I would not say I am born again or even that I have been saved, but I know I have felt the power of Christ around me for a lot of my life and this was not necessarily only the Jesus of scripture but the authentic man and channel for the divine that seemed to me to be such a powerful teacher for individuality and able to bridge the confused schisms of human arrogance and duality.
I do start to feel a special kind of magic in the lead up to Christmas.. It struck me today, when I realised I will not be included my family of how hard it was for Joseph and Mary to find a place for their son to be born.. They met locked doors or full houses everywhere.. In the end Jesus was born in a manger. Spiritual teacher Caroline Myss says this actually shows that Christ consciousness is often born in conditions of exile or difficulty or even in exclusion. There will be times we are not welcomed or included but we must always remember we are beloved and have the love of (as well as the power) of creation inside of us..
Some of us walk what Matthew Fox has called the via negativa. This is the painful road of breakdown, abuse, neglect or despair. But such experiences may encourage us to dig even deeper to find indestructible foundations or resources.. Carl Jung expresses this well when he says
“The highest, most decisive experience is to be alone with one’s own self. You must be alone to find out what supports you, when you find that you can not support yourself. Only this experience can give you an indestructible foundation.”
At such a time we do find a foundation that comes with the realisation no salvation is coming from elsewhere.. In the harsh place of abandonment we bend down or fall down and surrender it all, all of the longing for something outside to support us and the miraculously that inner force arrives.. It is almost like a crucifixion experience. We also turn within and learn how to nourish our own individual spirit, knowing that we are responsible in the attitude we take to adversity for how we respond and choose to go forward from this point on.
“Out of evil, much good has come to me. By keeping quiet, repressing nothing, remaining attentive, and by accepting reality – taking things as they are, and not as I wanted them to be – by doing all this, unusual knowledge has come to me, and unusual powers as well, such as I could never have imagined before.”
Emerging From The Dark Night 