By Rudra Shivananda
Christmas is a time for celebration and also a time to commemorate the birth of a great spiritual Master and World Teacher – the Lord Jesus. Although from a purely historical perspective, December 25th is most probably not the date of Jesus’s birth, it is one of the best day of the year to meditate and make spiritual progress by connecting with his power and blessing.
Let us meditate on one of the many deeper significances of this special time of year. It is the potential for the birth of Self-Realization in all sincere seekers. It is the path blazed by Master Jesus – the path of liberation from the cycle of death and suffering that we should celebrate as the true gospel of good tidings for all humanity. For sincere seekers, Christmas becomes a time to celebrate not only the birth of a Master, but the potential re-birth of all of us.
One of the symbols of Christmas is that of the Star that heralded the birth of Jesus. It is the Soul-Star that we will all perceive as we awaken to our true nature and in course of our Self-Realization. In the yogic mysteries, we are taught that when we are born, our soul-power is forced to scatter into the five sensory gateways of hearing, touch, sight, taste and smell. We then enter into a bondage to these sensory perceptions as our feelings, emotions and mental states become conditioned by them.
During our spiritual rebirth, we must reclaim our soul-power from the five senses and reconstitute our Soul-Star – the five-pointed star at our third-eye center – the star of Bethlehem.
Let us begin by siting in a quiet space with all the lights turned off and keeping the back straight but relaxed. Focus your attention on the incoming and outgoing breath in your nostrils for one or two minutes and then mentally repeat ‘amen’ twelve times after letting go of the breath. Move your attention to your tongue and concentrate there for a minute or two before mentally repeating ‘amen’ twelve times at the tongue. Then focus your attention on your eyes, feeling the eyeballs and the eye-lids for a few minutes before mentally repeating ‘amen’ twelve times there. For the sense of touch, we focus on the skin of our face, neck, hands and feet, mentally repeating ‘amen’ while concentrating on our skin. Finally, we bring our attention to our ears and the sense of hearing – repeat ‘amen’ twelve times. We have now purified the five sensory organs.
Focus your attention now on the third-eye center in the third-ventricle of the brain – midway between the mid-eyebrow and the back of the head. Mentally repeat ‘ amen’ twelve times. Now, watch your breath as it enters and departs from your third-eye for at least five minutes. If you do not yet see a ball of light at the center, then visualize a five-pointed star there. As you inhale, visualize the star growing bigger and as you exhale, let it return to its own size.
This simple meditation will help us reform the soul-star that heralds the dawn of Christmas and the re- birth of Self-Realization. It is practised anyday to make that day into Christmas.