The Sins of the Father

*

The sins of the Father

do not have to be

inherited

by the son,

no,

not if the father

will take responsibility

and amend

make a mends

put an end

amen.

* *

I have been in abusive relationships

more than once

more than twice

more than 1,000 times.

In every lifetime,

I've been abused.

In this lifetime, it started

with my first boyfriend,

the one

who took my virginity

chewed it up

wrapped it in an old

Dentyne wrapper

and threw it

out the window

of his orange

Dodge

Dart.

His abuse was silent,

controlling:

I saw him on Saturdays,

talked to him

on Thursday;

I was not allowed 

to call his house.

He called me.

We would go out

to movies

every week.

I saw movies,

forgettable movies,

and then

we'd go for pizza.

Rather,

he'd go for pizza;

pizza was a spectator sport

for me.

I was not allowed 

to get fat.

Needless to say,

I went through my anorexic stage

that lasted

five years or so,

long after he was gone.

My 2nd boy

friend

was a 

great friend

until I got

pregnant, and then

he beat me, until

our wise baby

departed

in a flood 

of blood.

My husband,

20 years my senior

and gentle

(or so it seemed at the start)

remained silent

for 14 years

refused me access

to his thoughts,

to his heart,

to my old friends,

to any new friends.

For all that time

I remained

hermetically sealed

and awaiting permission

to live.

I wanted to replace

that child that I lost

He refused me

by 

refusing me.

I left him,

                    and yes

it was all my fault.

( kroger )

Intermittently, I've been

the lover

for married men,

the fantasy

they never told,

seduced

by lies

No more of that.

I won't talk about

the last one,

the One

I loved the most,

the One

who still makes me

smart and cry.

But that was the One

who helped me see

the pattern of my life

with men.

That was the one

who made me see

that abuse

is inherited,

                       as is victimhood.

ENTER: my mother, the eternal victim,

her mother, too, 

and hers before that;

                    my father's mother -

                 too strong for that;

            and she

decided

                              I was my mother's daughter,

and let me be.

And the abusive men:

whose fathers abused

in secret

because

their fathers abused

in secret

because

their fathers abused

in secret

because

one of their fathers 

abused

in public

and everyone shook their heads

and muttered about

his saint of a wife.

They abused because they did not know

how to do it:

how to be a

man.

( lemaze )

* * *

Before God expelled

man and woman

from the garden,

their punishment

was made clear:

to the man: you will toil on the earth,

and you will die.

to the woman: you will wail in pain with birth

and must

obey him.

A bitter pill

for both, both who dared to think

they could be 

gods

when in fact,

they were only

like gods --

always a shade away

from being

the All,

and the bitter pill:

God to Man:  You want to be God?

fine!

                         I'll put you in charge

                           and leave you to fend

           for yourself.

Ha!!

God to Woman: You want to be God?

fine!

                            You will be the source

            of creation,

and 

                          it will tear your body

          with agony

      and you

       will also,

            by the way,

               have to obey

him.

HA!

Two clueless children

in the wilderness

were they

and immediately

the sins

compounded

and the sons

inherited

the sins

and believed

that they were truth.

but now,

oh now,

we can see

the sins of our fathers

are the sins

of children

who had no clue.

( hollywoodgo )

* * *

The sins of the Father

do not have to be 

inherited

by the son,

nor the sins of the mother

by the daughter

NO

Not if the current father

and mother

will take responsibility

and amend

make a mend

put an end

to this nonsense

by admitting

we were never meant to survive

alone.

We need the Other.

We need Each Other

We need to say

I'm sorry

We need

to admit

we didn't know,

never knew,

just did it that way

because someone else 

told me to.

We never listened 

with our hearts.

That's right.

In the end

all you need is love,

pure love

amen

September Equinox Channelling

( falconscience )

*

When two opposites meet,

face to face, well, they

stick together, right/

When two opposites meet,

well,

the negative and the positive

cancels each other out;

therefore,

there is

One.

A single, whole

entity.

( peppylicious )

When two opposites are not aligned,

that is

( physicssjsu )

 

the negative and the positive are farthest apart,

well I guess it gets really cold;

I suspect that's when

Ice Ages

occur.

Or something like that.

* *

Imagine it this way:

that we are all

rolling around inside

a giant ball, well, but

it's really like a half ball,

because -- remember the

sphere 

is perfect,

and the only way 

a perfect object

which is a 

sphere

can see its own face

is to break

itself

in half.

( murrayhudson )

and when the half meets

the half 

again

face-on

it fits so perfectly,

( dailymail )

but

in the meantime,

it's rocking 

It feels like 

its going

in circles

because it has to

rock its own

demi-circumference

twice

before it settles back

together again.

( davidasharman ) 

* * *

Imagine that creation was
a perfect sphere breaking
apart
so it could see its own
face, and then
in order
for it
to be
united
again, it would have to
rock back and forth
(do its demi
circumference
twice)
beffore its halves could
meld
together
again
at their widest
points;
in their perfect
shape
for awhile. . .

For
we are born of the compulsion
to have a compulsion
to see what we look like
when we walk
through a door --

the compulsion to break
ourselves in half
and see
is the compulsion
to create,
to see in
the compulsion to duplicate and
replicate is
the very compulsion that
created all
of us.

That's the truth.
(To fully understand
some of this,
read some of my earlier stuff on that
follow the link to representation,
The Fall,
and
The Grid,
always the Grid.)

That's the truth.

* * 8 * *

Let me please explain
the syntax of the previous
sentence ---
hold on tight --
this is the syntax
for a sentence in the Age of the Grid,
when sentences need to be
Understood across Languages.
In the Age of the Grid
SYNTAX
takes more value over actual meanings of words,
because, if we could all agree
on certain SYNTAX PATTERNS,
then we could communicate
Across Languages,
even translate
in real
time---

Let me explain a little further:

Here is a sentence pattern for theAge
of the Grid:
(I'd call it the Definition Pattern):

The first half of the sentence would
be the term or concept you seek to define;
the second half
of the sentence would be
the definition.

The definition --
the second clause
(which by the way is also the dominant clause)
(The first, the term to be defined
would be subordinate,
because
the first element of the sentence would be a term known by all.
It would work as a symbol.
It would need no verb.

) ).

An example:
M&M's: a milk chocolatey mess that melts
in your mouth and not
in your hands.

A perfect definition,
a perfect
proclaimation
of what you're trying
to say to each other.

Yes, this is the syntax
of the soundbite,
the syntax
of the momentary
blink
this
is the syntax of the next
generation.

(second rule for the Definition Pattern):

The first (subordinate)
clause
is often an internationally known symbol,
like Ford, McDonalds,
or
M&M's

(centerfornewmedia )

That symbol goes in the first part of the message.

The second part of the sentence
summarizes the new message --
ie: the argument --
you want to deliver
about the first,
well-known symbol.
Thus, even as this is a definition,
it is also an argument
for a new way of looking at things.

(Advertising has taught us, too,
that these arguments change
as the needs of socity
change:



It's just the way of the world.)


~~~~mmmmmmm~~~~

A shortened, elliptical version of this Definition Pattern
is the Direct Assault Pattern,
where you don't even bother
with the
second,
dominant,
clause of explanation.
In the
DAP,
you simply take that
internationally known symbol
and mark whatever message you want
to make about it
right over its face:

(worldkarma)

This is a very direct
and
unfortunately often
brutal
way to deliver
a message.

And its a syntax that is already in use
for much of the rest
of the world.

Consider this:

( killercoke )

It's only America that hasn't figured out
that the new language
of the new Century
is already taken
root, is
already making meaning
and changing minds.
And you'd think that America would
have figured out
and learned to communicate
more tactfully,
after receiving the kind of message
they did
on a rather ill-fated September Day
some Nine Years Ago.

Attacking one's central imagery
clearly expresses
what the other culture
thinks
of that central imagery.

( cargolaw )




Yes,
we have to protect ourselves,
but
we don't have to kill them all.
They are
our brothers
They are
the lover
we need
when no one else understands
US.
They are our
polar opposites, the ones
we don't tell
the rest of our friends
we love.
They are our
alcoholic sisters,
bisexual brothers,
paranoic mothers,
all the nutty ones
the ones
the human race has shunned,
the ones we love.

( accidentalmysteries )

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So we have a choice
as the rocking sphere
swings inward
towards its magnetic
center:

a) to love the Other,
all of the
Others
who we really love
already
or b) to shun
them
completely,
even knowing
that the other
will always
be other and
honestly be
other
for US,
we who need them
to hold us together
so we might be
one.

(Astronomy Picture of the Day

2002Nov25 )

Another Thought on Second Life

Yo

Makropoulos again.

Yeah, the real one,

not the fake one.

~ ~ ~ ~

You see, the avatar that I occupy in this life

is actually channeling at least one other personality at

the same time. No, well, probably three*

Anyway, the reason why I have trouble getting my own time

on this blog lately

is because one of the other personalities she's channeling

has this book, see.

And she really wants to publish

this book, see.

And she's working on that,

and it takes a hell of a lot of time.

I'd love it if she'd just publish the damned thing,

'cause she's getting kind of interesting in this blog,

and she ain't a bad writer, so as soon as I can get her

on board, well, this blog may rock

a little more.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I spoke about Second Life

a day or two ago,

and all the reasons I don't like it.

Now I'm going to tell you

why I find it to be so fascinating.

I saw an episode of 

C.S.I. New York

where they were solving a murder

where the motivation,

and even the murderer, could be found

on Second Life.

Since I didn't know much

about Second Life at the time,

I thought it was

kind of cool

There was one scene,

where there was a fight

on Second Life.

Clearly, one can have a pretty wicked battle

under the disguise of
Second Life,

even get one's head cut off

a couple times,

and still walk away from it.

So I thought:

wouldn't it be cool if

nations could fight their wars

on Second Life

and live in peace

on the Planet Earth.

All the 

demented,

crazed,

warriors of the world

could just have it out

in internet land

and live

placid,

uneventful,

maybe even peaceful

lives

in our bodies.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

If you think about it that way,

Second Life

could be the absolute cure

of all the social ills of the earth:

we could just act out our naughtiness

virtually.

But honestly,

that's just crazy:

there will always be somebody

not happy to kill another in a Second Life;

they'll want to see what it's like to do it

in the Real, First Life, as well,

and so we'd have to be prepared and ready

to deal with that, in a civil way.

(That brings us back to the question of the Fall of Man,

and Reproduction, 

and how the Fall of Man

is actually linked with the compulsion

to reproduce (ie: see one's self

as if in a mirror.)  Please

read my other entries

on those topics to get my drift. . . . )

But, you see,

people who think they have to do something

in this Real Life are actually

people

who recognize that this Real Life

is just

a Second Life,

and therefore,

disposable.

There will always be people

like myself

not content to do it

in the Second Life,

and when those people have

murderous tendencies,

well, they're dangerous.

So anyway, 

that's why we still need

law and order

in this earthly life;

because that's

what we're here for,

to make sure we get it right

in the First Life, so we don't have to do
a Second Life.

However, let me propose:

the Second Life

can handle those times

when collectively,

a group (nation) wants to attack

another group  (nation).

Couldn't it?

If there was enough at stake

in the Second Life,

then,

it may suit us well

as a battle field.

It would appear,

after all,

that the next few generations

are best prepared

to fight on that terrain.

~~~~~~~~~

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:

merriamwebster

The Fall before the Fall, According to Makropoulos

1.

(from QueenofDenial )

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 . . . . 

Avatar: A Return To The Garden

a note on originality. . .  .

Now, when I was a girl, the wise old woman down the street was the most profound person I knew, and every word she uttered was pure, true, and absolutely hers.  When I was a teenager,  listening to my father talking about the new ideas of the day, I began to realize other people had thoughts equally as brilliant as the old woman down the street, and some people even had the same thoughts.  When I finally got a chance to learn to read, some time in my twenties, people were beginning to get concerned about receiving credit for the thoughts they wrote down.  I agreed; this is when my desire to write began, and it was accompanied by my belief that if I could write, my wonderful original ideas would be known for an eternity as mine and only mine.

I felt that way for over a hundred years, but I've gradually come to feel it is such an immature attitude, really, this belief that in this large, lovely world of ours one individual in one place could have a thought and be the only person to have it.  You can be certain that somewhere, thousands of miles away, or perhaps only on the next street, someone may be having a similar or the same thought, but not the means to express it.  And they may never have the means to express it, despite the brilliance of their thought.  So I have since come to believe that the myth of originality is really grounded in the phenomenon that I'd rather call "The I Wrote It First Syndrome."

But for a couple hundred years, especially in the West, men in particular lived under the illusion that one man was capable of having a single original thought, utterly different from every other man's thought, and definitely different from women's thought.  And men took ownership over thoughts, and got very uptight if someone said the same thing they said, without giving them credit.

Now, the internet has given us a new perspective: I'll have what I think is a brilliant, original thought, then Google it, only to find 250 pages of blogs and editorials and syllabi and articles on versions of my thought. It's impossible to know who wrote something first, or who may have thought it first.  This can be a really deflating and silencing experience, if I let it be.  Or, it can force us to think about thinking and expressing ourselves in a completely different way.  And yes, this is absolutely connected to the idea of the Grid, and its relationship to the Collective Mind.  The internet makes us realize that there is a collective mind, with a multitude of layers, embracing the earth, sort of like radio waves.  If we tune into the one we're "wired for" properly, we'll discover a thought, a priceless thought, that we share with many like-minded people.  That thought can empower us both individually, and as a species.

But that's something to pursue later.   Don't forget that image of the radio, though.

For now, I want to contemplate an idea that others have contemplated already: the idea that the movie Avatar's  Pandora is really Eden, and our longing for it is actually a longing for what we lost, or what we've had all along but not paid any attention to.

Where is Eden and how did we lose it?
Some believe that the original Eden was somewhere between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.  And perhaps that is the place where Adam and Eve hung their original hat.  However, I tend to believe Eden was and is the entire earth.  A virtual Pandora, indeed, with just as many beauties and mystical happenings as any fictional planet could ever have.  In fact, that burgeoning cauldron of young life that this planet once was was probably even more spectacular than anything James Cameron could imagine.

And one particularly beautiful life form that was here, brought here either by evolution or some divine decision, was human.  Shimmering and upright, seductive, vulnerable, and funny.  A delectable treat for the predators, but like every species, humans were given a capacity that they could use to save themselves and their species.  They were given a brain that was wired into a very complex system of senses.  Avatar acknowledges the cat-like nature of human-like creatures; humans are, like cats, capable of tuning into the intuitive, spiritual realm.  That's what the sixth sense is all about.  It's a sense that has been dulled over time.  But we have it.  That sense is directly related to bodily awareness, to the ability to be tuned into our physical surroundings by using our biggest organ: our skin.   It's rare that we think about that fact, but skin is an organ, and it is one with very precise functions, related to drawing nutrients from the air and the sun and to mediating the environment in which we live.

Neytiri, the Na'vi heroine in Avatar knows absolutely how to use her skin, and her inner eye, in combination with all her other senses (which for her are really secondary) in a wide range of circumstances and physical activities.  And this is what makes her, and her entire breed, so alluring and desirable.  But they are really not all that different from us.

We've absolutely lost our ability to use this complex combination of senses.  We rely on some of the weaker senses, like vision, which, you might note, Neytiri often uses last.  Quite frankly, the only time many humans today come even close to using their skin appropriately is when they're engaged with sex, and this is why some humans overindulge in it, the same way they might overindulge in alcohol and some drugs.  If we used our skin regularly, in the wide ranges of manners within which it is capable of being stimulated, then sex would be treated like the gift and sacrament it is really intended to be.  That's not to say it wouldn't be hot and steamy and wonderful; in fact it would be more hot and steamy and wonderful.   But since so many aspects of the sexual act have been fetishized, many of us have lost contact with the fact that the act of sex is the highest form of communion two humans can share, and it is at its richest when the people engaged in it have reached a very special level of mutual understanding.  And that doesn't imply that they should be married, or that the union need be heterosexual.  But it does imply that once two humans reach that level of union, they should feel no need to be with anyone else, because they are so absolutely in accord.

But again, in my usual way, I wonder off course.  Or maybe not.  In the Garden of Eden, that is how sex and sensuality would be.  And sensuality would not refer only to sex, it would refer to every interaction that we have with our natural environment.  And no one would get bent out of shape over it.  A bit like on Pandora.

Any human today who says they long to live on Pandora is really longing for a situation wherein all of our senses are alive again, and used in equal balance.  That, too, is why there's an increasing interest in survival reality shows, and horror films, and terror, and fear.  Since we don't know how, anymore, to interact with the natural world in a subtle way, we seek out activities that induce extreme adrenaline pumping interactions with the natural world.

It's because our senses have been dulled.  But what caused that dulling of the senses?

The Fall From Grace.  The Apple.

This brings me to one of my favorite books in the world, a book I can read again and again.  During the mid 1600's, after my first and greatest lover died, I spent twenty years or so living in a convent.  That first love, my greatest love, was the one who wanted to preserve my youth and beauty forever.  I wanted to get old with him, but unfortunately, his tonic worked.  I remained vitally youthful and alive, watching him age and whither.   But I didn't care; when we were together, I was so absolutely pleased to always be the only beauty in his eyes.  After he was gone, I grew to hate him, because his selfishness had damned me to wander the earth, alone, for an eternity, my forever young body forever the object of men's and women's lusts and desires.  I didn't really have any love of any kind, until very recently.  Yes, it felt like I was with my first love again, which is why when the eyes of my most recent love turned to flirtations with others, I grew so deeply hurt and sad.

But let's go back to the 1600's, in the convent, now in France, where I trained my voice to sing purely, and I poured over the Old Testament.  My favorite books were the Books of Genesis, Exodus, Ruth, Isaiah, the Proverbs, and the Psalms.  At that time, I took them quite literally, but since then I've gone through so many stages of understanding, and now I like to read them more in the tradition of Kabbalah (You have to understand, the only way I can keep these wonderful books fresh and alive for myself is to look at them in a number of ways.  The beauty of these books is that one can do precisely that, and each time find something that seems oh, so true.  Again, as with everything I'm writing here, I have to emphasize that I'm not claiming that what I'm saying is actually fact; this is just the way I now think about these books after 100s of years of reading them, and watching the stages of humanity passing me by. )

I take very literally parts of Chapter Three in Genesis, where the serpent approaches "the woman" and tells her that she will not die if she eats of the forbidden fruit, but rather "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." 

The apple is the fruit of knowledge; we all know that.  Christian, Jew, Muslim, we all know that.  But knowledge of what?

"And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons."  (Genesis 3:7)  For me,  that is one of the saddest lines - and perhaps most ridiculous images - in all of written literature.  Because at that instant, that instant of supposedly gaining knowledge, the woman and the man felt a need to hide their animal nature.  This was the first step towards dulling those senses that were intended to keep us in harmony with our natural environment.  It's been a snow-ball effect ever since, because this event, of course, was soon followed by jealousy, lust and competition, largely over a) a desire for something someone else has and/or b) an infatuation with another individual's body and its adornment.  Ornamentation and ostentation became the means by which humans judged each other, and rivalry set in.  Blood poured, soon after.  Think Cain and Abel.  Think Joseph and his coat of many colors.  Think every bloody gory story in history.

But let's get back to Genesis.  That sad, tragic moment of two creatures suddenly fumbling with leaves, attempting to find some way to cover themselves out of embarrassment over something that was just part of what they naturally were is followed by a comic scene:  "And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the Lord God among the trees and the garden."  (Genesis 3:6 -- yes, I'm using a King James translation, because I like the language so much.  I've read the Bible in so many languages, and some may come closer to the original meaning than others, but when I read this translation, well, I felt it put it somewhere in the same league as Shakespeare, so it has remained my favorite over the centuries.)

Yes, this is a comic moment -- imagine it: they heard the VOICE of God walking.  No, they did not hear His feet rustling in the fallen leaves, or His body pushing aside the growths.  They heard His voice, walking.  God is VOICE.  And then those too poor fools were foolish enough to hide, as if one can hide from God, their creator.  He does, after all, know all.  Goes to show that fruit of the tree of knowledge didn't really work, because they would have known that He would know immediately that they ate it, if the were really as smart as God, and they would have just stood there, buck naked, and faced Him, God-to-God.  After all, He was probably naked, too, if He was visible.

But no, they hid.  And He found them.  And He knew, immediately, what they had done.  And God was sad, because, quite frankly, He knew that they were perfect before they ate the fruit.  If they would have just grown and lived in Eden, in their natural state, they would have grown to be Gods, because God made them in His likeness, and gave them the environment that would feed and nourish His children until they grew to be just like Him.

Fundamentally, if we read this book this way, God forbade them to eat of the Tree of Knowledge because He knew that if they did, they would become mutant.  A part of their organism would grow faster than it was supposed to, and that part of their organism was their brain. 

I don't believe God cast humans out of the Garden, as the book of Genesis says.  He didn't have to.  The minute the man and the woman reached for those leaves to cover themselves; the minute they felt shame and guilt, they had left the garden.  So began the era of uncertainty.  Brains mutated.  Other parts of our systems atrophied and withered, as we relied more and more on the activity of the brain, working with the rather superficial perception of the eye.  Those two organs, working hyperactively in concert, created the ability to deceive and be deceived.   To be jealous; to be angry.  To desire what they eye can not see; and to feel that others are hiding things from us.

can we go back to the garden?
I'm not sure this is a question I can answer tonight.  I am very tired.  My mutant mind is old, though it's so full of things to say.  Yes, I do believe the garden is here.  The Garden is Earth.  And the Voice of God still walks in the Garden; we just haven't been listening.


But listening doesn't happen with only our ears.  Seeing doesn't occur through only our eyes.  We have to reawaken our bodies, our earthly avatars, to all their senses, and the first step towards doing that is to recognize that we all are, after all, creatures of the Earth.