Christmas is a time to celebrate the consciousness of Divine love awakening within your own heart and awareness.
It is an opportunity to embrace eternal verities and to celebrate the birth of Christ consciousness within you.
The outward celebrations may be wonderful, festive, and joyous — but staying connected to the source, to your own inner joy and stillness, born of meditation and Guru-contact, is the secret to a truly happy Christmas.
Nayaswami Ananta says that this time of year is one of the few times when the world’s outer celebrations — Santa, presents, and Christmas carols — overlap with the inner celebrations of yogis and spiritual seekers of the Mystic Christ.
This makes Christmas a particularly powerful time for spiritual practice, prayer, and divine communion.
What Is Christ Consciousness?
Christ consciousness is the perfect reflection of God the Father within creation. Yogananda, Buddha, and Krishna all lived in Christ consciousness — fully awake, one with God, as they moved through their lives.
Jesus said, “I and my Father are one.”
Christ is that state of awareness which expresses only the consciousness of the Father, without the separative factor of ego.
The good news is that Christ consciousness is not only available to you through meditation and Kriya Yoga — it is also the destination toward which all souls are moving.
You may wander for a time in the forests of delusion, but each soul is ultimately heading in the same direction: liberation from desire and attachment, into timeless union with the Divine.
The Spiritual Eye and Inner Awakening
The centre of Christ consciousness is at the point between the eyebrows — the spiritual eye, the ajna chakra — where we gently lift our gaze in meditation.
By focusing here, intuition deepens and a sense of peace can often be felt almost instantly.
Our lives are a continual search for happiness because we carry a soul-memory of Spirit. For lifetimes we seek outwardly, until we begin to realise that the true state of joy and peace was within us all along.
It never came from outer things — career, money, or even human relationships.
So we begin to turn inward. And thus the spiritual journey truly begins: when we realise that what we were seeking can be found only by stilling the heart and mind, withdrawing from outer restlessness, and concentrating on the Christ-centre within.
The Nativity as an Inner Symbol
On the night of Jesus’ birth, Mary and Joseph encountered many difficulties — a hard journey, nowhere to stay, and the birth taking place in poverty and simplicity.
This reflects our own spiritual search, often marked by struggle and challenge, and the eventual realisation that peace is found in humility and simplicity.
Only then can Christ consciousness be born within us — when the complexities of the ego-mind are set aside, and we embrace a life of simple living and high thinking.
This Christmas, spend some time in stillness, lift the gaze to the spiritual eye, and offer your heart into the hands of God and Guru.
May you have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Here are some words from Yogananda on Christmas
“Celebrating the birth of omniscient, omnipresent Christ-Consciousness in your consciousness on the joyous Christmas festivity of your inner awakening, you will find the unbroken happiness of your dreams.
On the Christmas tree of Christ Consciousness hang your material desires, to remain forever. Give unto Christ all the gifts of love and devotion.
Let Him, on the Christmas morn of your spiritual wakening, break open the gorgeous presents of your heart offerings, sealed with the tears of your golden joy and bound with the cord of your eternal fidelity to Him.
He accepts only the gifts of sacred soul-dreams, and His acceptance will be His greatest gift to you; for, if He gives anything to anyone, He gives nothing less than Himself; and in giving Himself, He will make your heart big enough to hold Him.
Then your heart will throb with Christ in everything. Enjoy this festivity, the birth of Christ in your mind and soul, and in every living atom.”
…And from Swamiji
“Let us, during this Christmas season, view the birth of Jesus not only as a particular event in history, but as a particularly sweet expression of a universal truth.
Let the birth of Divine Love in that little form two thousand years ago inspire us to conceive and give birth to that love within ourselves, through the virgin purity of our hearts’ devotion.
In this way, Christmas can become a holy season not for Christians alone, but for people everywhere on earth, regardless of any religious affiliation.
The three wise men represented the other world religions in their visit, filled with respect and adoration, to the Christ child. Let us, like them, open our hearts and souls to Universal Love, as it calls out to us from the altars of every religion.”
More Resources
Christmas concert from last year
Uplifting music for the Christmas season
How can I have a Spiritual Christmas?
A talk with Nayaswami Ananta
The Three Wise Men
A wonderful story with music with Nayaswami Jyotish
20 Ways to Spiritualise Christmas
Tips for an expansive Christmas with Nayaswami Savitri
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This Post Has 2 Comments
Truly inspirational, thank you🙏🏼✨
My ability to meditate deeply has been hampered by a form aphantasia where I’m not seeing pictures when I close my eyes this article helps to re- centre my thinking with the picture you provided of the spiritual eye.