A mystical perspective understands Christmas as the birth of God's self-awareness within the human soul. More specifically, it involves spacious awareness suddenly perceiving itself - surprise! - as form. Here we might imagine God - within OUR perception - watching the sunlight diamonds of form appearing as though out of nowhere on the surface of the alpine lake of divine consciousness. Or, we might envision the light of divine Love appearing suddenly within the dark canyon of the human soul, with no Sun anywhere to be found! For God, we begin to understand, is emptied out in everlasting bliss at the great beauty and wonder of the Earth. Here, the experience of "silent night, holy night" is symbolic of the letting-go of all concepts and ideas as a necessary precondition for the divine mystery to reveal itself in all of its humble splendor as the backdrop against which all form is able to manifest itself. Similarly, the darkness of this night is the emptying-out of concepts and ideas in order to allow the Ground of Being to well up from beneath. The mystics also think of "heavenly sleep" as a sense of resting in a divine love that underlies all form. Finally, virginity means that only God can live within the core of the soul; not even the ego can enter there and mess things up!
Photo: The Joint Trail slot canyon, November 25, 2012; Canyonlands National Park, Utah
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