Once upon a time God created Paradise.[1] Among the many creatures of Paradise He created the Serpent, which dreamed of a world different from Paradise, she wanted to be free, to create herself an alternative reality, to show to herself that she was different, single, unique, one, independent, not a puppet but a Creator – she wanted nothing to do with Love and its fusion fragrance – how can one be one in Paradise where everything is everything?
The Serpent spent half of her life imagining that she was someplace else, but, while doing so she was absolutely alone. The birds would not stop singing the wonderment, the critters would not stop carrying the happiness on and on. While independent, the snake was all alone, and back in the true world, where everything was everything, she was a perfect Serpent, but, she felt, just another one, a perfection in the midst of billions of other equally perfect perfections. Both worlds made her want for more – a place where she could be King, a Creator, Free. The perfect place, or so she thought, would be to have a world where others would also be able to agree with her on how things were. If she felt lonely, she would join with the loneliness of others to reinforce her happiness of living in a world of alones: a world imagined by herself but shared (and, in a sense, lived) by others.
So she plead and plead to God to create some living-toys for her: Someone or something that could be deceived into thinking that he was in a place different from Paradise, a place imagined but turned real in and through imagination. To do that she would have to make him ashamed, believing that he was separated, divided, isolated from the whole, that there could be something other than Paradise, something apart – in fact, as the Serpent would soon find out, that would be Hell! A place of imagination, but imagination so convincing that it could provide suffering and shame for the abiding mind for ages.[2]
It is easy to understand how God must have felt hindered at the thought of creating a perfect being that would suffer by picturing itself as imperfect, a being so ashamed of his own image that could not look himself naked in the mirror without feeling shame or guilty, that could not truly want the fusion with another without consider itself perverse. A being that would have to chastise himself all the time for its hallucinated guilt and ugliness. But at the same time, it seems, God would not be able to simply dismiss the the Serpent’s wish. For the Serpent, perfect has everything else, had a sacred and perfect desire of wanting to transcend the World made for her. She wanted to be a Creator and not only an actor. In fact, just by wanting to be a creator she had already ceased to be a mere actor, and God, like He loved everything, Loved also the Serpent, in fact her wish to be bigger, was only a sprouting whish to be closer to Him, although she might not understand it as so for now.
And so Man was born, from a wish to be bigger than Being! God waited for the Serpent to be asleep and took off a part of her tail. He mixed the tail with the dust of the earth, and from the mixture he created Man. He created him with much intelligence, for it would take much conceiving and imagination to deny the obviousness of Paradise and to believe in the crazy fancies of the Serpent. And all that cunning could perhaps one day become useful when Man decided himself to Create, and, by Creating, to become once again one with the Creator!
When Man awoke he was still half-awake to the Real Paradise, but also, his half-snake mind, was also half-awake to the dream of separateness. God told him an half-lie: he said to Man: we are made at the same resemblance, we resemble Life and Beautifulness, all the things that surround you, were made for you, to Love and Honor, as yourself, as your own body. Man was half enlightened and half conceited. God, seeing the long journey of apparent suffering that lay before Man, warned him: do not eat of what the Serpent has in store or you will surely die for Paradise, regarding everything else you may eat. When Man fell asleep God took out a rib from his body, and mixed it with his own matter. He thus created the Woman out of the Man, which was made from the Serpent, and half from Himself. He wanted the woman to remain closer to the Heart of the universe. He knew that Man, in his hunger to overcome his abyssal loneliness would kill, imprison, devastate, violate, desecrate, at least to his mind, all that could save him. He made the Woman the sometimes faithful depositary of His own Heart. So that, when Man was utterly disappointed with separateness, he would be able to find in the woman a likeness but also a door to Eternity, the Eternity that was all around him, and would always be, although unreckoned.
The next day, the Snake was very happy, without understanding that she was going to fool a part of herself, for indeed, man was just a part of her, and the woman too, only more mixed with the Heart of God. The snake, at first, worked hard to maintain her distance. She saw how man, had freshly awakened to Paradise, was still fascinated with each small moment and each small thing, as if the grandest mystery was how such beautiful wonderment could fit in such a small moment, in such a small thing. But then, everything was related, and, even without understanding and science, Man and Woman could intuit that the oyster in their front had a fingerprint of eternity, or at least billions of years, and that all that they saw was a mere fraction, infinitesimal, of what there was to see, and the smallest thing depended from the existence of the whole. Today, many years later, we understand how whole galaxies through billions of years were needed to make a nail or a simple oyster. All that we see comes from the deepest core of the whole universe.
But, as days passed, Man, inheriting the wish for independence of the snake, was becoming more and more bored with beautifulness. He wanted more, he didn’t know what it was, but a deep desire, a restlessness, was awakening in him: there was something more, he was sure, and so was the woman. Both knew that life could not be only that wonderment, there must have been more than this “Paradise”, there must be more. And, slowly but surely, they began approaching the tree of knowledge where the Serpent lied. Knowledge was a way to know “about” something, not to be in communion with the tree and the sky, but to know about the tree and the sky. To be different from them. One day, at last, they found the snake. To the woman the snake offered the apple, saying: with this you will get man’s desire, he will be your forever, forever desiring your heart, in him you will have an admirer, a worker, a protector, a fighter, someone that will adore you so much, that he will be willing to even die for you (or to kill you, but that she didn’t say at the time). So the woman ate the apple, wanting to become beautiful, even more than she was, and attractive, and independent, subjugating by beauty and inner wisdom all men. Different, isolated, but rulling. To the man the snake told stories about being the master and commander of the whole world. She said to man that it was his place to command all nature and to use it as he would find fit, she also said that even God was made in the image of Man! The fact that Man eventually believed that shows how eloigned he still was from the Universe. But Man felt bigger, more important, different from the rest: a Commander in Chief of all that surrounded them, the decider.
In all the time the conversation with the snake took place, God was always present, how could He not have been? How could He not have known? But the snake did not notice him, and, for both to the woman and man, He became invisible, for they were so absorbed in dreams, of the greatness that they wanted to have, that they were unable to see the greatness that already is everywhere and of which they are an unalienable part. But when they finally entered the Serpent’s vision, and accepted this fabulated concept of conceit, suddenly God became visible again, but, this time, they were horrified of seeing him. God was in their own nakedness, and they were ashamed of being God’s nature, so they covered themselves with leaves and imagined that they were not naked under the leaves, that the leaves were not themselves naked, in fact that nakedness is God unraveled, and, while while they attempted to cover themselves, they could not see God, even when they wanted to, for He was not where they searched, rather, He was where they did not want to look.
Although God saw their thoughts, felt their feelings, and transparent as their desires, ambitions, concepts and strategies were to Him, they could not see Him in any way. Being Perfect He has not stopped Loving them and tender them, and giving them everything they needed to evolve and transcend the difficulties that awaited those who want to stay hand-in-hand with the Co-Creator. Those who want to realize. But although God was so infinitely close, as almost indistinguishable from reality, they could not see Him, for He, the True God, was necessarily hidden in the nakedness and connectedness of everything, which was precisely what, wanting to be One, they could not see or want to see. And because God stood away from their eyes for so long they started wandering and longing for Him, and so the Serpent disguised herself has God, a well-dressed God, not naked. She then arranged a companion snake to make company to Man and Woman for a short while and, dressed up as a dressed God went up to Man, Woman and snake . Her objective was clear: to release both Man and Woman from the idea of Paradise: as long as Man and Woman searched for the naked God, and remembered that they were in Paradise, they could not believe that their nakedness was evil, and loving their nakedness, their true and unpretentious identity - natural, one with bugs and stars - they could not be chained to the world of shadows, of lies, of separateness, that the Serpent had created and adored as her own ticket to individuality. But going separate from the Whole meant also that they could grow, for one thing is to be part of the whole, another is to know to be part of the whole. Although the serpent did not quite fully understand the details of what she was going after, she knew she wanted it. That is why she appeared to both Man and Woman under the form of a well-dressed God, to made them free from happiness: and, it was in that uniform that the Serpent told the three:
“To the snake the disguised Serpent said: You are ugly - Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals!
This was meant to be heard by both Men and Woman so that they could feel: You have no one to rely on, I, a well-dressed God, have abandoned you, and the snake which open your eyes, but, in any case, is very badly dressed, will be, from now on, your enemy.
Be ashamed, be closed, uptight, be afraid of opening up to life. Whenever you open up, so that life flows through you, you will feel fear of being ripped apart, of loosing your own life, of being damaged: the greatest gift of life: giving birth, will not be a reason to open to life and be ecstatic, for instead of sexual pleasure, it will be with great pain you will give birth to children, and the more you open up the more you will be ripped apart: for your desire will be for your husband, and he will use it to rule over you. So, the snake continued: Don’t be open, close yourself up, close yourself to life.
Now the Snake turned to Man, to tame Man’s Creativity she said - in the form of a dressed as powerful and distant God – when naked you had pleasure in creating, and creation was both beautiful and flowed easily and pleasurably, now, that half of you is hidden, Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
The words of the Serpent thoroughly convinced both Man and Woman that they had, in fact, been kicked out Paradise. In fact, the ideia of the True God, who had nothing but Love to give, was unimaginable to them: in their shame they had severed the contact with the Paradise that was all around them, had always been all around them, and still would be, even in the most peril of situations, all around them. But neither Man or Woman could see it, nor imagine it. And the Loving God that was there. Infinitely close, still nursed them, and made them breed and sing and feel, was nevertheless as inaccessible to their imaginations as their shame, of being who they were, was strong and hide their true natures. For God was hiding in the nakedness of their own beings, and, hiding God, they were in fact cursed, by themselves, by the Serpent, which was in fact a part of themselves, to feeling lost and the senseless all around (which they tried to hide with preposterous religions). Although “cursed” is perhaps not a good word, for they were aiming for something so close to God that could only be brought about, not by nature, but by freedom. And all that they were now suffering, all the lies and illusions, were in fact necessary for their growth.
But Man and Woman, although guided by Beauty in many moments of their lifes, lived immersed in a half-world. On the one hand, they were definitely alive: they could see and feel and knew, but they were also immersed in a hopeless confusion that could only be surpassed not by "solving" it with the mind and concepts, but by replacing it with being Love: the door to the fragrance of Beauty, Mystery and Sacredness of this Universe, in fact, the Door to Paradise. Their “will to power” had created a Hell, of separateness, of isolation, that only a pure act of love could, here and there, transpose. Robed from their true selves, Man and Woman wandered through the world, lost and full of fear, afraid of getting ripped by the sea of love all around them, they were close and up-tied, seeing sex as a crime, child-bearing as suffering, work as painful. Things they did were disconnected from their true nature, and they did them without pleasure. They were alone, disconnected, from the whole, from one another, but, in fact, a part of them, the living part, knew, that they were striving for something Big, a Paradise they knew by Heart, a Companionship they would somehow, sometime, attain, an infinite Love bounded them, in their beings, in their perfect hearst and minds and eyes, to a Love so Infinite, so infinitely close and so far-away... they could almost touch it, sometimes, and, nevertheless it seemed so invisible, so unattainable, so Real!
This is the true story of Adam and Eve, the story of all of us, and the Serpent that lies inside of Us.
See Yourself naked in the Mirror:
You are Beautiful,
Longing for Sex,
Hoping for Kisses,
Looking forward to the Fusion,
You already have and are,
But don’t Recognize,
With the
A L L
. . .
^ In fact, because He was perfect, He could only have created Paradise and nothing less than Perfect, and He did. This is Paradise, the World where you and I meet, now and forever, suspended on the perfectly harmonious laws of physics, full of mystery and infinity complexity, gigantic in size, precise to every minute detail, full of diversity, connected through the far reaches of Space & Time: this is Paradise – Here & Now – and you are part of it.
This story is about Adam and Eve, which is in fact the story of the Self, of the shame that turns nakedness into a sin, asphyxiates creativity replacing it by ‘work’, and annihilates the ecstasy of opening up to a new life, replacing it with the fear of death and rupture. In a sense, feeling shame / hiding is the door to Hell, while being connected is Paradise.
But how did Man, such a splendid part in a splendid Creation, come to believe that he was kicked out of Paradise? How could he have become blind to the Presence of God in trees, and fruits, and every living and beyond-living thing? This is the story of the blindness of Men and how it began.
^ For the whole is so beautiful, so full of light, that no being that could see itself fully connected with nature in each and every sense, no being that could see himself naked and beautiful, entirely beautiful and naturally so, with no forced additions or deletions, with no shame, no being that could see himself and the world without bias could possible fail to absorb the truth: that he was not only in Paradise, but also a part of Paradise.
p.