Stepping Stones to Personal Healing

CHAPTER 25 On the Tree of Knowledge and How to Get Back to the Garden When we have had one of those stressful days, or even weeks, we may wonder why it is that we have to function in this world of suffering, and work and eat our food “by the sweat of our brow.” Why did God set us up with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the serpent when we, or our two primary ancestors, were still in that wonderful Garden of Eden? Why did He put that tree there in the first place? We would have been just fine there with the Tree of Life and still be able to enjoy the beauty, the harmony, and the balance of that special sheltered environment! Maybe we were meant to work through a learning period, wrestling with man’s knowledge, eventually to rise above its inherent limitations and then return to applying Divine Knowledge to our life. This was explained in a simple, yet profound teaching I attended, given by Rabbi Michael Shapiro. He said when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil they became aware of Good and Evil, which is like good and bad, right and wrong. It was through the act of absorbing that energy that they entered a world of greater density, of more limitations and illusions –– the world of judgment. And God’s warning given earlier about the Tree of Knowledge, that “in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen.2:17) becomes more meaningful when we understand that dying here is to be interpreted as having to move down into greater density. After all, God knew that He created us as immortal beings. So here we are, in our current earthly environment that apparently had to be created for us when we needed it to learn to work through our world of judgment. For Adam and Eve, before they ate the forbidden fruit, there was no good or bad, as everything was in harmony and balance. The only discernment they had to make in that dimension was the one between true and false, relating to the state of affairs in what is called the astral plane of existence in our spiritual studies. Is this indeed a fruit we will enjoy eating? True or false? We will find out the moment we eat it. This discernment separates the real from the unreal, which is of a higher order than the discernment between good and bad, which is so often, if not always, based upon illusionary perceptions. So maybe the story of the Garden is mainly a symbolic representation of the higher astral world where we dwelled until it was time to dive down into the harsh physical reality of the third dimension, and consequently into suffering; our earth school of learning. So what hope is offered by these insights? Do they offer us a key to open up the Garden again or to persuade the cherubim at the Gates to let us back through? Of course! All we have to do to be allowed back in is to give up our judgments! So, just simply obeying the Divine commandment not to judge can indeed accomplish a transformation of our world back into an earthly paradise. How simple and yet how difficult. We are, through our many incarnations in this earth plane, totally soaked and saturated with judgments about everything and everyone, including ourselves. We are finally becoming aware in the holistic health arena how damaging this attitude has been and still is to our mental, emotional and physical state of health, as was explained in chapter 20. Does this provide any motivation to move away, or rise above the energy or the world of judgment? I sincerely hope so, as our world reflects clearly enough the need for such a collective human initiative. If we just start by monitoring our thought processes and catch ourselves when we engage in making a judgment, we can change our attitude in that moment to one of allowing that person or that situation to be imperfect, as we are all still imperfect; and also allow everyone in each situation, including ourselves, to learn and grow in our own way, to make our own mistakes, thus no longer shutting down our love for those other persons or ourselves as we always do when we judge. In this way we restore love as the primary interaction as it is meant to be in our world, or even our universe, and in doing so we will uplift our planet with us, finding ourselves before we know it back in the Garden of Eden. So let us start today to work toward this ideal! Let us switch our mind monitors on and reset those dials from judging to allowing! I will see you later in the Garden! Make a list of your judgments which you have not yet been able or willing to let go of, and reflect on how this delays our collective return to the Garden.