The Nativity – A Beautiful Light Within

 

What has become of Christmas? With the true meaning lost within the busy quest for self-gratification, there is little time to read of study the real meaning of Christmas, yet our very survival on this planet depends on us elevating our hearts and soul to another level, one where ME becomes we….The soul of man today dwells in unrelenting noise that drowns out all contact with that blissful inner harmony that can only be found in inner silence. This inner and mystical silence wherein the purest spiritual state can be achieved is the Silent Night…”

 

beauty of the arts

The Nativity

In the Christian story of the “Nativity”, the King of Kings as the Son of God is born in a stable among the beasts of burden. This most noble and glorious of Beings is depicted as being born in the most lowly of abodes. His room is a manger fit for animals, his bed is made of straw, his source of heat is the very breath of the beasts that so very wilfully share their quarters with him. The stable is not a castle or a mansion. The Shepherds are not noblemen and there are no servants waiting on him. Why does this most glorious, exalted and long awaited wonderful event transpire through such humility, modesty and lowliness? Why this event is called the Silent Holy Night?

This image of the divine child is a most beautiful symbol revealing very profound principles and truths. The stable sheltering the beasts represents the material aspect of our beings as that which belongs to the body, form and matter. It is that which belongs to the physical self, which houses the animal appetites and the desires of the senses. It corresponds to that which is the lowest aspects of our being, that which binds us to the earth. Just as the blooming of the beautiful sacred lotus flower on the surface of the waters has its roots below the surface anchored in the mud underneath, so too our highest spiritual understanding is rooted in that which is the lowest in us.

The comforting warmth given off by the breath of the beasts is allegorical of the alchemical fire of the vital force resident within every cell in our body. It is this fire that incubates the divine child within us. The darkness of the Holy Night represents the unconscious mind that has begun to be illuminated by a star which the Magi seek to behold and follow to the manger. If we meditate on this beautiful picture of the kings of the East adoring the Divine Child, we realize a beautiful image. The stable is no longer perceived as something lowly when divinity has found abode within it. The radiance of this infant as the unfolding and birthing of a man-god reveals the consummation of the alchemical wedding of heaven and earth. What a beautiful and sacred temple our lowly stable has become as we realize a most wonderful presence within its simple and humble manger! What a blessed and sacred temple the body of man truly is!

The soul of man today dwells in unrelenting noise that drowns out all contact with that blissful inner harmony that can only be found in inner silence. This inner and mystical silence wherein the purest spiritual state can be achieved is the Silent Night. If we keep vigil, and we receive the higher grace of God, then we will become conscious of that Holy Night, where we will perceive the star of the Magi and follow it to its crib in the manger as the inner depths of our beings, and there behold the new born Divine Infant representing our birth into a new and higher spirituality. In this way we will realize our own divinity as our inner master reveals himself and manifests his light into the world.

Merry Christmas and All Best Wishes to all. ~ Steven Kalec

 

Sat Chit Ananda

 

Defining the Moola Mantra with stunning visuals and the mesmerizing voice of Deva Premal.

You have come from God, you are a spark of His Glory; you are a wave on the Ocean of Bliss; you will have peace only when you again merge in Him. ~Sathya Sai Baba

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I’ve been thinking about God recently.  I’ll  tell you what I think God is all about. The  Indian mystics all tell us, “A God defined is a God confined.” “What can’t be said, can’t be said and it can’t be sung about either.”  They also say, “God is impersonal.”  “I am without form, without limit, beyond time, beyond space. I am in everything. Everything is in me. I am the bliss of the universe. Everywhere I am. I am sat, chit, ananda, absolute existence, absolute knowledge, absolute wisdom.” ~  No messing about with their sacred ideas of God and what He is all about. They are straight as an arrow about it.

Jesus Christ says “He that is born of the flesh is flesh and he that is born of the spirit is spirit.”  Then he says, “Least ye be born again you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” also Jesus says, “I and my father are one.”  then Jesus says this,  “He that loveth mother and father, child, more than me cannot follow me.” What exactly is He telling us?

He is simply telling us just how things are. He’s talking about higher consciousness; He’s telling us who we really are. He is telling us what it means when we start on the journey  to be born again, when we suddenly start to have faith in another possibility than the one we have now. Now what is that called, what is the other possibility? It’s just a vibrational rate. It’s like you’re born with a pre-fixed setting on your television set to channel eighteen and you never even knew there was a channel eighteen, channel four, three, two. So when someone comes along and says, “Were you tuned into channel seven last night?” You look at them with a wee smile, “Don’t they know there’s only  channel eighteen? Then something suddenly happens, something touches a place in your heart that’s been there all the time. It’s just like you have suddenly awakened for a moment from a long sleep and say, “Oh! Wow! So that’s how it is! I was asleep for a long time. But now you are awake and tuning in to channel eighteen and you like what you are seeing.

Just saying

Let Your Little Light Shine – Children Of Light

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(Joni Mitchell)

WOODSTOCK

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I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, “Where are you going?”
And this he told me…

I’m going on down to Yasgur’s Farm,
I’m gonna join in a rock and roll band.
I’m gonna camp out on the land.
I’m gonna get my soul free.

We are Stardust.
We are Golden.
And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.

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Since that time of Woodstock, where hippies gathered to celebrate their new-found shining selves (The Shining Ones), we have held a fascination for The Light. This is true of many of us who shunned the Church and its traditional teachings for something more appealing and often found in far flung places. By our thousands we turned instead to the New Age gurus both near and far, to point us towards The Light. Be it in a yoga meditation class, where light meditation ended each class, or while sitting meditating quietly on our own, we rekindled The Light within. We wanted to become the “New Shining ones”, the redeemers of the age.

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Who are The Shining Ones? I had an “aha” moment of sorts when reading about them. Seems like The real passé  Shining Ones have not been around lately. Perhaps they are keeping a low profile for the moment. We have to consult the Holy Books to fully understand the Shining Ones. I mean, what exactly was that blinding luminous vision of Christ that Saul of Tarsus saw on his way to Damascus, or Arjuna’s vision of Lord Krishna in Kurukshetra ? The experience of the transcendental Reality has often been associated with brilliance, splendor and light: The Bhagavad Gita states:

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“If a thousand suns should rise all at one In the sky,

Such slender would resemble

The splendour of that great Being..

Then Arjuna,

Who was filled with amazement,

Whose hair was standing on end,

Bowing his head to the Lord

With joined palms, said:

…With infinite power, without

Beginning, middle, or end,

With innumerable arms, the moon and

Sun being Your eyes,

I see You, the blazing fire Your mouth,

Burning all this universe with Your radiance..”

Chap. 11 v.12,14,19. Bhagavad Gita

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Fascinating and awesome as such visions might be, the experience of light ought not be the final goal. If that were so, The Bhagavad Gita would have ended with the Eleventh Teaching. But it does not. According to Krishna Himself, the Supreme state is that which the sun does not illumine, nor the moon, nor the fire, for it is the Light of Pure Consciousness. These worlds are analogous to those found in the Svetasvatara (6.14) and the Katha Upanishad. (5.15).

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Here is an excellent example of Light from Shri Ram Chandra of Shahjahanpur, known as Babuji to his associates. For almost fifty years he taught meditation on the ‘divine light in the heart’, according to the Sahaj Marg system of Raja Yoga. In the Voice Real, he writes:

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“Every saint has used the word ‘Light’ and that is the best expression for Reality. But that creates some complications, because when we talk of ‘light’, the idea of luminosity becomes prominent and we begin to take it as glittering. The Real Light carries with it no such sense and may be represented as ‘light without luminosity.’ It refers only to the real substance or, more appropriately, to

‘substance-less, substance,’ which is associated with neither light nor darkness but beyond both..”

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So  until the substance-less, substance, “The Ultimate Reality” is realized in all its splendor,  just let Your Little Light Shine.  Just saying. 🙂

Here’s one of the most important prayers in the Hindu Tradition:

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Asoto ma sat gamaya,

Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya,

Mrityor ma amritam gamaya.

From falsehood lead me to Truth,

…From darkenss lead me to Light,

From death lead me to Immortality.

– The Pavamana-Mantras, from the Brihadaranyaka Unipanishad.

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`•.¸(¯`✿´¯)¸.•´
♥☼♥ BєấUŦI₣UŁ . …..

La grande finale, Joni Mitchell. ~l’excellence de la chanteuse

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