A Metaphysical Christmas Story
(Taken from Science of Mind, December 2017, Question & Answers by Rev. Dr. Jesse Jennings)
We start with all scriptural stories as being about one single, generic individual — you.
Thus, the baby Jesus represents your awakening to your true self and enlightenment into the oneness of being. The expectation that this child will lead as a king signifies your responsibility to bring peace to the world by acting on what you know. In this respect, each of us is the messiah and shares in the work of loving and healing.
The coming of the child is heralded by angles, who stand for higher aspirations and spiritual longing. Joseph is the conscious aspect of your mind and Mary, the subconscious. The child is said to be born from the subconscious without conscious participation.
We find this imagery in other world tales, and it means that the God-awareness is not based in logic but in feeling, which is the realm of the personal subconscious and universal subjectivity — the deity’s immediacy being more of an every-present impulse than an objective temporal idea.
Thoughts and feeling return to the home of everyday thought (Bethlehem) for a census-taking or period of inner reflection. This can’t happen amid the crowded, noisy thought-field (the inn), so a place apart becomes the sanctuary for the birthing. The shepherds, too, are you practical, how-to-thought, astonished by the transforming, angelic self.
The Magi (thought, desire and action or cause, medium and effect alluding to the creative trinity) and Herod (the dug-in ego) are a long study.