The Black Horse and the White Horse. An allegory.

[I wrote this after I had been ill for about 8 years with fybromyalgia/CFS. I am a lot better now, some 6 years further on, but I was trying to get the ‘flavour’ of what some of the realisations were as time went by.]

Once upon a time a cart drawn by two horses, one black and one white, came clip-clopping along the road.

The day was warm and bright and clear, the sun shone and the sky was blue. The cart was well-cared for with bright paint and shiny wheels. The driver was neither young nor old; just happy to be driving along.

Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the black horse stumbled and nearly fell. It neighed and stopped, shivering. Our driver called ‘gee-up’ and flicked the reins, and the horse stood still. Then the driver pulled out a whip, and tried to whip the horse to keep going. The horse went a few more steps and then collapsed, with the cart jutting out at an odd angle, although the white horse was still standing. Now the driver did not know what to do; she tried to make the white horse keep pulling, but the cart just went in circles, and the black horse was clearly in trouble. This was a shock.

Now there was nothing to be done but to get off the road and onto the verge. Several other carts stopped to help and eventually somehow, driver, cart, and horses ended up sitting beside the road wondering what to do. Other people stopped with advice on what to do for the black horse, but most of that entailed taking time to wait and figure out what was wrong, and the driver wanted to get going again. It was also very difficult to work out who to listen to or what advice was worth taking. Some people were kind and stayed for a while, and some people gave them food, but by evening they too had had to leave, and now the driver and horses were alone.

After a long and lonely night, the next day dawned with little change, and everyone hungry. The black horse was clearly no better, so the driver took the white horse and went further along the road to find more grass and water, as well as food for herself.

Then she came back and waited; there was nothing else to do, but the horse did not get better.

The days passed. After a while the driver began to notice the other vehicles on the road. It was busy, and most of the traffic was heading in the same direction. There was a sense of urgency to get to where they were heading. The drivers looked to neither right nor left, only ahead, and pushed their horses on. The carts were of all different types, big ones lumbering along, piled high with baggage and people, barely moving along in comparison to some of the smallest and fastest carts zipping along. Large and small, high and low, wide and slim, cared for and uncared for. Some limped along with tired horses, but of them all few looked to one side or saw our driver sitting there with her horses. Those that did see them, looked sorry for them, but then looked away and drove on.

The days passed. The driver had by then made several forays on the white horse to get food, and began to see that there were quite a lot of empty or broken down carts all along the roadside. Their drivers had usually left and taken their horses with them, but she did not know where.

The days passed. And now the driver had to look further afield to find food. There was a field on the other side of the fence, and across the field the land sloped upward toward a wooded area, which looked inviting so she went to have a look. By this time, the black horse was able to walk a very small way before collapsing, so slowly they made their way to the wooded area, away from the road. From this vantage point she was able to see that the road went on and on, and was full of traffic hurrying along, but she was still unable to see the end of it, or where they were heading.

The days passed, and the weather began to change. The driver was able to build a small hut, and to start to collect food and to grow a little. With the white horse she was still able to take short rides, do her errands, and make new friends. She met others who had also been forced to stop. She began to notice that there were nice things that she could do; a cup of tea; listen to the birds; feel the wind in her hair. She even began to talk to her horses, and they began to talk to her – mostly horsy thoughts of course, such as, where was the next bit of grass coming from? , but at other times they told her who was coming and why, which was handy.

The days passed, and she walked down to the road and watched the traffic pass by. Did they know where they were going, and in such a hurry? She had not known where she was going; it just seemed to be ‘There’; the potential answer to all her problems. They pitied her because she couldn’t get to There, and never would, but gradually she started to pity them, because of all the little things that they were missing out on; how strange that felt. She tried to tell them about these things, but they looked at her as if she was mad, and drove on.

The days passed, and she realised that she had dropped out. She was never going to find out what was at the end of that road. The black horse recovered enough to draw the cart in harness for a short while when necessary, but she had discovered that she liked being able to talk to horses and look at the stars when she pleased.

Sometimes others nearby seemed to get better and leave, and some did not. Nobody seemed to know why.

The most surprising thing was that gradually other people began to ask her for her expertise in talking to horses, which pleased her immensely. Fancy that for a career! She had never thought of that one!

And in the end, she found she was happy.

kind regards,

ce’s

2 Topics – Some Numerology and some Observations about 29/11s.

Topic 1. Numerology and 7-year ‘passages’.

In Gail SHEEHY’s ‘Passages’, she noticed that we seem to have to assess and absorb our life experiences at roughly 7 year intervals. If we miss these steps or passages, we start to get into trouble, especially with finding meaning or sense for all the things that happen to us as the years go by.

Although the 7 year periods basically correspond with the transiting cycle of Uranus, they don’t seem to correspond to the sign or house that Uranus is in. There seems to be a theme running along underneath. It seems to me that these periods correspond to their numerology which goes like this.

This is what the numbers mean….

1.                  independent creativity

2.                  partnership, relating, the other

3.                  communication

4.                  building and setting up foundations; practicality

5.                  dependence and independence

6.                  ideals and perfectionism; getting it ‘right’

7.                  belief systems, religion, finding meaning

8.                  analysis and finding authority

9.                  understanding and synthesis

10.             focus (0) on independent creativity (1)

11.             finding 2 forms of independent creativity (2 x1s) or more relating (2)

12.             independent creativity and relationship (1 as well as 2)

and these are the passages through the ages of…

0-7         the first         1. independent creativity, but you are making you.

8-14       second        2. the realization of the other comes in, and how to relate.

15-21     third              3  communication and how to do that is important.

22-28     fourth            4. building for the future; laying foundations.

29-35     fifth               5. wrestling with dependence and independence.

36-42     sixth             6. what are my ideals; how do I get it right for me?

43-49     seventh        7. belief systems; finding meaning.

50-56     eighth           8. analysing what has happened and finding authority.

57-63     ninth 9. understanding and synthesizing; the over-view.

64-70     tenth 10. actual independent creativity this time; a new life.

71-77     eleventh       11. even more creativity; 2 forms or more relating?

78-84     twelfth          12. creativity and relationships, but the 1 plus the 2 makes 3 which can also give an emphasis on communication and also implies groups.

This system can go on of course, using the numbers. The 13^th passage can ‘bring in’ more building (1 plus 3 = 4) and so on.

Does this system ‘fit in’ with how you are finding your life?

See also Gail SHEEHY; Passages.

Topic 2. Having 29/11 as Birth number or Life Path number.

If born 29^th of the month, you will be 29/11 as a Birth number.

Birth path numbers are found by totalling all the numbers in your birthday eg. 15/6/1952 is processed as 1+5+6+1+9+5+2 = 29 and 2+9 = 11 MILLMAN expresses this as 29/11.

You may be aware that in Numerology the double numbers are ‘master numbers’, which may sound quite good to have, but in reality they can be quite a trial all of their own.

As a 29/11 this is what I have found.

This number means that its owner is moving from relating to the other (the 2) to finding 2 independent forms of creativity. Not 1 – but 2, which is something I have not read or found anywhere else, but have observed in myself and other 29/11’s. I thought finding 1 form was hard enough, but having to find 2!?

It’s as if we have a dream of partnership with the other but are simply not allowed to have it in this lifetime at least until we develop our own relationship with our Internal self (or the inner child).

If we don’t find these 2 forms of creativity, we seem to end up alone anyway (particularly in later life); eg, awake in the middle of the night as the partner sleeps on.

What are these 2 forms? What the dickens!!

I can only answer in general.

There will be an external form and an internal form; so what do I mean here?

One of them will come from inside, as in, be your own feelings, senses, intuition and/or thoughts, and the other will be about using or doing things outside you or external to you. This can include working with others ideas or intuitions, or making things and so on. But, in all of this, you will be initially at least, working by yourself, or if it’s a group, you are leading it through your own energy; it can be there because of you but you are not part of it.

The other thing to notice is that both of these forms must be in your life and balanced in terms of both having space in your life fairly concurrently, and possibly daily.

Much of the time, there is a great desire to be of direct use to others (that 9) or to create things that may be of use to others, so there can be a need to be careful not to wear the body out if doing service to the other. Wearing yourself out is generally an indication that you’re not looking in the right place for a creative outlet that is correct for you.

In MBTI terms you will probably need to access and integrate both the tertiary function and the opposite of the secondary to get to where you want to go, which takes time. The 2 forms of creativity seem to be from the primary and the inferior functions. There’s plenty of information about MBTI on the web, but not much about the tertiary function. I intend to tackle this topic at a later date, but it’s a big one.

29/11’s generally come across as gentle people with often a strong host/ess quality, but the internal drive of the 29/11 to find these creative outlets is absolutely intense, although it tends to get buried not only for the sake of maintaining relationships with the other, but it all seems so unreasonable to need 2 forms when it’s hard enough for most people to get to find their 1, and the ‘forever’ searching and dissatisfaction appear fairly peculiar (and possibly even ‘greedy’) to others; you’re just not grateful for what you have and so on.

This seems a bit short, and with very little to ‘fix’ the problemo, but I have written this as a warning or a confirmation (depending on how you look at it) for those of us struggling with this ‘master’ number.

kind regards,

ce’s

See also, Dan MILLMAN; The Life you were born to live.

Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden; a psychological analysis.

Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden; a psychological analysis, as in, a modern interpretation. A Tale for our Times.
         

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Shakespeare.

Introduction.

I have disliked the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden since I first heard it (quite some time ago now).

I thought that it was highly ungallant of Adam to blame Eve; that the serpent had a rough time as well; all of them get chucked out of the Garden of Eden; and what was wrong with eating of the Tree of Knowledge anyway? – isn’t gaining knowledge what you’re supposed to do in life? God seemed a bit mean about the whole thing as well; quite vengeful in fact. Why would I want anything to do with Him? Not to mention hoping I could find a lot better husband than that wimp Adam.

I also felt the implied blame; that being thrown out of Eden was the woman’s fault; it seemed to me to be part of some kind of built-in failure if you were born a woman; a way of explaining why you didn’t count, or were automatically wrong in whatever way. Men use it as the ultimate reason not to listen to a woman! This story is told to a great many people! It’s a story I would have thought that women could do perfectly well without.

So, the years have gone by and even though I forgot about such things, yet still the questions remained – what on earth was this story about?

I have seen various interpretations over the years, although none of them made much sense to me. Could this story make sense in any way and is there anything that can be learnt from it?

My aim is to look at this story in a natural psychological manner, and try to unravel what the words are saying while remembering that these concepts are translations from a different time and culture.

The story.

The story really begins with God making the world in 6 days and His seeing that it was All Good. It then turns to the making of the Garden of Eden, with Adam being made/formed ‘in the image of God’ for the purpose of to ‘till it and keep it’. There is also the strong implication that Adam is important for the Naming of all things. He is expressly commanded not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (TKGE), with a warning that he will surely die.

Adam’s female partner is formed from Adam’s rib, and Adam names her Woman. The bible specifically states that they were naked and not ashamed; they neither knew nor noticed whether they were covered or not; they accepted themselves as they were. They were quite un-selfconscious as is any young child or animal.

The serpent tells the woman, the fruit of TKGE is good to eat, and it will make you ‘more like God’. So she eats it, gives it to Adam, and then their ‘eyes were opened and they realised they were naked’, so they tried to cover up (aprons of fig leaves). This was the first decision that they made that they were not alright as they were.

God comes walking in the garden and can’t find Adam, because they are both hiding from Him.

[So, if God is all-seeing and all-powerful, and knows everything all the time, how come he couldn’t find Adam? I was brought up with the implication that God could stick his finger on you, no matter where you were in the whole wide world; in other words ‘you can’t hide’, and so you had better be good. In this story, God has to call out ‘where are you?’, so, can you hide, or not? Does God see everything, or not?]

So then they are found out, and there’s a lot of blaming – no-one is going to take responsibility here. Eve blames the snake and Adam blames Eve.

God curses the serpent, then the woman, then Adam; apparently comprehensively and thoroughly. There’s a lot about getting back to the dust – “you are made of dust”.

The story then moves on.

Adam names his wife, Eve. [Rather a change in pace here.]

God gives Adam and Eve clothes, [which seems quite kind of him?]

Then God throws them out of Eden and then makes sure that they can’t get at the Tree of Life (TL) by guarding the garden with cherubim(s) and a flaming sword; which seems a bit ‘dog-in-the-manger-ish’. But before that he says ‘the man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to eat of the TL and live forever.’

So now we start asking questions.

What is the Garden of Eden?

We don’t know, but for most of us it has the quality of Heaven on Earth; a garden of God; a divine garden. It’s a garden and beautiful; it’s warm, and the weather’s perfect, and everything we need just drops into our hands. So, we don’t have to do anything do we, even though we are supposed to ‘till and keep? It’s all there - how nice. But why do we need a heaven on earth as well as a heaven above? This would mean that there are 2 of them. So…

What do we think Heaven is, and why do we want it?

I think most people would consider heaven as a place where everything is comfortable and ‘lovey-dovey’ and nice, and we don’t have to do anything, (no body, and so no work) and it just stays comfortable and nice and most of all safe (no ‘bumps in the night’) forever. This is a terribly long time, which gives a very static quality. Would we get bored if we only played harps forever?

I suspect that we do carry an unconscious idea of what Heaven is, and I suspect that that is what we expect/wish that Life could be, especially in the Garden. Somewhere where we do not have to do anything, and it all just drops into our hand when we hold it out. Instead we find ourselves out of the Garden and that Life on Earth is not very heavenly at all. Heaven thus becomes taught as ultimately a Reward for suffering or enduring/coping sufficiently with life as lived on earth (once!?); ie, we need to be good; thinking and doing the right things to make sure we get back in.

Another way of saying the above is that for us the ultimate reward for our Life is to get Off Earth as fast as possible, without committing suicide, (because that is ‘cheating’). We are using and following religious/spiritual/’heavenly’ creeds as a way of coping with the fear we have of living on earth.

We also assume/are taught that God lives in heaven, and therefore, not on earth. But when we are in heaven there is also the quality that although we are ‘in the house of God’, He is not really accessible to us. He is a long way away; the boss; no relationship except perhaps being told if we are ‘good or bad’, and other people/beings help us with that.

What is the Difference between the heavens?

So, what were Adam and Eve doing in Eden that they would not have been doing in Heaven? Adam has been placed there to ‘Till/Work it and Keep/Care for it’. Adam will have to do physical work if he wants to eat. Keeping implies to me that we are in charge of ensuring that all God’s creations are kept very alive and very well to keep them going, as in, sustain and protect them. I take this as the primary instruction for humanity. Look after the garden and the animals for man’s own sake. (In the process of learning to look after God’s creations, we learn to look after ourselves as well.)

The problem here is that looking after one’s body, and tilling and keeping a garden and staying alive and well involves physical effort. Perhaps we are supposed to actually do something after all.

What then is the difference between being in or out of Eden?

We are not specifically told that Adam talked/communed with God, but the implication is there because both of them hid after eating the fruit. Thus, in Eden, we are accessible to God/Life and He to us. ‘God comes walking in the Garden’. This does not happen in Heaven, and it does not seem to happen out of the Garden either. Talking/communing implies relationship and equality and the Garden appears to be the only place it can happen.

Also, in Eden, although they are ‘naked’, they don’t notice the differences between their own and other bodies or animals. They were not ‘ashamed’ of their bodies. Once having eaten the fruit, they consider themselves naked and cover themselves ‘down there’, (aprons only, not the breasts), and are afraid of God, so they hide and become inaccessible to God, who wanted to and still wants to (?) talk to them. They then have to be thrown out of Eden to stop them from eating of the Tree of Life.

Well, then, what are the animals doing that’s different between being in Eden or not? The answer here seems to be that there is no difference. In the wild (whatever actually remains on earth currently) animals eat and are eaten and Life flows on, maintaining its extraordinary beauty and balance. The birds in my garden hunt for food every day, but all still have to keep a watchful eye for predators. The animals have not been thrown out – they are still there. Neither do the animals need warning not to eat of the TKGE. They will have eaten the fruit and can, with no consequences. So, the problem of being thrown out of Eden is man’s alone. If animals have no trouble with the TKGE, and humans do, then the problem lies with our being made ‘in the Image of God’. So, why and how?

What IS the Image of God?

Man alone has been fashioned in the image of God, so what are these qualities that distinguish us from other forms of life.

Important differences include awareness/attention and a drive to be like God, which are what?.

Self-Awareness/Attention. We get into deep water very quickly here. Whole books are devoted to this topic. The points that I want to make here are that we have the ability to think about or be aware that we are thinking. Some part of us knows we are thinking. Animals can think, but do not appear to think about their thinking. We also seem to have choice in the way we use/focus/direct our attention or awareness. At the very least we can direct our attention internally or externally to ourselves, and this tale revolves around how we use this attention/awareness.

Being like God. What is that? This is another huge topic. A definition could be the drive to manifest/embody the expression of one’s own uniqueness or ‘essence’. In general, the more a person is able to express their own selves, the greater the feeling of internal satisfaction with life. The problem here is in how does one work out what that expression actually is? This puzzle of how do we work out how to be and do God is a strong drive for human beings whether we know it or not, and it is why the snake was able to ‘tempt’  Adam & Eve by telling them that eating the fruit of the TKGE would make them ‘more like God’. Remember that A&E are all of us as human beings.

However, another of our ‘talents’/proclivities seems to be Naming.

Naming. Adam is also there for ‘Naming’. Can we humans assume that animals don’t Name things? I do not know, but I do know that we simply continue naming and labelling forever. Most people would not be able to not name something for an hour; we cannot not name/label things. Naming identifies our own experiences to us for ourselves. The implication of the story is that God wants us to name what we find. The trouble is how/what we name things, and the names/labels we use, because ‘naming’ implies identification which implies contrast/comparison. We need to be careful about our comparisons.

Naming is very important and I think it is easy to miss.

The story goes ‘out of the ground (earth) God formed (makes/creates) every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brings them to the man to see what he would call them’, and that became its name. The only way I can ‘get at’ this concept is to imagine what it would be like to have made all these fantastic and wonderful things, and then just hand them over to my child to name them whatever it pleased, with the instruction to look after it. This is a tremendous gift as well as a great delight in whatever the child does with it.

Being able to think about our thinking, wanting to be like god, and labelling our experiences, are the attributes that equip us to learn about who we are through our experiences, but notice that these inbuilt ‘tools’ that we have can be used incorrectly as well as correctly.

To me, the implication of all of this is that God wants us to have the physical experience of Life and he wants to know what we make of it. It delights Him. He knows that it is all good. We are the ones who are not very sure about that bit. But it is also clear that Life on Earth is a Gift, and we’re not sure about this either.

So then we turn to….

What is this Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?

The bible story specifically refers to the tree as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Wikipedia tells us that the words should have been translated as the Tree of Knowledge of Everything or the Tree of All Knowledge.

Any explanation/interpretation will have to encompass both concepts.

The name is commonly shortened to the Tree of Knowledge. We admire knowledge; we think it’s good to know lots, and we admire those who know lots; we can let them tell us what to do. Yet how does knowing everything lead to the effects outlined in the story, naked, afraid etc.

What then, is this Everything we think we want to know? Everyone has their own ideas about what everything is. It is not possible to know everything, and we kind of know that and keep wishing we did. We think knowledge of everything might help bring control (of fear). Maybe we would be more powerful and know what to do to manipulate life to give us what we want.

There are 2 things that we don’t notice here.

One of them is that this Everything that we want to know about is all that is in your life that is external to you. It is not knowledge of you; it is knowledge of everything but you.

The focus of your attention has become external to you. We are now ‘looking out’ rather than a ‘looking in’. It is a focus on the world rather than on your own self, and then we start trying to know everything about the external world using our inbuilt naming and comparing.

The other thing that we don’t always notice or remember is that there is a difference between knowledge as a concept or information about whatever, or what you think you know, and the actual knowing that comes primarily from your own experience through your body’s senses. It is the difference between theory and practice, and we have to be careful about which is which. In this story the TKGE is about our concepts rather than the actuality/reality.

Eve and the snake

Eve has been formed from Adam’s rib. She has Adam’s abilities because she is made from him. She has come from inside him. This is often taken as a weakness on her part and a potential depletion of man, but I suspect that she is more able to feel or sense into another’s internal state. That’s where she ‘comes from’ so to speak.

We are not told what she is doing, but I would imagine she was observing and getting to know herself, her surroundings and the creatures in the garden. And she would be ‘sensing in’ which is a skill used by all ‘primitive’ peoples. I also imagine that she observed animals eating the fruit of the TKGE without any ill effect. But Adam has already told her that if they eat the fruit they will die, so she would be immensely curious as to what was going on here.

If she was ‘sensing in’ to the snake, it would be saying, ‘sense everything, feel everything, touch everything, know everything, experience everything. This is what makes all of us Know Everything (in our world). For the snake, Knowing comes through the senses of its body; its experience, and the snake is the very closest to the earth. The snake doesn’t have the self-awareness or the labelling that humans have. It simply experiences All of it with no judgement in terms of avoiding doing things in case it might have a ‘bad’ time. It still goes out and does ‘snaky’ things. As with all animals, it uses all its senses, resources, and skills, and it has to be careful and wary to be successful and stay alive. It is using all its senses all the time to survive.

She will have tried the fruit through the snake’s example and advice which was correct for it.

We continue to consider the snake as a dreadful beast that lied to us, but what if its advice is correct for people as well as animals? The actual problem is the difference in understanding between animals and humans; there is a difference in attributes. The snake is not talking about the knowledge of good and evil that will help us have a more ‘heavenly’ or easier time; the snake is telling us something completely different. It is talking about the knowing that comes through its own senses and experience, because that is all of what it knows. It is we ourselves who confuse trying to know everything about everything as ‘being like God’. It is our own attributes that are getting us into trouble because we are using them incorrectly when we label concepts/things as ‘good or bad’, and think that we know about something when we actually do not.

Eve does not notice any effect on her, and she then offers it to Adam. Adam has the choice of eating it or not. He can listen to Life or listen to Eve. However, curiosity and exploration, particularly of forbidden fruit, appears to be built in to us humans, and there’s a certain inevitability here.

The temptings

We are tempted by the fruit of the TKGE. We want to know it all. Not only do we wish to be like God, but I think we really do not like not knowing what will happen next. If we have knowledge of everything then that should help us navigate Life, and in particular help us keep the ‘good’ bits and avoid the ‘bad’. We are thinking that if it make us ‘wise and God-Like’, then we will be able to direct our lives as we want them to be, and be gods in our own world.

But what actually happens is not what we expect.

Eating of the Fruit of the TKGE.

Specifically, eating of this fruit leads to..

   We become aware of our nakedness (we begin to compare - to what?).

   We feel a need to cover ‘down there’ (from whom? and why?)

   We run and hide and then…

God can’t ‘find’ us.

In steps then;

Firstly; our attention which was internal to us and un-selfconscious while in the garden has turned its focus to the world out there. Animals are completely un-selfconscious. They do not spend their time comparing themselves to ‘anybody’ else at all. ‘Self-conscious’ means looking at ourselves from another’s point of view, ie external to self.

So then, we try to encompass this with our comparing, judging and naming, and notice above all that we are an animal. And then, we decide we’re a pretty fragile looking animal; just skin and no covering and feeling very exposed (naked), and then

And then, we try to make ourselves feel more secure. The fig leaves are an attempt to cover the base chakra which is concerned with our connection to the earth; (security; feeling safe).

And then, we take fright, (the coverings are not enough) and bolt off to hide as fast as we can – it is overwhelming.

Being alive on earth as an animal is pretty different from ‘heaven’ after all and now highly unsafe. We are now hiding from life and God.

Nakedness is a comparison word which is looking externally; skin versus fur or feathers. Adam’s use of the word ‘naked’ told God what had happened.

If the purpose of Life on Earth is for us to learn about ourselves and our capabilities, then we need to learn the difference between Knowledge (told stuff) and the Knowing/Understanding that comes only from experience (we have to do stuff and find and realize things for ourselves).

This focus on the external and the consequent fear, judgement and avoidance makes us ‘die’ to the risks in life, and we can no longer be naturally ourselves or engage in Life/living. We are not going to welcome experience unless we know beforehand what’s going to happen (we are judging it) which defeats the whole purpose, and we are not going to grow in self-awareness. We are afraid of Life and living, and we hide when God comes walking in the garden. It is possible to hide from God, and He can’t find us when we do.

This is what happens when we have eaten of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Everything or of Good and Evil.

Then why is the TKGE in the garden?

Thus the next question is why is the tree there in the 1^st place? But All of life has to be there. If we are of God/Life, why do we need something different from God/Life?

God can warn us about it, and has, but we have choice, as always.

I suspect that, once again, we are assuming that if God says it is All Good, that means that it is all heavenly, but in heaven we are dead (static and knowing only theory), and God wants us to have Life, and the experience of being part of it, and I suspect also that Life has to encompass All things. It is the so-called ‘good’ that teaches us about ‘bad’ and vice versa. All of it is in fact a duality, and it is these contrasts that awaken our awareness of ourselves; ‘consciousness loves contrast’.

The cursings

These follow after Adam and Eve have hidden and then, when found out, have blamed others rather than themselves.

Thus, the cursings follow the blamings.

Blame holds decisions and judgement. Its use can be of self or others or whatever. It ‘feels’ easier and better, because it helps us keep a distance or detachment from our own feelings of guilt or shame at our part in this situation.

Thus it….

§         Implies something should be different from what it actually is and indeed that you know what that should be. You can’t accept the reality and prefer denial. We will also wish to control the situation in some manner if possible and wish/demand that the situation be changed.

§         Disempowers us – we’re not going to look at our own part in this, and hence become powerless – it’s not my fault, I’m a victim, so I could not avoid this – you made me do it, and so on. Its use shrinks us – we cannot grow.

§         Builds a barrier (or even enmity) between ‘blamer’ and ‘blamee’ – the guilty person should ‘pay’, which may suit me very well. There is a disconnection.

§         Prevents any further information/dialogue between the parties, or any real partnership, or shared endeavour. Thus, it ends relationship.

Which all leads to increasing fear and greater pain.

God curses the serpent/snake 1^st, then the woman, then the man.

For the snake, he says ‘on your belly, you shall crawl’ which has led various people to wonder if it used to have legs. I’m not sure about such things, but the gist of it is that the snake shall be the lowest of the low, and that is how we think of snakes, so much so that it is supposed to be symbolic of Satan. Yet other cultures do not think of snakes in such a way. The woman’s attitude to the snake as the ‘cause’ of her distress puts tension and distance between them. There will be no befriending or potential sharing because there is blame. In blaming the snake, Eve now fears it and she is disconnecting herself from a major symbol of feminine energy in other cultures, and from close connection with the earth.

Similarly, Adam’s blaming of Eve puts distance between them. Guilt is painful; trying to ‘make it up’ with someone who wants to keep blaming us is painful, Eve will suffer more pain. The distance between them will mean that neither will be able to fully utilise each others’ skills, or be really in equal partnership.

These ‘curses’ are thus the natural consequences of blaming others, and for Adam, of having eaten the fruit, which has changed his attitude to Life and being in the Garden of Eden, and his connection to God, because of the change in focus regarding the self from internal to external .

When you focus on the external, Name/label/judge/decide things as good or bad, and baulk at exploring and experience because you are afraid, you are always thrown out of the Garden. You are dying to Life.

Thistles can be a dreadful weed or a medicinal herb, or information about the state of your soil. Your attitude is your decision is your choice.

Is working the soil, and eating what you grow, a blessing or a curse? It is nothing but your thinking/naming/’knowledge’ that makes it so. What you have ‘made of’ (ie decided about) Life is making your life.

There is also much about dust. We are made of dust and return to dust. Dust is earth without water. We are made of earth and so are all other living things. It is our mortal ground.

I would take this as an instruction to come back to our bodies, and to being an animal; to ‘stay’ inside our bodies, and learn to use our senses, both physical and non-physical, and develop our skills and resources.

Considering the trouble we get into when we try to be above such things, it is probably an instruction to get our hands dirty, and by this I mean, yes, get rid of false pride and blaming, but also to do things; to create things of the earth as God does and to go back to tilling and keeping.

We are matter. Do we matter? And To whom and how?

The aftermath

Then, after the ‘curses’, God says ‘man has become like one of us knowing good and evil…’. This sentence puzzles all of us, but it may simply be a reference to understanding the things that tempt man. Man has got what he wanted, but it isn’t good for him, and he is now in great danger of being able to access the Tree of Life. I take this to mean that ‘living’ while ‘dying to the reason for being alive’ is not the way to go.

God gives them clothes, drives them out, (they have, of course, driven themselves out) and protects the garden with cherubim (singular or plural unspecified) and a whirling and flashing sword in the East. What are these?

There is little in the bible about cherubim, but it appears to be a symbol of ‘realized’ man; a man who knows all of himself, which is quite something.

The sword is also a puzzle, but I can think of one flaming sword that few people will face, and that’s the burning fiery discomfort in the gut from guilt and shame that occurs when we are faced with our own part in the things that happen to us, and the consequent dent in our self-concepts. Many people would die rather than face this sword.

CONCLUSIONS. WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

What are we left with?

I think we are left with a clearer understanding of

§         How we get thrown out of the garden, and

§         How we get back in, and

§         Why we want to be there, and

§         What we’re supposed to do when we’re in it,

all of which seems to me to be quite handy really.

We can even hypothesise about the Reason for Life, and what we and God might be wanting.

Therefore, in order….

How do we get thrown out? By eating of this particular tree. When we focus on Everything but ourselves we are ‘looking’ the wrong way. There is too much for us to cope with. Fear, judgement and avoidance overwhelm us. The External focus debilitates us.

The irony here is that we try to cope with this fear by trying to eat even more of this fruit of the TKGE.

Almost every aspect of our current media is a focus on the external. All opinions are about external things. Remove your focus from the external and stick with yourself and what you know and find for yourself. In particular, practice suspending judgement, and try seeing what happens when you remove blame from anything, including yourself.

How do we get back in? Stop being ‘above it all’ and hiding from life. We are of earth and we are an animal, and here to learn about ourselves through experiences. (Notice that all animals need clean air, clean water and clean earth.) Develop your senses, skills and capabilities, and take pleasure in what you achieve, create and realize. (Developing your senses includes refraining from deafening your hearing and ingesting vast amounts of sugar.) Keep your attention focused internally. In fact, the primary commandment of all appears to be ‘Know Thyself’ as in, realize/remember/recognise all of you.

Take responsibility and understand your own part in all of your experiences, particularly when you would most like to blame anything else. Face the flaming sword.

The greatest changes in the last 25 years include the access to ‘alternative’ information/ideas about life, and the modern development of tools to face your own judgements and to learn about yourself and your uniqueness (All your own Good and All your own Bad). However much these tools remain under the radar of public awareness, they are not far away, but they are certainly not part of our standard institutions.

Realized woman is able to stand up and be herself before and with God/Life.

Why do we want to be there? I suspect our deepest wish is to ‘talk with God’. In the garden of Eden (where our focus is internal) we are not afraid or self-conscious and we can welcome and embrace Life and be in partnership with it. It is in this way that we can become truly safe. The implication in this tale is that God/Life has never stopped wanting to talk to us. It is we who are afraid and hide.

What are we supposed to be doing when we’re there? Doing what God/Life does. Learning about who we really are and creating, wonderful, beautiful, useful things. Notice that, as we create, we learn about ourselves. That’s pretty good, so create more. Our children are brilliant at telling us about ourselves; we are just not always sure we want to know. Children are of course, not the only way. Having fun, learning about ourselves, playing with our children, making things of earth, looking after all the other animals and ourselves so that we are all vibrantly well and happy (Tilling and Keeping it). Coming into equal partnership with all Life/God so that it can talk to us and we can talk to it so that we learn about ourselves and others. It is in this partnership with God/Life that we can find a security that is much greater and more use to us than being safe because nothing can happen to us. It is the security that needs no security.

We learn to treat all as sacred because God/Life is in everything.

And make friends with the snake; its advice was correct. Get close to the earth and feel it; experience, experience, experience and find out for yourself.

Share what we have found in our own uniqueness with others; come into relationship. We are not meant to be islands. We build through shared resources.

And I suspect that this is the reason for it all, and I suspect that this is what we both (God and humans) want. The actual Getting back into the Garden is an individual task. The only person who can work on this is you. Start when you want.

And specifically..

To Adam.

Stop blaming Eve for your choices, or your feelings of insecurity in life. (Whole religions may come apart at the seams here.) You can find security for yourself if you are able to give it to another? Are you able to use your natural masculine abilities for the purpose of protecting/keeping life?

You have much to gain from coming into equal partnership with women, and learning to appreciate her skills which are different from yours.

Till and keep the Earth together. We only have one.

To Eve.

Stop blaming the snake and go back to making friends with it. Listen to whatever else it has to say. Go back to all Life – the natural living world as much as you can, rather than the man-made world. ‘Sensing in’ is a woman’s inheritance. How do we use it? It needs peace and quiet and time (how much of these have you got?) to blossom and develop. Remove your energy and attention from Adam; you are not guilty and never were. Wait for Adam to come into partnership with you first, otherwise he’s not going to learn, and he may not be worthy of you. He’ll ‘rule over you’ and not take any notice.

For a marvellous description of a realized Eve, read the Anastasia books.

To both.

Partnership brings more when together than 2 single people can do by themselves. We know that.

Earth needs all the skills of both men and women together.

And above all – Know Thyself. This is the Reason for Life. We are part of God and God likes knowing Himself and does it through everything that he has created. We do this ourselves when we learn who we are through our children and we delight in their learning (hopefully).

Make beautiful and/or useful things.

The more you know yourself, the safer you will feel. There will be less fear in your life, less need to hide from God/Life, and you will be able to listen to Life, and what it has to say.

Life is a gift. Gratitude can help us realise this.

‘Talking’ to God/Life.

I have used God/Life throughout this discussion as a way of ‘getting a handle’ on concepts such as Talking to God/Life. When I was growing up my concept of being spoken to by God included trying to be ‘good’ enough to be spoken to, and then I might hear a booming voice ‘telling’ me what to do. However, not only has this not happened, it is not what I call partnership. My reasoning for using God/Life rather than simply God goes…

§         If God/Life is an energy much greater than I am, and

§         God creates all Life, as in, this energy/breath is in us all, then

§         All Life is a manifestation of God energy and therefore any manifestation of Life (rocks, plants, animals people and circumstances) can ‘speak’ to you, as you can ‘speak’ to God, if that is what you want.

So what is this ‘speaking/talking’? All Life has a resonance; that is the energy. Some things will ‘resonate’ with you, and some not. The ‘resonating’ is the ‘speaking’ (loud or soft; nice or nasty). It is your business to not only notice this resonance in you for yourself, but to then work out what it means to you. You get to develop your own style. This is how God/Life ‘speaks’ to you, as you ‘speak’ to Life through your own resonance.

I imagine this is the basis of most nature-based religions.

All Life is sacred, including you. Treat it with proper respect.

In sum.

This is what I think that this story is trying to say, and as you may have guessed from the title, I think this story is very relevant to today. No-one will be more surprised than I am at what I have found through this inquiry. I have found it very useful indeed, and hope it may be of use to you.

Anastasia.

There are 9 Anastasia books written by Vladimir MEGRE,(Russian) translated to English by John Woodsworth, edited by Leonid Sharaskin, and published by Ringing Cedars Press, 2004 on, and are available in Australia. (and also available through Nexus magazine)

The title of the 1^st book is ‘Anastasia’. They are just lovely.

 Terms and concepts: Adam, Eve, Garden of Eden, apple,  fruit, Tree of Knowledge, serpent, snake, tempted, tempting, psychology, meaning, interpretation, discussion, blame, guilt, pain.