The Cradle
of Your Heart: A Christmas Message
by Paramhansa Yogananda
From Inner Culture magazine, December 1934
During this coming Christmas Season, open a new portal
of sublime devotion so that the Christ Omnipresence will
be able to come anew within your consciousness.
Every day, every hour, every golden second, Christ has
been knocking at your dark gates of ignorance. Now, in this
august sacred dawn, Christ is especially coming in answer
to your inner call, to awaken the consciousness of His Omnipresence
within you.
Weave the cradle of your tender perceptions with the threads
of your meditation, and make it commodious enough to hold
the baby Infinity within its welcoming vastness. Christ
is born on the viridescent* blades; His gentleness is cradled
in all fragrance. The opalescent sea-decked globe, the star-spangled
cradle of the blue, and the red love of Martyrs and Saints
have vied with each other in offering a dwelling place for
the all-pervading baby Christ.
This Christ of everywhere is sleeping in the breast of
Eternity, and He loves to take a new birth at any time,
anywhere, especially in the cradle of your true affection.
Though every speck of space is a cradle where Christ is
born anew as the splendor of new wisdom and expression,
you can never see Him unless He chooses to be seen in the
cradle of your unceasing devotion.
The cozy crib of your heart has for a very long time been
small, holding your self-love alone, but now you must make
it enormous, so that the social, national, international,
creatural, and Cosmic Christ love may be born there and
become welded together.
This Christmas must not only be celebrated by appropriate
festivities and the exchange of material gifts, but also
by deep, continuous meditation, making your mind a Cosmic
Cathedral for Christ. You must offer all your most precious
gifts of love, good will, and service to uplift your inimical
brothers, as well as your friendly brothers, physically,
mentally, and spiritually.
Since Christ is everywhere, you must worship his nativity
in the Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan, Jewish, and all true
religious temples. Since all Truth flows from the all-pervading
Christ perception, learn to worship that sacredness in all
sane religions, beliefs, and teachings. Since Christ dreamed
Divine people into existence, you should celebrate the birth
of Christ in your newly awakened equal love for the Jew,
the Gentile, the Hindu, the Mohammedan, and for all nationalities
and races.
Since all the new-blown blossoms and Astral twinklings
are images of Christ, garland them all with your love. Behold
the birth of an intoxicating Christ-love for your parents,
friends, relatives, neighbors, and all races. In the Cathedral
of your Soul, invite all your restless thoughts and assemble
them in the service of your deepest united love for Christ.
With the Christmas packages around the family tree, make
every thought an altar of Christ, and saturate the Christmas
packages with your good will. Worship Christ as born in
all space in the star, in the leaf, in the blossom, in the
nightingale, in the nosegay, and, above all, in your velvet
devotion. Unite your heart with all hearts, so that Christ
my be born and remain there forever and forever.
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