Advent Series #9
What a beautiful, sun-shiny 9th day of Advent. How rare to have such warm weather in early December! Perhaps this is the gift we are offered, to balance the challenge we are experiencing during this year’s holiday season…that we might find wholesome activity as we spend time with our beautiful Mother Nature…that we may experience Beauty, Joy, and a deep sense of Peace. This is my prayer for you, and for me.
This morning’s reflection and meditation brings a line from a familiar Christmas Song – “Oh, come, let us adore him…Christ, the Lord.” The season of Advent calls us to waiting, to patience, to surrender, to presence. It is a time of expectation that the light will return. This is both a literal returning of the longer days of spring and summer, and a figurative dawning of the Christ within. But is this what is really happening? Is there anything coming? What is it we are really waiting for?
The book of Romans, chapter 13, verse 12, tells us that “The day is at hand.” What could this mean for our celebration of Advent? Charles Fillmore’s Metaphysical Dictionary tells us that day and night represent degrees of unfoldment, night meaning ignorance and day meaning understanding. The act of understanding is a function of the self-reflective intelligence present in human beings. It requires the co-mingling of the intellect, or brain, and the intuitive sense, or heart. So what this short verse says is that understanding is already here. Christ Consciousness is already present, alive within each of us. But in order to experience it, we must first have the intellectual knowledge that it is available to us. Then we must be open-hearted in our acceptance that Faith, Love, Joy, and Peace…the Christ…is ours once we surrender to it…once we can willingly open ourselves to receiving it. Isn’t this good news? There is nothing coming. It is already here. This is an empowering statement that miraculously transforms waiting from something that I do passively to an active state of being. And what can I do to encourage the dawning of a greater intuitive Knowing, deeper Love and Compassion, greater Joy, and more profound Peace? You might try one of these:
- Practice Patience: Each time you are faced with a frustration or irritation, or the feeling of being rushed, stop. Take three deeps breaths. Count to 10. Consciously acknowledge that all is well. Begin again.
- Practice Surrender: Each time you are faced with a situation that is not going the way you would like, stop. Take three deep breaths. Count to 10. Consciously let go of your preference, placing your faith in God’s Infinite Intelligence. Let it be. Begin again.
- Practice Presence: Each time you find yourself distracted, stop. Take three deep breaths. Count to 10. Consciously bring yourself to what is before you in this moment. Give it your full attention. Begin again.
Each of these Practices has something in common with the rest…stop, take three deep breaths, count to 10…then, consciously redirect your thoughts…and at the other end, begin again. As we move into the second week of Advent, with our focus on experiencing more Peace in our lives, such Practices can be extremely helpful. In times of frustration, distraction, or confusion, the thinking, rationalizing, analyzing brain can become a deterrent to our Peace. Conscious Practice can offer tools to bring us back to awareness, to quiet the mind, and to redirect the emotions as we seek to Practice the Presence of the Divine.
In closing for today, I invite you to consistent Practice. While Practice may not make perfect (at least not right away), Practice does make permanent. Practice is how we rewire the hardware that gets in the way of our experience of Peace. It is how we pave the way for the dawning of the Light of Awareness and Understanding. How good it is to know that this coming is not a one-time, long ago event that happened in a desert, somewhere on the other side of the planet. But rather, it is an on-going, eternal process that is occurring in every heart, in this and every moment. May your day be blessed with the Peace that passes all understanding as you take an active role in the evolution of humanity, in the coming of the Universal Christ.
Know that today and always, I am here to support you.
Know that today and always, you are stronger and wiser than you know.
May we each live from our Radiant Light…be well…stay in touch…know our unity…and thrive!
And…may we know the Absolute Beauty and Wonder of this Grace-filled, once-in-a lifetime day, as Infinite Intelligence continues to pour Its blessings upon our world.
