Holy Night 2 – 2018

December 25-26 – Aquarius

Night of John. The Eagle of the soul circling high on its wings and looking back from a great height, observes its own life. And now the man recognizes the Laws of Karma.

The Mystery: Choosing the narrow and difficult path or the path that is wide and easy.

For those who are born of flesh it is hard to find the path of the spirit.

Bhagavad Gita: A selfish life, or a life devoted to humanity?

Rudolf Steiner’s indications for the Holy Nights given to Herbert Hahn

Translation from German by Laura Zanutto 2015 adjusted by Mark Willan 2016

2. Heilige Nacht

25.-26. Dezember – Wassermann

Nacht des Johannes. Der Adler der Seele kreist hoch auf seinen Schwingen, schaut zurück aus grosser Höhe und betrachtet sein eigenes Leben. Und jetzt erkennt der Mensch die Gesetze des Karma.

Das Mysterium: Den schmalen und schwierigen Pfad oder den breiten und einfachen Weg wählen. Für den, der aus dem Fleische geboren ist, ist es schwer den Pfad des Geistes zu finden.

Bhagavad Gita: Ein eigennütziges Leben, oder ein der Menschheit gewidmetes Leben?

Second Contemplation: by Kristina Kaine

John is love therefore this is the night of love. Can we even begin to imagine the kind of love that was necessary for Jesus to incarnate into an earthly body and accept THE task. Jesus represents the I Am of every individual human being. Because we don’t really connect with our I Am we don’t have a personal relationship with it. We can accept that it is out there somewhere, perhaps like the eagle “looking back from a great height, [it] observes its own life.”

When we become aware of this, the first thing that happens is we “recognize the Laws of Karma”. This does not necessarily mean that we understand the events of our own life. Primarily it means that we understand the behavior of all those people around us. We don’t judge them for their actions but rather we see their actions as their mission in life, their purpose. Great compassion arises in us as we observe each person’s struggle to be the person they decided to be before they incarnated.

It is like watching a child learn to tie its shoelaces. An intricate task eventually mastered over time. From the eagle’s perspective it is the achievement not the failure that is seen by those who have a strong experience of the Higher Self, their I Am.

In lecture 4 in “How Can Mankind Find Christ Again?” Rudolf Steiner explains that we experience our I as a reflection.

“Only indirectly do we experience our I when we come into relation with other people and our karma comes into play.” In this lecture he also says “You will ask: Then does the man of today not also find his ego [I]? No, my dear friends, he does not find it. For when we are born the true ego [I Am] comes to a stop. What we experience of our ego [I] is only a reflection. It is only something that reflects our pre-natal ego [I Am] in us. We actually experience only a reflection of our real ego[I Am];”

Christmas night gives us an opportunity to deeply consider what this means in our daily life. We can become more mindful of the way we live each day. Will we lead “A selfish life, or a life devoted to humanity?” This does not refer to charitable work, it refers to becoming conscious of our own soul’s activity, the way we feel, think and act towards other people. It is a night of great love and compassion for every single human being on this planet as we each work with the karma we chose for ourselves to give evolution the greatest opportunity to move forward.

John the Evangelist on Patmos, 1490 Sigmund Gleismüller (1449-1511)