I entitle this web site ‘Perspectives’ as we often develop when we see something from a different angle. I recently read an article from Keith Giles (https://www.patheos.com/blogs/keithgiles/) with the opening paragraphs as below. And thought – need to read those a few times more. A perspective…
The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden is a metaphor. I don’t believe it actually happened, but I do believe it gives us way of understanding how and why we sometimes struggle with this simple truth of Oneness and Connection with God and one another.
Here’s what I mean: The first people – Adam and Eve – were created in an original innocence where they experienced absolute Oneness with God and each other. Eve was even pulled out of Adam, which suggests that the two of them were once both inhabiting the same body before experiencing that separation process.
The ultimate separation for them came when they ate of the Tree of Good and Evil. This is a metaphor of duality. Once they eat from it they experience a form of spiritual death where they can only see and reason from a place of good/bad, right/wrong, us/them, etc. This is what shatters their ability to see and experience their original Oneness with God and each other.
This story is the perfect metaphor for our own personal experience as human beings. We are born with an original awareness of our Oneness with God and humanity. But, at some point early on in our development, we begin to observe how the world around us operates on this system of good and evil, right and wrong, us and them; the illusion of separation seeps into our consciousness and we are suddenly cast out from the Garden when we lose that original awareness of connection with all things.