The Illusion of Separation

Continued from yesterday…

Out of nowhere there suddenly appears a talking serpent. The Hebrew etymology for serpent signifies twist or spin and stems from an onomatopoetic (coming soon to a spelling bee near you) word for hiss or whisper. It suggests a twisting, spinning, or moving whisper, and later became the word for enchanter.

If you have ever been around a chronic liar, you know the concept being referenced. A habitual liar tells stories that are continually evolving and moving in subtleties and plausible fabrications. Listening to his voice is like being under a spell, where we are charmed to see the world as he sees it. The deceptive spell and the hissing whisper in this story was the ego’s formation in our mind.

When we were first born, we enjoyed the blissful innocence of life. At some point, probably between the ages of one or two, we became increasingly conscious of the concept of self, or I. The ego was formed and began to look for significance, value, and love outside itself. It needed a path to find it, and the world of duality was introduced.

The story of beginnings refers to this polarizing duality as the tree of knowledge of good and evil that brought with it death. Death here is not about annihilation or a physical end to life, for the word merely means separation. Eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil would alienate the mind from the divine spirit. They would no longer be conscious of their oneness with the divine being. The separation was not real, but an illusion invented by the mind. Yet the perceived separation would have consequences, as we see in the story.

To be continued tomorrow…

Adapted from Section 2 of Awakening To I Am Love by David Youngren