26.02.06
0502 – Notes on Christmas
Posted in the Branch at 6:11 pm by miracles 
Print This Post
from Issue 005 — Jan 2002
What follows are excerpts from two talks given on the topic of Christmas by James and Linda Hale at the Miracles Café in late 1997. Complete copies of the talks can be found on our Website.
For 2000 years, the Christian world has placed a tremendous amount of significance on the birth of a child. Many rituals and deeply held assumptions and beliefs have become inextricably bound up with the season we call Christmas. In the Course’s teaching, these mean absolutely nothing in a state that exists beyond time but, if reinterpreted and related to correctly, they can be used to lead us back to that state of timelessness.
Neither time nor season means anything in eternity. But hare it is the Holy Spirit’s function to use them both, though not as the ego uses them. (T-15.X.1: 3-5)
As always, the Course’s radical re-interpretation of the symbols that seem to define us is not done in the spirit of attack. Rather, we’re gently encouraged to bring our dearly held symbols to a wholly benign presence that will cleanse them of all that is not benign. The promise is that once we have reached the stage of being able to do this, we are also able to use the symbols to embrace the truth, which lies beyond them. Then we will be the Truth, and no longer in need of symbols.
So, in the spirit of gently questioning every value we hold, let us turn our attention to the symbol of a birth, a birth that was especially significant because it has become a symbol of the birth of something holy into the profane. That holiness is called the Christ and is our true Self. It is not restricted to a birth some 2000 years ago but a birth much closer to “home.” The awakening of our awareness of It is like the discovery of a Child within, a Child of profound significance:
Yet there is a Child in you Who seeks His Father’s house, and knows He is alien here. This childhood is eternal, with an innocence that will endure forever. Where this Child shall go is holy ground. It is His Holiness that lights up Heaven, and that brings to earth the pure refection of the light above, wherein are earth and Heaven joined as one. (W-pI.182.4: 3-6)
These words would probably have a ring of truth to many Christians, and yet the Course is here to teach us that they can only be truly understood if we fundamentally let go many deeply held traditional religious concepts. The ways in which the Course departs from these concepts will be a continuous theme throughout our discussion.
Where is the Christ?
It is the line that is in the paragraph following the one quoted from above which reveals one of the most fundamental ways in which the Course departs from traditional Christian views.
It is this Child in you your Father knows as His Own Son. (W-pI.182.5: 1)
Jesus, the person who walked this earth 2000 years ago was not the only son of God, with the rest of humanity being at best, adopted sons of God. According to the Course, we are all the equal sons of God, or to put it more accurately, we are all aspects of the One Son, the Christ, which only appear to be separate. There is only one Father and there is only one Son, the Christ, and the truth of our being is that.
Jesus debunks the traditional Christian notion that he has a special and qualitatively different relation to the Father very early in the text, which has direct implications as to the appropriate way of relating to him as a guide, teacher or “saviour.”
Equals should not be in awe of one another because awe implies inequality. It is therefore an inappropriate reaction to me…. There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else. This leaves me in a state which is only potential in you. (T-1.II.3: 5-6,10-13)
If Jesus was special in having a unique relationship to the Father, which only he could express, then our attention would necessarily need to be focused outside of ourselves and put upon this singular vessel of light and truth that he represents. He would become an indispensable link in the chain leading back to God, without which we would be lost.
The Course has a term to describe any relationship in which the parties see their salvation as existing outside themselves—a special relationship. Even a cursory understanding of traditional Christian practice will reveal that at least three of the dynamics of specialness have become inextricably bound up with the way many Christians relate to Jesus.
- Salvation is seen as lying in something other than one’s own change of mind.
- Salvation is seen outside oneself.
- Salvation is affected by separating out particular aspects of the Sonship as having exclusively held attributes.
Special relationships are described by the Course as any relationship made to substitute for the awareness of one’s own eternal relationship of love to the Source of love, God. The act of substituting in this way is described as idolatry. In the Clarification of Terms Jesus speaks of himself in the third person:
Some bitter idols have been made of him who would be only brother to the world. (C-5.5: 7)
These words can be understood to not only refer to more overt symbols of bitterness, such as the sacrifice of his body for our sins in the crucifixion but also to the whole egoic thought system in which we sacrifice our oneness with God and our brothers to make a world of idols–a world in which we seem to be separate bodies which are inherently sinful and guilty, whose only hope is the fleeting happiness sometimes found in special relationships but which eventually turn to dust.
Jesus as an idol.
An idol is any substitute we set up to replace the truth of our reality. So in this case, the singular person of Jesus is related to as being a unique and exclusive expression of the truth–a symbol of all we are not. Further, what he has is to be somehow magically appropriated by relating to him, and only, him for without him our connection to the divine would be lost.
To make such an idol of Jesus, we need to deny who we are as God created us, which according to the Course can only be known by wholly accepting the truth of our equality and inclusiveness as an inherent part of the Christ. Equality is denied by putting Jesus on a pedestal, upon which only he is privy to the full favours of the Father. Inclusiveness is denied by suggesting that the Father has degrees of relationship with His creation, some aspects being closer to his nature, more special, than others. The Course teaches that God’s nature is singular and constant. All His creation shares His attributes equally and wholly. That is in fact what makes creation creation.
The Course’s metaphysics does not allow for a theology in which some sons of God fall from the state of grace and therefore need redemption by other aspects, which are more pure. Sins cannot be atoned for by these pure ones unless one believes that sin is possible. In other words, there can be no hierarchy in the Creation’s relation to the Father, just as there can be no hierarchy in illusions. The Course’s teaching is that there is only one difference in creation that can be meaningfully spoken of and that is the difference between the Creator and the created. So lesson 326 states, “I am forever an effect of God.” The Father is forever the Cause.
I am forever Your Effect, and You forever and forever are my Cause. As You created me I have remained. Where you established me I still abide. And all Your attributes abide in me, because it is Your to have a Son so like his Cause that Cause and Its effect are indistinguishable. (W-pII.326.1: 25)
According to the Course, the Father gave of Himself so totally to the Son, that the Son shares all His attributes such that there is no place the Father ends and the Son begins.
We can talk about this, yet clearly the experience of the divine relationship between God and the Christ is beyond the capability of our verbal, linear, rational mind to comprehend. Suffice it to emphasise at present that there is no hierarchy amongst the aspects of Creation, and to relate to one aspect as if it were so is to effectively obliterate the possibility of remembrance of the eternal relationship we do have to our Source. Rather than getting closer to the awareness of Christ, in idolising Jesus [or any other spiritual teacher for that matter] we are actually participating in what the Course describes as the antichrist.
An idol is an image your brother that you would value more than what he is. Idols are made that he may be replaced, no matter what their form. (T-29.VIII.1: 6-7)
As Course students, much of our practice is focused on accepting more and more completely that the only solution to all our problems exists within our mind and that we and we alone, are responsible for what is within our mind. So in our relating to Jesus, part of our lesson involves letting go all magical tendencies to see him as the answer above and beyond what we conceive ourselves to be. The movement is always one of withdrawing attention from the outside as an end in itself, and placing it within. The question then becomes, if Jesus is not an intrinsically special being, who or what is he and what is and enlightening way of relating to him?
Rebirth–The Birth of the Christ
Where the Christ is, and what it is, is alluded to in the following excerpt from the Course:
The sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness. See it not outside yourself, but shining in the Heaven within, and accept it as the sign the time of Christ has come. (T-15.XI.2: 1-2)
That light symbolises what we are as God created us and the “time of Christ” is the reawakening of the knowledge of what we are in the midst of the darkness of our delusional self- concepts. Behind the darkness of the hell we have made, our Heavenly home awaits our choice to return to it wholly. In Lesson 182, the image is used of Christ becoming an innocent child, Who constantly pleads to us to take Him back to His heavenly home, in which He can simply be what He is:
It is this Child in you your Father knows as His Own Son. It is this Child Who knows His Father. He desires to go home so deeply, so unceasingly, His voice cries unto you to let Him rest a while. (W-pI.182.5: 1-3)
The analogy to a child is frequently used in the Course, both to describe our relationship to our Father and our relative state of ignorance! However, in the context of Christmas as the time of Christ we are also reminded that our first glimmering of the truth that we have so long denied, is indeed like a child and needs our protection and care. Moreover, this care is not for the sake of the child, but for our sake, that we do not “lose” sight of Him again. For it is within that sight that we will see the strength that is defenselessness:
For He was willing to become a little Child that you might learn of Him how strong is he who comes without defenses, offering only love’s messages to those who think he is their enemy. (W-p1.182.9: 2)
The profound truth that the Course helps us to understand is that until we let go all concepts associated with sin, sacrifice and death we must fear Jesus, and thus, at some level, experience him as an enemy. The theme of sacrifice and how it is linked up to notions inherent in the Christmas celebration will be the focus of Part II of these excerpts.
Lesson 182 is about teaching us how to enter into the present moment, what the Course calls the holy instant, in order to experience the truth that exists outside of time and the world. In the instant we fulfil what the Course teaches:
He rules the universe, and yet He asks unceasingly that you return with Him, and take illusions as your gods no more. (W-pI.182.11: 5)
In the present moment, we let go all our past learning and in that act, let go our presumptions of what the future should or would be.
It is in your power to make this season holy, for it is in your power to make the time of Christ be now. (T-15.X.4.)
The ego would have us avoid the present moment because of its dependence on fear that is rooted in the belief in sin and guilt. It is these three pillars that underlie the ego’s use of time.
By the notion of paying for the past in the future, the past becomes the determiner of the future, making them continuous without an intervening present. (T-13.IV.4: 4)
The time of Christ is the time in which we are presented with the only choice there is–to be host to God or hostage to the ego. Love is total, just as the ego principle is, thus there can be no partiality or attempt to compromise in our decision-making.
It is in the holy instant, when we make the choice for Christ, that we participate in the Second Coming, which is:
…nothing more than the end of the ego’s rule and the healing of the mind. (T-4.IV.10: 2)
Nothing new is created, rather, all that is unreal is let go of, so that what always existed beyond the veil of illusions is free to reveal itself and be itself.
Christ’s Second Coming, which is sure as God, is merely the correction of mistakes, and the return of sanity. It is part of the condition that restores the never lost, and re-establishes what is forever and forever true. (W-pII.9.1: 1-2)
To celebrate Christmas truly in the spirit of the Course’s teaching is to celebrate each and every day. It is to be willing to let go of all judgements, meaningless thoughts and self-concepts, so that the Christ, that which we are in truth, as God created us, can dawn upon our now empty mind. In our choosing, in the holy instant, to be host only to what God created, we “give birth” to the awareness of that which never left us–it was we who left it in our hallucinatory collective dreams. That is the re-birth, the resurrection or the Second Coming of the Christ.
The holy instant is the method by which we practice giving Christ ascendance in our minds, in acknowledgement that He is the link which keeps us one with God and is the only part of us which has any reality. When we do this, our mind is being healed and we are participating in what the Course calls “the Great Awakening.” [T-15.XI.10: 10]
This is the season when you would celebrate my birth into the world. Yet you know not how to do it. Let the Holy Spirit teach you, and let me celebrate your birth through Him. The only gift I can accept of you is the gift I gave to you. Release me as I choose your own release. The time of Christ we celebrate together, for it has no meaning if we are apart. (T-15.X.1: 5-10)
The birth of Self
Thus we are told that rather than celebrate the birth of Jesus we are to celebrate the birth of our Self. We are being led inextricably back to the fundamental process of the Course, namely, awaken to the truth of who you are, accept the Atonement for yourself. The method being used, the same method Jesus uses throughout the Course, is to look at the barriers we have placed in the way. To see them for what they are, shabby constructs erected for the sole purpose of hiding from us our Truth. At Christmas we are traditionally being presented with a barrier in that we are to celebrate the birth of one who is fundamentally different from us. Even in celebrating the birth at all are we accepting the “truth” of our condition. In celebrating the birth of one so divine as Jesus, we are also establishing our utter distance from God and our wretchedness before Him. We are accepting a place in the scheme of things that is firmly on the lower echelons. We are also accepting the elevation of “…him who would be only brother to the world.”[C-5.5:7] to someone or thing that is fundamentally different to us on an ontological level. It is this false image of him that Jesus is asking us to release him from, and in so doing, release ourselves from our own false image.
The idea of Christ
Christ is not a body of flesh, but an idea of Truth. An idea born in you each time you are willing to look with Jesus or the Holy Spirit upon a brother and see in him the truth that he is not a body. For as you release your brother from the prison you have erected around him, so too do you release yourself from that which you are not.
The lesson I was born to teach, and still would teach to all my brothers, is that sacrifice is nowhere and love is everywhere. For communication embraces everything, and in the peace it re-establishes, love comes of itself. (T.15.XI.7: 5-6)
The celebration of Christ’s mass is thus the celebration of the end of sacrifice rather than its veneration. It is the recognition that the body does not in any sense define us, and that we are all an idea in the mind of God or a thought of the single Thought.
That is because you recognize, however dimly, that God is an idea, and so your faith in Him is strengthened by sharing. What you find difficult to accept is the fact that, like your Father, you are an idea. And like Him, you can give yourself completely, wholly without loss and only with gain. Herein lies peace, for here there is no conflict. (T-15.VI.4: 4-7)
On this level, love is perfect, communication is complete, and loss or gains are both meaningless concepts. Physical birth and death are but dreams, and so implicitly, is everything which happens in between. It is significant that the two most overt celebrations of the Christian world revolve around the birth and death of Jesus. The Course is a call to relate to these events as symbols which reflect to us, and can lead us to, a knowledge that the only true birth is a re-birthing of our awareness of Christ through the Holy Spirit. The resurrection is but a relinquishing of the idea of separation and a reawakening of the awareness of our eternal nature as Christ–God’s Son. Death is but a dream of “peace.”
Teacher of God, your one assignment could be stated thus: Accept no compromise in which death plays a part. (M-27.7: 1)
In this there can be no compromise for to attempt to do so is to endeavor to combine orders of reality inappropriately, which can only result in conflict and confusion. The key always lies in who or what we believe ourselves to be. If we identify ourselves as a body, the gifts we give and receive will be bound to the limitations inherent in it. This is the alternative:
When the body ceases to attract you, and when you place no value on it as a means of getting anything, then there will be no interference in communication and your thoughts will be as free as God’s. (T-15.IX.7:1)
Christmas, the gift of choosing again.
Christmas is a time of much gift giving. We recognise, however dimly, that the most important giving is to do with something intrinsic to us. It is, therefore, a time when we make time to be with the ones who are closest to us, or, to extend a hand to those who are stranger to us, or who might be less fortunate than ourselves. We have the saying, “It is the thought that counts,” rather than how humble or grand our physical gift might be. Christmas is seen as a time of reflection in which we think about the quality of our life–”and so this is Christmas, and what have we done?”
Yet, as we have all no doubt experienced, Christmas can also be a time in which worship of the body can reach almost hysterical proportions. By the time we have gone through the hurly burly of gift buying and wrapping, organisation of social engagements, making sure we have left no one out, our bellies are likely to be too full, or we are too tipsy to have the space to quietly appreciate each other, let alone our relationship to Jesus or God.
Also, Christmas can be a time of great ambivalence. The ego world whips out its best in terms of what it can seem to provide, and yet behind it we can sense the personal conflicts, the judgements, and the old wounds which still tend to keep us feeling isolated and separate. Christmas in the West is like a great pressure cooker time of apparent good will and joining–yet the very intensity of it tends to reveal our ill will and lack of desire (for all our good intentions) to sincerely join. For some, Christmas is the loneliest and most desolate time of the year. Christmas as it is popularly practiced does not answer the great riddle of the passing of time and the onset of death. Indeed, it can be the loneliest of times because loved ones are no longer with us at a time when joining together seems to have so much significance.
There tends to be such a build up in and around Christmas, that by the time it comes and goes, it is almost a non-event. The party has to end, as all parties must, and our ordinary life resumes again. For all our wishing of a happy new year we all know that many will not be there to celebrate next year.
Christmas can however be a very powerful time if we learn how to relate to it consciously. It can help us to understand and do these things:
- See through the ego’s game. No amount of material gifts, pleasures etc. can compensate for, hide, or get rid of our felt lacks and limitations. Moreover, we start to see that our incessant pleasure seeking masks great guilt and fear.
- Open up to the truth that our happiness does exist beyond the bodily level and is no way dependant on it. We can transcend the condition of being human, and in that learn what it is to give and love. Only Spirit has the freedom in which to truly give.
- Now that we are learning in which direction to look for salvation, we can let go guilt for all the times we could not love or give, but rather sought to bargain and blame. As minuscule limitations, apparently separated off from the great sea of life, we were far too fearful of our own survival to ever give of ourselves. Once we begin to see this, we let go our own guilt and find the space in which to forgive others their limitations too. With gentleness and humility dawning in our hearts, Christmas can truly be a time to choose again. This, then will be our experience:
So will the year begin in joy and freedom. There is much to do, and we have been long delayed. Accept the holy instant as this year is born, and take your place, so long left unfulfilled, in the Great Awakening. Make this year different by making it all the same. And let all your relationships be made holy for you. This is our will. Amen. (T-15.XI.10: 8-14)
The True Gift: The Gift of Union.
Jesus, in speaking of our celebration of his birth offers this key to understanding what the true gift is:
We who are one cannot give separately. When you are willing to accept our relationship as real, guilt will hold no attraction for you. For in our union you will accept all our brothers. The gift of union is the only gift that I was born to give. Give it to me, that you may have it. (T-15.X.3: 1-5)
Jesus suggests when we are willing to accept our relationship with him is real, all else will fall into place and we will no longer have a misguided attraction to the things of this world. Jesus was a human who so completely identified with the Christ, that he became that. In becoming the Christ wholly and completely, with no part that he would keep separate, he re-awakened to his eternal relationship to the Father, such that to relate to Jesus Christ is to relate to the Father. That relationship is the only thing which exists in truth–Jesus simply accepted that completely.
Our gift then, becomes one of relinquishing in any instant the false thoughts that make an image of our /selves, so that we then become free to accept what we are beneath the veil of our delusional self-concepts:
This Christmas give the Holy Spirit everything that would hurt you. Let yourself be healed completely that you may join with Him in healing, and let us celebrate our release together by releasing everyone with us. (T-15.XI.3: 1-2)
We give up all that sacrifices the truth of relationship, so that only love remains. To recall Helen’s beautiful poem, “The Holiness of Christmas*”
…Nothing else you lay beforeThe newly-born except your doubts and fears,Your pale illusions and your sickly pride,Your hidden venom and your little love,Your meager treasures and unfaithfulnessTo all the gifts that God has given you….
So the process is, as always, one of bringing illusions to the truth, darkness to light, limitations to the unlimited, and fear to love. Given that what is other than the truth is what we have made and therefore believe in, it is we who must see through our own creations, and in doing so, realise we do not want them any more. They hide from us what we truly want- to be as our Father created us, totally, completely and wholly, because that is only the way we can be as God created us.
God’s creation is indeed a gift. It is what it is because it is a gift. So we do not need to earn the awareness of union. What we do need to do is be willing to give up all that blocks our awareness of it.
When we give up these blocks we finally begin to realise that to be in relationship to our brother is to be in relationship to God; to be in relationship to God is to be in relationship to our brother. It was only in the hallucinatory world of the ego that it seemed to be meaningful to think we had relationships, some more special than others, and some not existing at all. Beyond the hierarchical world of dreams, communication is total and complete, eternally. Not even our worst ego manifestations can threaten that. When we begin to sense this, we cease to feel vulnerable all the time, so that we are no longer afraid to be willing to give the gift of lack of judgement. In other words, acceptance of ourselves and each other becomes meaningful. And with acceptance there dawns appreciation and not far behind appreciation, love is. Then we can begin to feel as an actuality the advice Jesus gave early in the text:
You are the work of God, and His work is wholly loveable and wholly loving. This is how a man must think of himself in his heart, because this is what he is. (T-1.III.2: 3-4)
Our gift to Jesus and ourselves is to give up all thoughts that contradict this truth. We will naturally then, be vehicles of light, pointing the way to that which exists beyond all darkness. In any moment we can be the “Star of Christmas” leading our brothers home. That is the dawning of Christ.