“…the relegation of sexuality and nature to the forces of evil grows out of the belief that strength and clarity of consciousness depend upon cultivating a one-pointed and exclusive mode of attention. This is, in other words, a type of attention which ignores the background in fastening upon the figure, and which grasps the world serially, one thing at a time. Yet this is exactly the meaning of the Hindu-Buddhist term avidya, ignorance, or “ignore-ance,” the basic unconsciousness as a result of which it appears that the universe is a collection of separate things and events.”
This puts me in remembrance of the idea of “fallen” man. And woman. “The woman thou gavest me…” It draws up from the wellspring of my own personal experiences and takes me to that place where I recognized one thing pivotal about the Garden of Eden. The tree was that of the knowledge of good and evil. I ventured to see it as a moment of partaking of the awareness that evil exists, that good exists. But to assume that we would then be equipped to determine which is thus was . . . doubtful, a twist of “truth” for the truth that we cannot arrive at God via the knowledge of good and evil. For to be “like God” via that route, that knowing good is and evil is, is not to be Godly but to be a distortion of divinity, a taking on of “God-likeness” from a narrow view. You cannot, after all, see a whole forest when you are fixated on one tree.
No such venture succeeds except in reaching the depths of man and woman’s inability to be naked and unashamed.
It was that point of recognition that put me on a path of seeing Jesus as one who leads us, whether we believe he existed or exists or not at all (or whether he is merely symbolic, a representation of a vital part of transformation), he is one who leads us through and beyond the lies created by awareness of the existence of evil, of good. We are able, by dying to accusations created by judgements in the hellfire of good vs. evil, by dying to distortions of purity able to resurrect that same intrinsic innocence found “in the beginning” and partake of the Tree of Life. We work out our own “salvation” out of the lost realms of fixation and dependence on the knowledge of good and evil. We are redeemed beyond limiting knowledge while we learn how love safeguards our lives against forces truly destructive.
When we approach nature or sexuality from that idea of having “fallen” or when we approach nature or sexuality in a reaction against that idea, we miss it completely. We have an idol and an emptiness that whispers and cries for deeper, more sustaining feasts beyond comprehension. Rivers of living water . . .
I live... for love... for truth that liberates... for growth... for beauty... for intelligent, soulful connection and so much else.
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J. Ruth Kelly 
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