I guess Christianity got off on the wrong foot because Jesus was a Jew, and therefore everything in Hebraic antiquity had to be carried forth. I am talking about the concept of original sin. With that paradigm as a starting point, and with Judaism as the only major religion where people were kicked OUT of the garden, separation has been a thread throughout all Christian doctrine.
Matthew Fox prefers to see the beginning story as “Original Innocence“. That and several others beliefs got him kicked out of the Catholic Church.
Due to his so-called controversial teachings he was forbidden to teach theology by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) of the Holy See in 1988 and in 1992 he was dismissed from the Dominican order. He was received in 1994 into the Episcopal Church (Anglican Communion) by Bishop William Swing of the Episcopal Diocese of California.
Love can be found outside mainline denominational demands! But, I digress.
The Original Wound is powerful though it is only an illusionary perception of separation from God. When we read the New Testament we discover that Jesus is in God, we are in Jesus, and Jesus is in us. Call me crazy but that sounds very much to me that we’re ONE. There is a UNITY that the church just seemingly can’t accept. When one is focused on sin management, it makes love, goodness, mercy, and unity far more difficult.
The adage tells us that we’ll catch more flies with honey than vinegar, or look at it as David Wilcock does as he wrote, ” I AM the flower that opens up WITHIN YOU when you are willing to give it water (love) and light.”
But don’t fall for the “tickling of the ears” approach as well.
Let’s go with the reality and truth (that sets us free when we KNOW it) that we are ONE with God. There is no way that we could NOT be a part of the divine light: it’s just a matter of what shade of light we be, and how far off from pure white light we are. I was never kicked out of Daddy’s home or garden. I have never been separated (Romans 8) from the Creator-Consciousness. But I have been indoctrinated with the original wound (If I’m a mainline Christian or Jew) that needs to be healed.
Unfortunately, in order to accomplish that many people have had to leave religion and their church and find spirituality and community.
Beginning when I was about 10, I spend alot of time pondering the Adam and Eve story. In college, I mentioned in a group one time that I had been thinking the problem was not in eating what was forbidden so much as believing the lie that God was withholding part of his goodness from them; the fall began with that pollution settling in their mind. I dont recall any reaction, possibly no one even paid attention, but periodically it resurrects in my thinking pretty strong. My thought was that “fear” gripped them. In order to “fix” the fear, she took a bite. Just a story, but what dominoe effect!
This got me wondering about perfectly copying every “jot and tittle”. Being very close friends to some orthodox jews for many years I learned alot about traditions. Did their “traditions” stem from the same lie? Quite possibly, the original texts (beginning with the canon) were written erroneously to begin with, or perhaps later ones were altered even before Constantine. With the development of Judaism, would not the leaders of that time think it to their advantage also to represent the original stories to suit their ability to rule? Distort the truth and keep everything under control. If that’s what happened, “nothing new under the sun”, makes even more sense.
Once the thought was taken away, of who we really are, the downard spiral (as Ernie puts it so often) takes over, maybe even before we are born.
Parting Words: stingy – Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary “stingy”
Yep, those adjectives only apply to the God of Wrath. No wonder it frightened me.
Hers’s a question for you. What if the whole Jews being the chosen people was another lie to give them power and prestige. Accoring to the Kabbalist being the children of Isreal has more to do with the placement of your heart than your national origin. But I am just thinking out loud.
The aboriginese people and indians such as the Hope, Inca, and Mayan never bought the kicked out the garden story. Villoldo said that his shamon teacher lived high up in the monutains and you could place all of his personal belongings into a suitcase. When he asked him how he could live in such poverty. He took him out and pointed to all of the mountains, forest, and natural surroundings and answered “How can I be living in poverty when I have all of this.” They new that by staying in the garden, Earth would always take care of them.
Beautiful Paulette! I LOVE the point the shaman makes re: the Earth and all it’s beauty. As city dwellers I think one can easily lose site of the wonder and awe of nature. One of my favorite lines was spoken by Jesse during one of his teachings. “Why create Eden, call it all good, then banish us from the garden in shame and despair? It just doesn’t add up from the God I know as the lover of my soul. As a parent I would never dream of banishing my children from my presence, breaking all ties and connection, and then create a system of meritocracy whereby they fail over and over again. It’s just so ludicrous…like some type of mad abusive mind trip. It sounds like the workings of lower level consciousness man who dreamed up the concept then pinned the crime on God. Thank goodness this is far from the truth of a God who loves us so deeply, that he put himself within all creation, that we might recognize ourselves in the reflection of our brother, our sister, and the very one we come face to face with in the mirror.
In the spirit of discussion of our “original” beginnings I leave you with these final thoughts by Charlotte Mason, an absolute gifted being in the rearing and education of children. The book is Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola. “Even though most teachers lay down their lives for their charges with amazing devotion, we have been so long taught to regard children as products of education and environment, that we fail to realize that from the first they are PERSONS… We either reverence or despise children; and while we regard them as incomplete and undeveloped beings who will one day arrive at the completeness of man, rather than as weak and ignorant persons, whose ignorance we must inform and whose weakness we must support, but whose potentialities are as great as our own, we cannot do otherwise than despise children, however kindly and even tenderly we commit the offense.”
“As soon as he gets word with which to communicate with us, a child lets us know that he thinks with surprising clearness and directness, that he sees with a closeness of observation that we have long lost, that he enjoys and that he sorrows with an intensity we have ceased to experience, that he LOVES with an abandon and a confidence which, alas, we do not share, that he IMAGINES with a fecundity no artist among us can approach, that he acquires intellectual knowledge and mechanical skill at a rate so amazing, that, could the infant’s rate of progress be kept up to manhood, he would surely appropriate the whole field of knowledge in a single lifetime!” Charlotte Mason considered a child as he was, viewing him neither as Wordsworth did, as in the heights above, nor as the evolutionist does, in the depths below. She said, “A person is a mystery, that is, we cannot explain him or account for him, but must accept him as he is.”
Folks, we are fearfully and wonderfully made and our potential is unlimited! Indeed, the kingdom belongs to those fresh from heaven (“let the children come unto me…”) and blessed are those who are coming into this awakening with little ones in their midst. May we “connect” back to our “original” self, as Charlotte so aptly stated, to “the mystery of our being.”
Whoa! That is BEAUTIFUL sojourner! You stop me in my tracks!