Christmastide and the Ray of Creation.

Dear Ones,

The season of Christmastide is now upon us, carrying its quiet yet important invitation to be present to what has been birthed once again. If we turn to the Ray of Creation as a way of understanding what the “tide” of Christmas is truly about, we begin to glimpse the deeper significance of the Incarnation and its implications for our own lives and spiritual work. 

As Cynthia Bourgeault has taught, when God brought creation into existence, it was not fashioned as a static hierarchy but as an interactive, living system. While this vision bears some resemblance to the Great Chain of Being, it differs in an essential way. Rather than descending toward entropy and ultimate dissipation, the universe is held together through a dynamic exchange of energies across multiple realms or “worlds,” forming what Cynthia describes as a counter-entropic equilibrium. Gurdjieff named this process reciprocal feeding, emphasizing that the entire cosmos participates in this exchange, and that we have a particular role to play within it. 

Our task, and where Cynthia suggests we find the greatest fulfillment of meaning and contentment, is to mediate the seen and unseen realms by learning to operate from a level of selfhood that is not governed solely by survival instincts, exaggerated pleasure seeking, or reactive impulses. This is what our spiritual work supports us in doing, cultivating a stable inner ground from which we can consciously participate in the circulation and transformation of energies that sustain the Whole.

The mystery of the Incarnation reveals this process in its most intimate form. The Logos, the realm of primordial ideals and templates (World 6), descends into form in the realm of the Christic (World 12) where the Word becomes personal. Here, divine intelligence takes on an extraordinarily intimate expression of infinite tenderness, caring and love. Through Christ, the substances of World 12 flow downward into Worlds 48 and below, entering fully into the density of human life. 

Cynthia Bourgeault teaches that most of us ordinarily function somewhere between World 24 (the Imaginal Realm or Kingdom of God), World 48 (the physical or sensory world), and World 96 (the realm of the unconscious, habitual patterns), at times even touching World 192 (the realm of fragmented emotional and psychological suffering, the hell realms). While World 12 is always present and accessible, we often remain unconscious of it, lacking the inner perception of the heart needed to recognize and receive what is continually offered within and all around us.

Christmas serves as a reminder that we do, in fact, have the ability to grow within the womb of our being the more subtle functions that lie mostly latent in our ordinary state. We enter this life with a physical body (sometimes called the First or World 48 Body) along with our three centers of perception: intellectual, emotional, physical. Beyond our habitual thinking, shifting emotions, and mechanical postures and gestures, there are deeper capacities within us attempting to communicate from more interior strata of our being. Gurdjieff referred to these latent capacities as the higher emotional and higher intellectual centers. 

The ongoing work of awakening to and birthing the Christic in our own lives is the gradual opening to these innate higher centers and the development of a more stable sense of Self or Real I. Alongside this inner stabilization emerges what Gurdjieff called the Second or Kesdjan Body (World 24 or Heavenly Body), a more subtle, cohesive vehicle of this deeper Self. In our ordinary unawakened state—what Scripture and the tradition often call “sleep” —we are governed almost entirely by the First Body, influenced primarily by external stimuli and inner reactions. Awakening involves opening a way, a bridge, between the First Body and this more subtle Second Body, allowing impulses arising from the greater to increasingly guide and influence the smaller. 

Gurdjieff taught that the development of the Second Body does not occur automatically but requires sustained, conscious cooperation with the divine. This cooperation is expressed through practices such as three-centered attention and harmonization, self-remembering, working consciously with impressions, conscious labor and intentional suffering. Through these efforts, we take on the role of being an “apparatus for the transformation of energies.” Finer substances, generated through these practices the intentional digestion and transubstantiation of energies accumulated from ordinary life, can be conserved and eventually “crystallized” or “coated” so as to establish their permanence within our inner being.    

The development of a Second Body brings with it subtle inner experiences and capacities, though Gurdjieff emphasized that its presence is not easily verified or objectively proven. Instead, it is sensed through a new quality of inner life: a quiet, distinct stable sense of embodiment that is inwardly free from the constant fluctuations of physical states and psychological moods. The inner life is accessed through voluntary attention rather than automatic sensations. It manifests as an enduring sense of being that remains present amid ever fluctuating thoughts, emotions, outer circumstances, and mechanical reactions. 

This does not mean that emotional storms, difficult thoughts, or physical discomforts disappear. Rather, it means we are no longer entirely owned by them. A new freedom begins to grow within, not as an escape from life, but as a new center of gravity capable of remaining present within it. Importantly, this freedom does not arise through bypassing our human experience or attempting to have a different experience than the one we are actually having. 

It is this deeper Self and Second Body that is able to serve as a bridge between World 24, and at times World 12, and the denser realms of World 48, 96, and 192. In this way, we participate consciously in the ongoing cosmic transformation of the Whole Ray of Creation. This work is not ultimately about personal enlightenment, spiritual achievement, or individual gain. It is about taking our place within the care of the Whole. 

At the same time, we are cautioned not to prematurely claim the full development of a Second Body. We can, however, trust that our sincere efforts are supported from beyond and that assistance is given as the slow work of stabilization continues. Signs of this emerging body include a more unified and consistent emotional terrain, with fewer extremes of inner contradiction or reactivity; a depth of feeling that surpasses ordinary emotion; a distinct inner sensation and feeling of a finer, cohesive global field that seems to coat over or throughout the first body that can be voluntarily contacted; and the discovery of a quiet deeply rooted presence that endures even through crisis, illness, shocking life circumstances, or strong emotional storms—one that can witness and respond intelligently rather than become entirely absorbed in circumstances.

Once again, let us resist the temptation to name or assume the full development of a Second Body. Instead, acknowledge any such signs not as some kind of personal achievement to cling to or validate, but as an offering back into the rhythm of conscious participation that Christmastide so gently invites us to remember.

Much love,

Heather

---

Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses

*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*

Monday, December 22nd

Reading: “Light comes pretty inexpensively and maybe even too conveniently to us. With batteries in flashlights and the cool-to-the-touch fluorescent glow of chemical lights, Christ might well say to us anew: “You are the fire of the world.” Fire is heat and combustion—fuel actively being consumed and transformed into energy. “Fire!” is a cry for attention, and a warning for anyone who is unprepared. That must be what Our Lord had in mind when he said, “You are the light of the world.” We have grown accustomed to Advent being a season of light, but let’s agree to make this Advent a season of fire. Be consumed by the energy that dwells and is growing within. Let it burn in you. Let God use fire to purify the cosmos through you and make ready the Way of the Lord.

—Thomas Hoffman, A Child in Winter: Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany with Caryll Houselander, p. 61

Chant: Within our darkest night, you kindle a fire that never dies away, never dies away — Taize

Tuesday, December 23rd

Reading: “Light comes pretty inexpensively and maybe even too conveniently to us. With batteries in flashlights and the cool-to-the-touch fluorescent glow of chemical lights, Christ might well say to us anew: “You are the fire of the world.” Fire is heat and combustion—fuel actively being consumed and transformed into energy. “Fire!” is a cry for attention, and a warning for anyone who is unprepared. That must be what Our Lord had in mind when he said, “You are the light of the world.” We have grown accustomed to Advent being a season of light, but let’s agree to make this Advent a season of fire. Be consumed by the energy that dwells and is growing within. Let it burn in you. Let God use fire to purify the cosmos through you and make ready the Way of the Lord.

—Thomas Hoffman, A Child in Winter: Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany with Caryll Houselander, p. 61

Chant: Inner Life of Being, bearing Christ within me, come – John Tavener, lyrics by Alan Krema and Darlene Franz

Wednesday, December 24th

Reading: “So, very often, poets will say things a lot better than theologians, perhaps you've noticed and one of my favorite of all explorations of the meaning of not only the how and the what, but the why of the annunciation comes in a poem called “Annunciation” by the modern poet Denise Levertov and in this she tries to paint a picture of the psyche, of the state of being of this person that we often just put up on a pedestal and sort of identify as the mother of surrender and Denise is trying to get at the fact that surrender, the kind of surrender that co-creates the world of redeemed love, the world of redemption, is not an act of passive knuckling under, but an active participational intelligence. She writes in this one poem and she says, "Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings the angelic ambassador standing or hovering, whom she acknowledges, a guest. We are told of meek obedience. No one mentions courage." There's an insight. “Courage,” the word comes from French “corage,” and to see Mary as modeling the way of the heart.” 

“Denise continues, "The engendering Spirit did not enter her without consent. God waited." And we often think of Advent as the time where we're doing the waiting. This is a wonderful flip in this poem that says in a deep way God waited. God waited, the whole wheels of creation awaited a ‘yes’ from a human being, that is formed not with gritted teeth and humble knuckled under obedience, but an active intelligence. And then Denise Levertov goes on to explore what this intelligence was and some of her words, "Compassion and intelligence fused in her, indivisible." So, the contemplative act, the act of courage, the act of compassion and intelligence that allows a yes to be yes is indeed an act of seeing which is at the same time an act of participation, a yes which is not passive but active.”

– Cynthia Bourgeault, CAC’s An Advent Meditation with Cynthia Bourgeault Unedited Transcript

Thursday, December 25th

Reading: “The poet continues, "Called to a destiny more momentous than any and all of Time, she" Mary, "did not quail, only asked a simple, 'How can this be?' and gravely, courteously, took to heart the angel's reply, perceiving instantly the astounding ministry she was offered: to bear in her womb infinite weight and lightness; to carry in hidden finite inwardness, nine months of Eternity; to contain in slender vase of being, the sum of power-in narrow flesh, the sum of light. Then bring to birth, push out into air, a man child needing like any other, milk and love- but who was God." 

“Suppose this world isn't a mistake, a myth, a fall. Suppose it's precisely these conditions of fragility, finitude, density which allow the divine heart when it's focused and brought to radiance in the heart of a human being who is actively, courageously, intelligently receptive, then we have the real cocreation of the Christ, the infinite love in finite form. And that's the why of what this festival is about. And it takes the whole power and profundity, human depth, physical depth of the—of the god bearer, our earth, our planet to bring forth in human form what the always uncreated brilliant light of love is like. So, during this time of Advent as we ourselves converge towards the Christmas, the birth of the Christic may it be not just in a stable without, but in the stable of your heart, in your own human flesh and form that this—the rays of this uncreated light may shine forth in you and radiate your entire ordinary life with the glow of the eternal, from which it is always emerging and into which we are always returning.” – Cynthia Bourgeault, CAC’s An Advent Meditation with Cynthia Bourgeault Unedited Transcript

Chant: With you is the well of life and in your light we [are] light – Susan Latimer

Friday, December 26th

Reading: “It is necessary, while in the darkness, to know

That there is a Light somewhere,

To know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is a Light!...

The moment we cease to hold one another,

The moment we break faith with one another,

The sea engulfs us, and the Light goes out.”

– James Baldwin

Chant: We were born of the light, there where light is born of light — Susan Latimer

Saturday, December 27th

Reading: “Christmas has long been understood as the celebration of a birth that took place in time. But beneath the familiar story lies a deeper invitation: to recognise a birth that is always taking place…what Meister Eckhart called “the eternal birth of the Word in the ground of the soul”, not as a historical event, but as the ever-present awakening of being, shining quietly and brightly in each of us as the knowing, ‘I am’.” — Rupert Spira

Chant: Take o take me as I am, summon out what I shall be, set your seal upon my heart, and live in me – John Bell

Sunday, December 28th

Chant: The Lord is reaching out the arms of everlasting love and gathering all who would come to the Fountain of Life – Paulette Meier, Wellsprings of Life

← Previous Post

Next Post →