Descent at Christmas and Ascent at Easter

Descent at Christmas and Ascent at Easter

I dedicate my talk to these words of Jesus

For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.

 And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.

Christmas is a yin time where Jesus descended into this heavy earth in the spirit of sacrifice and compassion, to teach the unhearing, serve the unwilling, and heal the ungrateful. His incarnation was a downpouring from heaven.

Easter is a yang ascending time where we can reap, if we will, an ascent of consciousness into the Christ mind. It is where Jesus's passion becomes the passing.

These two actions, the ascending and descending are what we use incessantly. They are, as it were, the mother and father of our evolvement.

A mother weaves a body out of her own body and provides a vehicle for an incarnating soul. The Mother of the World knows the harshness of this world, which is her womb, and softens it's blows to the young in experience or evolvement. And we are all young and awkward in any new endeavor and will be as long as there are new things to learn (which, it seems, will be approximately forever.)

An ideal father teaches his child to face adversity as a necessity in this world. Our consciousness cannot be gained without resistance. Much as muscle does not develop without opposition, so does consciousness in this eternity system not come without the opposition of the physical world. This, we’re told, until we are earth karma free.

I had a repeating dream as a child where I was moving through space and did not appear to have a body. Large bits of matter began to appear and grow. It was accompanied by a feeling of fear and anxiety. At a dear child round table, which was always presided over by Jonathan, I shared this when Ann Ree talk to us about dreams. I must have been around age twelve. These kinds of dreams, I later came to learn, often accompany or precede puberty.

Ann Ree commented with a very intent look on her face, "you must have a body. Every thing needs a body." It was my first philosophical exposure to why we have to live on earth, even though heaven is so much better; why we even have such a dense physical world, and why there was a fall from Eden at all.

There was no act of love greater than that of Jesus to descend from heaven to this world, and walk towards His crucifixion. Ann Ree once said, "think of what it must have been like for Jesus to come from the glories of heaven to this dense world."

Even as He was stretched upon a cross suspended between life and death, heaven and earth, so on a smaller scale are we stretched between an earthly life, its infatuations and challenges, and our spiritual intuitions, longings and ideals.

In Ann Ree’s prose/poem “The Song of his Passion” she wrote,

In small portions or fragments men will remember; they will work and strive. They will recall the time of Golgotha; and they will know it is their own body pictured upon the cross; and they will know that they too shall arise, even as the Lord did arise.

Some physical struggle is self made and unnecessary. Other physical struggle is part of our cosmic schooling.

Alice Bailey wrote a very interesting passage on a downward energy that comes from surrounding galaxies and falls into our eternity system.

These descending energies ... as they descend, they produce stimulation. As they ascend, they produce transmutation and abstraction, and the one effect is as unalterable as the other ...

Upon this dual process of descent and ascension the whole cyclic panorama of manifestation rests ...

There is a negative downward movement, where we become more enmeshed in maya. But there is a positive downward movement, where spiritual ideas are stepped down to what we can comprehend, and where spiritual beings slow down their vibration and descend into the world. These are spiritual downpourings. In dreams, rain denotes a release of tension between heaven and earth. Sometimes we dream of lightning, which by its suddenness, denotes some very electric resolution of tension.

The first beatitude reads,

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:3

One of its deep meanings is that we are blessed when we descend into the physical world to engage in our schooling to produce a greater consciousness, and also lift our fellow human beings. In its highest expression this is the bodhisattva vow.

Every thing God gave us in this earth, from mineral, to plant, to animal, to man, from low to high, must be viewed with reverence and gratitude, but not as anything to possess - only as something on loan to us and a temporary prop, much like a text book for a course, or a notebook and pencil for writing a chapter in a book.

Jesus, even though coming down from heaven, and knowing that earth would pass away, had reverence for this earth. Ann Ree writes,

The childhood of Jesus reveals a love of the earth, the mountains, the vineyards, the trees, the waters, the flowers, the grains. His feet on the earth were not as others in the world. His spirit was master over the land, the air, the water, the fire.

So much of our unhappiness comes from attachment to things meant to be temporary. So much of what is thought of as happiness is excitement or elation about things that are meant to be supports. Spiritual downpourings bring stimulation and change, as Alice Bailey noted. At first, until assimilated and channeled, this can bring more titillation and excitement than spiritual works. Many have fallen after receiving a token of grace if they misuse it. Much as fertilizer makes both weeds and flowers grow, so does a spiritual downpouring contain a test that we discriminately choose the energies quickened. Ann Ree, in her Easter talk said,

Christ Spirit came into our being and made us restless, more restless than we had ever been. Out of complacency and a drugged sleep we came into restlessness,

We might call restlessness the low side of stimulation.

She then spoke of satisfaction versus contentment.

Contentment is a spiritual, divine attribute. But satisfaction is something coming out of complacency and procrastination. We cannot be satisfied when we once see the diamond chalice in our hearts. We thirst for God with a total and complete thirst.

With a perfect balance of the physical and spiritual, we fulfill our paths as karma yogis. St. Paul, speaking of the resurrection said,

It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body...

Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.

The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.

As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.

And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.