December 8th is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. For 1500 years, the birth of Mary has celebrated her purity.
The Immaculate Conception is the Catholic doctrine(teaching) that Mary was conceived without original sin and incapable of personal sin.
This teaching is important to Catholics. Should it be important to all human beings? Should it be important to you?
As a mood,
as a question,
as a quality,
as a way of knowing yourself,
yes, it is important for each of us.
As a belief or a doctrine, probably not.
As an imagination that leads us to finding, knowing and becoming self? Oh, my, yes.
Let these questions inspire you today.
Just imagine the idea of sin! What is sin? What are your thoughts about sin? Your feelings? About original sin, universal and born in and by everyone – casting us out of Paradise, and the intimate personal sins commited and carried by the individual – casting one into Hell?
Just imagine immaculate conception? Would being immaculately conceived mean never knowing guilt, shame, blame? Could we be self-aware or self-developing, without the shadowy contours of sin and the desire to be sinless?
Pretending & Hiding
For 2011 my thoughts on immaculate conception are about pretending and hiding. All little children love games of pretending and hiding. With pretending we want to be seen as something we are not. With hiding we want to disappear, to not be seen. Do you remember the fun of both when you were a child?
These innocent games for the child become limiting defenses for the adult who feels like one who was born within sin and commits sins of offense, harm, neglect, denial, hubris and so on the endless list of transgressions.
When do you pretend?
When do you hide?
Can you seek a new conception of yourself?
Today, do you dare to find within your soul, the immaculately conceived mother/womb of your incarnate “I Am?” This is the mother/womb that holds all of you, the sinless innocent and sinning seeker of wisdom.
Celebrate the love that tells you that you never need to pretend to be not-yourself or hide what is yourself.
your use of the language really hits home w/ me.
i’ve been thinking about ‘original sin’ lately…ive been wondering how anyone could worship a being that condemned all the generations of adam and eve to suffering of any kind. if this where a human ….they would rank with the hitlers of evil people. i am not to blame for anything eve did.
my bitterness to organized religion aside. i love your thoughts sin as a metaphor for what troubles me and why i seem to punish myself from some unknown place deep inside. why are some of my earliest memories centered around something being wrong. you seem to be hinting at there’s a lot of weight on the side of nature in the nature / nurture debate ….that maybe we aren’t born a ‘clean slate’.
“Could we be self-aware or self-developing, without the shadowy contours of sin and the desire to be sinless?”
this is a hell of a question…..my degree of self-awareness and development is intricately tied to my guilt and shame. of my flight from guilt and shame….hiding, pretending?….. to my super low threshold of shame and guilt. if i was born free of sin i sure found way early on to experience this nasty tag team.
thank you
I was just recently referred to your work, Lynn, just after Christmas, and I am so pleased to have found you. I am hoping to afford your Inner Year journaling experience and have started with the first three weeks. Thank you for that.
Anyway, I don’t know if it’s the way you word it, if it is the more objective point I am at in my life and my journey with organized religion or likely a little of both, but the way you describe sin in this article really hit home with me.
I have always struggled with the concept of sin and original sin. I still struggle with it some, but not to the same capacity as within the years that I was trying to make sense of the catholicism I grew up with. You revealed within me a sort of epiphany that suddenly puts the concept of sin into a light in which I can accept and appreciate. What I derived from your writing was a meaning of sin in which sin would be the actions/thoughts/intentions that separate us from our higher selves and therefore detach us from spirit self and Spirit. I have always imagined Steiner’s concept of soul as a portal or doorway between physical self and spirit. As I read and reflected on your piece here, I thought of sin as these actions, etc. that narrow that portal, or close that door. This really could be like living in a Hell, especially, once one would become aware of it.
Anyway, this feels good to me. To understand this religious word in a new way and to be able to reach beyond the words and baggage, into the deeper meaning in which I can connect the universal truths seen within in all religions and paths of enlightenment. Thank you!