Historically we have celebrated December 25th as Christmas and the birth date of Jesus the Christ. We have worshiped Him in our Christian religion as God incarnate who came into the world to correct the wrongs of man and die on the cross for our sins. We made of Jesus a deity that was far beyond and above our understanding and comprehension.
Charles Fillmore, Ernest Holmes, Emilie Cady and others in the new ‘Thought Movement’, have added a new idea to this story by teaching that Jesus was a man that overcame the material side of life and became a fully manifested spiritual being or Christ Self who demonstrated His control over the illusions we have accepted from the ego self that is running our lives. He did this through the various miracles He performed and His final miracle of the resurrection.
Jesus referred to himself over 80 times in the New Testament as “the son of man”. While the meaning of this phrase is hotly debated by religious scholars, I believe that Jesus was trying to tell us that he was just like us. That He was born of the flesh like each of us and had learned to return to His spiritual nature through a system of prayer, meditation and direct communion with God, who He said was present within us.
Jesus tells us that “we are the light of the world, the kingdom of heaven is within us, these things I do, you shall do and even greater things” and other promises in various parts of the Gospels. I believe He was reinforcing His major message to us that we are direct expressions of God, here to do our spiritual work, and we have the capability and creativity to overcome the errors of the world and live in peace, love, and harmony.
So, we celebrate Christmas as the birth of our master teacher and way shower, Jesus, the Christ. We also celebrate Christmas as the birth of the Christ Self within ourselves as we cultivate our direct communion with God. We then develop the subtle “Twelve Powers of Man” that are inherent within our Christ Self as we learn to operate as a human being in a spiritual world.
