A SEASON OF NEW LOVE
The advent of the heart
The holidays this year are sort of oddly juxtaposed with the events of the world. They’re either deeply relevant - a burst of Light signally a new possibility for humanity - or totally irrelevant, depending on how we choose to perceive them.
For those of you sensing that the ultimate solutions to our worldly problems involve otherwordly elements (Einstein said the we wouldn’t solve the problems of the world from the level of thinking we were at when we created them), I hope my reflections on the metaphysical meaning of Christ and the story of Jesus have had meaning for you this year. Below is a quote from my book The Mystic Jesus: the Mind of Love that I hope illumines your understanding.
Also remember that this Sunday I will be teaching an online seminar called A Metaphysical Christmas, an opportunity to look deeply into your own inner knowing to mine the power of the holiday. The state of the world today is a reflection of the people we have been, and the state of the world will change as we do. The power of Christmas is the power of change, rebirth and transformation, as something new is born in each of us. Is this “religious?” For some of us, yes, but for others, no. What we call the great religious truths are guides to the psychological evolution of the human race.
If I see you at the seminar on Sunday, or you read and enjoy The Mystic Jesus and give it to your friends for Christmas, I’m delighted we’re joined in the consideration of mystical truths as they apply to our lives today. During this period of Advent, as our hearts prepare for the coming of the Light into our hearts and minds, may your journey be filled with the glimmers of a new world.
From The Mystic Jesus:
Jesus was a man, yes, but he is also a spirit as alive today as he was two thousand years ago. The birth of Jesus as a physical being was the birth of the historical Christ; the advent of divine love into our thinking is the birth of Christ into the world today. He does not appear now as a man but as a state of consciousness, which does not make him any less real. The very concept of reality is transforming as we move further into the twenty-first century, humanity evolving beyond the limited framework of primacy given to external factors at the expense of internal forces. Once we recognize that the world of matter is simply a world of effects, the causes of which lie in consciousness, we begin to pay much more attention to the goings-on of the inner life…
The mystical birth of Jesus is the opening of the heart. Just as Mary gave birth to the historical Jesus, the mystic Jesus enters the world through us. He is born any moment that we are willing to give birth to him. He is born again in any moment of unconditional love. This isn’t simply an abstract idea; it’s a practical moment we either do or do not choose.
In every moment we are making a choice, whether we make it consciously or we make it unconsciously. We can either open our heart or close it, and our lives unfold accordingly. In every instant we are generating a thought, and every thought will have an effect.
How often we choose to blame instead of bless, judge instead of accept, take instead of give. And why? Because we were trained to think that way. The ego constantly tempts us to separate ourselves off from the rest of the universe. But the mystic Jesus has the power to override the ego’s dictates, to save us from our chronic temptation to withhold our love. Choosing to align with him, we cocreate with God a different kind of world.
We will not stop war or environmental degradation or world hunger or rampant addiction or any of the stresses that plague us today until we address the inner dynamics—the perversions of heart—that give rise to them. The problem of world hunger, for instance, is not hunger itself; the problem is that the people of the world find it tolerable that a child should starve. There is no dearth of food. There is only a dearth of willingness to put love for our fellow human beings before our acquiescence to a system that in essence doesn’t care if children starve. Global poverty is a symptom, not a cause. Its cause is our collective disconnection from adherence to the principles of a moral cosmos. That Jesus works with us on the level of cause, on the plane of consciousness, does not make him less relevant but even more relevant to the practical concerns of humanity today.
The Second Coming is synonymous with the evolution of humanity into our self-actualized state. The Second Coming isn’t the reappearance of someone who left and will return; it’s a remembrance of what has never left but has been obscured. The mystic Jesus is the Alpha and Omega that always was and always will be. His reappearance in the world means our remembrance of who we are.
How many times have people said to me, “I don’t know who I am,” or “I can’t find a place for myself in this world,” or “I don’t think I even belong here.” The world blinds us to who we are and why we’re here. The world as we know it is not home to the true self, and we cannot find ourselves within its walls. Even at its best it is a rickety, shoddy house compared to the light-filled mansion that exists within.
Yet the point is not to ignore the world or to reject it. We are here to transform it. Our purpose is to become the light that casts out the darkness, to be harbingers of a different world by becoming different people. The more we understand the deeper meaning of events, the more powerful we are at transforming them.
The deeper meaning of any situation is a universal longing for love. All of us long for it; all of us are looking for it. The miracle occurs when we realize we ourselves are here to provide it.
We can see God’s love only when we are willing to express it. We cannot find what we are looking for without realizing who we are. I think of all the years I was struggling so hard to “find God,” not realizing that I would see His love manifest in my own life only when I sought to make it manifest in the lives of others. Any wall we build to keep out others will keep God out of our conscious awareness. The only way to find His love is by giving it away.
May the walls in front of our hearts come down this year. What a beautiful thing that would be.
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