“And this shall be a sign unto you: You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12).
Dear family and friends,
With all my heart I wish you a blessed Christmas. Every celebration of Christmas and end of the Gregorian year is for all of us an opportunity to return to our centre.
It is natural to lose ourselves on our paths, it is natural to lose our meaning and our centre. But it is also true that God will find the means to bring us back to that centre where we are able to remember our true essence as Truth, Goodness and Beauty.
In the gospel, when the angels point out to the shepherds the signs by which to recognise the birth of Christ, it says: “And this shall be a sign unto you: You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12).
May we all strip ourselves bare, empty ourselves of everything, free ourselves of our concepts, ideas, considerations, filters and patterns of behaviour, so as to be left naked, completely naked like a child coming into the world.
And so we may be welcomed into that manger which is the world, the earth. To lie down, to surrender, to open ourselves to life just as it is, with its ups and downs, with its light and its shadow, with its sweetness and bitterness, with its joys and its sorrows, but from that centre which is the equanimity of inner silence.
May this Night be a night of peace, a night of silence, where the noise we carry in our mind is stilled by the powerful sound of silence.
May our gift this Christmas be to think less and feel more. To strip ourselves of the whole burden of the mind and remain in swaddling clothes, naked like a baby, so as to be able to feel and embrace the reality of the manger just as it is.
With all my affection.
Arjuna/Gustavo
Merry Christmas.
