For the contemplative, Christmas is an embodiment of a spiritual reality that is happening all the time. The nighttime imagery allows us to put to bed the rational mind with all of its clear-cut distinctions, and to awaken the unitive mind instead. Nighttime also elicits a sense of intimacy with God, just as night is the time for love-making. The silence of the night enables us to rest in the peace of divine bliss. The snow that we all fantasize about brings an experience of stillness and simplicity to the landscape of our hearts, the necessary condition for us to know the Divine. The vast sky of this silent night is an embodiment of the majestic expanse of divine awareness, a spaciousness with no boundaries, a sort of Backdrop against which all of the particular events of our lives appear. The "star of the East" and the newborn Christ and all of the candles and Christmas lights appearing suddenly within that spacious night are the birth of divine self-awareness - God's formlessless suddenly seeing itself within the mirror of form and energy. In Buddhist terminology, it's the Nirmanakaya (form-body) and Sambhogakaya (energy- and enjoyment-body) appearing spontaneously out of the Dharmakaya (Truth- or Spaciousness-body). The fact that Christ is a child speaks to the awareness that this process of divine self-knowledge is one that is continually new. For fresh forms and energies appear at each and every moment out of God's spaciousness, each mirroring back formless love in surprisingly new ways!
Photo: Nokhu Crags glowing in golden light, Never Summer Range, CO, December 9, 2011
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