Most of us sat around a Christmas tree either on Christmas morning or maybe late Christmas Eve, hopefully with family and people we love, and we exchanged gifts, likely things that we didn't need. There is a broad spectrum of holiday gifts. There are the small gifts, like stocking stuffers, small in size and small in price tag. In my family, when my kids were little they would get some new chapstick, some candy, or hair elastics for ponytails in their stockings. Stocking stuffer gifts are fun. We like them, but nobody goes crazy over them.
The next tier of gifts are maybe more “typical” kinds of gifts. Perhaps a new shirt or sweater. A new book to read. Slippers or a new pair of boots. A new tool for the toolbox. Kind of mid-range gifts. These are things maybe you needed or didn’t even realize you wanted! Those are great gifts! We are fortunate if we receive things like that.
Then the next level of gifts are the extravagant gifts that blow Christmas out of the water. You don’t get these every year, or maybe ever! You have probably seen those commercials on TV where the husband sneaks off to the car dealership and secretly buys his wife a new Lexus and parks it in the driveway with a big red bow on top. That would be a pretty darn memorable, extravagant gift if you received that!
Maybe you never got a new car, but I bet we can all think back over the course of our lives, all those Christmases we have experienced, and say, “Oh, yeah, remember that year I got the _____!” Fill in the blank. That new laptop. The electric guitar. One of my kid's most memorable Christmas gift was the year she got the complete set of Harry Potter books in hardback. That was a big gift. My most extravagant gift was not exactly under the tree, but it was my Christmas present that year--it was Lasik eye surgery. That was extravagant. The gift of sight is pretty big deal. Maybe the big gift you remember was from when you were little. It might not have been that extravagant, but it was big to you! Maybe it was something like a bicycle. A bike is a big gift for a child. Whether the gift was from Santa or your mom or dad or your spouse--you just can’t even believe someone was that generous to get you such a meaningful, extravagant gift.
I bring up this spectrum of gifts because in many churches around the world both on Christmas Eve and in services on Christmas Day, the birth of Jesus Christ is celebrated, and it is often referred to as being a gift to all mankind. That gift is viewed as something to adore. One of my favorite Christmas hymns, O come All Ye Faithful, has a line in it: “O come let us adore him: Christ the Lord.” It speaks of the adoration of Jesus, the baby—Jesus, the person, God incarnate. All these Christmas carols and hymns encourage us to sing and worship the gift of the christ child.
Some in New Thought bristle at that language. We give pause at the idea of worshipping or adoring Jesus, the Christ. Ernest Holmes himself wrote in the Science of Mind® that “the Christ is not a person, but a principle,” (SOM p.359). It can sound a little harsh! He said much more than just that, obviously. When we come to understand that the birth, life, and message of Jesus is a metaphor that represents man’s greatest potential, (man and woman--human potential) we can certainly have reverence for that idea. We can certainly all have deep respect and awe for that spiritual truth. We can adore the principle.
I personally like having reverence for both ideas. Worshipping Jesus, the baby in the manger, makes me nostalgic for the spirituality of my childhood and young adulthood. I often attend a Christmas service at a Christian church in addition to experiencing a New Thought service, so I can hear the nativity scripture read allowed, listen to children sing Away in a Manger, light candles with strangers, sing Silent Night, and feel that nostalgia. For me, Jesus can be a baby, and he can be a metaphor for my great spiritual potential. Those ideas are not mutually exclusive.
New thought philosophy views Jesus as representing the universal sonship of man. Sonship means that we are, all of us, sons of God with Jesus--daughters of God with Jesus. We are all brothers and sisters in Christ, knowing that Christ comes alike to each and all. New Thought sees Jesus as our master teacher and greatest example, who understood his unity with God more than anyone else. That is how New Thought leaders talk and write about Jesus the man. The grown adult. The teacher. The rabbi.
But Christmas is about the birth of Jesus, the baby. His birth in a stable. It is the very beginning of this great story, of this great message--his story. But Jesus’ story is our story. The situations and people in the Bible are always representing somebody, or more importantly, representing some level of consciousness for all of us to relate to and aspire to.
In this instance, as I said, Jesus’ life, represents the potentiality of our life. Like Jesus in the manger, we are all given the opportunity to start where we are--even if we are in a very low place. It doesn’t get much lower than being born in a stable and put in a manger, which is a feeding trough for farm animals. We are given the opportunity to rise from wherever we are and grow into our own christ consciousness, which is our entirety. It is the recognition and realization of our complete wholeness. Jesus Christ demonstrated that for us, going from a lowly manger at birth, all the way to overcoming death by demonstrating resurrection. He did this by recognizing his perfect unity and oneness with God, his CHRIST consciousness.
This is our gift, and it is quite a gift. One might say the opportunity to understand our own unity with the divine and grow into our own christ consciousness is an extravagant gift. To be clear, I don’t think Christ consciousness is the gift. I think the opportunity to be aware of this truth is the gift. Christ consciousness is always there, available to us, but we have to choose to become aware of it. It's that free will stuff.
We can ignore it and mess around with our human problems, spinning our wheels, living a limited existence if we want. Or, we can step up and accept this big, extravagant gift--the gift that is so big, it doesn’t even land on our little spectrum of human Christmas gifts. Think about the ways that we react when we open various gifts. If you open a $2 chapstick, you might say, “Oh, neat, thanks. I could use that!” Or, if you’re lucky enough to have one of those years where you get a huge extravagant gift, maybe you’re thrilled and excited. Maybe you jump up and down, and you might even have tears of joy. I’m pretty sure the wife cries in the Lexus commercial!
How do we react to the gift of our highest, Christ consciousness? There is nothing to unwrap, so you have to go there in your mind and think about it. How do we respond to the perfect spiritual principle that Jesus taught and demonstrated, for us? What do we do with an opportunity like this? What do we do with a gift like this? I can really only think of two things.
The first thing is we have to receive it. Do you know that you can’t be given a gift unless you are actually willing to receive it? “Receive” is an action word. It’s not passive. Receiving the gift of our Christ consciousness can be simply a turning toward God, a shifting of our awareness to the God presence--our awareness of our oneness and unity with the Divine.
This is not complicated, believe it or not. Are you aware of God? Are you aware of the presence of God that is within you that sparks and animates your life? As a side note, the interfaith minister in me would like to point out that it doesn’t matter what we call this presence of God. It is universal. Jews call it Immanuel, God with us. Buddhists call it the Buddha mind. Christians call it the Christ. Are you aware of your own Christ consciousness? The One presence of God within you? Yes? Done. It’s not so hard when we put it that way. That is the first thing we do with a gift like this—we receive it with our awareness. Let it be simple: You can affirm with me right here and now in this moment: I receive this gift because I am consciously aware of my highest self, the God within me.
The second thing we can do with the gift of our Christ consciousness is use it. I know we have all received gifts in our life where we unwrap it and we immediately think to ourselves, “Yeah, I’m never gonna use that….” Of course, you can’t say that out loud! You would insult the person giving you the gift. But you think it. I know we have all been in this situation. Maybe you have some crazy old aunt who lives across the country and she knitted you a sweater, and you open it up and think, “I’m never wearing that.” You receive it, but you don’t use it. You don’t do anything with it.
If Jesus the Christ is our greatest teacher, our true example of how to live on this earth and attain our own Christ consciousness, arguably our most extravagant gift, we really ought to do something with it. We ought to pay attention to this life, this message, these principles. We ought to actively apply them in our lives. This story matters to us, it matters to our life, to our demonstrations. But we have to use the gift, apply the spiritual principles of recognizing and knowing our true nature, our true wholeness at all times, like Jesus did. Make no mistake, this is big spiritual WORK, but it’s also the best part of getting the greatest gift ever.
Think back to when you were a kid at Christmas. Maybe you experienced this: you get a brand-new board game for Christmas that you have never played before. Remember how exciting that was? You were so happy to get it, but--ugh! You can’t use it right away because you don’t understand how to use it yet. You’ve never played this particular game before. There is a process to it. An unfoldment has to take place before you can use it.
You have to spend time opening all the pieces and setting it all up. You have to read the directions and figure out how to play, and that can be hard when you’re a kid. Sometimes you need a grown up’s help because they can read better than you can. They have a better understanding of games. Once you begin to understand the new game, then you have teach everybody else in the family how to play so you can all enjoy this new gift together. All of this is work, but it’s fun work. It is good work. Because it is part of getting the gift and using it. It’s worth it.
It is my great hope and prayer that we all actively receive this message of goodness, of oneness, and of wholeness into our hearts, not just on Christmas Day, but every day and always. May everyone receive this gift—the opportunity of our christ consciousness—and use it, so we can live our highest, best lives.
Please enjoy some quotes and excerpts about Christmas and Christ consciousness, written by some brilliant New Thought Leaders:
