Immaculate Conception

Hi everyone, this week I was going to talk about prayer and connecting with God, but then I had thought about the birth of Jesus and what that means. What's a little weird about that is, it wouldn't bother me if we skipped from Halloween to New Years. I do like Thanksgiving though. I like Christmas Eve services, but it isn't something I make a point to go to. Except for the potential for family drama, Thanksgiving is nice because all that's expected is to get together and eat and spend time with family. At Christmas, if you have kids, gifts are a big part of the fun and possible disappointment. I heard one time that, what causes anger is that your expectations weren't met, or your goals were blocked. If your kid's goal was to get the latest digital device and you couldn't afford one at all, or could only afford a lesser version then Christmas day was spent in disappointment and "ruined" in their eyes. These days Andrea and I exchange gifts but a lot of times the gifts are something we need for the house or take a trip.

With that being said, after the thought came to me about Jesus' birth I also thought, It's the week before Christmas so why not talk about Immaculate Conception. What a lot of people don't know is there are other stories of women conceiving a child without being assisted by a male. 

A woman in China, named Jiang Yuan, as the story is told, miraculously conceived a child when she stepped in a giant footprint left by the supreme deity Shangdi, thus giving birth to a child she named QI, which means the abandoned one, because he survived every time she tried to get rid of him. 

There are other stories throughout history. The greek god Horus, an Aztec god Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, and another more famous name we recognize is Guatama Buddha. 

Lying on the royal couch she fell asleep and dreamed the 4 guardian angels lifted her and the couch to the Himalayan Mountains. They clothed her with divine garments and flowers and anointed her with perfumes. They placed the couch with it's head towards the east and laid her down. She saw the Future Buddha as a superb white elephant wandering on a Gold Hill. Descending Gold hill he ascended Silver Hill and approaching from the north he plucked a white lotus. Trumpeting loudly he went into the Golden Mansion. Walking three times around his mother's couch with his right side towards it, and striking her on her right side he seemed to enter her womb. 

She woke up and told the dream to the king. The king summoned 64 Brahmins and asked the dream to be interpreted. They said "Be not anxious, great king, a child has planted itself into the womb of your queen." (I've paraphrased this story from the book "The Second Coming Of Christ, The Resurrection of Christ Within You" by Paramahansa Yogananda). 

If you've spent your life around the stories of the Christian churches you, like me, may not be aware there are other similar stories, and there are people who believe these stories just as strongly as people in the Christian tradition believe the story of Mary, the Angel and Jesus. 

I was also thinking this week that at times I may seem to come across as bitter towards the Christian church, and in a sense I am, but to the teachings of the church and that in the 3rd and 4th centuries, in their quest to control the people, the church leaders rejected the true depth of Jesus' teachings and adopted the teaching that we need a savior to keep us from eternal damnation. 

I don't want to give the impression that I'm only here to condemn, I'm here to help others see there is more to Jesus' teachings than what the typical Christian churches are teaching, and it's not even the fault of the ministers of the churches. They're only being taught in their colleges these teachings and passing it along.

Next time we'll get into the birth of Jesus, and it's spiritual significance other than just a baby being born to save the world.

As always have a great week and

Keep searching,

Paul

I also decided to play with more AI images on my artspace ai program