*“Born of the Cosmos” – image by Dalmo Mendonça*

Adventing Christ Consciousness – Part Four

In this series, we have been considering how we might participate in adventing—which is to say, actively engaging in the arrival of Christ Consciousness in this season. As Christmas is upon us, the time for birth may be drawing near.

Do you feel them? The contractions of a world in the early pangs of labor?

We all have our personal journey in the ways we bear and bring forth the divine in our lives. Individually, we might be more than ready for the birth to come. Or, we could still be in a place of early gestation. Perhaps we continue to wait for the gift of a new inner conception. The calendar says it’s time, yet we may be living in barrenness or miscarriage.

Sometimes, in the passage toward birth and new life, it will feel like death.

Wherever you are in this rite unfolding, we are all, at the same time—in this time, participating in a collective natal arrival. Christ Consciousness is not a possession to be attained by some but a flow of divine being we open up to and move with. And the current is growing. The tide is rising in a global awakening. A cosmic imperative for the advent of a new divine initiation.

Do you see them? The angels among the expanse of stars in the sky twinkling with the celestial light of proclamation?

For unto us is born a savior, in the cities and stables of every part of the earth. In the fields and in the forests. There is no need to journey to Bethlehem, for Christ comes in ubiquity. She is all around us and before us. They are beside us and beyond.

Do you hear them? The voices of spirit declaring across the land, “We are making all things new.”

I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be for all people. The divine life is born among you. Lo, behold, it is within you!

Come, taste and see.

Come, come with haste.

Co-Created Christ Consciousness

“The soul is in God and God is in the soul. God is closer to us than water is to a fish.” – Catherine of Siena

What is being born? What is this new life emerging within and among us as Christ Consciousness?

Christ is the divine principle that exists within all things, as we explored in part one of this series. She is the incarnated divine, embracing and imbuing materiality in and through the energy and element of God. And so we are, each one of us, met not with a static and separate divine but an intermingled and interwoven conception.

Just as any baby is made up of two sets of genes, spiraling together in a unique DNA sequence, so too is the birth of Christ Consciousness in us a comingling of divine qualities and our own uniqueness. As such, every countenance of Christ expresses through who we are. Born of our very nature and God’s nature, in creative embrace.

Not only will you express Christ Consciousness in your particularity, but the divine life will even shape and form in and through the substance and personhood of your soul and body. It is a co-creative affair, just like any offspring.

*“Divine Child” – image by Dalmo Mendonça*

Personally, I find that to be quite amazing!

What gifts, qualities, quirks, and traits of who you are come forth in the integral enfoldment of the human/divine birth of Christ Consciousness in you?

While every offspring will have its beautiful uniqueness, it will also then have elements of the divine qualities of Christ. The nature of Christ—the divine source incarnating—is extensive, manifold, and fills volumes of theological tomes. For our purposes here, we’ll consider four essential qualities.

Christ Consciousness is Integrative

“The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.” – Julian of Norwich

In addition to fundamentally bringing together the divine and human/material, Christ Consciousness has the overall inherent quality of integration. Christ is the great reconciler, not through a dissolution of opposites but through a creative and loving integration in dynamic interplay.

We can see this, for example, in this very own series of articles accentuating the divine feminine.

In this birthing rite of passage, we have emphasized the feminine nature of the divine. In part, this is necessary because it is an essential rebalancing of the dominant masculine and patriarchal history of recent culture and much of Christianity—including other spiritual and religious traditions as well. It is also necessary because birth is a fundamentally female act, though spiritually it is not limited in the same way as it is biologically.

As we dance and live in the realm of form, we necessarily engage with dualism, binaries, and differences. The path of integration does not discount and discard the lived reality of such differentiation, nor does it try to supersede these differences without honoring and acknowledging both the challenges and the advantages of their unique and particular nature. Again, the path of integration is not a blending or total loss of distinction.

Christ Consciousness is not bound to gender, but it cannot be fully made manifest without a healthy presence of the feminine—alongside the masculine, which must also not be discarded or denigrated.

And then, in the possibility of a full and complete spectrum, we can live and dwell from any place we find ourselves in our identity but not stuck or locked in there. We can be who we are while also being free to embody and express from the feminine, the masculine, and everything in between in healthy ways.

This is holistic Christ Consciousness. It inhabits through a fullness of capacity that particularizes and yet is not bound to or trapped in any singular form. It is free to dance throughout.

In this way, men can deeply inhabit the feminine. Women can dwell in the masculine. And humans can be free to be in their gender and biology, and live beyond the binaries. At the same time, we also have the capability to continue to evolve into a new humanity.

This is one example of how Christ serves as the great reconciler. Integration cannot happen without reconciliation, which cannot happen without recognition, recompense, and justice. This is true for gender, race, class, and religion.

In a culture of extreme classification and hyper-identification, the Christ path leads us toward a consciousness capacity that can bear difference, honor uniqueness, bring together, and integrate toward a more holistic embodiment.

This may even be the manner in which we are able to evolve; as Jean Gebser said, “Consciousness mutations are completions of integration.”

Christ Consciousness is Embodied

“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” – St. Theresa of Avila

Incarnation is an inherent quality of the “Christ.” The Christ is the divine alive within matter, which intrapermeates all forms—male, female, and everything in between. And is not limited to only humankind, as we explored last week.

So our birthing of Christ Consciousness comes through embracing and enhancing the substance of our physical being, our embodied human consciousness, with the divine.

This happens, in part, by “putting on the mind of Christ,” which is not a disembodied, mental collection of teachings and wisdom. Rather, the mind of Christ permeates and enlivens the spiritual knowing of our immanent consciousness throughout our body, not just our brains.

To be embodied does not just mean to have flesh and form, but to dwell in the enlivened being of our substance, which is enfleshed in the here and now through our whole body, personal, collective, and cosmic—the Mystical Body of Christ.

We awaken in our Christ Consciousness through deepening into our living, immanent consciousness and incarnated being embodied in this now. This is one of the core purposes of our Whole-Body Mystical Awakening practice.

Of course, in the Christ-nature of integration, this is not set against or restrictive of our participation in the transcendent divine as well. We place special emphasis on the immanent embodied nature of Christ—just as we have with the feminine—because it is often the side that gets neglected and disowned. There is often a bias and privileging of the transcendent in many forms of spirituality, including much of traditional Christianity.

The integral Christ brings together and welcomes the transcendent and immanent. One does not supersede the other, though we may need to focus on one more at times in our personal spiritual journey. And we may need to collectively accentuate one side in certain eras as well.

The evolving work of integration often involves counterbalancing and over-emphasizing one side of things. The ongoing unfolding of our dynamic interplay with these dynamics is not about finding a static, still point of balance but living in the creative tension of the dance through these variations. At our best, we’ll do this playfully and with grace, like a skilled dancer enjoying a variety of music with great range and skill.

Christ Consciousness is Collective

“O Holy Spirit, you are the mighty way in which everything that is in the heavens, on the earth, and under the earth, is penetrated with connectedness, penetrated with relatedness.” – Hildegard of Bingen

In another dance of polarity, this embodiment is not held independently in the singularity of our personal bodies—which is often privileged in this time of individualism.

Rather, Christ Consciousness is born throughout a mystical body that encompasses a much greater whole. It is a collective unfolding, coming to bear in various forms and multiple ways.

This communal body is not bound to any specified locality. It is not the property of one group or denomination, of one religion. It is not exclusively contained in any one community and is certainly not boundaried and given only to those with the most “correct” and “right” beliefs.

It even extends beyond time, living in the past, present, and future all at once. In our conscious participation in this constellation of consciousness as individuals and communities, we can inhabit our stars in the great system, shining our light to arrive in due time, offering our illumination to the great, celestial form coming together in a complete picture for that moment and perspective, whenever it may be.

We are engaging in the ongoing birth of this communal body. It spreads across and throughout space and time, though it also brings us together in the shared parts, the organs of form and function, the sacred cells and chambers we share in mystical community.

Working together in the act of birthing the communal Body of Christ becoming.

*“Radiant Heart” – image by Dalmo Mendonça*

Christ Consciousness is Divine Love

“Many people walk alongside the river but never step into the waters. But there are some who eagerly jump into the river and flow together in the fullness of God’s love.” – Jeanne Guyon

The last quality of Christ Consciousness that we’ll consider for now is that of love. I use “divine” in front of love to add charge to a word that is so common and brandished about in so many ways. And yet, for all of its overuse and trivial applications, the word still carries a power and significance that’s undeniable.

In truth, it is a human/divine love that Christ Consciousness embodies and enacts. It is pure and it is messy. It lives in the midst of the suffering and pain present in the world and in relationships. It lives between strangers and between relatives. It intensifies in intimacy but is not defined by its exclusiveness. This love is not made special because it is privileged and reserved for an extraordinary few but because of its unconditional and unmitigated generosity.

Authentic Christ Consciousness will always lead us into greater love—for ourselves, with one another, through the earth, and into the universal embrace.

Alpha and Omega

The integral, embodied, collective, loving Christ Consciousness is being co-created in the here and now. It is the eternal now of divine becoming in and through us and the world herself.

This is the “second” coming of Christ, which has been ongoing now for millennia. The birth of Jesus, celebrated at Christmastime, is the great advent of Christ Consciousness, which has been present since the beginning.

We are living in the beginning of the end. And the end of the beginning. The birth and the death. The death and the resurrection. The first and last. The Alpha and the Omega.

In the Great Mystery we dwell, with life and with death. With joy and with suffering. With the grief and the glory.

Christ invites us to drink freely from this water. It is sweet and it is bitter. And yet, it quenches the thirst of our souls.

For we know that the eternal Christ, the divine heart, shines within and through it all. It is whole and complete. It welcomes and embraces the feminine and the masculine, the immanent and the transcendent, the love and the suffering of each one and of us all. And everything in between. Everything belongs. Christ Sophia holds it all.

We are all, each one of us, born into this divine being. The advent/arrival of Christ Consciousness in us, today and every day.

With divine love we are able to meet what is before us. We are able to live from the deep source of God that has ever been before, is now, and will be forever beyond.

Do you feel them? The tremors of the divine earth are vibrating with the sounding joy.

Do you see them? The angels and ancestors are dancing with us in ten thousand places.

Do you hear them? The bells are ringing and songs of the Mother singing for the healing of the nations this Christmas day.

The dwelling place of God is with humanity.
She will dwell with them, and they will be her people.
And Christ Consciousness will be within them as their divine life.
We will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more.
Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any longer
For the former things have passed away.

Behold, we make all things new.
We will be called the wonderful counselors
And the world’s peace will know no end.
Surely, I am coming soon.
Amen.

The Birth of Christ Consciousness in Us