The real spirit of Christmas is JOY! And you can get that joy by always wanting less and less, by understanding that in your heart you already have everything that you will ever have. This joy that comes in simplicity, in a child-like, humble heart is worth everything. When you can sit in your meditation and just feel so good you don’t want to go anywhere else, when you can sit in your home and think, “Well I just don’t need anything – I have it all right here in my heart;” when you can just think of God and in a moment that thought brings welling up inside you such pleasure, such happiness, such a sense of purity – then you know the real spirit of Christmas. And you know that it is the Christ Consciousness, the presence of Christ in yourself, coming to life again in your own heart,
How are you going to get this joy? If you really love God in the way that brings His response, then in your meditations you will be thinking not of “When will You come to me?” but of “What can I do for You? How can I give myself to You more completely? How can I offer myself at your feet again and again? I don’t want anything but the blessing to be able to love You.” When you can surrender yourself at the feet of God with that kind of spirit, when you think not in terms of what you are getting but how wonderful it is to have this great privilege, this great opportunity to serve God; then comes that joy.
Years ago when I had more time I used to write a card to everyone that I knew – four or five hundred Christmas cards. And I would meditate and pray over every card and just send my love with that card. I don’t know if those people got my love or not. But I can say this – that the more I gave, the more joy I felt in my heart until I was fairly swimming in it. And this is the joy of this season that I think anybody who is sensitive can feel. Attune yourself to it, attune yourself to the spirit of Christ, who is not just a man but a universal consciousness of the Divine. Let it be born in your heart by feeling that birth, feeling that birth of joy in your meditations and in your service of one another.
-Swami Kriyananda
