7 – Is Christmas a Time of Love? What Does that Mean?

Christmas is often talked about as being ‘a time of Love’. It’s a nice, soothing belief for the Personality to hold onto at the end of each year. But if this is true – if these couple of weeks in December are a time when we try to bring forth the best in us – what does that tell us about our idea of what Love is?  If it can be summoned forth at a specific holiday by an agreement in the tribe (the Group Personality) then it seems to be a pretty flimsy, transient idea of what Love is.  What happens to kindness, compassion and sharing at other times of the year? Don’t those values matter in June or August?

I’m being slightly facetious, but you get the point. The Love that Personality talks about is conditional; it’s dependant on our mood, our ethics, even the time of year! The Love which exists before Personality – is unconditional.  Literally, it is not dependant on conditions; it already is.

This is not a belief.  Look at any baby and you’ll see what I’m talking about. We are born ‘in’ this Love and ‘as’ this Love. There’s no effort involved, the baby is not doing anything; it’s just Being what it is. But then, as we know- after a few years, it is lost.

 You could imagine a world in which this Natural State is not lost, a world in which that Stillness, Joy and Love remain with us as we grow into adults. But that’s obviously not what happens. It would be true to say that we’re survivors of losing this original relationship to life. It’s left everyone with scars and ways of living centred around ‘getting by’ in this life without knowing and living this original experience of Love.

As adults we’ve forgotten that we are Love. Love has become almost like an altered state, something we only feel when a strong experience jolts us beyond the everyday life of our Personalities back into the wonder and Joy of life. For example: when we fall in Love, when we give birth or a loved one recovers from a life-threatening illness. It’s as if the experience is so strong that we’re momentarily shocked back into a taste of our Natural State.

From the Absolute point of view, we can’t be anything but Love: It is who we are. But our ongoing human condition in the Relative Level is often an estrangement from feeling that Love. In the Relative world, where Duality runs the show, Love has found an opposite: the apparent absence of Love.

If unconditional Love is indeed our Natural State then two questions arise: ‘How did we lose it?’ and ‘Is it possible to return to it?’ This is what this enquiry is all about.