The Tree of Life Was Standing There Too.
(based off an old video called, “Is the Knowledge of Good and Evil Really Evil?”
I had a revelation in the garden one day…which is apparently where most of my useful thoughts happen. I was thinking about the Garden of Eden. And no, I am not about to become a Bible preacher. Everybody relax. 😀
I don’t belong to one religion. I have spent my life studying many of them, respecting what I find useful, questioning what does not make sense to me, and listening for the truths that seem to appear beneath different languages, traditions, and symbols.
So I am not telling you, THIS is what Genesis means. I am telling you what the symbolism began saying to me while standing in an actual garden. 🙂 And the thought was ridiculously simple: What garden has only one tree?
We have spent thousands of years obsessing over the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Was it forbidden? Was knowledge the problem? Was curiosity the problem? Was humanity punished for knowing too much? Was somebody trying to keep us ignorant?
I used to wrestle with that myself…I asked churches, scholars and wanabes…Why would God not want us to know the difference between good and evil? What kind of Divine intelligence would supposedly want human beings wandering around ignorant? That just never made sense to me!
And then one day I realized, maybe I had been staring at the wrong tree…
The Tree of Life Was Standing There Too
That changed the whole story for me. We talk endlessly about the Tree of Knowledge. But there was also a Tree of Life…deemed “evil” in some religious sects. lol And somehow that tree gets considerably less attention. Which is fascinating. Because maybe the spiritual lesson was never, “Thou Shall Not Know Things…” and perhaps a lot closer to, “Knowledge alone will not save you.”
OOOF.
Because knowledge is easy to accumulate. and Wisdom is harder. Knowledge tells you something. Wisdom asks…What are you going to DO with what you know? You can spend your entire life learning about everything wrong with the world. I actually know people who have spent their entire lives doing so…Every corrupt institution, scandal, war, crime, secret, deception, abusive leader, EVERY SINGLE EVIL PERSON AND HISTORICAL ATROCITY, secret organization, hidden agenda…and EVERY SINGLE TERRIBLE THING humans have ever done to one another…………
Congratulations…You ate the knowledge! Now what???
I Spent Years Eating From That Tree
This is not me standing above anybody pointing a finger. I did it…for years…decades, really…I re-searched, investigated, read, listened, went down the rabbit holes inside the rabbit holes……….I wanted to understand WHO was doing what, WHY they were doing it, what was hidden, who controlled what, where the corruption was, what histories we had not been told. I thought knowing more would somehow make me more powerful…maybe even “smarter!” LOL
And some knowledge absolutely was useful. It changed choices I made. It made me question things. It taught me discernment. And kept me in fear and hopelessness…But eventually I had to admit something uncomfortable. There were years when I was researching life instead of living it. There were years when I knew an enormous amount about what was wrong…while spending far too little time climbing the damn tree.
That realization hurt. All the hours I could have spent with my children, improving myself, and DOING…not just collecting information. Because time is one thing no amount of research gives back.
Knowledge Is Not Wisdom
You can read a thousand books and remain a fool. There…maybe someone more omportant said that at some point, but I just said that too. 😂 You can know every spiritual teaching ever written and still treat people terribly. You can memorize sacred texts and never practice compassion. You can uncover every conspiracy on Earth and never learn to feed yourself. You can understand corporate corruption and STILL spend every dollar supporting the same systems you say you oppose!
You can know people are hungry and never feed anyone. You can know communities are collapsing and never meet your neighbor. You can study trauma and refuse to examine your own. You can study healing and never nourish your own body. You can know…..and know…and KNOW……………….Until your head is completely stuffed with information……
But wisdom asks a different question, “What did you become because you knew it?” “Did you LIVE it?”
That is much harder.
The Truth Community Can Become Its Own Prison
Oh yeah…we’re going there.
There are people who have listened to essentially the same alternative radio show, podcast, livestream, documentary, or outrage cycle for twenty years. STILL the same villains, same crimes, same warnings, same fear…..Same “BIG THING COMING.”
Different thumbnail. 😂
At some point, we have to ask…How many times do you need to learn that bad people sometimes do bad things? How many more hours do you need? How many more exposés? How many more shocking revelations? How many more “leaked” documents? How many more stories about corrupt people accumulating more power??? At what point does research stop increasing your awareness…and start consuming your life? At what point does “being awake” become another form of paralysis? At what point are you so busy studying everything destroying the world that you are no longer contributing anything to the world you actually want?
BOOM! That was a difficult question for me. Because I once wore “knowing” like armor…and eventually I realized armor can become a prison, too.
Attention Is Food
This is something I think we underestimate. What we continuously feed with our attention grows inside our experience. I don’t mean that evil disappears if we refuse to look at it…Please! lol If someone is being harmed in front of me, I am not going to sit underneath a tree chanting about positive vibrations. I’m gonna act.
There ARE times to act, to expose, to document and even to fight. There are many times to say NO! But there is a difference between responding to something we can meaningfully affect…and spending every waking hour consuming distant horror because knowing about it makes us feel like we are doing something. KNOWing isn’t DOing.Those are not necessarily the same thing. Sometimes constant outrage becomes entertainment with terrible lighting. Sometimes fear becomes an addiction, an excuse… Sometimes anger makes us feel powerful while our actual lives remain unchanged. And sometimes the endless search for evil becomes such a consuming spiritual practice that we forget there was ever another tree.
When Did You Eat From the Tree of Life?
That became my question. When did you feed your heart and nourish your soul? When did you nourish your body? When did you grow or create something? When did you put your bare feet on the Earth, touch the soil, climb a tree? When did you watch a bird without turning it into a symbol of impending catastrophe and actually listen to it’s song? When did you make something beautiful? When did you feed someone? When did you laugh until your stomach hurt, till you cried? When did you learn something simply because it brought you joy? When did you sit underneath a tree? When did you listen to somebody who needed to be heard? When did you cook food with someone you love? When did you touch the soil? When did you experience whatever you call God instead of reading what somebody else says God is???
Those things matter too.
Actually…I think they matter enormously. It’s the difference between LIVNG life and hiding from it, repeating others perspectives.
Maybe God Was Never Asking Us to Become Ignorant
This is where my interpretation changed. I don’t believe the Divine wants us stupid. I don’t believe curiosity is evil. I don’t believe learning is sinful. I don’t believe questions are dangerous. Quite the opposite. NOT asking questions can be dangerous…with the ultimate price of your life, your soul, your entire purpose for being here……….
Maybe it’s time to REAL-eyes there is a difference between knowing about life and participating in Life. Maybe the danger wasn’t intelligence. Maybe the danger was becoming so obsessed with categorizing everything as good or evil that we stopped experiencing the whole Garden…?
Think about how easily human beings do this. Good person, bad person. Good religion, bad religion. Good political party, bad political party. Good medicine, bad medicine. Good spiritual practice, bad spiritual practice…MY people/Their people…God’s people/Evil people…
And pretty soon we aren’t living among human beings anymore. We’re living inside categories, judgements, fear, shame…
The Knowledge of Good and Evil has become the only tree we can see.
Religion Does This Too
Human beings are remarkably talented at taking spiritual teachings and turning them into systems of control. 😂
Somebody tells you which thoughts are allowed, which questions, books are allowed…which spiritual experiences are legitimate…Who can hear God, which people cannot. LOL Which medicine is sacred, which medicine is witchcraft. Which ritual is holy, which ritual is demonic…Who should have authority over your relationship with the Divine…….And I have NEVER understood that!
If the Divine is truly Divine…if we are all “God’s Children,” why would it require one particular human middleman before it can reach me?
My own experience has been almost the opposite. Direct Revelation. The clearest spiritual lessons of my life have often arrived when nobody was preaching at me. In a garden…observing an animal…during my own suffering, while homeless and disabled….in silence…
Holding somebody who was hurting. Watching something grow. Watching something die. Living.
The Tree of Life.
We Can Know That Darkness Exists Without Building Our Home There
This distinction matters. I am not advocating ignorance in any way, shape or form. There are terrible things happening in this world. People hurt people. Power is abused. Institutions become corrupt. Greed destroys things. Trafficking exists. Violence exists. War exists. Exploitation exists. Pretending otherwise is not spirituality. It’s denial.
But once I know a problem exists, I ask,”What can I actually do?” If somebody in front of me is hungry, I can feed them. If someone needs shelter and I can help, I can help. If a person is being harmed and I can safely intervene, I can act. If my community needs something I know how to build, I can build…or share… If someone is lonely, I can sit with them. If I discover something harmful in my own life, I can change it.
But if all I have is another frightening meme being passed around Facebook…maybe giving it another six hours of my life isn’t resistance. Maybe I should go plant something instead…
Heaven and Hell May Be Much Closer Than We Think
I have often thought of heaven and hell less as distant destinations and more as states we participate in creating. What are we feeding? What are we building? What are we becoming?
There are people who live surrounded by extraordinary beauty and spend every moment mentally living inside fear, hatred, resentment, envy, and catastrophe. And there are people enduring terrible circumstances who somehow continue creating love, humor, generosity, friendship, and meaning.
Same planet. Very different worlds.
Maybe our attention doesn’t control every single thing that happens to us…Of course it doesn’t. But it influences where we live inside what happens…and that matters.
The Tree of Life Requires Participation
So here’s the annoying part… 😂 You cannot eat from the Tree of Life intellectually. You actually have to live.
You cannot read about gardening forever. Eventually you have to put something in dirt.
You cannot read about community forever. Eventually you have to show up for somebody.
You cannot study love forever. Eventually you have to risk loving.
You cannot analyze your body forever. Eventually you have to nourish it.
You cannot study spirituality forever. Eventually your actions have to demonstrate what you supposedly learned. Make your actions match your words, your knowledge…Life requires participation. And participation is messier than research…that’s why many people avoid it. 🙂
You might fail. You might get dirty. You might love someone who hurts you. You might plant something that dies. You might trust somebody who disappoints you. You might build something that falls apart. You might even be wrong…GASP!
That is the price of living. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. 🙂
Knowledge lets us remain observers. Life requires vulnerability. Maybe that’s why the other tree is so seductive.
What Are You Doing With What You Know?
That has become one of my favorite questions.
We know corporations exploit people. Okay…so who are you supporting instead?
You know industrial food systems have problems. Okay…what are you growing, cooking, learning, or buying differently?
You know people are lonely. Okay…who have you called and checked in on?
You know small businesses are disappearing. Okay…where are you spending your money?
You know children need better examples. Okay…what are you demonstrating?
You know people are divided. Okay…who have you refused to hate?
You know the world contains suffering. Okay…where are you reducing some of it?
That is when knowledge becomes wisdom. Not when we accumulate more information. It’s when we actually APPLYwhat we already know.
Maybe You Already Know Enough About Evil for Today
😂
Seriously…Maybe you’ve done your homework. You already know it all exists…greed, corruption, manipulation, propaganda, violence, etc…you know powerful people abuse power. Congratulations.
You passed that chapter.
Now perhaps Earth School has another assignment. Grow something heal something, build something, learn something beautiful, teach something, feed somebody, create art, play music, hold an animal…FORGIVE YOURSELF! Establish a boundary, speak your truth, rest, make lovem male soup….or cake. 🙂 Plant a tree……..and learn Faith!
Help somebody remember that life is still worth participating in. Because the darkness did not disappear while you were studying it. It only grew in you…
But the Garden didn’t disapper either…She’s been waiting…
The Whole Garden Was There
That may be the revelation I wish I had understood sooner. I spent years asking, Why would (a) God tell humanity not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge? Then another question appeared…Why was I acting like that was the only tree in the story? The Tree of Life was standing there too.
And perhaps symbolically, it still is. Every day. We choose what we feed. We choose where we place attention. We choose whether knowledge becomes wisdom or merely another collection collecting dust to wax poetic and use it as a weapon of superiority. We choose whether understanding suffering inspires action or becomes endless spectatorship. We choose whether we spend our lives documenting everything wrong with existence…or whether we occasionally participate in making existence worth living.
Maybe the great tragedy wasn’t that humanity ate from the Tree of Knowledge. Maybe the tragedy is that after taking one bite…we became so fascinated with that tree that we forgot there was an entire Garden.
So yes….go ahead and learn, question, investigate, expose what needs exposing…KNOW the difference between good and evil. But then…look around…appreciate the beauty…have gratitude for ALL there is and all you are.
The sun is still rising. Plants are still growing. Somebody still needs you. Something still needs tending. There is beauty that requires witnesses. There is suffering that requires action. There is love that requires participation. There is a whole damn life happening while you’re researching it.
COME JOIN US IN THIS THING CALLED LIFE!!!
You ate the knowledge…Now what?
The Tree of Life was standing there too…waiting for you…
I can promise you God does not want you accumulating information for the rest of your life and not actually going out and LIVING it.
Go forth……………live……love…….be…………. <3 <3 <3