The Shocking Truth About Adam & Eve That Nobody Told You

The story of Adam and Eve is not just the story of two first people. It's a story of all of us because we're all their descendants. And we're not just their descendants, but their experience created a pattern which sort of became the template for the human psyche. And when we understand what they went through, we can understand why we are collectively humanity the way that we are and what was broken and what needs to be fixed. So let's talk about the prohibition against eating from the tree of knowledge. There's two trees in the garden. Garden of Eden. Uh the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. And the the full name is the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Don't eat from that tree. Okay. What is this tree of knowledge of good and evil? You're telling me that before they ate from it, they were amoral. They didn't know the difference between right and wrong. You know, some people imagine Adam and Eve as primitive. You know, people who think of them like caveman, I don't know, Fred Flintstone or something. Adam and Eve were the greatest specimens of humanity. They were uh the first they were the prototype and they were spiritual giants. They were certainly not amoral. Amal as opposed to immoral. Of course, immoral means you know right and wrong and you do wrong anyway. Amoral means you have no concept of morality. What it means is this. And we can tell from the story after they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God comes to Adam and says, "Where are you?" And Adam says that he was hiding. And God says, "What are you wearing?" Put together clothing from from leaves, from fig leaves. That's actually accurate, by the way. It's not one of those things that come from Renaissance artists depiction. They did make clothing out of fig leaves. The tree, by the way, itself was was a fig tree. So, from the same tree that they ate from that caused their uh downfall, they used those leaves to make the the clothing. Interesting aside, figs are completely kosher for consumption. But there were certain very spiritual people who as an extra level of piety avoided eating figs for that reason. At any rate, so God says, "Uh, why are you wearing clothing?" because I didn't want to be naked. God says, "Who told you you were naked?" Um, what does it mean? Who told you you you were naked? Again, do you think they were children? I mean, even a child knows they're naked. I mean, who doesn't know they're naked? A a baby a baby has no a baby runs around without a diaper on and has no concept that it means anything, right? So the reality is yes what Adam and Eve were lacking was the self-consciousness the self-awareness that any not only adult has but even even children have child has a sense of modesty right a child knows at a certain age you know you uh don't change your clothes out in the middle the living room, right? These are private things. Adam and Eve before the sin, they were spiritual giants. They were, I mean, privy to the secrets of the universe. Said that when Adam was created, he could see from one end of the universe to the other. And yet they had no sense of selfawareness to the extent that their own nakedness had no meaning to them. The tree of knowledge of knowledge of good and evil injected that within them. All of a sudden, they became aware that hold on, you can use your nakedness for other stuff than its designed purpose. That's the knowledge of good and evil. The knowledge of good and evil means to become sophisticated and savvy and to realize that you could actually misappropriate things. You have free will and you could use things not in line with their design and you can get away with it, so to speak. It'll work. In other words, before the sin of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They knew they were naked. They knew they had reproductive organs, but it didn't mean anything to them. It wasn't particularly meaningful to them. It was just a body part that you do a mitzvah with, which is be fruitful and multiply. The labba once said that before the tree of the sin of knowledge of good and evil, a person would be as embarrassed of his reproductive organs as you were embarrassed of the arm upon which you wind the fill in straps. Meaning not embarrassed at all. It's just the body part that you use to do a mitzvah. meaning to say in their state pre sin they could not conceive of their minds could not fathom of using something in a way that God had not designed it to be used after the sin they became aware oh these body parts we could come up with our own purposes for them and even though they hadn't done that but just the awareness that it could be used that way that you could misappropriate these body parts made them shameful and they covered themselves. So another way of understanding the tree of knowledge of good and evil is understanding it as the source of human selfawareness. And by self-awareness, I don't mean in a good sense of like being humble and owning your faults and working on them. I mean self-awareness in the sense of crippling self-consciousness, the root of toxic shame. The awareness that I can misappropriate my free will to live in a way that is misaligned with my creator's purpose for me. And even if I don't do it, just the knowledge that I could do it is a source of existential discomfort. So what happened? What happened is that the tree of knowledge injected within the human psyche, not just in Adam and Eve as individuals, but within all of their descendants, meaning all of humanity, this ego, the separate sense of self, the sense that we can do as we please. We can defy our own design and go away from our source. Now, that's not just shameful in the sense of knowing that there you have the potential to do things that God doesn't want you to do. It's also very lonely because what it does is it gives you the mental freedom to be able to imagine yourself as an entity apart from the one. Now, in reality, there is nothing apart from the one. That's why it's the one. There's nothing apart from it. there's only God. But what happened at that moment, at that juncture in history, that pivotal juncture in history, is that humanity had it installed like a virus that gets into the operating system, this concept of there's God and there's me. And what I'm saying is before you even do something sinful, let's say you don't even do anything sinful, but just the feeling of separation. There's God over there. There's me over here. Now, even if you only do good things, but there's still this feeling of separation. And that feeling of separation from the one that is the source of all existential angst for all humanity. That feeling of wanting to be a part of and instead feeling apart from, lonely in a crowded room, terminal uniqueness, uncomfortable in your own skin. All of that stuff comes from the capacity of the ego to imagine itself as an entity separate and distinct from the one. Now, I'll tell you something interesting. Noah came 10 generations after Adam and Eve, and he sought to rectify this. You know that whole story about after he got off of the ark, he planted a vineyard and he harvested the grapes and he made wine. A whole process just to what? Make a frat party where he got drunk. He passed out naked in the tent. This whole debacle. What's up with that? Like Noah was a righteous man. So uniquely righteous that he alone and his family were saved from the flood. It wasn't an accident. Noah was trying to rectify the problem that self-consciousness had created. Self-consciousness created this feeling of separation from God, from the one, from the everything. Noah wanted to rectify that. Well, how do you do that? There's something called antis-consciousness medication. Some call it liquid courage. It numbs the ego. It makes you forget yourself. It's called wine. A little alcohol. Now, how much of it did he want to drink? Just a little buzz to get a little socially lubricated at a cocktail party. No, he wanted to go much much more into the realm of selfobliteration than that. Remember, the self is the curse. The self is the problem. The self is the the separation from the everything. So, he's trying to blow past that. Well, how far does he have to go? How much does he have to drink? So he looks at the first occasion where the first symptom of self-consciousness presented itself which was Adam and Eve being ashamed of their nakedness. All right. So if human self-consciousness was first evidenced in the shame surrounding nakedness as nakedness represents sexuality. Let's be specific. How much does Noah have to drink to erase that? Enough to pass out naked and not care. And that's precisely what happened. And he knew exactly what he was going for. And he did it. And you're going to say, but there was this terrible debacle that ensued. And I'll say hindsight is always 2020. Yes. Looking back, you can say, Noah, that was a very bad plan. thought at the time, you know, like they say, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Noah was only trying to rescue humanity by seizing the opportunity, having just left the ark, seeing a new world. Says he left the ark and saw a new world. The world had just been cleansed. The flood was not a punishment. It was a cleansing. And he saw a new opportunity and a newly cleansed world to create a new paradigm with the removal of self-consciousness. didn't work. It led to disgrace and to violence and uh falling out in the family. So was obviously it was not the right direction. But here's the thing to understand. The Adam and Eve paradigm is the curse of selfconsciousness. The Noah paradigm is the attempt to rectify problem of self-consciousness through the pursuit of self-obliteration. And these become like the two um options. Self-consciousness, self-obliteration. Self-consciousness, self-obliteration. Well, self-consciousness, that's untenable. That's untenable. You can't live. You can't you can't be fully present. You can't just be. You can't legitimately have an experience because you're actually experiencing your experience of the experience. You know, that being removed from reality because you're you're watching it. you're watching yourself having the experience. So that's the crippling self-consciousness which doesn't let you live. Then there's self-obliteration which is the antidote to that. But self-obliteration has terrible side effects because you know like in Noah's case it led to sexual debasement and to violence and you know when when you're self-obliterated all types of terrible stuff happens and you cause problems or either you do violence to others or they do violence to you. It's it's it's not a way to live. But then you know these just sort of bounce back and forth between these two options. And of course the the real direction that humanity needed to learn how to move in is a third option which is self-trcendence. Self-trcendence is the ability to rise above the ego without destroying ego. It's gentle. It's compassionate. It's release as opposed to violent engagement. So what we essentially are struggling with for all these millennia is figuring out how to gently rise above the ego to let go of the ego to let go of these attachments that separate us from the one from the everything. That's been the the the main objective of humanity since I was going to say day one, but it wasn't day one. It was day six. Adam and Eve were created and sinned on the sixth day of creation. And let's make this very practical. For our part, the way that we are part of the solution, part of the rectification, the healing is by pursuing selflessness. Not in a violent way of destroying the ego, but in a gentle way of finding ways of surrendering to that which is greater than ourselves. That's poetry. It's too lofty. Let me say it practically. Acts of service. Make yourself useful when you enter a room. Instead of looking around, scoping around what could I extract from this situation? Who can I get to do me a favor? Who, you know, in instead of looking at it as me me, you enter a room as a a conduit or a potential conduit for God's will. Where can I be God's arm in this situation? Where can I surrender myself to being the vehicle for God's compassion and generosity to be revealed here in this situation? And then being able to wait with humility and silence and patience to be called upon. And if you're not called upon, great. Then you sit there comfortably until you're called upon. So when we're able to move through life like that, selflessly focused on service, focused on usefulness, that is how we rectify, truly rectify the sin of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Hi there. I hope you're enjoying this. 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