:20","date_gmt":"2013-11-13T06:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/?p=4020"},"modified":"2013-11-13T00:11:51","modified_gmt":"2013-11-13T06:11:51","slug":"the-festival-of-lights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/the-festival-of-lights\/","title":{"rendered":"The Festival of Lights"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tonight my husband and I were invited to go to the Governor\u2019s mansion to celebrate Diwali.\u00a0 Diwali is a five day Hindu festival known as the Festival of Lights and it is one of the biggest holidays of the year in India. \u00a0This festival is as important to Hindus as Christmas is to Christians.\u00a0 \u00a0During Diwali people wear new clothes and they share sweets and snacks with family and friends.\u00a0 What a FANTASTIC HOLIDAY!\u00a0 I am all for any holiday that allows you to go buy new clothes and lets you eat treats! \ud83d\ude42 .\u00a0 So for my new outfit I wore a beautiful Indian Sari that hand beaded with gorgeous crystals. I absolutely loved it \u2013 what could be better than beautiful clothing covered in sparkle?!?<\/p>\n

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During the celebration a Hindu priest did a special ceremony to invoke the blessings of Lakshmi, the Hindu Goddess of wealth and prosperity, toward a good year ahead.\u00a0 The priest spoke of the importance of each of our \u201cinner light\u201d that existed before we came to this life and will exist after we pass from this life.\u00a0 He shared that when you understand your inner light it is far easier to endure life\u2019s difficulties because you know who you truly are.\u00a0 He talked about embracing good over evil in life and not allowing the negative things of life to drag us down or kill your spirit.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite comments of the evening is when he stated \u201cIf you think God is your co-pilot then you need to move over.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 He reminded us that we should trust God to pilot our lives and instead turn our own focus on doing our best each day and then trusting that he is taking us where we need to go. \u00a0We should let go of trying to be in control of every outcome and instead focus on just our efforts\u2026then let the rest happen as it should. SO TRUE!<\/p>\n

It was a very inspiring evening and I loved being reminded to keep life in perspective and keep problems and stresses in perspective. Hard times come but then the hard times will go, and our life will continue forward. Our inner light will carry us through any trials we face if we let it.\u00a0 We just need to trust in God and move forward with a smile . \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Have an amazing day and let your inner light shine!<\/p>\n

~Amy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tonight my husband and I were invited to go to the Governor\u2019s mansion to celebrate Diwali.\u00a0 Diwali is a five day Hindu festival known as the Festival of Lights and it is one of the biggest holidays of the year in India. \u00a0This festival is as important to Hindus as Christmas is to Christians.\u00a0 \u00a0During […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[174,105,2690,2500,2691,29,2696,606,2227,237,910,2692,629,766,2695,53,1482,2698,1681,2697,2693,81,1996,1782,275,2694,2595,84,507],"class_list":["post-4020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anxiety","tag-christmas","tag-diwali","tag-evil","tag-festival-of-lights","tag-god","tag-goddess","tag-good","tag-hindu","tag-holiday","tag-india","tag-inner-light","tag-inspiration","tag-inspiring","tag-lakshmi","tag-motivation","tag-outcome","tag-priest","tag-problems","tag-prosperity","tag-sari","tag-smile","tag-sparkle","tag-spirit","tag-stress","tag-sweets","tag-treats","tag-trust","tag-wealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4020"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4026,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4020\/revisions\/4026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}