The Nativity Scene in Our Hearts

The Soul of Christmas Cannot

Be Found in the External World

Carlos Cardoso Aveline

The celebration of universal love is made right before we turn the page of another year in the Book of Life. However, esoteric philosophy says that the true Christmas is experienced in our hearts. The best nativity scene must be found in one’s own soul.
 
During Christmas, our best and higher sense of self is being born again. The experience is initiatory: each element in the outer scene of nativity can be acknowledged as a symbol of the Path.

The winter conditions in the Northern Hemisphere correspond to the probation process preceding initiation. The sheep stand for the sweetness of soul necessary to transcend outward hardships. The donkey means humbleness and altruistic service, which compensate for some of the sufferings in life. A goat is a symbol of persistence, and of the ability to get up to the heights of spirit immortal.

The feeble flames around the newly born are the buddhic lights of the higher soul, always precarious in the middle of the night of materialism and ignorance. The parents and the children represent mankind. The cock will announce the new day. A cow, often present in nativity scenes, means the whole life and for this it is sacred in India. A star in the sky, shining over the scene, represents Atma and the Universal Law. The whole nativity scene is a study in togetherness, or unity in diversity. This is one of the key ideas in the initiatory path. 

Each year we are born again during Christmas, to start living in the New Year. Across this and other cycles, we learn to exist in conscious unison with our invisible universal Star above. 

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On the role of the esoteric movement in the ethical awakening of mankind during the 21st century, see the book “The Fire and Light of Theosophical Literature”, by Carlos Cardoso Aveline.  

Published in 2013 by The Aquarian Theosophist, the volume has 255 pages and can be obtained through Amazon Books.

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