Creation Spirituality: Regaining Paradise

In the beginning, there was light. It was, and still is, a light so bright it has the power to create whole worlds beyond our wildest imagination. That light created us and imbedded itself within us forever.  But, something happened, and we forgot what we are.  We didn't lose our light.  We forgot that's who we are.  And, the world's long sad story is the result of a forgotten dream, a lost paradise.

As beings of light and nonmaterial, in our perfect unclouded state of light, we are enlightened, powerful, visionary, wise, loving, merciful, compassionate, kind, creative and contain most of the qualities we ascribe to our Divine Creator.

It may not look like that from where we are today, but that is what we are if we stepped out of the grand illusion we have all come to believe and by believing it, make it real. It's a very bad dream, a nightmare, and we need to wake up. 

There is a profound truth revealed in the creation stories in Genesis which will help. Since the creation stories are the foundation of the three Abrahamic faiths - Hebrew, Muslim, and Christian, and most of the world's population is at least one of those religions, clearly these stories are fundamental to the world's understanding of life itself. 

The origins of these creation stories are ancient and stem from oral tradition, from a time when myth was understood at a deeper level, closer to spiritual truth. 

When read aloud, the stories lead the listener on a journey into an imaginal, poetic state, a deep interior realm. This other realm is humanity's primordial psyche or our a priori condition, common to all humanity, and it is the beginning to which we can and must return.  

Genesis 1:1:  "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth." Then, after creating every living thing, God said, "It is good." That's the first creation story.  

The second one concerns the creation of man and woman, the serpent, the temptation, eating of the forbidden tree of life, and being cast out of paradise. 

Then, life as we know it begins. Misery, alleviated by intermittent pleasure, joy, tears, struggle, pain, and ultimately suffering become the daily state of affairs. Adam and Eve leave a world of light - of peace, enlightenment, spiritual wisdom and eternal life and enter into limited lifespans marked by disease, pain, fratricide until finally devolving into a state of insanity - which is obvious today.

St. Augustine (c. 380 AD) claims the second story in which Adam and Eve are cast out of the Garden is reflective of humanity's "original sin." That concept has spun a global story that needs to be rewritten to uncover a deeper truth which is understood by those "who have eyes to see" or have the inner spiritual vision to perceive the deep truth in it.

(If you're sick and tired of the misery, then you have eyes to see and a mind ready to listen.) 

Today, the world needs to hear that other story. It is the real truth and has the power to turn things around.  

Over the millennia, the doctrine of Original Sin gestated in western civilization's dark subconscious weaving into it a toxic psychic sense of deep unworthiness, inferiority, shame, judgment, condemnation, fear, and spiritual impotence. In fact, over the centuries it bred the very thing it claimed was our downfall - sin and death.

(Many assume the doctrine of Original Sin is actually in that second creation story, but it's important to know it is not. St. Augustine developed the doctrine after Rome accepted Christianity as the official faith of the Empire at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD ending a couple centuries of torturous persecution of Christian believers. Soon after, Rome fell, leaving the Church head of its former holdings, which were now languishing in desperate poverty.  For the next 17 centuries, the western Church and western civilization have focused on sin and death, rather than spiritual life and our potential for incredible goodness. This is obvious in our media and everywhere in our western culture.)

Today, the western world has stagnated into an apocalyptic worldview of impending damnation. We definitely need a new story and it might be in that second creation story if we look at it again without the Original Sin lens.  

This may be a new story, a new way of understanding ourselves which opens the door to a new world: 

We are made in God's image, and since God is Spirit, God's image is Spirit, which means we are Spirit.  If we are made of God, then we are like God, and this is important - we are Love, and we are Good.  In our original perfect spiritual state, after we discard all the lies, the neurosis, the limitations of the illusion, the killing, and self-condemnation, we are made of God's light.  

After Adam and Eve ate of the tree, they became infleshed and subject to the qualities of being embodied in denser material.  They appeared separate and were fearful of their vulnerability. Their original and authentic identity of light seemed blocked by their new state of being infleshed. They lost the ability to see and hear the divine as before. Also, the qualities of being infleshed gave rise to the "ego," which is the great and terrible judge both within us and in our communities. It is the ego that judges, condemns, and creates that sense of shame Adam and Eve had when they realized they were naked. They didn't feel naked when they were light. They felt naked when they weren't.

This is the original story, the true one.  It was always there, waiting for when we would be ready to see it again.  It is the new beginning which calls us to return to the garden, now, without shame, without judgment, clothed in our light. 

The garden has always been there.  Seeing it, and accepting it is all a matter of free will.  We can choose to see ourselves as sinners and lost from God's love, or we can see ourselves as beings of light who have been blind, temporarily in the context of eternity.  We can choose to accept our innate divinity, and accept it, live into it, and help each other regain paradise. We have - as a human race - matured enough to see this now.  We are able to pull off the lesser cloak of condemnation and judgment and stand bravely in the light of Divine love.  We are ready.  It is time to do this.

It seems the Eastern religions, and Gnostic Christianity, the Yugas, Vedas of India, and Sutras of Tibet, along with the Jewish Kaballah, Sufi and Islam's holy writings all offer us a way back into Paradise, into the Garden. Jesus describes that garden as the kingdom within. Now, we see with our inner vision of which we had been blind. Now, the blind see, the deaf hear.  Now, all the words of the prophets, sages, seers and wise men and women of the past make perfect sense.  

Today, the world is poised on the brink, driven there by our global ego and darkened consciousness. The world has become a culture of sin and death.  What if we chose a culture of goodness and life?  If we can return to the Garden, regain our sense of blessedness and holiness as the beings of light we always were before we fell into delusion, we may be able to reverse what looks like an apocalyptic global holocaust.  The urgency to do this is now.

We can begin by having compassion for our deluded state for so long, that has mired this beautiful creation.  We can love ourselves again and each other.  We must stop judging. If there is one single thing we must do, it is to stop judging ourselves and others and start loving ourselves and others.  It sounds easy, but it is the hardest thing any of us can do.  As you listen honestly to your own words and actions and challenge your intentions and motivations, you see there's work to do. And, to love your neighbor - not to mention your enemy - will ask for all the faith, love and courage you have - and you may need to be on your knees to receive it.