Now, I cannot even begin to say how God came to be-He just is. It is beyond me to fathom beyond God. Perhaps that is because I see all life as contained in Him. And nothing that exists can exist outside Him.
'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' Acts 17:28
Anyway, to start with, I accept this premise: that there is a substance called Energy in our universe and it is intelligent, it is relational, it is unconditional love and I, along with millions of others, call it God.
Down through the ages people have experienced and documented personal encounters of such substance that you could never convince them that the God they know and love is not real. I am one of these and I am truly humbled by the various experiences I have been graced to experientially know and hope with all my heart that I can, in some small way, generate a desire within any and all I encounter to meet with God in some similar kind of way-because I know what great joy and peace it has brought to me.
Over my life time, from my earliest memories up till today, I have sought to know and understand God's love for me and the way it works in and through my life. I have taken a lot of circular journeys and I guess, there are lot more to come, but at this point right here, I'd like to share how I see things now. Even if you don't agree with me on all these points, I hope you are able to see the things that really matter- and believe them.
1. How much God loves you
2. Why He came in the form of Jesus and
3. How knowing and relying on this love changes everything forever.
In the 'beginning'... my simplified paraphrase.
A long time ago (and in spite of the arguments, it really doesn't matter when), God, who is all and is in all, decided to have a family. Why? I think we can answer a lot of things about God, when we simply consider ourselves. Why do we want family? Why do we want relationships? It feels good to connect and share experiences.
Well, I think, it's because God wanted someone like himself to relate to. He's one of a kind. I'm not trying to disentangle the triune aspect of God here, but suffice it to say, the Trinity is ONE consciousness. There was no other 'like God' that had a separate consciousness centre until Adam- the first man. When God breathed into Adam and he became a living soul, God finally had a friend 'of his own kind'-capable of giving and receiving love on a spiritual plane. Also, 'life begets life' (one of my sayings) and something in us wants to expand and grow and multiply.
God also immediately appreciated that Adam would need someone to share with in this way too, because although he was spiritual and could fellowship with God, he was also physical and needed someone to commune with via those senses. God gave Him Eve.
Now, here's the important thing: Adam came from God-the same way a droplet of water comes from the ocean-but when that tiny 'seed' from God was clothed in flesh, it had the ability to think independently of its Father Creator, and for the first time, experienced some level of autonomy. This is why Adam was created, so God could enjoy fellowshipping WITH someone who chose to, and had the capacity to love him back the same way (but this is also why they could fall for the lie of being apart from God). This is why God 'gave birth' to himself in the flesh. God saw himself in his creation and loved them. Every human being that has come forth into life on planet earth is an individuated fragment of what was the SINGLE consciousness we call God, just like Adam and Eve.
Having the ability to think freely and responsibly care for their environment and for humankind to genuinely love the Father, there needed to be a choice not to. This choice is what is represented by the two trees in the Garden of Eden. The Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
I know, for a long time, I pondered how these trees could represent contrast and I have explored many layers of possibility.
I had no trouble understanding the tree of Life as being all the good that is in existence, including immortality, but how could knowing about good and evil become an opposing power to love and life?Weren't we supposed to study to know what was 'good' so we could be 'pleasing'? And so we could feel happy?
Apparently not. We were pleasing and loved and enjoyed without knowing any of those 'rules'. This is the climate of unconditional love. This is the truth of who we are and what we have in and with God, when we know we are loved. We are free to give and receive love without any thought of self at all-other than to BE. FREEDOM from all condemnation, fear, lack (inadequacy), guilt, self abasement and scrutiny was to be our experience. Total peace and wholeness.
The reason the trees represent opposing states is because the first represents life in the light of God's love, connected in that ONE consciousness, at peace and whole. The second presents existence in the absence of it and is brought about through believing in the ILLUSION of separation. The only reason Adam and Eve ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was because they yielded to the notion that they were not already 'like God'(Gen 3:4), possibly because they had bodies. Well, some would say Eve fell for the lie but Adam didn't want to feel separated from Eve, and chose to follow her lead instead of being the leader. It was an issue of identity on both counts. The 'fall of man' was the severance of man from the ONE spiritual consciousness into a place of fear. Fear comes because the consciousness has disconnected from Love and become physically oriented, 'self' centred and self condemning. The EGO is born. It was not God that made Adam and Eve feel this way, but the alienation brought about by their own 'separate' thinking.
"There is no fear in Love. Perfect love casts out fear because fear has to do with punishment" I John 4:18
"Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour."
Col 1:21 ('evil' being that which is born from FEAR-for the thoughts that inspired the behaviour came from that which is not love).
Once the sense of separation took them down in their thinking, the process of separation from LIFE simply continued, eventually destroying the flesh that would otherwise have continued on untouched by sickness or age. This state of separation, being what they now knew as their reality was then passed on from generation to generation, taking a firmer grip with each cycle and continuing to shorten the average life length. In some ways, we could say it peaked, manifesting in the enslavement of Israel by the Pharaoh.The inner state had become the outer condition.
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