Dearest Friends,

When I first experienced the Twelve Holy Nights, I learned that many of my friends gathered together around a Christmas Tree to read a sacred text. The Holy Nights were presented as social and communal practice.  

Beginning in 2004, I realized the Holy Nights were a solitary meditative experience full of intimate mystery.

Here are my thoughts on the differences between attending social gatherings during the Holy Nights and the solitary work of spiritual development. they are based on my 36 years of experiencing both the social and outer activities and the inner and individual attention to the Holy Nights.

Not Religious

Most of us grew up with the idea that the path to the Spirit was about belonging to a religion rather than belonging to one’s self. Religion was a collective, social, tribal connection to God. There was a priesthood, rituals, and a book or books that defined beliefs and determined behaviors. Acceptance depended on conforming. Wondering and questioning, out-of-the-box perspectives, new imaginations were discouraged, even seen as sin. The only kind of self-reflection was confessional. 

The mystery of the Holy Nights reveals that every human soul experiences them. Freeing them from religion, means they are not a Christian experience. The Holy Nights embrace everyone and go beyond belief...they are direct experience. They have existed from the Beginning of Time.

Self & Spirit

The Inner Christmas Journey is individual, intimate, personal, creative, and full of wondering. It is inner! It takes place in your soul, the temple of I AM.

The Holy Nights understood spiritually are not social, communal,  holiday evenings. They require spiritual solitude, inner soul breathing, and silent contemplation. They are intimate moments for connecting Self with Spirit in new ways. They are a birthing, an incarnating, an inner blessing.

Gathering with others, listening to presentations on the esoteric, singing the songs of Christmas bring a social warmth over the 12 nights, but these activities are distractions from the true inner journey to the Threshold. I love the yearly”Holy Nights” social gatherings that balance the deep solitude of the sacred Holy Nights but they are not a substitute. They will not take you to the Threshold. They will not lift the veils. Social Gatherings will nurture your humanity, but will not evolve your individuality. 

Conversations During the Holy Nights

Let me offer a different perspective on the Holy Nights and group work.  Many who subscribe to the Inner Christmas Messages read them with their partners and their families and have conversations about them. The benefit here is the nurturing of connection rather than your individuality. How many times in the year do you engage in a 12 consecutive conversations exploring with each other twelve different perspectives on an ensouled theme? There is so much virtue in these conversations. 

It is the same with the two inner activities that embrace the Holy Nights: Inner Advent and Inner Epiphany. Both these spiritual activities ask for your sacred aloneness. And both can be shared in a conversation with others.