By Raphael Awen
From my heart to yours during this Christmas season…
If there ever was a time that the line from the Christmas song “O Holy Night” seems to apply so deeply, it feels like now.
“Long lay the world in sin and error pining…….”
Many of us are embracing a time with family or friends at Christmas as a way to escape the pain and disconnect that surrounds us on all sides in our world. We deeply know another reality is possible, but collectively, at least, we haven’t found it yet.
And regardless of the bliss you may have found and that you treasure personally, some aspect of it isn’t complete until that realization of bliss or joy rings through every heart in consciousness. And that alignment with life and love itself that you (or what you call you) have found also doesn’t mean it lives in every part of you. Love, by its very nature, wants to find its way into infinite realization into every nook and cranny of our beings, our world, our solar system, and all the ones beyond.
Could this dark night that we are collectively going through somehow be the ‘O holy night’ that we have long pined for?
I’m going to ask you to come with me on a few minutes journey into some words and heart that, if we feel it together, can be a profound awakening of love in the world.
I’m going to show you that the Christmas story is both the most real story and completely made up story at the same time. I know that doesn’t sound possible to our ears, but I assure you, anything less than this realization is part of the ‘Sin and error’ that we’ve been pining in, and what has buried our hope.
Nothing changes a heart like a story can. In one way, what you are is a story who is out seeking a story to understand your story. We seek others who align with our story and our lives and we are changed through others colliding with or resonating with our story. Everything of love and hope and joy and peace that I believe in and live for can rightly be said to be nothing more than a story, albeit a true one.
Because something is a story, doesn’t mean it is anything less than real as real can be. If you ever felt deeply moved from a novel or a movie, it is because the energy of the story resonated with the story of you. You and I are walking stories, seeking interpretation while the climax and plot are still unfolding into unknown infinite possibility.
For a big part of my life, until my forties, I subscribed to the Christ birth story as being a literally true story. I would have said then that this may be called a story, but it’s a factually true story that really happened. That’s the way my consciousness was moved by it and felt it to be real. It brought me genuine tears and love. My feeling-based interaction with the story satisfied any quandary over the opposition from people claiming it wasn’t real. That’s the power of a story…it creates deep feelings and emotions that go way beyond a mental debate of whether it really happened or not.
But I’ve since come to the painful intersection of other stories colliding with my literal-Jesus-Christ-birth Christmas story as offered and sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church, extending all the way down into present day Christianity. It began some time prior with the eroding conviction that God himself had protected the bible from any human tinkering. I was then introduced to the now very widely known and easy to see reality that prior to the Jesus in a manger story as being literal and unique from 2000 years ago, there were, in fact, many other birth of Christ stories. Okay, but so what, you may say, the devil always tries to counterfeit the real?
Well, these other very pagan Christ birth stories came from several different cultures and religions in times thousands of years prior to the Jesus birth story. Horus, the sun god of Egypt, or Mithras of Mithraisim along with several others (Krishna, Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Attis) all come up with stunning similarities. We find (and bear with me, this partial list goes on) that these mythical Christs are also not only born of a virgin, but also on the same date, or the nearby solstice of December 21st, fathered by carpenters, attended by wise men along with bright shining stars and manger births. The Christ child in some of these other stories went on to have 12 disciples, be a saviour, be crucified, and resurrected.
My God, I could hardly believe what I was undeniably seeing. An atheist leaning brother-in-law from my previous marriage had once mentioned the book, (right in the middle of our living room, no less), ‘The Pagan Christ’ by Tom Harpur and back then, the very title was anathema to me and my ex-wife. I was very surprised a few years later to have my world expanded by that very book.
I had to simply shelve the whole thing and seek to find my own way. I still felt a god connection but didn’t want to be around anyone any longer who claimed to have it all figured out. It’s a bit ironic, because from where I sit today, I still, you could say, ‘believe in God,’ but this god/God, itself/herself/himself/source energy field, is the one actually trying to ‘figure it all out’ and it’s doing this through you and I through ongoing infinite discovery and expansion, and with all of us as fragments of it.
So, why then did the literalist Christians of recent fame get the corner on this story and why? The Christ story as it existed in mythology was a powerful story that many ascribed to, but left in its mythological form, it offered the Roman authorities of Jesus’ day no control over the people. For control, a literal story was needed, and one that was rolled out by Roman authorities. It was rolled out in strategically time appropriate/ripe stages long after Jesus’ death.
The man, Jesus, was made into the one true manifestation of the long, and through many channels, prophesied coming Christ. It began with the apostle Paul who had hardly any use or interest in the man Jesus, and complete disdain for his actual followers and sought only to fashion Jesus into this one true literal Christ. It is a lie of truly epic proportions, and interestingly (but this is a story for another time, see ‘The Event That Created Created Christianity’ by Eric Zuesse for more) the evidence for thee event that created this version of Christianity is contained irrefutably in the very writings of Paul in his letter to the Galatians. Long and winding story short– Jesus of Nazareth rolls over agonizingly in his grave that his life and teachings could have been used to construct a lie to keep souls in stumbling darkness.
This is all coming to light in our times now. What we (many of us at least) simply found so hard to see before is now revealed in plain sight. One of the tenets of literal Christianity is that once you accept Jesus as your personal saviour, you’re good to go. Literally. You’re ready for the afterlife, now that you successfully handled the one and only purpose for your supposed single incarnation.
Well, if you really need something to do, you can work on the fruit of the spirit –good works, because that’s a good thing and God likes that. Or, if that all lacks some juice for you, like it did for me, you can get into the power of the Holy Spirit, and seek out deeper manifestations of gods power. I can honestly tell you that within literal Christianity, I have never seen more corruption and shallowness (up close and personal at least) of heart and soul than within the leaders who most strongly push the signs and wonders, Holy Spirit etc. agenda. The power is real, but is being used for the overall agenda of literalist Christianity…, control. God is out to control, using final authority, and we’re just rooting for him. True godliness.
This shadow expression may look alive and well, but is actually falling apart at the seams in our day. It’s been a long time coming.
‘Long lay the world in sin and error pining’ now takes on a different meaning doesn’t it?
What might this all mean to you and I this Christmas?
Literalist Christianity is now being seen as the story that it is, whose time and purpose is now completing, and people all over the world are exiting their role in the story. It was a necessary story, but now a much larger story is sweeping over us that is calling us to a renewed vitality and role.
Who Jesus was and what he advocated for and taught is a far cry from what we are left with in the gospel accounts written many decades after his death, and overlaid writings by the deeply anti-Jesus Pauline writings. Jesus knew the real goods on the divine purpose in the very fabric of the universe itself that calls us to raise our consciousness of love and its desire in the world.
Our Christmas carol goes on:
“Til He appeared and the soul felt its worth
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.”
What is appearing now, in a way it hasn’t before, is a wave of Christ Consciousness that lights up the grand scale of the utter indescribable worth of the individual soul.
You are an actual soul fragment of God. God won’t no more rest with you being tormented in hell for an eternity than it would rest with you being outside of its full love revelation for a millesecond. You are the point of the whole deal. You are the reason for the universe. And you are the saviour of the world.
As long as you see yourself as anything less, you magnify the very purpose of the creation of space and time, which isn’t a bad thing, but there is a higher thing. You and I came here to remember and to awaken and to inhabit deeper and deeper expressions of our God-laden-selves.
This is the ‘yonder breaking new and glorious morning’. It literally knows no bounds, unending rejoicing.
The song goes on:
“Truly He taught us to love one another
His law is love and His gospel is peace
Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother
And in His name, all oppression shall cease.”
There is only one story that unites all man-kind, along with every other kind, and that is the story of love. Here, that story is told through the lens of the Christ story. It is this story of love that introduces hearts to love itself. The story is the gospel that God is utterly at complete and total peace with ALL. That includes you, me, every part of me, Trump, the devil, all the extra terrestrials and all the angels in between. You and I are this ‘God’ coming to know this ‘God’, and we are already at peace in our highest expression, and are just in process of coming to terms with what we are.
What comes next is the ceasing of all oppression. Much of the oppression in the world is centred around fossil fuel energy, food control and the sick-care industry. There already exists waiting in the wings the technology and ability to deeply address super-abundantly everyone of these ills. (See the movie Thrive on you-tube if you’d like to doubt your doubts on any of that.)
But we actually don’t need to wait to enter our own personal golden-earth or fifth dimensional consciousness for everyone to be on board. It’s here now and very available. In fact, for all of us to go here eventually, the universe needs you to go there first. And the universe won’t actually rest until every last one of us find our way back to our true soul home.
Talk about a high calling.
There isn’t anything that compares.
In fact, every portrayal in every story ever told or depicted throughout all time attempts to get at and under this deep knowing deep in our souls that we have eternity in our hearts and an infinity of love to explore that.
This is the very true story, offered through one lens,…that consumes every other story!
So what’s left?
“Fall on your knees and hear the angel voices!
This is the time of our dear saviour’s birth …”
Noel, Noel, Noel! Rebirth! Rebirth! Rebirth!
Much love to your heart and mine…
Raphael Awen is co-creator, teacher, and facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Please visit soulfullheartwayoflife.com for more information and inspiration.
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