Advent: Waiting for a New Birth in Essence

At this time of year - the end of November and the start of December - the Earth is in a very quiet, dormant state.

When we look outside, we see that leaves have fallen, the trees now rear their skeletal arms to the sky, while the grass has stopped growing and few plants keep their greenery. To the unobservant eye, everything seems dead or dying.

Yet this is not quite true. When we look closely, we see tiny buds forming on shrubs, waiting for the days to lengthen again and the sun to reappear. There is the promise, but not yet the fact, of new birth.

The conscious men and women who planned the major religious festivals for the Northern Hemisphere chose this time to celebrate the birth of the Saviour, the Christ, Light of the World, leader of Conscious Humanity. Since prehistoric times, the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, has been the point when human beings held feasts and rituals to urge the dying Sun to return.

Excavations at Stonehenge, Avebury and elsewhere, have - as I mentioned in the post on November - shown that huge gatherings took place during the seasonal rituals. Enormous heaps of animal bones and broken pottery testify to the great "barbecues" of prehistory, accompanied, no doubt, by ritual drumming, chanting and shamanic rites, as still take place in Siberia and the tundra.

When the time to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ was selected, the winter solstice was the obvious choice to inaugurate a new feast. It would take place at the same time as the previous religious rituals, because it was the natural, cosmic season for new birth, new hope, to be celebrated. And so we have Advent, the season of waiting, leading up to Christmas, on December 25th; the date on which the length of time the Sun shines can be almost imperceptibly seen to increase.

All the festive accoutrements of the West testify to the solar past of these rituals. We eat mince pies and Christmas puddings and Christmas cake - all traditionally round, to imitate the shape of the Sun and show how much we hope for its increase. We set fire to the Christmas pudding, to show the Sun what we wish it to do, as though reminding the great star of its chief duty. We even hide gold or silver coins inside it, miniature Suns, to be discovered and held up to the Sun by the children of the family.

We hold family feasts, as men and women have done from time immemorial, to strengthen our spirits and to welcome and "encourage" the newly reborn Sun, the Christ, to illuminate the Earth.

Of course, I'm describing the customs and traditions that I grew up with in England, but all over the Northern Hemisphere there are similar actions and symbols that relate to the same idea. I have no idea how residents of the Southern Hemisphere celebrate Christmas! Their yearly cycle is the opposite of ours, and the major religions all developed in the Northern Hemisphere, giving a different cosmic flavour to our celebrations.

In the Work, we look to the period of Advent and Christmas as the time when we prepare to celebrate a new birth in Essence.

This description puzzled me when I first came into the Work. How could Essence have anything resembling a birth? Surely it was there, fixed, for all time?

I began to understand the mystery after some time in the Work, when I had actually experienced some growth in Essence. Of course, this is not limited to the Advent and Christmas period, just as Christ's coming into the world may be experienced at any time during the year, when we remember all that Conscious Humanity has done for mankind.

At Advent, however, the Earth is in a propitious place for self-remembering and for receiving higher influences.

If you think of the way the Earth orbits the Sun, and how it is tilted away from the Sun during our Winter season, we can see that this means a corresponding shift towards the orbits of other planets in the solar system, and beyond that, to the galaxy itself.

And, as the yearly cycle brings us to the time of Sagittarius and Capricorn, the Earth is positioned in such a way that it is actually closer to different parts of the galaxy.  In the period from the beginning of Advent to the Feast of Candlemass, the orbit of our solar system crosses the orbit of the Dog Star, Sirius. Since our Sun orbits Sirius, it can be said that in some ways Sirius is the "Sun" of our own Sun. Influences from that very high realm reach us directly now, as we are closer to Sirius itself.

It's interesting to remind ourselves that Gurdjieff sometimes spoke of the need "to bury the dog deeper", as he was writing "All and Everything", and that some scholars think he may have been referring to the influence of Sirius here.

In any case, these very special cosmic influences, which include the unimaginably fine substances from which Essence itself is made, come to us most of all at the season of Advent and Christmas, right through to the beginning of February and the celebration of Candlemass.

During this period the cosmic position of the Earth is most propitious to working on ourselves. Efforts made at this time will be helped by the galaxy itself, making it the most suitable and likely time for a new birth in Essence to take place.

What does this mean for us?

We know that for Essence to grow, to experience new birth, it must be fed by Personality. And Personality feeds Essence when we work against our habitual little I's, our negative emotions, our worries, our habitual likes and dislikes.

Advent, therefore, is the traditional time for sacrifices to be made. Many Orthodox Christians eat a vegan diet in these four weeks, giving up their attachment to meat, fish and dairy foods. In the West, Catholics generally undertake some sort of voluntary fast or abstinence, and, just as in Lent, make extra donations to charity with the money saved, thus symbolically feeding Essence (love, or caritas) by the sacrifice of Personality (our habits).

As all this takes place, Essence begins to grow, experiencing an expansion of its capabilities. No longer limited by these petty I's, Essence may express itself more freely in our lives. The Essence within, often pictured in art as a small child or a baby, begins to grow and mature. Eventually, it will be able to direct our lives for us, so that we live according to our Essence needs, not according to what our Personality wants, or even - heaven forbid - according to the dictatorship of False Personality.

What we wish is for Essence is to be able to express itself in us, until, after many long years of work, our lives are shaped by the pattern that Essence knows is right for us. And this will be to live according to our Fate. To live according to the will of Real I, which is reached through Essence, and is the truly sacred place where we meet with the God of our understanding.

Essence in us is so often neglected, its needs and desires relegated to the background as we become caught up in the passions of the Personality and False Personality.  At the time of Advent we begin to understand that it can grow only from what is truly humble within us, not from the puffed-up False Personality or the Know-it-all Personality.

It's no coincidence that the Feast of St. John the Baptist takes place at the exact opposite part of the yearly cycle from that of Christmas, on June 24th, Midsummer Day. In the Bible, St. John symbolizes the full potential of the human Personality. Of him, Jesus says that he is the greatest of all the children of men, but of himself, John - recognizing the limitations of Personality - says only that "He (Christ, Essence) must increase, while I must decrease". No clearer example could be given of the relationship of Personality to Essence. There are many very useful I's in Personality, but even the greatest of these I's must subordinate itself to the rulership of Essence.

This truth is pictured in the True Myth of Christmas, where the Cosmic Christ, the Logos of God, comes to us not through the pomp of a royal palace, but in the lowly, neglected, overlooked stable. And this most royal of all births takes place at midnight, in darkness, unheralded by mankind, amongst the lowliest of people.

 Kings visit Him, to be sure, for they must acknowledge their place in the cosmos as servants of the Most High, just as even the highest, most developed I's in Personality must give way to the rule of Essence.

But it is the humble creatures, Mary and Joseph, the animals and the shepherds, who are the first to hear the angelic voices and to bow to Essence.

At Advent, we move more deeply within and concentrate our Work on helping Essence to grow. This is the real meaning of the season, and the entire Universe moves to help us when we do so.