adam and eve

Adam and Eve

Image result for the new church

”The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” (Genesis 2:8-9)

Read the story in Genesis 2:7 – 3:24.

Adam And Eve

The Garden of Delight

The Parable of Adam and Eve takes place in the Garden of Eden. If we know that Eden is simply the Hebrew word for “Delight” we can easily see that the Garden of Delight is no more a literal place than the Slough of Despond or the Pit of Despair.

The Lord often uses trees, gardens and fields of crops to picture different kinds of people or different ways of thinking. There is no reason to think He is talking about literal plants at those times. In Jotham’s Parable of the Trees, all the trees gather and ask the olive tree to be their king (Judges 9:7-15). No one thinks those were literally talking trees.

Now in the Garden of Eden were two trees, but what kind? Apple trees have apples, fig trees bear figs, but what kind of fruit might we find on a Tree of Knowledge or a Tree of Life? In fact the story says that the Tree of Knowledge might give one knowledge (Genesis 3:5-6), while the Tree of Life gives eternal life (Genesis 3:22). Can anyone imagine that such trees in such a garden could be found anywhere but in the human mind?

Adam

And it is in this garden that we find Adam and Eve. In English transliteration those sound like names of ordinary people, but in Hebrew Adam is the word for “human” or “humankind.” It’s much like the medieval morality plays where the main character was named “Everyman.” The story goes, “In the day that God created Adam, He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and blessed them and called their name Adam in the day they were created” (Genesis 5:2). “He created them male and female, and blessed them and called their name Adam.” The story could hardly be more clear that “Adam” means multiple people, not one individual. Translating “Adam” literally as “Humankind” also supports this point: “In the day that God created Humankind… He created them male and female…and called their name Humankind.” Very clearly, the literal meaning itself shows us that Adam is not just one individual, but the likeness of God that is in every human being. One translation says “the whole human race” where the Hebrew is Adam (The Message, Genesis 5:2).

Adam or “Humanity” was formed from the dust of the ground (in Hebrew, “Adamah”). Adam from Adamah means Human from Humous. The Lord says, “Look, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand” (Jeremiah 18:6). We are the clay, and the Lord our potter; And all we are the work of His hand (Isaiah 64:8). Of course, we are not literally clay, nor was Adam; but the Lord is moulding all of us into His own likeness if we allow Him to do so.

The rib

The Lord saw that it is not good for the Human to be alone, and makes a helper suited to him. He does it by taking a rib from the Human and building it into a wife. The idea of taking away the rib (a hard, relatively lifeless bone close to the heart) and putting flesh in its place may remind us of the valley of dry bones Ezekiel saw in a vision (Ezekiel 37). “Can these bones live?” the Lord asks; “Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live. I will put sinews on you and bring flesh upon you, cover you with skin and put breath in you; and you shall live. Then you shall know that I am the Lord” (Ezekiel 37:5-6).

It’s not talking about literal bones. “These bones are the whole house of Israel. They indeed say, ‘Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off!’ Therefore prophesy and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “Behold, O My people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel (Ezekiel 11-12). The Lord obviously is not talking about putting literal flesh on literal bones, but taking something relatively lifeless, hard and dry, and making it into something living, breathing and beautiful. And this is what the Lord does with every part of our lives, if we let Him. We might feel that our marriage is dry and lifeless, or that we have a dead-end, hopeless job, or that religion is a bunch of meaningless rules, or that the Bible or the Writings are old, dry books without life or movement in them. And of course, it is not the marriage, the career, the religion or the revelation that is dead but there is something in us that is dead and fails to respond to the life, purpose and joy that the Lord constantly offers. It’s not bones out there, but something selfish and hard that is in us, close to our heart.

In Adam, that is, in all humanity, the Lord took out a hard lifeless rib and put flesh in its place. In Jeremiah we find something similar: “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh.” The Lord is promising to take away the selfishness, indifference and cruelty that leads us to be sarcastic with a coworker, overbearing with a child or contemptuous with a neighbor. In its place He will put a heart of flesh: compassion, forgiveness, kindness and service.

In marriage in particular the rib of the Man can symbolize the male ego, the self-righteousness and pride that whatever opinions he holds close to his heart are right and good. As a rib protects the heart, a man protects his heart with these opinions, but they hard and without life. There is a saying (and book title), “You can be right, or you can be married.” As the teachings for the New Church put it, a man can’t love his own opinions and his wife, so taking away the Man’s rib and giving him a Wife instead is a process of taking away a man’s high opinion of himself and replacing it with vulnerability, humility and true married love.

On another level remember that Adam means all people, male and female, so women, too, have a choice between being right and being married. Women, too, must let the Lord take away the heart of stone, the rib, the need to be right, and replace it with compassion and selfless married love.

Adam and Eve as the Lord and the church

The name Eve means “Alive” or “Living One.” Knowing the meaning of the name makes it easy to see Eve means something that comes alive in each one of us. She was said to be the mother of all who are living (Genesis 3:20). Paul says that the mother of us all is the (New) Jerusalem (Galatians 4:45). The New Jerusalem is the Bride and wife of the Lord (Revelation 21), described also by the Woman Clothed with the Sun, who is called the mother of “those who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ” (Revelation 12:17). According to Paul the marriage of Adam and Eve is a great mystery concerning Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:32).

Though we have said that Adam means all human beings, on the deepest level there is One who is Human more than anyone else: Jesus Christ, the Divine Human, the God-Man in whose image all humans are created.

On this level Eve, the Church, is all people who receive life from the Lord. The Lord forms the church from His own “flesh” and “bones.” The Lord takes from Himself His own Wisdom, contained in His Word, and builds it into the beautiful and living Bride of the Lamb. By itself the Word may seem lifeless and hard as a bone, but it is transformed: like Ezekiel’s bones it gains sinews, flesh and spirit when we live by its teachings.

Yes, Adam was asleep when this transformation took place, just as Jesus was asleep in the boat while it was tossed by the tempest. The Bible says “God rested” (Genesis 2:2, 3; Exodus 20:11; 31:17; Deuteronomy 5:14; Hebrews 4:4, 10) and “awoke out of sleep” (Psalm 44:23;78:65), when in fact the Lord “neither faints nor is weary” (Isaiah 40:28) and “neither slumbers nor sleeps” (Psalm 121:4). The Lord’s sleeping is symbolic of our feeling that the Lord is absent and unconscious of our trials. The reality is that He is then closer than we can possibly believe. But it is only through this sleep or this feeling that we have been left on our own that we can have a sense of independence or the heavenly feeling that the life He gives us is our life.

You see, the story of Adam’s Rib is the story of the Lord’s Word. The story itself is hard to understand and without life or meaning when we take it literally, but seen as a parable containing a deeper meaning it is transformed into something living and beautiful when we live by what it teaches, when we let go of selfishness and pride and accept the Lord’s life, when He takes the heart of stone out of our flesh and gives us a heart of flesh.

Excerpted from a sermon by Rev. John Odhner

https://newchurch.org/

DAILY INSPIRATION

“To the extent that truth becomes the leader good becomes obscured; but to the extent that good becomes the leader truth is visible in its own light.”

Arcana Coelestia 2407

Can we believe the Bible?

Image result for the new church

When the Lord speaks to us in His Word, infinite Divine truths are expressed in human terms that our simple brains can comprehend. The fact is that infinite truth can only be expressed to finite minds through analogy, comparisons,metaphors and parables. We cannot understand the infinite as it is in itself, but we can compare and contrast the infinite with finite things, seeing a reflection or image of the infinite in the allegories.

Does that mean that we can’t trust what the Bible says? No. We can trust the Bible. We can trust the Lord’s Word to reveal deep truths that will bring us closer to the Lord and closer to one another, but we don’t see those truths by staying on the surface. If you get a can of food from the store, it will have a label saying “peaches,” or “corn.” Most likely there will be a matching picture of peaches or corn on the label. Before you eat, you will have to open the can and take out the nourishment inside. The words and pictures are true because they correspond to what is inside, but if you never open up the can, or still worse if you open the can and keep it, throwing away the food, you will never get real nourishment from it, and the labels themselves become useless.

Scripture Points to Its Own Deeper Meaning

The literal meaning of Scripture is a container for the deeper meaning within, and just like a box that says “open here,” Scripture itself points the way to the deeper meaning. Jesus told His disciples that the Old Testament was about His own life:

“Beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:27)

“He opened their understanding that they might comprehend the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45)

He compared Himself to the Manna from heaven (John 6:32), the brass serpent lifted up in the wilderness (John 3:14), Jonah and the whale (Matt 12:40), and the Temple in Jerusalem (John 2:19-22).

Furthermore, Jesus’ own words were symbolic. He told so many parables that it says “He didn’t speak to the people without a parable” (Matthew 13:34, Mark 4:34). Even alone with His disciples He said, “These things I have spoken to you in figurative language; but the time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but I will tell you plainly about the Father” (John 16:25).

Paul, too, warned us not to take everything literally: “We should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter” (Romans 7:6). “The letter kills, but the spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). Early Christians learned that many of the earthly things described in the Old Testament were a “copy and shadow of heavenly things…symbolic for the present time” (Hebrews 8:5, 9:9, Colossians 2:16, 17).

We can see that there are many, many statements in the Bible itself that direct us to look for a deeper meaning. And on the other side, there is not a single passage anywhere in the Bible that directs us to take everything literally. There is nothing on the box that says, “Do not Open.”

Other Symbolic Stories

There are many stories that are made up in order to teach a deeper truth. The many parables in the Bible are examples. We find further familiar examples in Aesop’s fables. No one imagines that the Tortoise and Hare were literal animals that talked and raced against each other. They obviously represent types of people, or attitudes that people have. The story is not literally true, but conveys an essential truth: “Slow and steady wins the race.”

In the parable of Adam and Eve it is not a tortoise or hare that talks but a snake. Though the story says that the snake was just a beast of the field, no one takes this literally. Anyone can see that the snake was not a literal snake but a symbol of the devil, a personification of evil itself.

Another made up story is Pilgrim’s progress, a story about a man who happened to be named “Christian,” who has friends named “Pliable” and “Obstinate” and is on a journey from his hometown the “City of Destruction” through the “Slough of Despond” to the “Celestial City.” With names like these no one would suppose that it to be a literal story about an actual individual. It is clearly intended as a symbolic story about anyone who might happen to be a Christian.

Again, the ancient Greek myth about the love between Cupid and Psyche was never intended to be taken literally. Cupid means “Desire.” Even today Cupid is a common symbol of love. And Psyche means “Mind,” as in psychology. Cupid or Desire loves Psyche (Mind) but remains invisible to her. Only after going through many challenges can Mind be be married to Desire, and have a daughter named Pleasure (“Voluptas”). No one thinks these were literal people. In ancient times virtually all writing about deeper things was done through symbolic stories such as these.

https://newchurch.org/

DAILY INSPIRATION

“The Lord’s Divine Providence is present within the smallest details of a person’s life.”

Arcana Coelestia 10774

 

Psycho-fruit. Beware of what you eat.

You are what you eat. It is common knowledge that the food we eat is turned into “us” through the body’s digestive process. For instance, when we eat an apple its essential nutrients are turned into our very bio-structure.

What goes unnoticed is that the same holds for information and mental ideas. When we believe in certain ideas and information, they too are turned into “us.” However, our belief-system and worldview, which is derived from the ideas we favor, represents the true spiritual “us” verses the true physical “us.”

The quality of our heart and mind is who we really, and inwardly, are. Religion, which focuses on our “inner” health, is therefore concerned over the ideas and values we have an appetite for.  All eating in Scripture symbolizes psycho-food.

The Forbidden Fruit in the Garden of Eden actually refers to harmful ideas (psycho-fruit) that ultimately poison the soul. It was not physical fruit. It doesn’t make sense that the entire human race be damned just because two people ate something growing from the wrong tree.

God does not make weird rules just to test our obedience. God is infinitely pragmatic and makes rules so that we do not wander from TRUTH. To wander from truth is to “swallow whole” a lie – a tantalizing and delicious lie.

This kind of mental metabolism is made evident in Hosea 10:13 – “Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity, ye have eaten the fruit of a lie…”

If you were the “subtle” Serpent in the Garden of Eden, would you not want to feed humans a great lie? The Serpent’s lie consisted of convincing Adam and Eve that they did not need God. By eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would “be as gods.” What is sweeter to the human mind than such flattery and a verification of one’s self-importance?

Adam and Eve were seduced by the worldly love of their own self-importance and ego reasoning. This is the psycho-fruit that damns us.

Now then, if we apply the same rules that allowed us to derive a higher meaning for fruit to every word in Scripture, it would reveal a new and unexpected depth to the story of our salvation! It involves elevating physical terms to their psycho-spiritual equivalent.

It would be worth your while to seek instruction concerning the Holy Word’s spiritual depth! This is the secret behind the Lord’s Second Coming.

Posted on October 8, 2008by thegodguy

Posted in god, Inner growth, love, metaphysics, psychology, Reality, religion, spirituality, symbolism, unity | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Are myths anything more than superstitious beliefs?

Today we are discovering or, to be more exact, rediscovering that the inner and outer worlds of our experience are closely related to each other. What we see in the images and experiences of the outer world is in some sense dependent on what elements are currently active within our psyche.

In that way outer images and forms can mirror or reflect, and, therefore, reveal living aspects of our inner world. Potentially, therefore, everything in our outer experience is a possible source of revelation of our inner realities and current state — as many mystics report. How we perceive and interpret events is very much a reflection of our individual selves.

Universal import of myths and legends

Just as there are underlying universal physical laws in the physical world, and underlying universal patterns of growth and development in the biological world, would it be so surprising to discover that there are also underlying universal patterns of psychological development which lie within the great myths and legends that have survived eons of human ages and development?

Witness the frequent emotive and evocative use made of them by so many of the great poets. Today, the psychologist Jung’s discoveries and interpretations in this area of ancient myths and legends is now well known, and have been influential in dispelling the rationalist’s judgment that myths are no more than primitive and superstitious beliefs about non-realities, or primitive pre-scientific attempts to explain natural phenomena.

Daedalus and Icarus

Remember the myth of Daedalus and Icarus? In order to escape from the Labyrinth in which they had found themselves imprisoned, Daedalus made wings (of wax!) for himself and his son Icarus, but warned his son not to fly too high. Ignoring his father’s advice, Icarus soared proudly up towards the sun which melted the wax, causing Icarus to fall into the ocean and drown. ‘Trying to fly too high’ — with wings of wax’.

Could a legend like that have originated without any deeper message for the hearer; without some inner significance that was the real reason for the story being told in the first place? Today we are perhaps uncovering some of the deeper awareness of the ancients which they were able to express only in story form. The difference is that, unlike them, we have an articulate psychological terminology with which to express it.

Psychospiritual Import of Sacred Scriptures

And further would it be so surprising to find that the key stories within the ancient sacred scriptures are still alive and vibrant today, retaining their emotive and sacred power because they symbolically express deep universal spiritual patterns of human experience and development?

The Buddha and Jesus are perhaps the best known ‘spiritual psychologists’ from the past, who demonstrated their incisive ability to plumb the spiritual and psychological depths in humanity through the use of symbol and parable, in the ancient scriptures as well as in their own parables, so many of which have also come down to us. For example, Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son  with its universal experiential patterns has stirred up and brought to light countless deep spiritual emotions and insights in those who have been prepared to ‘hear’ it with an open spirit.

The Old Testament

Generally, ‘tales’ inevitably become embellished and details changed in the telling. But in the Old testament of the Bible we have a record of ancient religious myth and sacred history of accuracy second to none due to the meticulous copying skills and strict rules of the semitic scribes known as the Massoretes.

Sadly, later interpretations of the Old testament by scholars and theologians in the Christian era became merely historical and literal, lacking spiritual and psychological depth so that it became largely dismissed or neglected as too archaic and repulsive for the modern mind. So it remained unrecognised as a potential revelation of timeless psychospiritual truths and inner realities concerning potentials divinely embedded in the human spirit, the obstacles to their development and the ways these may be overcome. The key to such deeper meaning became lost.

Swedenborg

It was not until the 18th century when rationalism was getting into its full stride that a psychospiritual breakthrough came. Emanuel Swedenborg, a distinguished philosopher, following a period of humbling transformative inner experiences, began to publish his revelatory writings. In 1747 he startled leaders of the Christian church with the opening statement of his great work, Arcana Caelestia (Heavenly Secrets).

“The Word of the Old Testament contains heavenly secrets…Every single detail, even the smallest…means and embodies matters that are spiritual and celestial — a truth of which the Christian world is still profoundly ignorant…The subject of Genesis 1 is, in the internal sense, the new creation of man, that is, in general, his regeneration.”

In the Genesis creation story Swedenborg sees how the emergent kingdoms of nature correspond to emergent levels of the human mind and spirit and so provide a universal key to the interpretation of natural images in all the subsequent stories in the Bible.

Thus the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden with its two trees, the divine prohibition, Adam’s falling into a deep sleep, the serpent and the ignoring of the divine warning, reveals how the human spirit is drawn into an egocentric state which, spiritually, is dreamlike and inevitably becomes subject to negative consequences.Some form of psychospiritual rescue operation is needed which, as Swedenborg, shows, the Bible goes on to symbolically outline in detail.

So the Bible will never become dated or irrelevant so long as the human mind is able to recognise its own universal inner states and stages of spiritual development reflected in the personae, events and dramas of such well-preserved sacred narratives.

Copyright Michael Stanley 2012

What was the mystical knowledge of Ancient Egypt?

meaning of mystical knowledgeThe Egyptian artist was never a literalist, but used symbols to represent inner concepts. He was free to combine human and animal parts, yet show the resulting image in a ‘seamless harmony’. A simple example of this is shown in Egyptian grammar. To write the single personal pronoun ‘I’ the writer would draw a human figure. But to express the reflexive ‘myself’, he would add a snake in front of the figure. The snake is a world-wide emblem which appears as something to be both feared and revered. Is this because it symbolises something of the deeper self, the roots of personality. If so, why?

The snake crawls along the whole length of its body. Its movements are sinuous, sensuous and so it can readily be seen to represent the lower levels of our experience, just as birds more fittingly represent higher levels of thought and detachment. Here are three examples from the Bible.

The cunning seducer in the Garden of Eden

This story (Genesis 3) is par excellence the moment which sets the serpent as enmity with mankind. Adam and Eve are thought to represent the innocence of mankind who lived in obedience. But the serpent begins to whisper that we can decide for ourselves what is right and wrong. This explanation means that Eve is not to be seen as the cause of ‘original sin’, but the feeling part of our nature. Our own desires are seduced by our senses into unwise behaviour. Eating from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil shows that people have decided what they themselves will call good or evil without reference to higher authority.

The staff of Moses becomes a serpent

Moses had been chosen by God to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. God gives him a sign and asks him to cast the staff in his hand on the ground. There it becomes a serpent and Moses runs away in terror. The useful, reliable staff in the hand of Moses, once he lets go of it, can have a life of its own! He is commanded to take hold of it, and it becomes the familiar staff again (Exodus 3 & 7).

One way of understanding the meaning of this is to say it shows the orderly function of the senses in our life. Whatever we first learn after birth we absorb entirely through our senses. Our mind opens out to absorb, to enjoy these sensations and to realise our identity through them. When the Egyptian royal crown was adorned by a raised cobra, it showed the benevolent aspect of knowledge and power (our staff) which we gain through our senses. Only when our senses get out of control do they become dangerous. They have assumed a life of their own.

The words of Jesus to his disciples

Jesus told his followers that they should be ‘as wise as serpents and innocent as doves.’ (Matt 19:16) These words can be understood to mean that the serpent in us is our strength, our protection, circumspection, our sensation of all things beautiful; and our healing touch. Within it lies the very experience of our selfhood and these sensations will grow purer and more refined when they are linked with the higher wisdom and the kingly power which exercises self-control through the innocence of a dove.

The Tet Pillar

mystical knowledge of Egypt
Tet Pillar

The exact meaning of this symbol is not known, but it has been called the emblem of stability.

The four horizontal planes leave three openings and, if we look for other parallels, we are reminded of the three storeys in Noah’s Ark, and the three defined areas in the Tabernacle. Swedenborg tells us that these universally used patterns reveal that the human mind exists on three levels.

1. As we have seen, our life begins on the level of the senses. This enables us to develop our memory and from that we can accumulate knowledge.

2. When we have sufficient knowledge, then our thoughts can begin to be formed. Thought is quite a different function from memory!

3. The highest degree is the ability of judgment and reason.

These are the three separate storeys of the mind. In the truly mature individual the higher levels control the lower ones. The Tet pillar can be seen as a reassuring symbol of such stability.

The Magic Eye

meaning of mystical knowledgeOne of the marvels of the hieroglyphs is their stylised simplicity which nevertheless has strength and impact. The eye symbol really looks at you in a penetrating way. It is the all-seeing eye of God from whom nothing is hidden. In ancient Egypt it was known as Utchat.

The Psalmist says, “He who formed the eye, shall he not see?” (Psalm 94,9) If the eye of the all-seeing Providence is looking, then there can be no lack of purpose in a person’s life. Whilst the cynic may see in the Utchat mere superstition, the spiritually minded person knows that it is a representation of the reality of the Divine in human life.

The insight is that the human spirit is not separated from the body. They are in correspondence with each other. This why the knowledge of symbols is of practical value for all of us today. Those who deny the life of the spirit within themselves will naturally see no sense in this mystical knowledge, because it does not connect up with their own ‘reality’. It is like showing a musical score to a profoundly deaf person, or like describing colours to the blind. But as Helen Keller remarked, “None are as blind as those who will not see — those who shut the eyes to the spiritual vision.”

Based on material by Christopher Hasler first published by the Swedenborg Movement.

Was The Forbidden Fruit A Crisp, Juicy Apple?

Eating fruit is supposed to be healthy for us. The saying, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” is a positive testimonial to its nutritional value and fiber content.

So why would God warn Adam and Eve not to do something which offered real health benefits? What made the forbidden fruit forbidden? If one does not think deeply about this, then the only conclusion to be made is that this particular fruit was not necessarily bad to eat, but that the act of disobeying God made it evil.

If one does think deeply about this biblical event it becomes quite troublesome. The outcome, called “The Fall,” challenges our intuitive and deep sense of justice and rightness.

In this story, God concocted an artificial test, which had nothing to do with a person’s actual character or morality, yet became so indignant by this minor infraction that all humanity was doomed to suffer. Why would someone’s moment of weakness be transferred to future generations as deadly original sin?

It seems as though God acted more like a spoiled brat than one possessing Infinite Love and Wisdom. And why did God later choose to become more practical with the Ten Commandments, which does indeed address and test the quality of human souls? Was God still tinkering with how humans should behave? Tinkering does not suggest inerrancy.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in the inerrancy and authority of Scripture. The problem is that the literal interpretation of its stories kills heavenly communication.

The Word of God could not be the Word of God unless it contained the boundless depth of Infinite wisdom. God could not have created everything in the universe, including bio-complexity, from the Holy Word, unless it too, contained unimaginable complexity. The only way Infinite Wisdom and complexity can exist in a finite book is if Scripture is a multidimensional document with layers of meaning.

These higher meanings allow God to reveal more and more divine wisdom to us. For instance, on a higher level, the act of eating in Scripture represents appropriation. When we eat and metabolize food (or fruit) it enters into our very fabric and becomes “us.” The same thing holds true with ideas and beliefs – which we can swallow whole.

Simply put, the forbidden fruit was harmful because it was really poisonous to eat – poisonous for the soul. God warned against eating this fruit because it came from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which represents humankind’s misguided belief and faith in their own self intelligence, rather then being led by God’s wisdom (Tree of Life).

To be expelled from the Garden of Eden is to be removed from God’s wisdom. Everything wrong about today’s world and human affairs is not from any ongoing punishment. It all stems from a lack of wisdom.

Don’t you think that the “fruits” of one’s self-pride and ego reasoning are much more tempting and sweeter than a mere apple? This higher lesson is carried over into the New Testament by the Lord’s words, “wherefore by their fruits you shall know them” (Matthew 7:20) and “for the tree is known by his fruit” (Matthew 12:33).

Posted on April 19, 2008by

Website: http://www.innergardening.net

This entry was posted in god, Inner growth, love, psychology, Reality, religion, spirituality, unity and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.