Winter Solstice 2015

Winter Solstice

The Sun at the Midnight Hour

            Winter Solstice marks the turning point of the year.

            The earth has reached its deepest angle of inclination, and will begin to turn itself again.

            Or, in other words, the sun is now at its deepest point in the sky (for us in the northern latitudes). The night has reached its climax: the earth is dark and cold, and seemingly cut off from the sun.

            If we lived in the furthest northern regions, perhaps without even the comforts of electricity and indoor heating, we would know the fear of the winter months. Without the certainty that the sun will ever return, we would know the challenge of living in the dark, with only our faith to assure us that we have food, fuel and warmth enough to last through the winter months.

            The spiritual teachers of ancient cultures, priests and priestesses alike, acted as guardians of the wisdom of the seasons. They were responsible for marking the two solstices and two equinoxes through ceremonies and monuments. It was who erected the massive stone monuments in alignment with the declination of the sun to mark these four turning points.

            The ceremonies that were held at each season were appropriate to the lesson that each had to offer.

            The mystery of midwinter was called “learning to behold the Sun at the Midnight Hour.”

            We know from the Celtic mysteries that on the long night of the solstice, the teachers and their students entered into caves or hollows. Through their spiritual understanding, they confronted their fear of darkness and abandonment. They knew that when the earth is at its darkness, we have a unique opportunity to turn our attention away from the sense world. They knew that the solstice is the best time to perceive the Creative Forces that lie behind all sense phenomena. They used the experience of the solstice shadows to seek and find the sources of world creation as a spiritual light that shines in the darkness. This is called “Finding the Sun at the midnight hour.”

            All spiritual realities have multiple levels of meanings. The solstice shows us one aspect of the Midnight Hour, but we can find this on myriad other levels as well. And all of them point ultimately to the Midnight Hour when the Christmas Child was born in the manger in the darkest hours of world evolution.

            The midnight hour happens each night when we go to sleep. At the deepest point of each night, we are moving through the highest spiritual realties. Those who have attained the ability to perceive the source of their own I-Am as the Cosmic I-Am will be awake even at night. There they behold the Sun at the Midnight Hour.

            On an ever grander scale, the midnight hour also happens for us between each of our lifetimes. As we journey away from the earth after each life, we move back into spiritual realms. At last we reach draw near to the loftiest spiritual beings, to the Creative Word. Before the majesty of these beings, our personal consciousness is dimmed, almost to the point of unconsciousness. Those who can sustain awareness of self even in the field of universal spirit mind will find that they are able to do so only when they can awaken in themselves the awareness of the Cosmic I-Am spirit. This spirit is the spirit that shines as the Sun at the Midnight Hour. This is the same Sun that the initiates seek at the midwinter solstice.

            All these mysteries point to the grandest mystery of all, the birth of the Cosmic I-Am on Earth, at the Turning Point of Time.

            Our human nature was originally one with the earth spirit, born out of the Creative Worlds. As we grew in perfection, the Creator Gods set us free, and the earth became material. As far as we know, ours is the most advanced, the most complex, and also the most bereft condition in the universe.

            Only a few millennia ago, our Earth condition reached a point of deepest darkness.

            From the perspective of the spiritual world, the earth had slipped into a condition of pure darkness.

            The earth existed in a condition of permanent midnight.

            At this Cosmic Midnight Hour, the World Creator freely chose to enter into this world of matter. S/He became a Sun on Earth, became light within the darkness.

            Herein lies the real meaning of learning to behold the Sun at the Midnight Hour. If we seek and find the World Creator on the earth, we can experience that S/He shines on the earth as divine consciousness even as S/He shines in our consciousness as the essential I-Am that we are.

            In times past, we could find our Creator in the Heavens above.

            Now we find the Creator even here, in the world of the senses, and here in the core of our own heart and mind.

            The yearly festival of the solstice marks the point when the darkness again turns towards the light.

            What better season to celebrate the birth of the child, who would grow to be the bearer of the Spirit Light of the World, here on the earth?

            This is the true meaning of the Turning Point of Time.