I’m sitting here on my couch, with my laptop (literally) on my lap, dog snoring next to me, tea going from hot to warm to tepid, writing a short, simple Christmas blog post about the Light that entered the World at this the Darkest Time of the year.
But my screen somehow has gone into “Dark Mode.” The pages and icons are all darkened black, and the letters are white. It takes me a good 15 minutes to figure out (with the help of my favorite search engine) how to turn off Dark Mode and get back to Light Mode.
Dark Mode to Light Mode. Isn’t that our spiritual search?
On this plane of existence, the contrast of dark and light is necessary to be able to compare and contrast, to judge and choose among opposites:
Good and Evil
God and Devil
Up and Down
Right and Left
Paper or Plastic
Dogs or cats, Coke or Pepsi, John or Paul, Beatles or Stones, Rhianna or Beyoncé, religion vs. science, boys vs. girls, DC vs. Marvel….
You get the idea. We only know what we know on this plane of existence by being able to weigh it against something else.
And rarely (if ever) is anyone or anything “right.”
It’s all judgment; all relative. And most maddening, it all changes – sometimes gradually, sometimes in an instant.
What was awesome yesterday is old, stale or even hated today. What everyone today craves and raves about, tomorrow everyone will wonder what all the fuss was about. He/she/it/they/them aren’t all that.
How the mighty have fallen. How the bloom is off the rose. How our beloved’s endearing spontaneity is now quite annoying.
There’s that Wheel of Fortune again!
Last week I promised to write about more tools to develop spiritual sight.
This day brings the greatest way to move us off the hamster wheel of random chance, into a place where True vision (aka “seeing it right”) is possible, a world of beauty and miracles, indeed of Heaven on Earth.
The tool is Christmas Light.
One of the most beautiful passages in A Course in Miracles is this
The sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness. See it not outside yourself, but shining in the Heaven within, and accept it as the sign the time of Christ has come.
ACIM T-15.XI.2:1-2
It appears in a section entitled “Christmas as the End of Sacrifice” which is to say that we don’t have to choose! We can have it all. We can have our cake and eat it too!!
In the Light of the Spirit, there is no need to choose, no need to sacrifice one thing for another. “All good things” are ours when we stop playing the silly game of judgment and division, lack and limitation, of sacrifice and loss.
Seeing things, people, events, ourselves and each other in the Light of Christmas we have the answer:
You who believe that sacrifice is love must learn that sacrifice is separation from love. For sacrifice brings guilt as surely as love brings peace. Guilt is the condition of sacrifice, as peace is the condition for the awareness of your relationship with God. Through guilt you exclude your Father and your brothers from yourself. Through peace you invite them back, realizing that they are where your invitation bids them be.
In this light, the opposites of the world:
Peace vs guilt
Love vs fear
Heaven vs hell
Loneliness, deprivation and sacrifice vs. Oneness, Fullness and Abundance…
are reconciled.
The Light of the Star of Bethlehem signaled to all – to the wise and the lowly alike – that here (in humility) was born the reconciliation of all opposites. Here is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and Omega.
Where does eternity begin or end? Where do you and I begin or end, if we are all One. The Light invites us to see this seamless Oneness, without any shadow of turning to darken this Reality.
Simple Christmas message? Both simple and seemingly hard for the world to hear.
Even after 2000 years.
This Christmas, See it Right! See Life everywhere. See the joy, the love, the peace that has come this day, and indeed has been here every day, when we have the eyes to see it.
Bon Dimanche (good Sunday)
John
All quotes are from A Course in Miracles, copyright ©1992, 1999, 2007 by the Foundation for Inner Peace, 448 Ignacio Blvd., #306, Novato, CA 94949, www.acim.org and info@acim.org, used with permission.
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