Knowledge of Good and Evil

Another email to a friend

As far as consciousness, the knowledge of good and evil, original sin and becoming like a child again to enter the Kindgom:

My view is that there are individual and community aspects to the fall or original sin that are both separate and intertwined.  I believe the best basic definition of consciousness is simply awareness, which quickly leads to the ability to see ourselves as separate from everything else and then evaluate ourselves in relation to everything else.  From this we developed the ability to 

1 - be selfish and gain advantages for ourselves at the expense of others (evil), which leads everyone else to want or feel they need to do the same and endless conflict (worldliness).  Or 

2- to look out for the benefit of The Whole more than our own individual or separate interests (good), which of course turns out to be good for us also since we are part of The Whole and leads others to want to reciprocate, which becomes the Kingdom when embraced by a community. 

So the individual aspect of the fall or original sin is that we use our awareness of being separate and thinking to maximizing our own safety and interests.  This starts young, probably around the terrible twos when kids are testing their boundaries to see how advantageously to themselves they can arrange things.  Kids this age also like to be generous, but generally trend towards being spoiled selfish brats if not led in various ways towards looking out for others.  And of course we should not forget that life is full of unavoidable pain and suffering (starting with child birth from the child’s perspective), which everyone tries to avoid.  Basically all I am saying here is that we have an inherent tendency to be selfish to the extent we have not been taught by our community and life to be more concerned about a greater good than our own and we probably never get rid of it completely.*

When this inherent tendency towards selfishness (getting as much as we can and avoiding as much pain as we can) mixes with the same in others we get endless conflicts, including holding emotional currency over others (basically subtle emotional hostage taking and blackmail).  This is the corporate/community part and the trauma/pain/suffering that we as humans needlessly inflict upon one another, which teaches us that we must hide the part of us that wants to be a part of rather than separate because that is the part of us that can and often will be hurt as well as manipulated and exploited for others selfish ends if not hidden.  This is what we must unlearn or let go of and “turn and become like a child again” in order to enter the Kingdom.  I do not think that Jesus meant that is the only thing necessary (because we will still have our inherent selfishness), but that is one component necessary. 

And it is probably the first thing necessary, because it is only after we let go of this pain and the fear it creates, that we are capable of starting to live from our secret place where we know we are united with everything else.  As we start to live from that place (which of course is not supposed to stay hidden) and experience the joy of being found, whole, and connected (at least to an extent) this is the fuel that convinces us to relinquish our separate based motivations and prioritize how we might enrich things beyond us.  And as we do this we experience more joy and faith that further propels us. When we get off track by looking out for ourselves more than others (even if doing generous things for the wrong reasons or recognition) we will quickly know because we will experience the pain of being separated from the place within that connects to everything else and will thus go back to feeling lost, broken, and separate, which is often all the more excruciating after experiencing the opposite.

*There are beneficial functions of looking for advantages and competing with others. 

1 - It pushes people beyond what they would normally think they were capable of and thus would attempt to achieve without the competition, which ends up being good for the community as they achieve more than they otherwise would.   

2 – They look for better ways to do things in order to win, which leads to innovations that can serve humanity and beyond well if used for that purpose. 

3 – In being pushed to dig so deep and find strength beyond what they knew they had during the preparation or competition or after losing, they will often tap into the place we connect to things beyond ourselves, which is the part that connects to God.  In indigenous cultures that do not encourage competition, often various rites of passage serve this function to some extent.

Along these lines I love the saying, “Success is failure turned inside out” and the poem it comes from, which I think is trying to express what I am here with some of the benefits of competition and tough challenges.  In my own words that would be something like, the accumulation and then coalescing of tiny partial successes within what seems like failures is what leads to finding ourselves and success, all at the same time, if we persevere through what seems like failures, but is actually our necessary journey.  This is the process of chiseling away at the things that keep us separated to see glimpses of who we are in God, as we learn from great challenges that push us seemingly beyond ourselves to this source of greater power within us and beyond us.