Eden: Trouble in Paradise
Jonathan Phillips
I was twenty-nine years old and had just experienced the most crushing defeat in my career as a street-theater media activist. While coalescing in bed for the next couple of weeks, I became overwhelmed by the dire situation looming over the entire globe. Mass hunger and poverty still ravaged the “third world” without any real global efforts to solve the problem. Constant wars, military domination, and regime rule plagued nations on all continents. Transnational corporations were infiltrating borders, extracting, polluting, and profiting, often without regard to the lands or the people they exploited. The poles were melting at an alarming rate, threatening to flood our heavily populated costal regions, pushing back swarms of people into already resource-strapped lands. Our life-giving rivers and oceans were heavily polluted with metals, toxic waste, and pesticide runoffs, while a half century of industrial fishing had wiped out over ninety percent of the world’s big fish population. Polar bears now had traces of Teflon in their bloodstreams, residents of Beijing were wearing gas masks to work and the Amazon Rainforest, “the lungs of our planet,” was getting wiped out at eighty to ninety thousand acres a day. With six billion of us consuming, polluting, and reproducing, the world’s ecosystems had plunged into serious distress with 30,000 species going extinct each year – that’s three species every hour. Our small blue ball was dying off and burning up in what was now being called “The Sixth Great Extinction.” [1]
How could this have happened? With all our computers and superconductors and information systems, you think we would’ve figured some of these problems out by now? What was the underlying impetus behind all of this devastation and suffering? It had to be bigger than any one person elected to office, perhaps even bigger than all the governments, militaries, and corporations combined. Maybe it was something more all-pervasive, yet very subtle, like a subconscious thought or belief system that ran our dysfunctional world? In a somewhat desperate attempt to stumble upon an answer, I began to trace the timeline of wars, bombings, slavery, slaughters, genocides, ethnic cleansings, pogroms – all the hardships and suffering of history. I found myself intuitively drawn to the various empires, and I traced these institutions of dominance and subjugation back and back until I finally landed at the most unexpected place of all – the very beginning. There it was, staring me straight in my disbelieving eyes – The Garden of Eden. “Could all our problems stem from this one event?” I wondered. “But this is just a fable, right? An old story?”
I began to rehash the myth. In the beginning, Adam was happy in the garden. He ran around eating fruit and living with the animals, but he got a little bored so out of him came a woman to help pass the time. God permits the new couple to eat from all the trees in the garden, except for one, the Tree of Knowledge, which to be honest, sounds a bit like a set-up. Eve goes on a hike and a wily serpent tempts her with a nice juicy apple, which she generously takes back to her man. They each partake in a few sumptuous bites, but the fruit kicks in like a smart pill, and they suddenly recognize themselves as naked for the first time, separate from nature and obviously from each other. They hide in the bushes but God finds out, and next thing you know, he exhibits some tough love by kicking them out of the garden forever. And that’s the end of the easy life. Adam and Eve now have to find their own apartment and get real jobs toiling in the fields to eek out a meager living.
My eyes widened re-reading these pages, as if I were seeing a deeper significance to this story for the first time. What if this wasn’t just a fairy tale to beguile church-goers, but a sort of code to help us understand where we came from and how we got to where we are today. I felt an intimate relationship with the authors of this tale, as if they had encoded the Bible’s opening passages for curiosity seekers just like me. I started thinking of myth as a knowledge system from which the ancients could impart wisdom, much like we use the limits and benefits of the scientific method to understand our world today.
It didn’t take me long to come across a basic conclusion that a number of scholars have conjectured about the Garden of Eden – that the story relates to two significant events in history. Before astrophysics, Hubble Telescopes, and Doppler radar, we explained the universe through storytelling. In the beginning, “darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light and there was light.” And then, wallah! From nothing came something and we have the first and greatest event in cosmic history – The Big Bang. Of course, in the tale we witness the creation of the stars, the moon, the sun, as well as the water, sky, and animals of Earth. And then God creates a very peculiar creature – the first human. But this one is different than what we know of today. This human was created in “the image of God” which seemed to be both “male and female,” a complete, energetically balanced human being. It wasn’t until later that a lonely Adam was created from dirt and then split into two separate beings – man and woman. From this, we get the duality of the universe, the feminine/masculine (yin/yang) poles or charges that keep currents of energy flowing across space and time. As the snake of wisdom (more on this later) descends down the Tree of Knowledge, the homo sapien component of the universe becomes self aware, recognizing a perspective of incompleteness, separateness, or “nakedness” in the material world
The serpent, a creature that sheds its own skin, has served as a symbol of transformation throughout global cultures, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that in this story, the snake is the instigator of a major shift in human consciousness. He challenges Eve to test out a fresh perspective on reality. “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” he says. “You will not surely die… For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 2: 1-5). Upon eating the fruit, Eve and Adam’s eyes open to an entirely new insight on the world, an amazing and yet frightening one filled with separation and danger. Fear comes into existence and Adam admits to God, “I was afraid because I was naked so I hid.”
This new sense of consciousness is captured in a wonderful conversation between Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers in the video program, The Power of Myth:
Campbell: "The Garden of Eden is a metaphor for that innocence that is innocent of time, innocent of opposites, and that is the prime center out of which consciousness becomes aware of the changes."
Moyers: "But if there is in the idea of Eden this innocence, what happens to it? Isn’t it shaken, dominated, and corrupted by fear?"
Campbell: "That’s it. There is a wonderful story of the deity of the Self that said, 'I am.' As soon as it said, 'I am,' it was afraid."[2]
God helps out his two new creations by making them “garments of skin,” then says, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.”
But wait a minute. Who is he talking to when he says “one of us”? Are there more Gods out there? This is no small enigma. It’s a question brought up right in the very first book of the Bible. God seems to be referencing his colleagues. And perhaps more important than that, Adam and Eve, who were naïve creatures of the garden, can now perceive duality in the universe and are just one tree away from living forever and becoming “one of us.”
Could there really be a “tree of life” and what does it represent? Was this what Ponce de Le?n trekked across another hemisphere looking for, and was this something that could be found in external reality, if it actually existed? If this tree signified another change in perspective, what could that new vision possibly be? All I knew is this tree seemed extremely tough to access because after kicking Adam and Eve out of the garden, God left cherubim and a flaming sword behind to guard its powers.
Adam and Eve’s theft of divine knowledge reminded me of the famous Greek myth where Prometheus steals fire from the Gods and hands it over to humans. As punishment for this sneaky act, he is chained to a rock where his “regenerating liver is eaten daily by a vulture,” mimicking the same repetition of suffering we see in the Garden tale. I began to see Prometheus’ story as a mythological representation of the integration of fire into hunter-gatherer communities for cooking, sharpening weapons, and such. These societies were bringing a strange and heavenly power, which they must’ve witnessed in amazement during lightning storms, into their daily lives. Analyzing this myth brought me to another fairly common hypothesis about the Eden story – that it also represents what’s considered to be the most significant social and scientific development in all of human history – the first agricultural revolution and the beginnings of Western Civilization.
The Garden can be seen as symbolizing a tribal model of existence. Adam lives in leisurely harmony with the cycles of nature amongst the abundance of the “birds of the air” and “beasts of the field.” But after gaining new wisdom from the apple, God commands the following: “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food” (Genesis 2:17-19). Adam is no longer living in cooperation with the ebbs and flows of the natural world, but he now has to struggle to survive from the means of his own labor, eating “the plants of the field.” This all begins to make more sense when you look at the setting of this dramatic event. Genesis 2:13-14 names the four rivers of Eden – the Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris, and the Euphrates. The last two rivers place the Garden right in the middle of “The Fertile Crescent,” the birthplace of civilization in what we now called the Middle East.
The Agricultural Revolution that occurred around ten to twelve thousand years ago pioneered the Neolithic Age, which featured a major transition from tribal models of communal living and nomadic hunting to permanent settlements that allowed for higher populations and increased technological developments. Land ownership comes into play, creating greater and greater inequity within communities. This phenomenon happens almost immediately after the expulsion from the Garden. As the popular story goes, Adam and Eve have a couple kids in exile named Cain and Abel. In the brothers’ first scene, we find them toiling away with the new agricultural technologies of their time – Able with domesticated animals, Cain with crops. God can almost be seen as enacting the role of a landowner, taxing them with offerings. When Abel pleases God with a more honest return, Cain gets jealous and the rest, as they say, is Western history. Individualism and fierce competition within communities drives the new economic models while the simple act of planting seeds eventually leads to the development of city-states, then nations, empires, and even the multinational corporations you see today. As it turns out, scientists believe the agricultural revolution kick-started most of the extreme mass die-off of The Sixth Great Extinction. No wonder we called this single event “The Fall.” We were all living after original sin, the first separation from God and nature.
I studied the Garden of Eden story as if it were a seed in itself, a thought-system or operating platform that has sown discontent throughout civilization as it expanded across the planet. From this one traumatic point comes forth a deep sense of separation, abandonment, scarcity, guilt, and judgment that spreads out across the entire globe. After opening their eyes in the Garden, humans perceive themselves as alone, separate, competitive, and fearful, struggling to survive in this harsh world of natural and social selection. We consider ourselves guilty of sin, if only on a subconscious level, and live our lives according to laws that determine “right and wrong” for us. Binary thinking comes into play – male/female, us/them, nature/civilization. The Earth and its cycles are now separate from us and in our alienation we kill our own mother with the technology we fashion from her resources. The feminine is blamed and denied its power, setting forth thousands of years of patriarchy: “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (Genesis 3:16). Time now runs on a masculine, linear scale as warring egoic power structures expand without much consideration to our fellow humans and our surrounding environment. And the individual is left to fend for itself, struggling in a separation consciousness that often falls into the trappings of hate, jealously, anger, disappointment, greed, and guilt as it hurries forward, running away from its own fears and inadequacies, still feeling “naked” in the world.
Had a destructive virus taken over the entire grid of our planetary mind? If so, my old mode of activists’ tactics would be useless at creating a dent in the problem. In fact, it seemed to be part of the problem. As wise old Einstein used to put it, “You cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that caused the problem.” What this required, I thought, was a full-scale Galileo-type paradigm shift. When that 16th century astronomer pointed out that the Earth rotates around the sun, it didn’t just change the way we looked at large objects floating in the sky, but every particle in our daily lives. The whole universe became relational, and for once, we weren’t the very center of it.
As a retired media activist, I honestly had no idea how to go about looking for a paradigm shift. I dabbled online, asked around, and kept my eyes open. I debated and discussed with my friends in the activist world but many of them thought I’d gone completely loco. “Garden of what?” “Abandoned by God?” “Scarcity models of thinking?” “Paradigm shift?” “Are you turning religious?” The last question always got to me. As a skeptical secular materialist, I didn’t want to fall down the rabbit hole of dogma or unexplained phenomena but there was a part of me that believed these old stories knew something that I didn’t.
I decided intuition was my biggest clue, so I followed my instinct more and more and it led me onto strange web portals and around obscure mythic corners and down mysterious historical alleyways until several months later, I ran smack into a dead-end brick wall. How naïve and fruitless this search had been. What was little old me thinking? Nobody ever goes around finding paradigm shifts?
That’s when the old Chinese curse, “may you get what you wish for,” happened to me. On my thirtieth birthday, some friends had lured me out to a dance party in a warehouse in Brooklyn. It was one of those urban tribal affairs with performers decked out with temporary henna tattoos and gypsy warrior clothes spinning blinkie poi balls in the air. One of my favorite djs, Bassnectar, was dropping some electrifying beats and everyone was swimming and swooning in its ecstatic pulse. I jumped into the sweating crowd and immediately loosened up with the silky grooves. I lost myself in the quick sultry rhythm, dancing away all my thoughts and concerns of the previous few months. Bassnectars’ long hair bounced with the cheers of the crowd and I moved, swayed and shook until I was one with all of them, forgetting everything in that one moment in time.
Then a thought suddenly formed in my mind. “I miss my first girlfriend. I wonder what she’s up to these days?” And at that exact moment, a woman came up to me, saying that I looked like her first boyfriend, that she missed him, and wanted to say hello to me. When she left, another thought snuck in, “Maybe I need to open up to my shaman side more?” I’m not sure where that came from or what my shaman side was but at that moment, Daniel Pinchbeck, a friend and author of Breaking Open the Head: Psychedelics and Contemporary Shamanism, came over to talk about his recent projects. When he left, I thought of another old friend, one I hadn’t seen in months. It wasn’t but a minute later that I felt a pat on my shoulder, and low and behold, it was him. Throughout the night, thoughts kept coming to me and then they would almost miraculously manifest minutes later. This continued to happen until I got a taxi home.
While lying in bed in the early hours, a strange thing happened. I was thinking over the bizarre coincidences of the night, when a high-energy presence, a sort of angelic feeling, drifted over to me. I was tired and groggy and shook it away, not thinking much about it. The presence hovered over me, gently covering me with soft warm energy. One thought suddenly entered my mind, “Oh, yes, you could see things that way too.”
I immediately sat up and tilted my head to the side. To my surprise, the whole room had shifted dramatically. Every object around me suddenly looked bizarre and foreign, as if it were part of an entirely different universe. Bright, glowing energy fields now flowed all around the room, radiating out of the light stand, the armoire, the work desk, the floor, the ceiling, and especially along my arms. The whole room looked nothing but miraculous – suddenly filled with beautiful flowing luminescent energy.
“What was the presence that came to me?” I wondered. “Who turned all these lights on?”
I held my hands up high to view a brilliant blue glow shining all around the surface. When I pressed my fingers together, then back apart, the iridescent energy between them pulled away like taffy. I then tried what my sister has now dubbed “the Wolverine” – putting the tips of my fingers together and then watching the bright glowing trails of white light linger in the air as I pulled them in opposite directions. I marveled at the luminous energy ball I could form and grow just by cupping my hands together. But the biggest surprise came when I got up and stumbled over to the mirror. All around my head and shoulders were wondrous blue-green layers of light, energetic fields of color flowing and shifting a couple feet away from my body, hovering like a beautiful ghost or specter. I suddenly realized that this perspective on reality had been there all along, but until now, I had somehow been entirely unaware of it. How could that be? What other secrets lay out there, just a hair beyond our normal periphery? Gazing at the ethereal lights glowing in the mirror, my eyes opened wide in complete disbelief and my whole body began to shake with a frightening mixture of awe and terror.
Had I bitten from a new apple? I was seeing the whole world naked for the first time.
Creative Commons Image: "Bob and Laura in the Garden of Eden" by greens n cornbread on Flickr.
[1] Niles Eldredge, “The Sixth Extinction,” ActionBioscience.org, http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/eldredge2.html.
[2] Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, (New York, Anchor Books, 1991), 59.
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DAMN PARADIGM NEEDS OIL IN THE GEAR BOX
Might you (collectively) consider that its super dopey to spend time thinking and writing about things you see/hear/feel away from the (taught) norm if they don't serve the here and now?
We all KNOW there are gazillions of frequencies we can't hear or see or even fathom, and other dimensions. So some of you can get a peek. So what? Beyond making you cooler-than-thou, what does seeing energy fields/pastels/salamanders around your body effing have to do with the crash and burn of humankind?
THERE ARE OTHER REALMS. YEAH. And your point is?
NO PARADIGM WILL BE SHIFTING ON ITS OWN. YOU NEED TO GET OFF YOUR IRIDESCENT COLOR SEEING BUTTS AND DO IT. Natural 'paradigm shifts' are not a BFD. Black holes, exploding stars, mutant cells, asteroid crashes, countless unseen, unknown, unsensed energy shifts do it every day, everywhere.
What makes humans so exalted that WE get a timed, 'predicted' New, Improved, Fresh Paradigm for fun-while-learning, home delivered? Some very old forecasts made by as imperfect humans? And if we do, why won't we just fuck it up again? Especially if those with a clue, us, would rather save for our full-package Prius than tell the government to change or die because DON'T TREAD ON ME, a motto of our founding fathers, is our motto too?
http://xanaduxero.blogspot.com
* * *
PANARCHY!
It alllll has to go - even Anarchy.
great work
remember this is a chapter in a book. so a lot of your demands will be answered in time. but i will give my thoughts on the value of developing psychic abilities.
the few that dare to open up enough to get a peak at what most consider to be "unseeable" can offer great information to assist in the peace process. would you (Collectively) like to be able to see, sense or even know that you are surrounded by angels guides who would love to assist in the peace process? who in fact already are? would you like to see the lost souls who wander the lower level astral fields, making mischief, and perhaps learn how to offer healing and send them home? what would you do if you had access to that type of information? would you dismiss it and call yourself crazy, would you make a tv show out of it, or shut it off and call it useless? or would you just be scared out of your mind and beg for it all to end?
would you like to be able to see the broken grids around the earth, where violence and sickness pervade, that dedicated lightworkers, healers and indigenous tribes everywhere are repairing? would you like to be able to surrender your idea of what is real long enough to witness anothers hidden emotional trauma in their auric field, deepening your compassion and assisting in its transmutation? would you like to be able to witness the psychic knives that are thrown in the name of gossip and verbal attack, so you might think twice before doing it?
not everyone wants or needs to see these things. not everyone wants or needs to work on those levels. perhaps they have other ways they can serve and take action that are better suited for them. its all needed. rest assured there is purpose, both good and bad, in psychic skills as there is purpose in all things.
nice work jonny. i think you describe the opening process beautifully and authentically.some of us are born seeing in that way, some of us walk our days begging for that experience, begging for some proof that the spirit world, or even God exists. Is seeing an aura proof of any of that? in my world, its added another level of questioning, and added another level of tools to help in the peace process.
Seeing, Healing, & Transformation
Thanks, nitelife. Your lyrical thoughts sum up much of what's yet to come in the book. I myself would have never believed that this one simple stage of "seeing" would lead to meeting spirit guides and helpers, accessing an entirely different knowledge system (through energy and gnosis) that our current logic does not even address, as well as offering healing to "lost souls" and to all of us wounded in the dance and journey of separation consciousness.
DAD BLANG LINEAR TIME
Nitelite, I do not disagree with you. But I do not think we have time for that now. I really don't. I think we have to fast forward to the action scene. We are in quicksand and we know, but don't FEEL how swiftly we're sinking.
http://xanaduxero.blogspot.com
***
PANARCHY!
It alllll has to go - even Anarchy.
Transformation Tends to Be a Process
Hi Xanaduxero,
Your thoughts ring very true with me. In fact, in the next chapter, I talk about how perplexed I am that this little spiritual "party trick" as I call it could relate to a major shift in consciousness that could help our planet in crisis. I myself want (and wanted) solutions right now, but as the book will reveal, the process of healing and transfomation doesn't typically happen all at once. It seems to be a personal, and perhaps global journey, with many stages to find the answers we are looking for while uncovering a deeper mystery. This seems not only to relate to spiritual/mystical discoveries, but also to scientific, social and cultural shifts as well.
I often am reminded of the snake, a universal symbol of transformation, and how it needs to let the new skin fully form underneath before shedding the old if its going to make it through this challenging change.
As for the idea that "we all know there are gazillions of frequences we can't hear or see or even fathom, and other dimensions," I don't believe many of my own family or personal acquaintances even think of these things. If string theory says there are at least 10 dimensions in the universe (which relate to energy and its varying frequencies), I believe we can create massive new potentialities for healing and personal/global transformation by accessing this universal force in a healthy, caring way.
understanding me
Thanks for sharing
Thanks for sharing your experience. I relate from my own experience and have been seeing a recurring pattern lately with many people in my field. The details and specifics differ but it follows a pattern of their old way of living breaking down and generating a period of painful pressure which breaks them open into a new perspective or new state of consciousness. This seems from my perspective to be part of a widening shift in consciousness and its interesting to observe it on the local level as well as the global level. At the local level things seem much farther along than they do globally but I am increasingly optimistic that a global shift in consciousness is not only possible but inevitable. It is quite profound but on another level also quite ordinary because you could say that we are just learning how to stop distracting ourselves and pay attention to what has been their all along, being......
~In peace
Colin
bodhidude.wordpress.com
It's all about the Sex...
The problem of the Adam and Eve story most of us knows is that it is incomplete. The first woman on Earth was named Liltih!
"When God created Adam and saw that he was alone in this universe, God said, 'It is not good for man to be alone' (Gen. 2: 18). He immediately created a woman for him, who was taken from the earth, like he had been. He called her name Lilith, and brought her to Adam. They both immediately began to quarrel. He said, "You should lie underneath me," and she said: "You lie underneath me, as we were both created equally, and we both are of the earth!...." "This is a translation of the myth of Lilith as it appears in the earliest source in Judaism in a wide clear way. this book - the Alpha-Beta of Ben-Sirah" was composed in Babylon in the 9th century, and was very popular amongst Jews all over the Jewish world for many centuries." http://www.kabalove.org/Eng_Pages/Quotes_eng/Quotes_eng1_files/Lilith_en...
This is from Ohad Ezrahi, a Tantric/Kabalistic rabbi from Israel. He gives an in depth lecture about Eve and Liltih.
As the story goes Lilith runs away and does not come back, and in fact laughs to the angels and says it is to late for her to come back she has slept with the Great Demon. So God gave Adam the docile Eve. And the rest is HIStory.
Now from a Mystical perspective Lilith and Eve are one divided, as is the Great Demon and Adam. And together they make the unification of duality. So the problem as I see it is we are all living in the legacy of being split if we come from the Judeo/Christian traditions. Lilith represents the wild woman, and Eve the domestic mother. Adam represents the God self God and the spirit and the Great Demon is the Wild Man. Later on he was made into Satan. So in our western ancestral collective lives the idea that parts of ourselves are evil and parts are good. And if you are not unified and are fighting the different parts of yourself then how are you to make clear and rational and loving and spiritual decisions. You can't!
So women since that time have been split into the Whore and the Mother. Each seeking to be unified because Eve without Lilith is only a sidekick to Adam( pun intended) and Lilith haunts men with her sexual desires and steals their life force and creates havoc and gives births to demon babies. She is one angry bitch who ran away from home because her man did not have the balls and grace to see that she was equal to him. In some versions she is Adams Twin! Is she happy...are women happy...IS THE EARTH HAPPY? And to top it all off Eve is cursed by the male God, who created her for Adam.
And Adam the pure one who has to be indirectly tempted by his "Demonic self" the Serpent, as played out through Eve, to bite the Apple. Because he cannot accept his animal nature as represented by the phallic and kundilini symbolic Serpent he is expelled from his innocence and so the fall begins. But what is the Fall except dropping into the body, into the shadows into the unacknowledged and "Dark" side.
If you look at this story it all revolves around sex...the most primal force of creation. So how can there be wholeness without the total acceptance of sex from a animal, as well as a spiritual perspective.
In other cultures the Demon is accepted as Pan. He is half goat and half man...Animal and Spiritual. And Pan is whole, Pan means everything. But since in this culture we generally do not like to admit that we are animals we made The Great Demon into the Devil. Pan is also related to Dionysis, the God of Ecstasy. I find it interesting Johnny that you found your transformation into shamanic thinking while dancing up a storm at the Bassnecter party( I was there as well that night)!
So perhaps the answer to the problem of the Trouble in Paradise is to seek and allow ecstatic union with the divine. Every single person needs to find their own path of acceptance of their animal and spiritual side and from that place of total Love making with ourselves, another and all of Creation...we will find the right solutions to our global situation...Return to the Source.
About time
...someone brought Lilith up.....
And the Mother
Hey Mark, so glad you brought up Lilith. And I wanted to mention another forgotten feminine figure in this tale - the goddess Mother who can balance Yahwey's masculine energy. At this time Asherah was worshipped in ancient Israel as the "Queen of Heaven" and consort of Yahweh. But just as the feminine principal in Eve is denigrated in this story, the Mother Earth Goddess is lost to the past. As an energy healer, I often see our dilemna in Western history as being that of a child born to a strict, judgemental father and an absent mother, which can create great imbalance. But I also sense that a new feminine energy is coming in. Perhaps we are moving up the body's tree of life (the spine) and are moving from the achievement/power masculine third chakra and up into the feminine heart chakra, and a frequency that balances the masculine and feminine polarity. And as you mentioned, perhaps esctatic union is one way to help us get there.
The Journey...
Perhaps there is much in our Psych that starts our Journey from Union, then Fall into forgetfulness then rise up back to the source. So we are born to the Mother, leave the womb, connect with the Father and see the limitations, and then go beyond both to union with the source. Joseph Cambell writes about that in the Hero's Journey. If you follow the pathways of the tree of life you are constantly moving from dualities until you reach the ultimate union. The work of movement teacher Gabriella Roth is about moving from the rhythm of the Feminine (Flow) into the rhythm of the Masculine (Staccato) , then into both (Chaos), then into Mastery (Lyrical) and then disappearing (Stillness). It seams like we are in the Chaos phase, trying to bridge the gap between dualities. Sounds like you were going through the ancient ritual of seeking a vision through dancing with the God/Goddess. To paraphrase Jesus "He who does not dance does not Live".
Very interesting article
Very interesting article - although being ex catholic and knowing the myth in question pretty well this interpretation was very revealing to me. As for the mystical end - I guess even being in close to Daniel may trigger a psychedelic experience :) xana - dismantling the current myths and core of the problems is equally or maybe even more important than direct action - in era of web 2.0 it may have more global impact than we think. Without deep rethinking of our civilisation and underlthe we would be played down with energy saving bulbs and Priuses. So lead by example, be the change, walk the talk and so on... but please stop telling others what to do in such demanding tone. Cause we all have our own paths to walk and the missions to fullfil. The fact that you don't understand them or cant see their validity does not mean that one doesnt exist. Our strength lies in our diversity - that we are people of different paths and are not easy to label, classify and predict is our strenght as a movement.
visualchemy.co.uk
the wild woman
we meet her in Keat's poem "Lamia" it begins...Upon a time, before the faery broods' Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods"
there is Yeats poem that ends..."the silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun".
what apple o we see in Paradise lost,
at what a cost to be tossed in to this,
that we should be found and never missed
to never be serpent kissed in the history
of language for the first time it whispered
to Eve to eat of the wild fruit of knowledge
that she would not know the wisdom of Lilith
in the fall from the dark womb of the earth
like a full blown woman calling that wild song
in her venom bit opening she hold forth her worth
a vision that wanders from the beginning and myth
the unbirth there is no right or wrong in this
her call to the mystery man to accept the other magic
of dual currrents twisting together in loving clasp
not to look back or forward but to turn that gaze
within the naked roots where the sun and moon
ride the sap of eternity without regret.
cj
Tree of Power
~Aydra Jenson~. . ..Keeper of the StarSix.
I like to toy with the idea that perhaps there is evidence within the story of eden which lends to a particularly wild and auspicious myth concerning our creation. Most of us have heard it, the notorious Nephlium, one of the oldest alien species said to have visited earth, along with the Sirians (a race from the Sirius star system) engineered a human experiment to mine for gold which was needed for repairing their atmosphere.
. . .
Its kind of a endearing story considering that perhaps their planet was undergoing some degeneration of the ozone which could be solved with gold dust. . .but whats more is that they built a super-human army to mine it, created in their perfect image.
. . .
The story goes that the mines were located around the Persian Gulf in the middle east, also the speculated location for the garden of eden. The human 'slaves' were allowed access to this garden and granted many other privileges except however, the power to pro-create, to of course, keep this experiment under control.. . .
There was predictably, a catch. Since the Nephilum were compassionate beings, many took so to the humans that they could not help but offer them the choice to embody their own, true power.
. . .
So a scenario was set up using the infamous serpent to tempt 'eve' with an apple from the 'tree of knowledge' -also note that when you look at an apple thats been cut in half you see the shape of the infinite 'doughnut' energy which moves through all things and lends 'individual life' within all the interconnected cosmos.
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Eve made a choice, a very courageous one, to take on the heavy yet awesome burden of personal Power and true organic life from the source, the mother. No wonder the Gods were angry, for now their experiment had a conscious, a choice to pro-create and even to devise civilizations, agriculture and materialism- all gifts of the tree of knowledge, (perhaps truly handed down by the Nephulium). The story than goes that many of the exiles went into Mesopotamia and eventually many made their ways to the lost lands of Atlantis and Lumeria.
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I just love this story, though its simply another Myth of our time, but something rings true. It seems like the "fall' is more in relation to the ebb and flow of the grand procession (when traveling away from the galactic center consciousness gets sleepy and slows down). Also, according to the same myth, Atlantis had built portals for other races to come in and colonize which attracted mostly benevolent beings with the exception of the Martians, who of course, were escaping the Lucifer rebellion happening on their homeland, Mars. They essentially triggered the fall in consciousness by bringing their war-mongrel, external-merkaba mentality to the advanced, yet innocent civilizations of Atlantis and Lumeria.
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Finally, it seems the 6th great extinction fits right in with the Hopi mythology (earth and cosmos conspire to cleanse when its people grow too separate from their creator). Its also speculated that after the major pole shifts of Atlantis- which corresponds to one of the great extinction's- consciousness suffered greatly (falling further away from the source)- survivors of the 'great floods and shifts' moved into Africa and some to Mesoamerica which began what history tells us, the first human civilizations (namely the Sumerians and Babylonians). History however still can not explain why such advanced cultures only seemed to grow less advanced and how they suddenly appeared containing copious amounts of cosmic knowledge and technology.
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Its fascinating really and calls for each individuals own careful investigation. I guess I tell this story namely because I'm obsessed with it as I too delve into better understanding 'our origin' in effort to have a clearer understanding of 'our now' and 'our future'. Also because I like to believe that Eve really did a courageous and strong act and that perhaps it was not the apple that created the fall but rather symbolized the beginning of knowledge, planted the seed for infinite consciousness and creation to grow from the human experience, and because it suggests that although its all connected to the source, maybe we really are alien hybrids- it would explain the difference in brain size from us to our cousins the apes. . .and lets face it, human behavior is far more complex than our relatives the cave men.
. . .
Consciousness does not evolve like bacteria, it is received, it is a gift of the great cosmos and it is always available, but we must chose to access it, to claim our power. In any case, thanks for all your work into this subject Jonathan, and for sharing your radical experience in transformation! Maybe this is to personal, but were you medicinally charged when this occurred? If not thats pretty damn impressive.!!!
.
.Catch u all in the dance, and please let me know any thoughts, ideas, evidence or quarrels pertaining to this myth.
Keep the Faith, and really- see this movie
http://www.10000bc.com
LUV AYDRA J
Secret Book of John
Hi StarSix,
I enjoyed reading your insights and have definitely come across these myths before and find them fascinating. I think you might enjoy The Secret Book of John if you haven't read it yet. In this tale, the Demiurge, an angry false creator God and his archons rule over this reality of suffering, but Eve with the help of the serpent takes on the heroic role of taking a bite into knowledge/wisdom (sophia) and transforming our consciousness in the world. Also, Jesus comes in like an undercover agent to help assist her in this brave action. It seems to be another gnostic tale of letting in the power and potential of the divine feminine.
.
Hi StarSix,
I'm guessing you've read Drunvalo Melchizedek or Bob Frissell's books.. you might also want to check out Ashayana Deane's Voyagers II: The Secrets of Amenti for another perspective. It can be a very dense and confusing read, but it's interesting...
I've also come across a tribe in New Zealand, the Waitaha, that claims it is pre-Maori & who have published two books on their history before the arrival of the Maori in NZ around 800CE ..history that was apparently kept secret & passed down orally for 60-70 generations. There is speculation (http://www.drboylan.com/4-5wrld2.html) that they are descended from the original inhabitants of Lemuria/Mu.. pretty wild stuff.
i don't know too much
i hope to not know too little, all these creations that were spoken of, these words the brought power and healing, the gift, the memory of the potency of certain words chanted, and vibrated, so much has been lost the original meaning of the language as it moved in time with its own rhythm with the stars and chronology-ontology, yet it also seems that so much has been able to pass on through the veil of the ages.As far as moving up the tree of life, and the meanings of certain myths, and tales that have been handed by word of mouth to others that bore the formula, the correct way to use the words, ect. When we look into the myths and fragments of stories of what happened in the early time, or first time,or lost time or end time, we see things being played across a wide moving field of various possible meanings to these fragments of the actual events that were playing with the energy of the entities involved.
However these stories show of manifestations of certain types of rises and falls,beginnings, middles, finals, as we experience this changes that are speeding up as we speak, there seems to be certain forces that are set free, in the psyche of people that will it to become tangible. It so happens that part of the actual events portrayed in these rises and falls are comings and goings on to us now in ever greater frequency, yet we also are still subject to some of the causes and effects the began the whole ball rolling.We therefore are in greater position to open the way for these changes to come through to give vision to those whom would see the messages and begin the work of bringing them into current adjustment.Shifts happen, so and here is still no exact method of removing the past mistakes, and or birth pangs of a consciousness that would be evolving and breaking all the old taboos while also creating the better example to best techniques and practices that bring this all down to earth.
She was curious, that bright shiny solar round ball(all life) looked like all the nice lushous round soft yummy smooth to touch and taste of the ripe knowledge, which looked like a branch which held the fruit fall with the tree and the light glimmering through its shadows and leaves, like waves and patterns of color and light, the moment just right to pluck at.If we eat the words that stood for snake and fruit, mother, eve, ect.And go from there.
she will now reach out for the moment as it once was, as it now shows the opening again of the heart and its vast beat to the cosmic source. As then she did not hesitate, so now too she does not, with the added knowledge of then and added to Lilith wisdom,(the whole ball of wax)(Sophia?)Eden in flower.
'The Oldest Taboo in the World'
I also have had a deep and long interest in the ancient tale of the Garden of Eden, even as a kid. Something about the imagery which is very powerful, and as I came to learn , the Garden myth very much pre-dates the Genesis patriarchal rip-off and subversion of original meaning for its own insidious and poisonous means!
In the last few weeks I have found two articles that have really had an effect on me and brought me deeper understanding. I recommend the reading of them as complimentary to this inquiry. If you will please read them in the order, I give. Which is what I did............ Sin - the Ideology of the Military Industrial Complex http://www.awitness.org/column/sin_military.html & The Oldest Taboo in the World http://www.metahistory.org/OldestTabooIntro.php
OK, I will preview them. The first really cuts the crap informing us very directly that the Abrahamic 'God(s)' is a war god!! So, his 'Son' also will be very much involved in that scam. A scam that has played us all down the generations, via writ down text/'Word', oppressing, and doing genocide and ecocide far and wide. So to understand this clearly!
The second link, an article by John Lash about his interpretation of the Garden of Eden myth is THE best one I have read! it is complimentary to John M.Allegro's discoveries as writting in his book, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross,(and others) that the Tree(s) in the Garden of Eden are referring to entheogenic fruit!
John Lash claims that the story is really a TABOO that differs dramatically from the usual meaning of taboo in Indigenous tradition. For this insidious patriarchal taboo not only is taboo against us eating the entheogenic fruit of inspiration which reveals our interelationship with the Web of Life, but also a taboo about even KNOWING this!! And that IS the 'Fall'.
Our separation from entheogenic inspiration and Paradise.
So that tale is not some kind-hearted coded tale of warning. But is a tale writ by a cabal and their creation of a patriarchal war god who, via their propaganda, design to divide us from the Land, animals, woman, the Goddess, Earth, and our very essential sensual and instinctive BEING. By guilting us, and adhering us to their miserable authority as slaves!
The Sacred Mushroom
I agree that the amanita muscaria is the best candidate for the "apple" of the garden of eden. As the god of war, fire and immortallity, the knowledge of good and evil might just be a sidebar. :-)
I wrote this about thirty years ago:
Almost every religion has a sacred tree as one of its most ancient symbols. This "tree of life", was very important to the Sumerians. It symbolized growth and strength as well as furnishing them with firewood, building materials and (most important of all) the place most likely to find their sacred mushroom. In that part of the world, the Amanita muscaria attaches itself to the root of the white birch, its host tree, and cannot fruit without one. The ancients tended to find divinity in their natural resources, a practice that we would do well to copy today, and they probably would have valued the tree for the wood itself. Although many trees could provide wood, the white birch became known as the tree of life.
The reason for this tree's fame lies in the fact that two very important fungi chose the white birch for their host. First, was the sacred mushroom. The second was the shelf fungus Fomes fomentarius. It was probably under a white birch, blessed with both fungi, that the ancestors of the Sumerians first learned to make their own fire.
The main clues to how this was accomplished are found in the word groups that describe a wide range of activities, including shamanism, fire, mushroom inebriation and the mushrooms themselves. The shaman was the one who used the mushroom to communicate with the god. It was these early priests that first used the fire drill to make fire. They chose to name the various parts of the fire drill after the similarly shaped parts of their mushroom god. The "whorl" was held in the left hand and became the bearing for the "axle" whose lower end fit in a depression in the base. This depression is where the heat was generated by the friction of the spinning drill. This drill was powered by a leather thong that was wrapped around the shaft and secured on its end to a stick bent in the shape of a bow. Even the curve of this bow receives a mushroom name referring to the curve of the cap of the Amanita when viewed from the side. When the bow was pulled back and forth, the axle would spin very rapidly and soon send smoke curling up from the base. Now, this is where the second fungus comes in. There needs to be something that will burst into flame at the lowest possible temperature. "The best tinder for this purpose in northern Eurasia has always been the dried Fomes fomentarius,".1 Wasson
I don't think it is just an unrelated coincidence.
Cheers,
jim
Myth is such a fascinating language
Makes we wonder about Eve's next great incarnation, the Madonna.
Mother of Man becomes Mother of God.
And my spine prickles thinking of the implications of the Ouroboros--the symbol for eternity--on the tree.
Our collective awakening...
~Aydra Jenson~. . ..Keeper of the StarSix.
Hey guys:)
Thanks for taking the time to read and for the insight. I will have a look at the links, and yes, most of my knowledge of this myth comes from the 'Ancient secrets of the Flower of Life' and 'Nothing in this book is True ect'...
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Its funny how the authors or storytellers, translate, its all very juvenile in a sense, but thats what drew me in, I felt I could really grasp it. Sometimes its easy to get lost in heavy grammar and vocabulary tricks.
. . .
In any case, remaining open and grateful that we have this virtual ground to play and share on together, I am ever impressed at the vast oceans of knowledge we awakened or maybe re-awakened with-in ourselves and one-another.
Continue transmitting.
Bizarre..
Well this is a bizarre synchronicity on my previous comment. I dropped into my local esoteric bookshop here in London this morning, and saw that Drunvalo has a new book out, Serpent of Light. I picked it up, flicked through it..and discovered a chapter on the Waitaha tribe mentioned above....
rippling through
hi Jonathan,
Found your first two chapters very interesting. E. Pagel's book was assigned in a univ. class way back, and it's great to be reawakened to this information and the angles/synthesis you're bringing. Strikes me important. Looking forward to the book. And the podcast over on the other page.
I echo VisualAlchemy's comments on the high importance (and power) of capable writers and researchers questioning old myths and belief systems, and finding hidden ones. It's positive, productive and provocative. It takes courage. It activates change. It serves the here and now, and the here and the near future.
It seems like wisdom is rippling through to all generations at an ever faster rate. I think I (we all? sometimes?) underestimate the impact and the scope of the Web. Let's keep it open and available, and the pixels and print flowing.
Before I get tangential, you reminded of another great exchange between Moyers & Campbell:
"CAMPBELL: It's been said that poetry consists of letting the word be heard beyond words. And Goethe says, "All things are metaphors." Everything that's transitory is but a metaphorical reference. That's what we all are.
MOYERS: But how does one worship a metaphor, love a metaphor, die for a metaphor?
CAMPBELL: That's what people are doing all over the place -- dying for metaphors..."
peace.
What an enchanting chapter.
Eve was very brave to eat the apple (which some traditions say was a pomegranate, rich with ancient symbolism), because she and Adam had been goofing around for quite a while, and she realized that if they were ever going to graduate to another level it could only be through that 'door'. God's first instruction to Adam and Eve was to "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth..." (Gen. 1:28); surely this Prime Directive superceded any later commands? Indeed, they were immortal beings, unable to die at that time. I'm unsure if their innocence was that akin to the animals', or something more like a robot's artificial, and possibly unfeeling, intelligence.
What's amusing is how both Adam and Eve tried to pass the buck when God discovered their malfeasance. Adam: "It was she - THE ONE YOU GAVE ME - who made me do it". Eve: "It was that tricky serpent." We still haven't changed from that, by much.
Some traditions say Lileth/Lilith is Eve's dark side, like the dark side of the moon, her Id. In astrology the asteroid Lileth has the connotation of sexual scandal, such as an affair with a married man. George MacDonald, the Scots childrens' storyteller, wrote an adult fantasy novel entitled Lilith which tells of a strong, malevolent, goddesslike woman. Which corresponds with Lady Ragnall's Black Knight (dark side of the moon) as he demands King Arthur tell him what, exactly, do women WANT?!? Which the ugly old hag (dark side of the moon) eventually explains to Sir Gawain as he chivalrously allows the hag (who is by then revealed to be an enchanting beauty half the time - light side of the moon) to have her sovereignty...
Which brings up the joke: Adam and God were walking in the Garden when God said, "Adam, you're lonely. I've got a woman for you. She'll cook delicious gourmet meals. She'll keep your house spotlessly clean. She'll bear you many well-behaved children. She'll keep herself fit, attractive, and eager for your attentions." At which Adam said, "Sounds wonderful! How much is this going to cost me?" God replied, "Oh, only an arm and a leg." Adam says, "What can I get for a rib?"