During the Christmas season one powerful image we are presented with is the Nativity, a visual feast of various selves in our psyches.
To explore this I encourage you to first draw the Nativity making sure to include angels, animals, shepherds, magi, Mary and Joseph, the Christ child, and the manger. The mandala of the Nativity you have drawn shows our new inner life to come forth. Each of us need the balancing of selves to come together inside for wholeness.
Angels & Animals – the angels represent trans personal or superconscious selves, not of the earth or of our limited ego personalities. Transpersonal states of harmony, beauty, life. Glorification lifts us into those realms. You become what you glorify. Glorification helps in dark times. Sacred music helps us attune to this quality of glorification. The balancing selves are the animals, the donkeys, sheep, cows. They represent our instinctual, animal selves. The breath of the animals, our instinctual nature, warms the Christ child. This reminds us to bring the warmth of the body and instincts into our SoulWork meditations and spiritual practices.
Shepherds & Magi – both represent different aspects of our male selves. The shepherds represent the path of simplicity reminding us to ask, what is really essential in our busy lives. The Magi or wise ones, contrast the shepherds. They can read the stars. They represent the doctor/teacher/seeker selves; our capacity to read underlying patterns beneath the surface, to look into the depths, to see movements of death and rebirth. The part of us that leaves home, the familiar on inner and outer levels, to look for the life of the soul.
Joseph & Mary – represent the masculine and feminine selves coming into alignment. Joseph maintains the outer life so the inner can happen with his support. Joseph gets them to the inn, the place of safety. He represent the part of us that manages the outer world so we can have an inner life. Mary is the female self or soul, empty of all impressions, the sacred void out of which all new life emerges.
Christ & Herod – The Christ child represent our inner soul child of wonder, of aliveness, of joy, (not our wounded child). Christ is the opposite of Herod who represents our old personality structure, the saturn principle. Herod may manifest as a vicious mental judge or superego in each of us. Herod was the Christ child at one point but his time is over as our new life emerges.
What images open you to your depths in this season of Holy Days?
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