The Journey Back to the Garden of Eden

It is a biological fact that once you have climbed out of the mother's womb you can't climb back. The Story of the Tree of Knowledge was exactly that. We left our subconscious connection with God and nature and became aware of our own creative powers. Alas, with the gain of powers came a loss of innocence, a break with our God-connectedness.

When we spend all day getting drunk, stuffing our face, having sex orgies, working ourself to death, or maxing our credit card on stuff we don't really need, we in fact try to climb back into our mother's womb. We want to lose consciousness and experience this feeling of connectedness with artificial means. It backfires as we all know and after a brief feeling of orgasmic bliss we feel even more alienated and irritated. Yet, if we spend time in meditation instead, with people we love or on creating things that are meaningful to us, we in fact are going back to that original state with proper means. 

By the way, we are not saying that sex, alcohol, dancing, working hard or indulging in things we care for is not part of the Way. Drowning out the 'here' with the help of artificial means in order to be 'there' is the problem;  meaningful work, celebration and exaltation is the Way! It is a free joining of a Force that flows through you rather than a desire to escape the here and now.

Living in the Now - walking the Tao as we call it - is the experience of finding this God connection that we once lost. The meaning of life is communicated to us when we experience that divine connection just as in the olden days. We experience life and know that it is "good" without getting entangled in the good versus evil battle at all. 

A spiritual path is the journey Home. We have tasted from the Tree of Knowledge and we now create freely in our Mother's garden. Heaven on earth is right here in front of us. Learn to center yourself as the yin and yang of life unfolds and you can experience Her Presence all of the time. 

Aspire, Manifest, Reflect and Renounce

We are eating from the Tree of Knowledge again. We were little children when we took our first bite many thousand years ago and were afraid of the responsibility to choose between good and evil. In the meantime we have grown up and the next step in our evolution is to move beyond good and evil. Express yourself and play your part in the divine play.

There is a tao of life that shines before you. Right or wrong very much depends on your personal path. As Lord Krishna told Arjun that it was his duty to kill people he cared for in the battlefield, who knows what is in store for you - only you can be the judge. The brother you may meet today may have a sign around his neck -  of course invisible to himself - "brother, please teach me a precious lesson".

The question of course is how to separate the egotistic I demands from the longings of your soul. That's what Jnana Yoga is all about, i.e. the path of wisdom. No authority, no guru or holy book can help you with these decisions. You only have your intuition, and the little signs life throws at you. Aspire to realize your dreams, manifest them as best as you can, but be prepared to drop them if life tells you to. Aspire, manifest, reflect and renounce - that's what Jnana Yoga is all about. Yes this, but not that!

Eckhart Tolle writes that women are ahead of men on the spiritual journey. This resonated with me. Women are more closely connected with their hearts and "feel" themselves from decision to decision. For somebody like me who has a stronger intellectual connection, all I can do is to look out for the signs that life has to offer as I make my choices. No matter what you do, there is always a quite voice in the background that begs to be heard.

Take the fairy tale of the fisher and his wife as an example. The fisher finds a golden fish one day and declines his offer for a boon as he feels he already has everything his heart desires. His wife thought differently  and makes the fisher go back and ask the fish first for a bigger house, then a castle, a kingdom and eventually to become God. One wish after the other gets fulfilled, but progressively the sea gets darker, the weather worse and the fisher has to wait longer and longer before the golden fish shows up. Eventually, when the wife wants to become God, the golden fish tells the fisher that his wife has lost everything and is back in their old filthy shack.

So what exactly is the moral of the story? It is not that we shouldn't aspire to express ourselves. It is knowing what desires to manifest and what desires to renounce. The fisher's wife could never see the signs of discouragement to go further as her submissive husband was unable to communicate them to her. I don't know what her dharma (destiny) was, but she certainly aimed for stars that were out of her reach. Know your dharma and  fulfill it and you don't have to worry about good and evil any longer.

We are Eating from the Tree Again

"Surrender to life, don't surrender your desires". If I had to summarize my spiritual learning experience over the last couple of years in a sentence, that's how I would put it. Many of us in this community aspire to be free, and we try to achieve this goal by listening to the free spirits and their lessons. However, don't assume that you are operating on the same spiritual level. You have to follow your path instead.

When we ate from the tree of knowledge for the first time we were babies who had to be told that there is a divine part buried in the animal. We needed rules to discover our spiritual path. Today we are adolescence, we learn that we have a mission and suddenly there no longer are any rules. Play your part in the divine video game by following your passions. Actually, you don't have a choice in it anyway. Live your desires and burn them up in the process.

Arjun in the Gita discovered that he had to slaughter his friends and family, he hated his mission, but God Himself told me that he better do his job. What's your mission? Knowing what Christ and Buddha would do in your situation doesn't cut it. The divine play needs you to show up instead. Doing the "right" thing at the "right" time is your assignment. No pressure, at worst you can learn another life experience if you "mess up". As the Course in Miracles states, 'Nothing real can be threatened, nothing unreal exists". You have nothing to lose and your Self to gain.