It's funny - I often am left standing in the kitchen wondering what I came in for, yet memories from half a century ago come in crystal clear - or at least, so it seems. There is one that has always bothered me. It took place in first grade, with a particularly nasty teacher who I was fortunate enough to leave after Christmas because my family moved. In this memory, it is early fall and the teacher (or is it a gym teacher?) is having us hold hands in a circle. "Do not let got of your hands and break the circle!" she declares. And so, I, and only I, yank my hands away and break the circle. I am yelled at for this, but only briefly. It should not be so imprinted in my mind, but I know why it is: because I can remember what I thought at the time in my little kid mind. "Don't break the circle" I hear, but something else, something that seems extraneous, makes me do it.
"The devil made me do it," one comedian always said, and this line always caused a laugh, but I know what he means. It was as if a devil had invaded my will to have me do the wrong thing and mess things up. It could have been because I hated the teacher of the class and I was rebelling against her. It could be that I was becoming of a certain age where I had to define myself, regardless. I don't know, but it still strikes me that it seemed something came from outside to make me act in a way I knew I should not act. What the heck was it?
It most likely was a part of me, and my behavior was a part of ego definition. It is this that we perhaps think of as Original Sin, our born nature that has been stained by the actions of our founders, Adam and Eve. But this seems so ludicrously unfair that I can't believe it. We are to be blamed for the actions of ancestors thousands of years past? Why, even the vengeful god of the Old Testament only cursed a family for 7 generations. But for ever? Forever until Judgement Day?
And so argues Laura George in "The Truth" and I agree with her. I also agree with her about the divinity or lack thereof of Jesus, but that will be saved for later. But, as with the lack of divinity of Jesus, she is missing something here, something that is buried in the meaning of the Old Testament. The story of Adam and Eve is, I believe, a "fairy tale" in the sense that it is not to be taken literally, but rather is to be seen as a deeply considered explanation for the state of our being. We die, we become sick - life, that is, often sucks. Why? In one story (I believe that there are two versions of it in the Bible) Eve is tempted to eat of the tree of Good and Evil, whereby discernment of actions can be made. With this, humans are no longer part of the eternal "One," but rather now artificially - in relation to the big, eternal truth - separate one thing from another, one moment from another, one time from another. We no longer, then, live in an eternal present, but in a world of discrete limitation.
Original sin, then, is not a guilt stain, as is the mark of Cain. If one wanted an eternal damnation of mankind, wouldn't one look for something a little more heinous than defying God out of innocent curiosity - especially as this act was led by a cunning adversary? That would be as if my life were condemned - my whole life - because a little rebellious voice got to me in first grade and made me pull my hands out of the circle. No - Original Sin is the explanation of this, of life as we know it. It is not an outside blame or mark, but the circumstances of our reality. Being born into this reality system - into this perceptual world - IS the original sin. Humans are all about discernment, which is separation (or discrimination). It is what we do and what we are. I believe the old timers who made up the fable of Adam and Eve were speaking a deep truth through a story: that paradise is as close to us as our skins, yet we are barred from it by our perceptions. Jesus himself declared that heaven is with us NOW if we could only see it. And so they knew, too, and tried to explain it.
And that is what religion, or rather the spirituality that inspires it, is all about - getting to the paradise that the great minds KNOW is here right now, but is somehow infinitely apart from us. "Why" is answered in a rather childish way by the creators of the Old Testament - perhaps because they knew that they were speaking to a childish people. But the "why" is something that perhaps we will never know. What is important, though, is the "IS" behind such creation myths - the IS of paradise at our fingertips. And the IS of the possibility that we may someday see that the angel's flaming sword that guards paradise has always been a matter of our own discrimination - and that it can be made to disappear at the blink of an eye with the right alignment of thought and action. FK
"The devil made me do it," one comedian always said, and this line always caused a laugh, but I know what he means. It was as if a devil had invaded my will to have me do the wrong thing and mess things up. It could have been because I hated the teacher of the class and I was rebelling against her. It could be that I was becoming of a certain age where I had to define myself, regardless. I don't know, but it still strikes me that it seemed something came from outside to make me act in a way I knew I should not act. What the heck was it?
It most likely was a part of me, and my behavior was a part of ego definition. It is this that we perhaps think of as Original Sin, our born nature that has been stained by the actions of our founders, Adam and Eve. But this seems so ludicrously unfair that I can't believe it. We are to be blamed for the actions of ancestors thousands of years past? Why, even the vengeful god of the Old Testament only cursed a family for 7 generations. But for ever? Forever until Judgement Day?
And so argues Laura George in "The Truth" and I agree with her. I also agree with her about the divinity or lack thereof of Jesus, but that will be saved for later. But, as with the lack of divinity of Jesus, she is missing something here, something that is buried in the meaning of the Old Testament. The story of Adam and Eve is, I believe, a "fairy tale" in the sense that it is not to be taken literally, but rather is to be seen as a deeply considered explanation for the state of our being. We die, we become sick - life, that is, often sucks. Why? In one story (I believe that there are two versions of it in the Bible) Eve is tempted to eat of the tree of Good and Evil, whereby discernment of actions can be made. With this, humans are no longer part of the eternal "One," but rather now artificially - in relation to the big, eternal truth - separate one thing from another, one moment from another, one time from another. We no longer, then, live in an eternal present, but in a world of discrete limitation.
Original sin, then, is not a guilt stain, as is the mark of Cain. If one wanted an eternal damnation of mankind, wouldn't one look for something a little more heinous than defying God out of innocent curiosity - especially as this act was led by a cunning adversary? That would be as if my life were condemned - my whole life - because a little rebellious voice got to me in first grade and made me pull my hands out of the circle. No - Original Sin is the explanation of this, of life as we know it. It is not an outside blame or mark, but the circumstances of our reality. Being born into this reality system - into this perceptual world - IS the original sin. Humans are all about discernment, which is separation (or discrimination). It is what we do and what we are. I believe the old timers who made up the fable of Adam and Eve were speaking a deep truth through a story: that paradise is as close to us as our skins, yet we are barred from it by our perceptions. Jesus himself declared that heaven is with us NOW if we could only see it. And so they knew, too, and tried to explain it.
And that is what religion, or rather the spirituality that inspires it, is all about - getting to the paradise that the great minds KNOW is here right now, but is somehow infinitely apart from us. "Why" is answered in a rather childish way by the creators of the Old Testament - perhaps because they knew that they were speaking to a childish people. But the "why" is something that perhaps we will never know. What is important, though, is the "IS" behind such creation myths - the IS of paradise at our fingertips. And the IS of the possibility that we may someday see that the angel's flaming sword that guards paradise has always been a matter of our own discrimination - and that it can be made to disappear at the blink of an eye with the right alignment of thought and action. FK
RSS Feed