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TheAlchemist

Reinterpreting biblical stories

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I was raised up a Christian, went through the usual route of questioning and becoming atheist because the literal interpretations seemed too magical and simplistic. Now that I have had some spiritual and nondual insights, some of the biblical stories have started to make a lot more sense. Not in the literal sense, but as metaphors that represent mystical states of consciousness. It's really exciting to hear or read about some biblical story I had almost forgetten about, and then having it make a ton of sense from a totally new perspective. 

For example, the Garden of Eden.

Adam and Eve live in a paradise created by God, in bliss, basically in heaven on earth.

Then along comes the snake boi (satan) and convinces them to eat from the tree of good and evil (duality).

They take the bite and suddenly feel separate from their surroundings, they become aware of their nakedness (ego mind, identification with the limited self). They become capable of feeling shame/imperfection.

They enter the barren lands of suffering/imperfection and there starts the story of man. 

But in the background, even in the traditional Christian worldview, there is the one source (God) of everything, including Satan. So the separation was just a single mad thought (as ACIM would state). It popped up in Gods mind, and that created a dream, an illusion of being separate from the source. Although from Gods pov, it never even happened as some event, because it is still happening within the oneness, and isn't seperate from it. 

Satan=separation/ego/scarcity/fear

God=oneness/perfection/love

Christians say it is blasphemous and even satanic to call yourself God, but from this other interpretation the only satanic thing would be the belief in being seperate from God, since that idea of seperation is the source of all evil and it is what Satan (ego) represents. 

So perhaps awakening is just becoming aware of the whole (God) and seeing that no separation ever even happened, just an imagination of it. 

I'm still not totally sure why these stories are so sticky in human minds though. Is it because a) they simply have survival value for the ego or b) people gravitate towards them because they have deep intuitions that they are pointing towards some truth, like their infinite Self. Perhaps a bit of both?


"Only that which can change can continue."

-James P. Carse

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1 hour ago, TheAlchemist said:

So perhaps awakening is just becoming aware of the whole (God) and seeing that no separation ever even happened, just an imagination of it. 

Yep. ?

Quote

I'm still not totally sure why these stories are so sticky in human minds though. Is it because a) they simply have survival value for the ego or b) people gravitate towards them because they have deep intuitions that they are pointing towards some truth, like their infinite Self. Perhaps a bit of both?

In a nutshell, it’s because people project all their fears onto being alone, rather than ‘emptying their cup’ & realizing they made it up. 

Folks want to feel good (the goodness that is God), and unknowingly circumvent themselves / settle for belief / the surface level feeling of thinking they are good. Like “being Christian is good, so I’m Christian, I’m going to Heaven when I die, so I’m good”. It’s a settling for status quo, social inclusion, projected acceptance, assumed righteousness. This pigeonholes Jesus as some kind of recruiter for a religion / saver of souls / leader, and thus what he said, which Christianity was founded upon, is actually unfortunately, pretty much entirely, missed.

The Bible also says what to do about this ‘knowledge of good & evil’ / ‘shame’ situation. God hung a flaming (the burn of judgement) sword (the truth that cuts through dogma & belief) pointing to the tree of life (creating consciously / the path of realization you are the goodness, the creator). I interpret this as when you experience what you do and don’t like, focus on what you do like, and as such you are creating it in your life, and well on your way to realizing the magnitude of which you are indeed the creator, the goodness that Is. You end up living the life you most want to & realizing you actually created the Bible, via apparently forgetting that you did (are). 


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2 hours ago, TheAlchemist said:

Christians say it is blasphemous and even satanic to call yourself God, but from this other interpretation the only satanic thing would be the belief in being seperate from God, since that idea of seperation is the source of all evil and it is what Satan (ego) represents. 

So perhaps awakening is just becoming aware of the whole (God) and seeing that no separation ever even happened, just an imagination of it. 

I'm still not totally sure why these stories are so sticky in human minds though. Is it because a) they simply have survival value for the ego or b) people gravitate towards them because they have deep intuitions that they are pointing towards some truth, like their infinite Self. Perhaps a bit of both?

Stories have the ability to hold in place emotional connection, while also allowing the listener to disconnect and let go of the (previous personal story) of self identity. That's the immense potential power of a story. 

For a religious person whose story says "I am inferior to God" the new thought, "I am God" may undo this. There's an analogy of using another thorn (a false belief) to remove the initial thorn imbedded in the skin. In the end both are thrown away. "I am God" is a thorn that removes a thorn. Works slightly different for the atheist, perhaps. 

If you are aware that a story is not true, and yet has a kind of deeper truth that speaks only to something deeper beyond you, it is making use of an illusion to dispel the actual illusion that is both the belief and the believer. 

“Fiction is the lie that tells the truth” -Neil Gaiman

Edited by mandyjw

My Youtube Channel- Light on Earth “We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”― Robert Frost

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@TheAlchemist

7 hours ago, TheAlchemist said:

 

@TheAlchemistI find it hilarious when hardcore materialists divide the understanding of Reality into an exalted, perfected form of Science with quasi-religious qualities, and a dumbed down, literal interpretation of metaphysical myths, in a double fallacy where hard-nosed materialism is the only refuge for an advanced mind. They seem completely oblivious of the metaphorical spirit of many of those religious tales. 

As you say (and regardless of some people interpreting them literally), after some insights, many of the old stories can be correctly understood and reveal from radical nondual awakenings to kundalini risings, etc.


This is my forest, my joy, my love and my shelter, the music I compose: loismusic.com

 

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20 hours ago, Nahm said:

Yep. ?

In a nutshell, it’s because people project all their fears onto being alone, rather than ‘emptying their cup’ & realizing they made it up. 

Folks want to feel good (the goodness that is God), and unknowingly circumvent themselves / settle for belief / the surface level feeling of thinking they are good. Like “being Christian is good, so I’m Christian, I’m going to Heaven when I die, so I’m good”. It’s a settling for status quo, social inclusion, projected acceptance, assumed righteousness. This pigeonholes Jesus as some kind of recruiter for a religion / saver of souls / leader, and thus what he said, which Christianity was founded upon, is actually unfortunately, pretty much entirely, missed.

The Bible also says what to do about this ‘knowledge of good & evil’ / ‘shame’ situation. God hung a flaming (the burn of judgement) sword (the truth that cuts through dogma & belief) pointing to the tree of life (creating consciously / the path of realization you are the goodness, the creator). I interpret this as when you experience what you do and don’t like, focus on what you do like, and as such you are creating it in your life, and well on your way to realizing the magnitude of which you are indeed the creator, the goodness that Is. You end up living the life you most want to & realizing you actually created the Bible, via apparently forgetting that you did (are). 

A lot to reflect on here. Thanks. 

20 hours ago, mandyjw said:

Stories have the ability to hold in place emotional connection, while also allowing the listener to disconnect and let go of the (previous personal story) of self identity. That's the immense potential power of a story. 

For a religious person whose story says "I am inferior to God" the new thought, "I am God" may undo this. There's an analogy of using another thorn (a false belief) to remove the initial thorn imbedded in the skin. In the end both are thrown away. "I am God" is a thorn that removes a thorn. Works slightly different for the atheist, perhaps. 

If you are aware that a story is not true, and yet has a kind of deeper truth that speaks only to something deeper beyond you, it is making use of an illusion to dispel the actual illusion that is both the belief and the believer. 

“Fiction is the lie that tells the truth” -Neil Gaiman

This is great. Insightful analogy. 

 

5 hours ago, Husseinisdoingfine said:

You completely misinterpreted the Adam and Eve garden story, the legit interpretations of the story have a very practical spiritual meaning that new agers alike can learn from. 

Essentially, we were all with God at one point, and now we are not. When Adam and Eve left the garden Eden, they entered into the fallen state. The fallen realm is where we as humans are currently at right now, it is considered a fallen realm because we are disconnected from God. We are not with God, and thus we suffer in hell (a state of mind). The purpose of spirituality is to reconnect us with God and bring us into heaven (also a state of mind), thus overcoming the fallen realm. 

Ta-da...

Who says what is the "right" interpretation though? Consensus? Biblical scholars? The bible didn't come with a manual of interpretation. And if there's consensus about some interpretation, it's not a real sign of its truth, rather it would more often be a sign of its falsehood, since most of us are very much engaged in survival and would choose the interpretation that best helps us get by in day to day life, regardless of its truth. 

I don't find your interpretation necessarily inconsistent with my understanding, I don't really see where you see it differently. We were with God = Oneness --> fallen sate = separation (self created/imagined, still happening within God) --> suffering --> end of suffering = recognition of mind that is one with God. The fallen realm is still "happening" within God, it can never have a true ground of reality of its own since God is everything and infinite. So maybe you are saying that humans actually split off from God and created their own reality outside of God, I'm considering that the split never even happened, the apparent "split" was just an imagining of a boundary that is still actually inside the largest whole.

But you also suggest that hell is a state of mind, so perhaps you also see that a state of mind is always happening within a mind, which could be seen as Gods infinite mind. The other option would be that there would need to be two separate minds, the mind of man and the mind of God. This would mean that the mind of man is as real as the mind of God. I would interpret this belief to refer to Satan. In the biblical stories Satan thinks it can be as powerful/real as God, which would be like the human ego mind thinking that it can be as real and powerful as God. God talks about how it will banish Satan (“The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet,” -Romans 16:20). The whole reality (ground under your feet) of Satan (the ego) will be destroyed when God is recognized. 

14 hours ago, Purple Man said:

@TheAlchemist

@TheAlchemistI find it hilarious when hardcore materialists divide the understanding of Reality into an exalted, perfected form of Science with quasi-religious qualities, and a dumbed down, literal interpretation of metaphysical myths, in a double fallacy where hard-nosed materialism is the only refuge for an advanced mind. They seem completely oblivious of the metaphorical spirit of many of those religious tales. 

As you say (and regardless of some people interpreting them literally), after some insights, many of the old stories can be correctly understood and reveal from radical nondual awakenings to kundalini risings, etc.

yeah, I guess that's the pre-trans fallacy, anything that has even a whiff of pre-rational dogmatic religiosity is like a toxin for the mind in full on rationality mode, even though it might be including and transcending the rationality. 


"Only that which can change can continue."

-James P. Carse

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Maybe you´d be interested in watching the videos of  Westcott Louden. His is a peculiar journey, from hard Catholicism to exploration with different mystical paths, psychedelics, meditation, etc., having some awakenings as a result of it. But what I find particularly interesting about him is his videos on the Bible, myths, stories. He has a deep knowledge about them, and comments them in light of mysticism and different traditions. https://www.youtube.com/c/Enlightenchannel/videos

Edited by Purple Man

This is my forest, my joy, my love and my shelter, the music I compose: loismusic.com

 

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