UNDERSTANDING ORIGINAL SIN

UNDERSTANDING ORIGINAL SIN

So many struggle with the story of Adam and Eve. Here is an overbearing God threatening them with death if they eat of a certain fruit. In comes the sly serpent offering enlightenment and godhood. On its surface the serpent seems the good guy and God the oppressive controlling one. Let’s get into this and really dissect what is going on here.

To fully understand this story we first have to understand the fruit that was offered. This fruit was not the apple as many claim, it was a fig. In the wild figs are a type of fruit that flowers inward creating a sort of protective womb for pollination. In order to be pollinated a female wasp, still carrying pollen from her own birth must crawl through a tiny opening called an ostiole into the figs interior. This process damages the wasp often ripping off her wings and antennae trapping her inside. She then lays her eggs, pollinates the inward facing flowers and dies within the fig. Her body is broken down by enzymes within the fig and used as fertilizer. The eggs hatch and male wasps emerge first, blind and wingless. They mate with the females still in their galls, chew exit tunnels and then die inside. The newly fertilized female wasps collect the pollen and escape through the tunnels to repeat this cycle in another fig. Through this process the fig is transformed into a seed bearing fruit.

This macabre process is a mirror echoing the fundamental truth that in order to bring forth new life you must become subject to cycle of death. This was what God meant when he said when you eat of this fruit you will surely die. To eat of this fruit is to fully know and understand the cost of the act of creation. The serpent gave Eve a half truth, “You will not die, your eyes will be opened and you will become like God, knowing both good and evil.” When Eve ate of the fruit her eyes were indeed opened and she did not immediately die. She became aware of the womb she carried that was a mirror to the womb of the fig. When Adam ate of the fruit he became aware of the seed that he carried that live only to die while fertilizing the woman’s egg. They understood the full nature of their reproductive system and became ashamed at what it represented so they covered themselves with fig leaves.

What was the nature of good and evil they became attuned to? Simply the cyclic nature of creation and destruction, the dynamic tension that exists in nature keeping all things in balance. Creation brings forth new life and new potential. Destruction prunes the old making space for new creation. In this knowledge Adam and Eve became aware of their own divinity and ability of procreation that is a mirror to God’s own creative ability. But Adam and Eve were still children and not ready to weald this power in a responsible way thus the serpent became both liberator and enslaver. The burden of this knowledge became Adam and Eve's prison. What is true evil? To an eternal creator it is an absolute death. Death is an affront to life and perhaps God wrote it into his creation to understand it. We are the universe experiencing itself and through us and maybe God is attempting to understand why death is the cost of creation. It is an entirely foreign concept to a being that doesn’t experience it. The entirety of humanity’s repressed anger is centered around the nature of death. The path through this life is to learn acceptance and understanding of it and find peace with it. Learning to cherish each moment in the brief time we are given.

Why then does God curse them and cast them out? The curse of Adam reflects the work and toil that Adam must do to provide for the growing family he is creating. The curse of Eve of pain during childbirth is to remind her of the painful cost of creating and bringing new life into the world. The fetus gestating inside her literally sucks the life force out of her. This is could be the reason why the ancients of Earth lived so much longer. There was more of this creative life force to go around. But as populations grew this limited life force energy in a closed system was distributed over the growing population and there was less to go around, so lives became shorter. Life in Eden was designed to be easy and free of such burdens. Adam and Eve were created to be eternal and live in harmony with God. In this sense God was truly just a protective father seeking to persevere his children’s innocence until they had grown up and were able to receive this knowledge with the maturity to use it with wisdom. This also marks the imbalance that was created between the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine and the rise of the patriachy with the words: "And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you." The Divine Feminine has been repressed ever since. In Eden Adam and Eve were on equal terms but with different gifts and roles. Adam represents the divine seed / spark of knowledge and Eve represents the divine womb that receives that seed and births the cosmos, transmuting ideas or information into reality. The fall happened when Eve tried to become the seed by giving Adam the fruit. In this situation, the serpent was no better than a pedophile groomer seeking to mar God’s beautiful creation out of its own petty jealousy and desire to be honored as God. The reason why pedophilia is so often associated with powerful elites is this is a reflection of the serpent’s desire to bring enlightenment to children before they are ready for it. And God, like any good father let its children sit in the consequences of their actions so they could learn from their mistakes.

Lastly we have the curse of the serpent:

“Then the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all animals, domestic and wild. You will crawl on your belly, groveling in the dust as long as you live. And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.””
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭3‬:‭14‬-‭15‬ ‭NLT‬‬

The serpent instead of being honored and glorified for binging this knowledge to humanity will be cursed and hated for it. This foreshadows the victory that Christ would eventually achieve over evil, “He will strike your head and you will strike his heel”. In Revelation one of the heads of the beast is struck in the head mortally wounding him. Throughout history the serpent was cursed to slither in the dust, the darkness that bore the light. Seeking to bring knowledge and enlightenment to humanity by being a mirror for every dark desire we have, but always being reviled, demonized and attacked for the reflection it showed us. And then there is Christ, God in the flesh. The Light that came down and bore the darkness of all our sin and shame. Thus becoming the bridge healing the original sin that caused us to become separated from God our father.

All of this highlights a fundamental dark truth of our reality. The pedophile is the teacher and knowledge is the poison. We impregnate the innocent with knowledge. With that knowledge comes great responsibility. Think back to your role as a parent nurturing a child and if you aren't a parent think back to your own. Did you perfectly impart knowledge on that young mind with discernment and divine timing? Or did you make mistakes and cause wounds and trauma to that child? The innocent mind is like a womb and knowledge is the seed. What births in that womb through the child's actions is the responsibility of both the child and the teacher. Will it lead to flourishing life in both the child and what they manifest into the world or will it lead to death.

Now that we have shined the light on the collective repressed trauma and anger at the trick the serpent played on humanity lets flip the script. This interplay between God the protective parent and Serpent the trickster offering forbidden knowledge highlights a deeper mechanism that operates within our consciousness itself. The relationship between the Ego and the Higher Self. The Ego seeks to preserve your identity and keep you within the comfort zone of what you know. It does that by exercising control through fear. In this instance God supplied the fear to Adam and Eve in the form of, "If you eat this you will die". The Ego is constantly trying to balance the equation of your identity in order to protect and preserve it. But the Higher Self seeks your continual growth and evolution and therefore is continually trying to unbalance the equation. It is in constant dynamic tension with the Ego because the Ego knows that to grow and evolve the old identity must die. It is a chess match between the Ego and the Higher Self in which the Higher Self must play three moves ahead and back the Ego into a corner where they have no choice but to face their fear and evolve, sink or swim. The Higher Self knows that in order for the butterfly to be born the caterpillar must die. All of this boils down to the question did Adam and Eve need to grow and evolve in the first place? Was God controlling through fear in order to preserve their innocence? Or was the Serpent manipulating through fear that Adam and Eve lacked something within themselves that was always there to begin with?

So what is the lesson in all of this? Can you find the balance? Will you protect your children’s innocence for as long as you can. Teach them and lead them by example. Use discernment on when you think they are ready to learn certain things. Let them make mistakes, sit in those consequences and be there to help them see the lesson in it when they do. And be ever willing to lay down your life to rescue them from their own sins.

However at the real heart is this. Can you forgive God for holding you back from knowledge out of a desire to preserve your innocence? Can you forgive the Serpent for it's trick and the heavy burden of the knowledge it revealed? And at the end of the day, can you see yourself in both God the protector and the Serpent the catalyst for growth? Can you forgive yourself?

Be gentle with yourself in exploring these questions and remember. You lack nothing within yourself to make the story good.