Place of Refuge

Place of Refuge

16 May 2010

The Fall before the Fall, According to Makropoulos

1.



So.
I was going to write more about
america,

and instead I found myself back on the topic of Creation, Re-Creation, and the Fall.

I realized tonight that what humans gained or lost
at the Fall 
had as much to do with the emotions
and the soul
as it did with the mind.

This is all because there was a Fall before the Fall.

(Hold tight now, this is a bit of an
intellectual roller coaster that's coming up,
and it would help to read earlier entries
on the Fall
at some point)


2.
There was a Fall before the Fall



(from: curitiba-brazil )

 It was, fundamentally, the result of God's little
Mirror Stage
;
it was the stage at which God held up a mirror
so God could see Godself.

The pure mirror that he held up
had no conscience
no sense of self;
the mirror needed God
to show it how to shine well enough
that it would succeed in reflecting
to God
his face.

The problem is:
the mirror broke,
because nothing could sustain
the power of the face of God
Nothing - not even the mirror that he produced for the purpose of reflecting himself - could be that great
because no-one-thing
can be the equivalent of God

 The mirror broke into a million shimmering pieces;
it broke into the various elements
that we now call
the heavens and the earth.

And each sparkling aspect 
of that broken mirror functioned
- in the garden -
to reflect some aspect
of the face of God back to him.

curiously,
it was easier for the Parts of the Mirror
to reflect the entirety of God
than it was for the Whole.

In essence, the parts had a capacity that was greater than the whole,
when it came to the divine mirror.

3.



(this is not the first time I've used this image.  Its source
can be found at the time of its original use.) 

. . . . And God love those pieces of the mirror that composed the garden,
those various features that we know as earth.

But he loved that one feature called
"hu-man"
the most because the
hu-man
represents the mind and soul of God --
the massive Mind of God --
shattered in pieces.
That's what we're here for:
to be the Mind of God
in a landscape where all our 
fellow
living things
reflect other aspect of his being.

Our bodies, then, are just avatars,
the sole function of which
is to give an earthly home
for our minds:
as Hamlet said:
our bodies are machines

The problem with hu-manity is this,
in a nutshell:
Adam and Eve ate the apple
and
Adam and Eve saw their bodies,
and realized their bodies
were the most
beautiful creatures
in the garden


(from lebanonart )

You may be wondering why God
would want to house his Perfect, Eternal Mind
in such Hot Bodies?

Well, hello:
it's because He thought his Mind was
his hottest feature,
so he opted to house that
aspect of himself
in the hottest apparatus he could devise.

So, even if we're not Everything,
hu-mans happen to be
the part of Everything
that
Everything thought
was his sexiest part.


4.
In other words
:
God has many parts
and they all serve different functions,
like the parts of any given body
serves different functions.

If the shattered, shimmering image of God's body
is made visual in the natural world, then
say, for instance,
a pig represents a particular
function in the body of God,
and so does a tree.  Even
a flea reflects some aspect of God
truly.
God is mostly the thing
that we see as water - a glorious velvety substance,
and when you put the sun to it,
you produce
a mirror.

(thus, to drink water is the ultimate communion)


5.
But, back to the glimmering 
parts of the mirror which are
required to reflect back to God
Himself:
and Hu-mans 
are the parts that reflect the mind and the soul,
those insubstantial elements that house
love -- the beating heart of God.


Yes, it is our job as humans
to represent the unrepresentable;
we are the vanishing point,
the site of the palindrome:


containing the mind
in a fragile, beautiful vessel
called a body.




(also from lebanonart )


And God loves his mind
so much
that he made these fragile vessels 
in the likeness of himself:


each one of our bodies contains
an imitation of
every aspect of the universe
(think humours from medieval times: they weren't so far off the mark)
and he packaged all those elements with German precision,
into a beautiful, well designed fleshy vehicle
of two types - male & female,
so our vehicles could keep the mind alive


Before the Fall, Adam and Eve didn't care one iota about their bodies,
because they were too busy
being the Mind of God.


They really didn't care if anything happened to their bodies
because they knew their bodies
were just vessels designed
to contain
the Mind of God.


When they ate that apple,
they saw those bodies, 
which are actually designed a bit like a Porsche,
and they got a little
distracted.


They lost their minds.


*


Unfortunately, if humans 
get a little too obsessed 
with their bodies,
to the point where they
lose their minds,
they lose their fundamental reason
for being on earth.


So honestly, why would earth want to keep humans around?


The earth is capable of producing 
another form capable of containing
mind and soul;
perhaps humans have even done it for the earth:
the internet,
that technology that was developed
to imitate and extend
the mind.


Everything on it has the power to endure . . . . 











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