Moving Beyond the Beginning

So I have given the whole Adam and Eve thing a great deal of thought. It made me recall a conversation I had years ago with the husband of a friend. Bill and is wife led a different kind of lifestyle and one night the conversation turned to religion. I asked Bill how he managed to talk so peacefully about his religious upbringing and he simply said, " I guess  just knew even then that it didn't apply to me." So simple, so clear. So here is what I am going to conclude about this part of the Book of Genesis.

However we got here, we live in a world of opposites, up/down, on/off, right/wrong, good/bad. Without one the other could not exist. Man/woman exist if for no other reason than to go forth and multiply. The story of Adam and Eve mirrors our psychological development from the experience of infancy when we are at one with the world.  The pain of separation that occurs when our brain begins to tell us that we are separate from the object that we love so much is lost to us consciously, but we see remnants of it in this story. We cannot control her mood any more, or change her thoughts. We can disappoint her and eventually we say no and begin to think for ourselves. No matter how much we might wish to stay in that sublime undifferentiated state, it is in our genes to move forward, grow and become independent. I have seen children who try to resist these changes and it causes severe pathology. No matter what you do, you will get older and you will know more. To grow and separate, we must face our primal aggression ( that part of us we share with what we consider to be lower species). Out we go into a world where we learn that animals and plants die and the world is not the safe place that we remember our home being. We have to forge for ourselves, compete, and make our way. To make it easier we look for a partner. Someone with whom we can occasionally (on average 3-5 times per week) re experience our earliest experience, the ones that will forever elude us. is it really any surprise that our created myths lead to a reuniting and pure oneness after death?

We all have to leave the garden of Eden and usually we are disobedient when we do. Let's assume for a moment that there is a God and he/she created humans to have a beingness experience on this planet. Then in order to develop and grow as an entity and have that experience we must not remain innocent. The child of God must become the adult of God or there is no glory to give him right? We must learn and experience both sides of all of the opposites that exist. If we look to our biology then we know that the human animal was built to change...that simply cannot happen in the world as we know it without experiencing both ends of the dichotomy.

So for me the story of Adam and Eve is an ancient tale that lets us know that for all of time and in all cultures, humans have tried to understand this experience. This story gives the whole human race a set of parents to nurture and protect them, then as resistant as our own parents were they release us into the big bad world outside of our garden gates to glorify them in the life that we create.

As for the massive abuse of women and the relegating of sexual intimacy as sin that has been perpetuated  based on this story I say this: It simply does not apply to me and I will try to understand how ingrained these concepts our into our collective unconscious. I choose to believe that knowing this will somehow impact how I confront these issues when I run into them and by the grace of all that is I will find new and better ways to change someone's mind. The how will have to show up when I need it.

So onto the book of JOB. The chronological plan I am following says that the book of Job comes historically before the story of Abram that wraps up the book of Genesis. Love to hear your thoughts folks.