Place of Refuge

Place of Refuge
Showing posts with label Garden of Eden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Garden of Eden. Show all posts

09 July 2012

return to the garden

(all photos by Makropoulos)

At the moment when the infamous residents
of the original Garden Eden
ate the apple, something happened:
the human brain began so quickly to grow, so
much so it began to rival
God's
.

And not knowing this new power they so quickly had in hand,
they panicked.
If they had not panicked so
A + E may have discovered,
far too early,
 the distinctive 
pleasure of mind, the intense
satisfaction one can gain
from imagining worlds.
Ultimately, they, both woman and man,
might have gotten lost
in their own individual revery.
Like two fools in front of a TV,
they would have climbed inside themselves
-- godlike, indeed, one and only --
and that would have been the end
of the human race,
before it even began.

But that was not the plan.




God had intended all along for woman
and man
to make manifest the many dimensions of Him/
Her/
(Whatever pronoun we must deploy
to speak of God.)
But if so early in the game
the human players got distracted,
it would be the end.
Amen.

So God, in Her infinite wisdom,
put an end to that:
He decided that humans, 
more than any other species,
would have the distinct ability
to take intense pleasure in the act
of coupling, and presto!
it worked. 
Man and wife produced
legions, and with that too came
                         jealousy
                         pride
                         leachory
                               treachory
                             and 
                         falsehood =
all the products of minds misused
and bodies abused, in the 
lusty quest for self stimulation.
But meanwhile we have reproduced
indeed, and invented History
(written by the few, not always the wise;
the wise, in solitude, advanced technology).

And here we are now 
at the crest of infinity.
In our spare time,
we have created a facsimile 
of God=Expansive Mind,
but in our limitations
and morbid manipulations
we cannot see
that God is with us
and in us
right now.




O man, listen to birdsong.
O woman, cease your labors.

The earth pulses with life;
we are her masters.
It is our responsibility to care for her
as it is our appointed duty.



In the word huma, hu represents spirit, and the word mah in Arabic means water.
In English the word "human" explains two facts which are characteristic of humanity:
hu means God and man means mind, which comes from the Sanskrit mana, mind being the ordinary person.
The two words united represent the idea of the God-conscious person; in other words, hu, God, is in all things and being, but it is man by whom He is known.  "Human" therefore may be said to mean God-conscious, God realized, or God-man.    from: The Music of Life, by Hazrat Inayat Khan

24 February 2012

The Historical Beast


Change – we’re in it –


It is interesting to me how this blog, and my relationship with it, has changed.  It began as a performance, a persona who is probably closer to who I was, am, or will be,  than any face I could ever offer the world in my physical body.  And indeed, it is still that.  In my current life, I have a name, a face, a physical being that probably does not look like the woman you imagine could write these words.  I struggle, in essence, because the being inside of me is not the face my body presents to the world.  (I suspect that is true of most of us right now, and it is our challenge, on this earth, to come to terms with the contradictions between what we appear to be and what we really are.) 

I am, in essence, a very old soul who is troubled about the state of the world we live in.  I see us going through monumental change, and yet not acknowledging how profound that change is, and how important it is for humans to accept their role within it. 


We are historical beasts, we humans.  I would argue that is one of the things that makes us different from every other animal on the Animal Planet.  My cats, for instance, are not historical, though they each have a history.  They, however, are oblivious to that; they live in the Now.  Right now, all my cats know is that I am not with them.  

I am traveling right now.

Traveling and thinking.  Asking very hard questions, and contemplating their answers, and the hardest question I like to think about is the nature of the change we, as a race, are currently going through –

I have long felt that we are in a paradigmatic shift, and right now, I am participating in a conference where that language is being very readily used.  It is a conference on education, on the changes needed in education to make it a viable industry for our children to participate in.  And our children are not us, in the most dramatic of ways.

Those of us who made their earthly entrance in the late 1950's, early 1960's, can be labeled in any number of ways: in the United States, we are the end of the Baby Boomers, the end of an age of prosperity that was born out of a victorious war. We were born at the peak of a wave that felt our culture is fundamentally right and good, and we were born right before that wave crested and broke against the rocky shoals of the 1960’s.  We were one of the last ages to trust our parents and others in positions of authority. 

We were one of the last ages to be nursed on Great Books, to be led to believe in the Rightness of the Book, and to love Great Authors.  Our age produced an abundance of English majors, because being an English major allowed us to analyze the by-products of Great Human Minds.  Yet we were also the age that was influenced by the questioning of our immediate predecessors, those who asked why all our Great Books were written only by White Men, thus causing a reassignment of Authority to Women and “Minorities.” 

We were also the first age to be raised solely on television. 




We were a cusp age in that regard, because we have lived our lives in a world where we appreciated and understood the values of the last few centuries, and yet we are the first age that can say that there was never a time in our memory when television did not exist: one might say, we were the first Human Age raised and influenced by a virtual, visual imitation of ourselves.

I hope, dear friends, you can follow this logic, because that’s what it is: logic.  This entry is the painful burden of an unencumbered human mind unraveling the cues that the world provides.  My mind is still an Enlightenment Mind, a Mind that believes that Humans can and do know without technological assistance, and that knowledge can come to us through rigorous study, careful examination of the artifacts of the world around, creative risk, and a good sprinkling of intuition. 

An Enlightenment Mind is profoundly grounded in the Written, Published Text – the Linear  Book, and in language that has been produced for that media.  That’s right: books are a Media, and for a few hundred years, they were the most radical media for disseminating knowledge and provoking creativity.



But the Age of the Book is over. 
Books are now antiquity, and
text
laces through space in a delicate filigree of complexity.

My words,
The words of this blog,
Are part of an increasing cacophony of other words,
A multilingual, unilingual digital embrace which,
Combined
Embodies the workings of the Human Mind.

And we, we lucky Historical Humans alive today
Have been born to witness the rapid transition
From the Age of the Book to
The Age of the Cyborg.


Our children, the current children
Who sit so complacently in our classrooms,
Repugnant
Indulgent
illiterate
Have been born into a New Literacy,
Just as we
Were.
The children of today are “digital natives” and
As such
They are wired to think digitally –
Digital literacy is not Textual literacy
Though Textual literacy is a part of the Digital.

But the Digital Text is not solid –
It practices a New Linearity
                         It is fleeting and acknowledges
The rapidity
With which
It can and will be challenged,
And the children
- if they can survive the education system we still have, an education system that was made to serve the Enlightenment Mind -
Major in Psychology
Because the most provocative fiction they can read
Is the working of Human Mind itself,
And the altered worlds it is capable of producing
At any given moment.

Living through a Major Turning Point in Human History,
Which is what we are doing right now,
Is not without trauma.  It is, in essence,
A Birth,
And in our case right now,
Because of the role our own Technology is playing in it,
It is a New Birth into a Different
Physical Form –
The form of the Cyborg,
And any given Cyborg has an absolutely different relationship with the collective human mind (ie: this internet) than we have had with our own minds for
Centuries.
Indeed, the Cyborg accepts unequivocally
Its own participation
In the collectivity;
It relies
On this wealth
Of Knowledge Production and Reproduction
And laughs fondly,
With warm sentimentality,
Over the antiquity of the notion
Of Originality.


Nothing is Original on this earth, in this realm of reproduction and imitation.  From the moment when the Creative Force (aka God) sought to reproduce an entity in His Own Likeness, we (aka: the likeness) have been doomed to Not Be Original.  And now we have finally figured that out, and accepted it, and at some time, perhaps in the not to distant future, we will come to terms with the fact that once we stop trying to be Original, Once we stop trying to be Authentic and Right and True, we will actually Be
That.



But as I was saying, that will be the future,
Perhaps tomorrow,
Or this evening
When that will happen,
But right now we are Trapped in a Moment of Historical Change,
And we will be that Moment’s By Products.

Our delicate all-to-animal human entities will indeed die
In time
And we will be replaced by a generation that will recognize
That time is inconsequential because
The body is inconsequential
And yet,
The body is sweet –

Perhaps the Human Animal will live on through stubbornness (stubbornness is one of our more endearing qualities).  There will be some of us who will refuse to participate in the Rise of the Cyborg, sort of like Apes refused to participate in the Rise of Man, and we will live and toil on this earthly domain,
Sweetly,
Admiring its beauty,
Nurturing it lovingly,
Accepting our mortality
As a fact of life,
And that too
Will be beautiful –
The sustenance of that type of animal life,
of the Human Beast life,
if the Cyborg allows it,
Will be Eden
All over again.

04 December 2010

12/4/2010: Channelling from 11/21/2010

Oh,
sometimes
I imagine my entries
are aggravating,
as I sit and write
the visions I have
as my energies channel through me.
For instance:
the following, 
which I actually wrote on 11/21/2010,
but I thought it was way out there,
and then I went to write again
last night
and liked what I wrote
but realized
I have to post this one first,
because,
(if you dare believe I'm receiving 
some special insights as I channel,
and if you dare believe
I'm 425 years old)
it appears 
the messages are coming
in some kind of order.
And so it begins:

Oh, sometimes
I imagine my entries
are aggravating, as I sit here
channelling my energies;
sometimes they're just
channeling, and there's
nothing coming through.
Just pure energy.
It pulls sideways on my
                       body,
the energy I channel,
like one of those long heavenly beams of sunlight,

(fatjohnnysfrontporch  - scrumptuous blog!)

That's kind of what the channel
I'm connected to looks
like.
We're all connected to channels,
wide open impulses
from our source; they
tell us how to move,
how to act;
they are like rainbows;
mine is shaped like this:

They generally say good things,
but sometimes a spot of blue,
or that which we interpret as blue,
passes our spectrum, and
our spectrum dulls,
and so too
does our spirit.

The beam pulls down;
it pulls, in my case,
from the upper right,
and down my side,
              and sometimes,
                                   it seems to be pulling me up,
pulling me toward it.



What I'm feeling when that happens
is the compulsion
that pulls us from life until death;
it shoots us
      out,
and we
and we
and we
                        start trying to get back,
but it says
             NO,
you can't come back yet,
you're not perfect yet.
You can't come back until
you feel you're perfect,
can't come back until
you perform at your very
highest level,
in the skill in which
you're required to perform.

You can come back when you're perfect.

It just so happens that
this particular draw
is getting harder right now for everyone,
                        saying:
I demand you
I require you
to be good -----
             if you cannot be good,
well, either you're going
         to carry on
       here on earth
in pretty grim conditions,
or not at all.


So learn to live on this earth properly,
in collaboration with her,
if you intend to stay on her.


That is the word I receive right now ---
profoundly and clearly:

Learn to live on this earth,
with these intended earthmates
properly
if you intend to stay here.

If you're fighting; if you're
arguing; if you're
not talking; if you're
raping; if you're lying; if
you're stealing;
if you're doing any such thing,
this is the time
to stop.
I tell you right now:
this is the time to stop.



The consequences of stopping:
an effortless transport to the
next realm of humanity.  And you don't
have to do anything more
than be fucking good.
You don't have to put
a dove in your front yard,
or a bumper sticker on your car;
you don't have to vote democrat or republican,
labor or conservative,
you don't even have to blog;
you don't have to picket;
no
you just have to be good,
and absolutely honest
with yourself and the rest of the world.

You don't have to wear
tennis shoes and drink
Kool Aid,
just keep being good;
the transport is
prepared, just
 keepbeinggood

be the best you can be,

and your journey to the next level will be easy,
more or less,
like Space Travel.



However,
however,
if we're being awful
at the end of time,
we'll feel it like a searing
hot --
poker isn't a strong enough word --
but it'll hurt like hell.

For those of us who
haven't been good at all,
the searing hot pain will last
 a very long time,
but
if we're lucky
we'll come out the other
end of it
kind of unscathed.
Kind of.

We're going to look like
shit
but there we'll be,
embodied,
yet again.

If the earth survives
the end of this cycle of time as we know it,
we'll live on earth.
                               If
the earth survives
at all.

That's really up to us.  The earth
is our only vessel.
There may be other vessles
like ours
with other creatures
on them,
all waiting
to return to
our shared source
and all doing it
in their own special way.


~ ~ ~



Now, there is another concept
I've talked about before:
the idea that we are all already occupying
avatars
right now.
Each avatar is designed to protect
and preserve
the aspect of the eternal
it is its duty to house.
Humans are, by nature,
beings of spirit;
the spirit
is one of our essences.
We enter the physical plane
in a most peculiar way, through
these lovely
extraordinary
physical beings;
we're all really sort of like
plants
on our earth's core,
feeding
off of her.  If we
feed her well in return, she will live,
maybe
could live
forever--


That was the magic
of the Garden of Eden:
Adam, Eve and the Gang
all knew that they were
just part of
the organization;
they were
the intellectual part
of the organism,
but they knew
their place
and their duty, and
they kept to it,
and
did it.


Since one of their essences
was/is
knowledge,
and part of knowledge
was/is
confidence,
this particular group of avatars
- Adam, Eve & the Gang -
had a tendency to occasionally decide
they were the only extra-special avatar,
and when humans decided
we were the only ones,
we ushered in the reign
of the material world.


As long as humans believed
that the material world
was made FOR them,
to SERVE them,
and
as long as humans believed
they were the greatest
creature on the earth,
well
the material has reigned,
and humans
have reveled in it,
like a pig in shit.


(atomblog)



Anyway, so we live
in the Material World
as we feel we possess it,
and as long as we feel
we possess it,
we will continue to live
in time
(and we'll continue to experience
the cycle
of birth, life and death)


However, the second
we realize
we are required to live
in harmony and cooperation
with every other sentient being
on this planet,
when we accept the fact
we're not the only ones,
and instead,
we're all in this together
(and when I say
we,
I mean:
humans,
animals,
plants,
fish,
rocks,
rivers,
sand,
sun,
sky,
fire,
planets,
etc.)
well,
when we realize we're all meant to work
together
equally,
we'll move out of the realm of the
United States of Materiality
and into a true
America.


17 May 2010

Three In One

1.


(from rtjones  - nice blog )

The human being, is in essence
the representation of the three of God's most ineffable,
most unmanifestable
aspects

Our bodies, don't forget, are just really the vehicles
that those three aspects live in
while living on 
planet earth.  

At the time of Creation
(the First Fall)
it was found
by the Almighty
slightly by accident
that he could better represent himself
in his constituent parts
than he could as a whole
because
to represent himself as a whole
would be to represent
the Everything
Twice
and that's just impossible.
Because Everything Cannot Be doubled.  

So the only way he could create
the Everything
was to create the Nothing
because
the Everything and the Nothing
contain the same things
at the same time.
Because in order for their to be
No Thing
You have to know the
Every Thing


2.
It's the place of the double negative,
the place of the palindrome:
The place where the left and the right meet
Where the mirror image meets
that which is reflected.

We look up into space, and we see No Thing
Because during the time we occupy our bodies
we contain Every Thing;
when we move to the realm of the everything
these bodies are nothing.

It's funny:
we think our soul mates
are people just like us;
when in fact it makes the most sense
for a soul mate to be a mirror
opposite.

(2a. - read through 3, read 2a, then return to 2a;
read through 2, 2a, and 3 and then whatever. . . )


3.
Let me please get back to the point I began with:
every individual human
embodies
the three most ineffible aspects of God,
and remember, as I said
a couple days ago,
the reason our bodies are so damned beautiful
is because
he loves these aspects of himself
the most.
We are the most sacred, because we are the closest to No Thing

The three most unrepresentable aspect of God
that we are obliged
to contain within us
are imitated within each on of us -
in our personalities.

They are:

God the Creator
God the Father or Ruler
God the Child


Thus, each one of us has at least these three aspects
of our personalities.


2a.

And wouldn't it be interesting
if our soul mate shared one 
essential aspect - the Child -
but was the exact opposite 
of OurSelves in one or two
of our other aspect??????

Then, when we meet back
in heaven, for lack of a
better word, we know we
would be everything.
EVERYTHING
both the positive & the negative;
we would be perfect.

A soul that has reached the end of its human path,
in terms of reincarnation, is generally a very lonely
soul, because they have reached a point in their 
evolution where they know the biggest challenge they
could give to themselves on this earthly plan
would be to make their earthly double
their exact opposite,
with one
qualification:
they would
share the
same Child,
because
the child

is the essence of our earthly, heavenly being.





4. 
I was talking to my sister tonight.
She was telling me about her old
childhood friend, who I'll simply call
OldFriend.  OldFriend was always a bit
of a rebel. She ran away from home
at 16; left home for Alaska at 19 or so.
I don't know middle years, because
my sister lost contact.  Somewhere in
there, OldFriend met a man (Oh, I should
mention, OldFriend was always a knock-out;
her voluptuous body always made me shudder
and feel inadequate.  But OldFriend had troubles
with men, as we all do.  Anyway, OldFriend met
a man, a foreign man.  She married him;
they produced three daughters, with the help
of a test-tube. OldFriend lives with the man, her 
husband and the father of her three daughters who look
nothing alike, sometimes.  Other times, she's running.
Away from something, towards something; who knows.
She bring her girls with her,  Right now they're doing it
in an RV.  OldFriend showed up at my sister's house; the 
girls are now around 14, and they've been home-schooled for
the past 4-5 years.  Clueless.  (so sis says)  And angry; they
all wear their hair really short and don't bathe much.  One of them seemed to really
like my sister, and smiled and was kind to her.  And thanked
her for lunch, for a walk, for hospitality.  The other two refused
all kindness.  They did not speak or look at her.  Of the three, one is more 
mannish; one has a few learning disabilities (she's the one who
liked my sister); one is I-Don't-Remember-What, but she was
different. As sister told me about them, and their stand-offish
yet happy-to-see-you mother, I said, "her daughters are the three
primary aspects of OldFriend, and only one of them likes you."

Sister laughed, because she knew I was right.  There was a a part of
OldFriend who always liked being with my fussy sister, but most of the time,
OldFriend didn't want to have much to do with her.  I remember that from our
childhood.

Using my equation from above, about how each of us are imitating the three most
ineffable aspects of God in ourselves, one might venture to guess that 
OldFriend's three personalities, embodied so fully in her daughters
are the Father, which is a wanderlust, the Creator, who may be the girl who likes 
my sister, and the Child is the other, who 
my sister said was the nasty girl.  But the girl who likes 
my sister may also be the Child, because my sister is an Eternal Child.

We each have these Three Aspects, 
but in some of us, one of the aspects
is more pronounced than the other. 
We all have an element of the Father,
the ruler; we all have an element of
the Creator; we all have an element
of the Child.


To find someone who is completely compatible is so difficult,
because a completely compatible person has to be compatible
in all three of these areas.  We can have friends,
like my sister and OldFriend, who we like to see some
of the time, but we'd rather not see Most of the Time,
because two out of three of their essential aspects
are different from our own.

The core of all of these three aspects, for each human,
is the Child, because we are all
children of God at our core.

We are born perfect, and it is society
that fashions the Father aspect in all of us
--
this is called the process of socialization
(by the way, that comes right after the mirror stage)
--
The Father aspect in us is what Freud called 
The SuperEgo, that element of the tripartite
personality that enforces and controls the other two
more primordial urges.  The SuperEgo
makes us able to "pass" in society.

Psychologically, we gained the Super-Ego
when we ate that damned apple. The
SuperEgo, that Third Part of our
personality that God didn't want
us to have was the part that made
us the Maker of Laws;
(For the Disciple John who was giving us
his version of the New Testament, the Testament
inspired by the word of Jesus,
In the beginning was the Word

That Gospel should go first;
because it is the most accurate.
That Gospel readjusts the time frame we
use when reading the story; 

the beginning
of the New Testament should acknowledge
that after the fall of man,  a new time began,
and it was a time in which hu-mans had the capacity
to make their own laws.
The beginning of time as we know it, 
began when Hu-mans
were expelled from the Garden
For

Before that, 
we were
Creator
and Child --

yes,
we imitated the
Creator who is God
but we were all
his children
We were not him.


If we can find our inner child,
we will also find our creative spirit
at the same time, because those two aspects
are at the core of our being.  
As long as we have bodies, though,
the best way to live in society
is as a responsible child,
a child who recognizes that as long as we live
in this World After the Fall,

we have to also follow some rules.


When all humans begin to see that
perhaps we'll start on our path
back to the garden.




(I have to end this with this funny word list link,
because they made me think of palindromes
check it out:


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 . . . . 











06 May 2010

The Creation & The Fall of Man, According To Makropoulos, Continued

1.


(Nicola Haigh Lake Reflections )

So, in the first lines of 
The Book of Genesis;
we have God creating
a reflecting surface
a mirror:
sun on water.
After that, 
images begin to appear 
in the mirror:
reflections of the various aspects
of God
Humans, according to the Book of Genesis
are the crowning creation:

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God created he him;
male and female created he them.

Such is how King James translates it.
My only contention is that
man is NOT the only creature
created in God's image;
everything
had to be created
in God's image,
because God, previous to this act of creation
was everything
and in creating, 
everything he created 
was an imitation of some aspect of God;
it had to be,
because there was nothing else but
God
for the original creation to represent.

So the first thing he had to produce was a reflecting surface,
which captured the likeness
of every aspect of
everything:
thus the water,
the trees
the birds
the fish
the animals
and humans
all rose in that reflecting surface,
and gazed back at God,

just as our own image gazes
back at our selves
in the mirror every morning.
2.
Fundamentally, it was the world of Avatar.
Avatar appears miraculous to us
because it represents an entire environment
that cooperates with its creatures
in directly imitating God
and celebrating in God's creation
without being self-conscious about it.

The reason humans look so strange on Pandora
is that we are so self-conscious of how we look,
and of how the natives look,
because, 
well,
we ate the apple.


3.



So at what point did humans stop seeing
that they were just part of the diversity
that appeared in the mirror
reflecting the face and limbs
and body and environment
of God,
and when did we start thinking that they were at the center of it all
and the rest is just background:

Easy: it was that whole
Apple Incident:

At the 
Apple Incident,
the serpent made this claim:
Ye shall not surely die;
For God doth
know that in the day ye eat thereof,
then your eyes shall be opened,
and ye shall be as God,
knowing good and evil.

Not
just 
good
and
evil
!
Everything:
to be as God is to not just know everything
but to be everything.
Eat the apple, and you will think
you are everything.

So Adam & Eve
saw themselves
after they munched
on the Apple,
and each thought
they were everything,
but at the same instant they thought they each thought they were everything
they looked over at the other, and realized
they were not.
And furthermore, they looked a little different for the simple reason
that each was really half of a whole;
together, they imitate
an entire part of
God
(please see my other entries on the palindrome, mirror-images, and God)

But they didn't perceive that anymore:
Adam thought he was the center
of everything,
and Eve thought she was,
too.  

In essence, when they ate that ol' apple,
they went through the equivalent
of the mirror stage.

Suddenly, each had
a separate identity,
and each expected to see
a reflection of himself
in the creature in front of her.

But that's not quite how it worked out:

he saw her mysterious
curving 
earthy
flesh,

and she saw
him:
erect and attentive
to her.
Each thought they were 
everything---

Now, I have a theory that abusive relationships began
at that very instant,
because each wanted to be dominant over the other,
and abuse is an act of domination.
He may have been bigger
than her, though
I tend to think that they were more or less 
the same size.

So, the first form of abuse was not physical;
it was emotional:
both God and man established,
fairly early,
that it was the woman's fault,
and she's been guilty ever since.

4.
Honestly,
who knows if God then made all the proclamations
she is claimed to have made: 
she didn't have to,
because at the instant humans began to think
they were Everything,
they began their own one-way trip
to destruction, or at least to where
we are today.
  If one thinks one is everything,
then everything else
is nothing,
and therefore,
disposable

~

Perhaps the eating of the apple
signifies the moment
when the brain
grew to a point where
the human race began
its evolution towards being
civilized man? It may actually
be the instant
where the imagery of the Creation Story
intersects and exposes
the reality of Evolution