https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=X4ZhnNKVBww
And so then at the bottom of the tree, what do we usually have? We put the gifts. Now what’s important with the gifts is to understand that the gifts are wrapped. The gifts are hidden. And that’s really the most important part because even in a little bit, not that long ago, just one generation ago, my father for example, at Christmas they could get either a gift or they could get just a chunk of coal. And so the idea is, you know, depending on if you’re good or bad, the gift could either be something positive or negative. But now we’ve only kept the positive, but we can still understand this idea that you don’t know what’s there. It’s potentiality. It’s Schrodinger’s Box. If the cat is could be alive, it could be dead. We’re looking at the potentiality of reality. It’s not revealed yet, okay? And then hidden in this potentiality are the gifts. And so the gifts are just like the lights in the tree, for example. They are these hidden precious things which are in potentiality. The treasure that’s hidden in the unknown. You can see that, you know, the treasure that’s guarded by a dragon or the idea of, in the Bible for example, we have St. Peter who goes to the shore and finds a golden piece in the mouth of a fish. But also the fish itself, which is the symbol of Christianity, early Christians, represents exactly that. So imagine there’s this water of death, this chaotic water, and then in the water you find these sparkling things, these sparkling living things, these things that are useful inside the chaos. And so you can fish and you can you can bring out of this death and out of this chaos things which are useful, things which are precious. And so that is really this idea of the gifts at the bottom of the world, if you will. And so I know some of you might doubt that this is what it’s referring to, but a good way to understand that that’s exactly, that that is indeed what we’re dealing with, is to remember other traditions of Christmas. Once again, where usually do we hide the gifts? We put them under the tree, but there’s another place where we put them, right? We put them in the socks, put them in the stockings. And so at the bottom of a sock, we will hide a precious thing. In the old times, they would usually hide an orange. You know, we have this story of St. Nicholas who hides a golden ball at the bottom of a And so this golden ball, which is hidden at the bottom of phenomenological reality. I don’t, I barely struggle to imagine a better way to represent the bottom of phenomenological reality than the bottom of a sock, because that’s where your feet touch the ground, the earth. And so, and once again, this idea of putting an orange or a gift in a sock, it used to be that we would all, we could maybe put a piece of coal there as well to kind of remind you that you’ve been naughty. And so that is basically the kind of structure. Now, in order to kind of, to understand the whole thing and how the gifts are also at the bottom of the tree or the golden ball is hidden at the bottom of the sock, you also have to remember that Christmas is the solstice. And so it is the low, it is when the sun is going down. So every day the days get shorter and shorter until the solstice. And then at the solstice, the days start to get longer. And so you can imagine that the day is going down, down, down. We’re going down into darkness. We’re descending into death. We’re descending into the lowest place. And the question is, what’s gonna happen? Is it just gonna keep going? Is we’re just gonna be overwhelmed by darkness? But no, in that lowest place, you have this hidden thing. You have this golden ball at the bottom of the pond, you know, in the story of the princess and the frog. You have this golden ball at the bottom of the pond or this golden ball at the bottom of a sock, you know, or the gifts hidden under the tree, hidden in the, being hidden in their wrappings. And so the sun goes all the way down and then it starts to come back up.