Do you remember the tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, found in the Book of Genesis in the Bible?
It goes like this...
God creates the first man, Adam, and places him in the Garden of Eden. To keep Adam company, God creates Eve. They live in a paradise surrounded by the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. They can do anything except to eat the apple from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God has forbidden that.A serpent, often interpreted as Satan, tempts Eve to eat the forbidden apple from the Tree of the Knowledge, claiming it will make her like God, knowing good and evil.Eve eats the fruit and then gives some to Adam, who also eats it. Their eyes are opened, and they realize they are naked, leading to feelings of shame.God discovers their disobedience. As a result, He punishes them: the serpent is cursed to crawl on its belly, Eve is condemned to suffer pain in childbirth, and Adam is cursed to work hard for his food. They are expelled from the Garden of Eden to prevent them from eating from the Tree of Life and becoming immortal.
While the fruit is commonly referred to as an apple in popular culture, the Bible itself does not specify the type of fruit, it simply calls it the "fruit of the tree." So maybe it was no apple after all, maybe it was tomato.
My dear friends, tonight I am going to explain you what is this tale about, and believe me, it is all about... you!
I would like you to suspend judgment. I'm not a saint, I'm not a self-realized, I'm not enlightened man but I know more than you do and being in obligation to all those I learned about spiritual awakening, I'm writing this for you and you only. I'm here to tell you something different and maybe something you don't want to hear.
There is nothing in this Universe outside of yourself. The Tree of Life (immortality) and the Tree of Knowledge are inside you but unfortunately you are the one who ate the forbidden apple (or tomato, who knows).
At present, you are a living being who knows what is good and what is evil.
The body has never been a problem, yet, between the body and yourself there lies a cloud of thoughts and feelings. That knowledge neither serve the body nor yourself. Transient and meaningless, they are mere mental dust that blinds and chokes, yet they are there, obscuring and destroying you.
Consider...
The memory of an event cannot pass for the event itself. Nor can the anticipation. There is something exceptional, unique, about the present event, which the previous, or the coming do not have. There is a livingness about it, an actuality; it stands out as if illuminated.
There is the Presence, which the past and the future do not have.
What gives you the present sense?
There is nothing peculiar in the present event to make it different from the past and future. For a moment the past was actual and the future will become so.
What makes the present so different?
Obviously, you! That is the Tree of Life, you're real for you are always in the now, in the present, and what is with you now shares your reality. The past is in memory, the future in imagination.
There is nothing in the present event itself that makes it stand out as real. It may be some simple, periodical occurrence, like the striking of the clock. In spite of your knowing that the successive strokes are identical, the present stroke is quite different from the previous one and the next - as remembered, or expected.
A thing focused in the now is with you, for you are ever present, you are immortal; it is you that impart reality to the present moment.
But you ate and you are still eating tomatoes, you consider memories, you bring the forgotten into the now, or you bring imagination, something that doesn't exists at all... and then you worry amazed by your knowledge.
Stop taking yourself as a body with thoughts and feelings. You are not that. Thoughts and feelings are funny things produced by the knowledge of good and evil. You've never been, you're not and you'll never be that knowledge.
The Tree of Life, the immortality, is beyond thoughts. You are an immortal being and that cannot be talked about or described at all. Everything what you know, you are not. You can only say "you are not this, not that", what you are cannot be descried.
Things and thoughts have been changing all the time. But the feeling that what is now is real has never changed. Be that... Keep attention beyond thoughts and feelings. Try it.
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