The story of Adam & Eve can be considered as a mythological allegory describing humanity’s “fall” of consciousness into the complex dualities of self-awareness, subject/object relationships, and all the opposites of existence (male/female, light/dark, hot/cold, day/night, happy/sad, health/sickness, etc.). This is symbolized in the partaking of the “tree” of knowledge of good and evil, i.e. dualities.
The felt separation from God is perhaps the conscious emergence of our own separate “self” in our mind and in the world, and this “self” feels cut off, isolated, independent, apart, divided, incomplete, disconnected from the rest of nature, the world, and the cosmos. We feel like we live in the cosmos, rather than being the cosmos. But which is more accurate? Did we get placed here in the cosmos from somewhere else?
As long as we are partaking of the knowledge of dualities, in dualistic consciousness and the thoughts of the mind, of this subject/object duality, attaching ourselves to the polarities of existence, of this versus that, then we cannot return to perceive the fundamental essence of our life, the wholeness that we are, the ground of our being as one with the cosmos, in nonduality or at-one-ment in God.
To return to the “tree” of life we need to go beyond all dualistic thought, perhaps through meditation and other spiritual practices, and contemplate the deepest reality of our being, of our awareness, of consciousness. To pass the “flaming sword” guarding “Eden” we must let go of all our thoughts of how we think things are, all the “knowledge” we’ve partaken, realizing the limits of intellectual knowledge. We transcend all dualities.
We go directly through that “sword,” allowing our separate ego-self to be slain on it as we pass back into Eden in Spirit. Then we may look to see what’s really Real, the Truth. There we discover we are One with Life and Being and Love, and we’ve never been separate from it in Reality.
We partake of pure Love, and realize we are pure Love. We recognize we don’t have a life, we are Life. We find our Spirit is God’s Spirit. We awaken as pure undefiled undivided Consciousness, and this is God. It is One.
We are One in God.
Discover more from Thy Mind, O Human
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I agree pretty much 100%, Bryce. The story of Adam & Eve is in essence a story of human-kind’s “fall” from a pre-egoic state into ego. I think our purpose as humans is not necessarily to pursue happiness, or peace, as is commonly suggested, but to evolve beyond ego into a post-egoic state. This brings with it a “return,” so to speak, to peace and happiness through oneness with God, but I prefer to see it as a moving forward, moving beyond ego — as growth, more so than a “return.” The end is the same, however, merely a matter of perspective. Psychology tells us the egoic sense of self begins to emerge between the ages of one and two, and continues to develop throughout adolescence into young adulthood, where unfortunately, for most of us, it stalls out, or becomes conditioned by society to become ever stronger, as opposed to progressing out of that stage and moving beyond it.
I agree that a mythos of sorts may be derived from the garden story. Even so, over time I’ve become convinced that the whole saga is based on hard analogues. It is a representation of real personalities experiencing real events in a real place and time. And inasmuch as Adam is an archetype for all of humanity it follows that each one of use are among those personalities involved in the story. But it is a real story–a real drama being played out on a real stage with a deep prologue of which we were a part before arriving here–as a result of our actions then and there.
Out of eternity we’ve come like a lion emerging from the wilderness–only we are now encumbered with the weight of the flesh. And if we do things God’s way that weight will have a taming effect–and, like an ox, we will become both useful and powerful under the yoke of Christ. We become established as individuals before God and are then able to proceed further in becoming like God. These are the great pillars of strength and establishment that must be erected before we can bear the weight of the knowledge of God. This is Boaz and Jachin–the gateway into the realm of the knowledge of God.
I believe that our design and growth in mortality follow a pattern that is trackable on a larger scale — an eternal scale, if you will — and that our experience here is not (IMO) the full story. Even the various relationships of life that we experience as mortals — who we are to ourselves, our progenitors, our spouses, and our progeny — are analogous to far greater relations in eternity. So it is, as I understand things, with Adam and Eve.
That said, I agree that the Garden Story may be applicable on a number of different levels–even while the fact remains that Adam and Eve are real individuals and that we are part of the larger family of Adam.
Nearly everyone is slightly or fully wrong, which is fine i was too, in eden both didnt took from the tree of life, which is proofen by the elohim which say that “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil. And now, lest he reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever…” notice that man became like elohim in partaking in the knowledge of right and wrong, means it was not a bad event, more it was an upgrade because as the elohim speaker say “now they are like us” doesnt sound that bad, but now comes the crux, even the elohim didnt took from the tree of life, so if man can do that he goes beyond elohim which looks like jealous characters. All of this proofs that its clearly no coming back(and impossible to do) but rather an upgrade, inner evolution of the soul which isnt finished yet for all of us here. The whole theme isnt that new or different we might say, all the ancient stories of the gods are that way, that the gods arent pure in any way, simply more mighty and skilled than humans, much longer life span and often also jealous in some ways, than you always too have the character like prometheus going against his own society/race to bring enlightenment to the humans, also humans mostly have to proof themselves worthy to get accepted into the realm of the gods, even in lotr frodo for his struggle, sacrifice and courage is allowed to go with the elves where humans generally arent allowed there.