The Christmas season holds a special place in my heart because my father was a part time Baptist preacher. I have fond memories of his moving sermons at this time of year about the beauty and purity of God’s gift to us in Jesus through the virgin birth. Christmas, to me, was far more than presents under a tree. It was a time of spiritual truth so innocent, even a small boy could understand.
Whether or not you believe the Christmas story of the virgin birth with a literal interpretation or as mythological symbolism, the message is powerful. The virgin birth refers to the purity of spirit that is within each of us. It’s an innocence that is free of all judgment, prejudice, concepts, fear, attachment and desire. In this innocent place we discover the truth of our spiritual nature, our Essence. Anything born from this place is pure love. It’s the place that Rumi refers to when he wrote, “Out beyond the concepts of right-doing and wrong-doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
The process of Awakening to Wholeness is a virgin birth experience. I help my clients see past the pain and separation created by their egos to find the infinite love and acceptance of Spirit in their Essence. When they are finally able to meet their true self, their Essence, it is like a virgin birth, and a beautiful gift of recognition is born to shine the light of love into the world.
During my own virgin birth, I was blessed to have many midwives. The late Joseph Campbell, known by many as the leading expert in mythology, was one of them. He helped me to understand that spiritual teachings are spoken about through metaphors and stories. The depth of their truth is beyond facts and the limitations of language. The truth is in the illumination provided by the beauty and purity of the story.
Those of us with a scientific and skeptical orientation might dismiss the rich spiritual insights available to us as mere fables and children’s bedtime stories. Without proven facts there can be no truth. That’s an example of “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”. The skeptic would say, “Prove to me the existence of the baby, the bathwater and that they were in fact both thrown out.”
The literalist would hear about the unfortunate baby and that fateful bath and say, “God said it, I believe it, and that’s all I need to know,” without even trying to understand the deeper meaning behind the story.
The ritualist might create an elaborate ceremony around the careful separation of the baby from any bathwater.
All three well-intentioned, but misguided seekers are missing the point. They throw out the deeper meaning of the heart expressed in the story’s symbolism along with ego’s superficial bathwater grasping to be right. Ego seeks certainty, whether through science, religion or routine. Essence sees truth by contemplating the story from that place of virgin purity and feels the deepest aliveness as a result.
Take a closer look at the virgin birth story during this holiday season. Consider the meaning you give to it and the meaning you unconsciously inherited. Are you throwing the baby of a deeper spiritual truth, out with meaningless bathwater? All spiritual literature, whether Christian or from other religions and cultures reveal a message of truth far deeper than the words if heard from our hearts rather than interpreted, defended or dismissed by our heads. Find the beauty and purity expressed in these stories and you will find the richness of Spirit. The story of the virgin birth of Jesus holds a beautiful truth of unconditional love and hope that transcends the boundaries of organized religion and speaks directly to the purity of our connection to Spirit.
