Christmas is a celebration of togetherness. Everywhere families come together. On the streets and in the shops one feels a sense of peace and solidarity. Whole nations feel more united during Christmas days. Everywhere in the world people pray for peace and justice. Where does this sense of togetherness come from? This wonderful feeling comes from the meeting of the human with the divine in us! Deep in our hearts we are connected – and even one – with our divine essence. As soon as we allow this truth to settle in, we experience a sense of connectedness, and in our heart rises a feeling of warmth and love.
Actually we don’t have to get connected with the divine in us, we already are! We only have to remind ourselves of this fact and we start to realize it. This is the real purpose of the Christmas celebration. In the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, we celebrate the birth of someone who at a very tender age was already very clear about his essential unity with the divine! He expressed this in his famous words: “God the Father and I are one”. This inner experience fulfilled him so much, that he absolutely wanted to share this experience with everyone. He wanted to remind us of the fact, that also we are one with our divine essence. For this he used many flowery words like: „The Kingdom of Heaven is within you“. Unfortunately, as history reveals, only very few people were able to understand him.
If we wish to respond to Jesus call, and we want to experience a really inspiring Christmas, we only have to realize that our inner core, our inner essence is really divine! We can use the Christmas holiday to make ourselves aware of the connection that exists between ourselves and our divine essence! How do we do this? This is extremely easy. We only have to direct our attention to our very self, our inner core, since our inner core is identical with our divine essence!
The real meaning of the symbolism of Christmas is thus: we celebrate the birth of divine consciousness in the consciousness of mankind.
This year, let us try to look through the outer symbolism and become aware of the real meaning behind it: we are all connected to the divine within us. God not only has assumed a human form in Jesus of Nazareth, but in all human beings! Furthermore, we will then be in a position to understand that not only humans are the manifestation of the divine, but that the entire universe is! What makes us people remarkable manifestations of the divine is that we have the potential ability to become aware of our divine essence! We have the ability to experience the divine as our very essence, as our true self! And as a matter of fact, this good news is the message of all mystics, of all ‘awakened’ and all ‘enlightened’ persons of all times, and in all parts of the world!
As soon as we contemplate on this basic understanding, and start to see the truth of it, there arises in us a sense of connectedness with all that exists in the entire universe. This very insight in the fundamental unity of all things, and in the divine essence of all and everyone, blesses every meeting that we may have in the coming days with peace and harmony. Let us always cherish this insight wherever we may go, and the goal of Christmas – Peace on Earth for all Mankind – will be an automatic by-product of it.
A spiritual column of Drs. Frans Langenkamp Ph.D., cultural Anthropologist and Vedanta Expert. For more information
on our divine essence, visit: www.selfrealisation.net