The root of a pair opposites is a continuum between extremes. Light and dark; good and bad; truth and falsehood; life and death, and so many others. The first pair of opposites in the bible is associated with knowledge, specifically the knowledge of mankind.
God is omniscient, all knowing. All knowledge is God. Yet, mankind, like God, has the ability to think, to obtain and act upon knowledge. When mankind is one with God, all knowledge flows in the spiritual realm from God to His creation. However, when mankind’s knowledge is founded upon a sense-based pair of opposites, it becomes the product of God “and” thinking which results in death.
We often fail to notice many things in the Genesis 2:17 account of the birth of a pair of opposites. Foremost, the incorporeal God, Spirit, Love, Consciousness is speaking to man who is both corporeal (made from the dust of the ground) and incorporeal (in the image and likeness of God). The fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil introduces the concept and perception of death to immortal beings. This is in contradiction to the other prominent tree in the Garden, the tree of Life, whose fruit is stated to impart healing to all the nations.
The Consequence of a Pair of Opposites
I have written in previous posts (here, here, and here just to name a few) about the subject of desire. While I might potentially repeat myself in what follows, I hope to provide a rounder perspective of this topic while emphasizing the role of a pair of opposites.
The actions depicted in the third chapter of Genesis are well known by every believer. For the moment, I am going to ask you to suspend whatever you were taught in Miss Jones Sunday morning bible class about the characters in the narrative. Consider how today we live over 3,000 years from when the original manuscript was crafted. Our understanding and vocabulary far exceeds any of the people in the book at the time of its writing. Concepts not wholly understood then, now have people who are specialist who write or teach in this field of endeavor and professionally administer clinical treatment to many.
In order to proceed I am with this I am going to need you to recognize how the “talking snake” in Genesis 3 is more than like a concept which the original writer could not explain. Allow me to offer an option which will better fit our discussion: The Ego.
Your Ego is Not your Amigo
I don’t intend to get all Freudian here and take this down a long dark psychiatric path. I am merely inputting a term and its associated concepts into the narrative to give it a clearer representation of the events.
We have been instructed in a number of ways that the ego is the basis of our pride, which leads to our downfall when it is not constrained properly. We have been indoctrinated how the ego influences the mind which becomes enmity with God.
The ego is a survival mechanism. It keeps us alive in a number of situations where competing forces try to extract a part of our life from us. The ego uses the application of desires to promote our well-being within a mind-filled competition of a pair of opposites.
Consider how the “talking snake” speaks to the woman using words which craft desires for the fruit. This “self-talk” of the ego is the inner battle of the survival skill to eat. The weighing of varying aspects to determine the viability of a substance, product, endeavor, relationship, or any of a number of other occurrences is what the ego is designed to do.
This activity is continually going on throughout our daily lives. What must be recognized is that the outcome from this activity is not always beneficial to our survival.
Ego – Judge, Jury, and Executioner
At all times, remain aware that the real you is not the ego. Refuse to identify with it.
David R. Hawkins. M.D., Ph. D., The Ego is not the Real You
As a survival mechanism the ego develops into a proponent of duality. Each of us must make decisions which insure our survival on a minute-by-minute basis. These decisions are always founded on perceptions of what is best (good) or worst (bad) case scenarios which we play out in our mind. Because our perceptions are continually evolving the scenarios we play out are constantly changing too. This is emotionally and psychologically draining.
To circumvent this interplay, we often establish a benchmark or ideal which every situation must measure up to. If it can’t, it is immediately discounted and relegated to a “lost” thought. When a situation meets or exceeds the standard, it fortifies our ego as being righteous, able to secure our survival. When this is taken to an extreme, the belief structure it establishes has generally been characterized as being “self-righteous.”
Belief structures are essentially a duality based on a pair of opposites. As I’ve said previously, many of the beliefs which each of us presently operate from are ones which we never developed but adopted from previous generations. Somewhere in time someone made a judgement call which supported the survival of an individual or community and a jury of peers deemed the action to be vital to their continued well-being. Anyone who disagreed with the choice was subject to ridicule, banishment, imprisonment, or even possible death. Because beliefs hold such power over a person, community, state, or nation it is very difficult to revise, amend, or even remove an outdated belief.
Here are the scriptures I referenced in Part 1 which will be addressed in this section:
Mat 7:1-5 Judge not, that ye be not judged. (2) For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. (3) And why beholds thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considers not the beam that is in thine own eye? (4) Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? (5) Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
Joh 7:24 Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.
Joh 8:15 Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man.
Joh 12:47 And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.
Righteous Judgment
Everyone thinks that they are capable of judging a matter righteously. Claiming a dependence on all moral upbringing, we rely on the spectrum defined by a pair of opposites to decree a matter to be justifiable. Unfortunately, we then come into awareness of the passage from Matthew 7:1-5 where the Master, Jesus, teaches that we are not to judge anything or anyone lest we be judged also. He clearly demonstrates that our own judgements are impeded by the “beam in our eye” indicating that our perception about a matter is clearly diminished.
The passages from the book of John establish how Jesus viewed judgment as a sense-based matter founded upon the survival mechanism of the ego. In John 12 he clearly was not concerned whether people believed him since he never came to judge people but to save the world. Herein lies the novel message of his ministry: Salvation does not involve beliefs on a pair of opposites; it is recognizing the oneness of All with the Father.
You may need to read that last sentence again. Religion has indoctrinated all of us about how we are a “fallen” being needing a “savior” to “redeem” us from an entity who is responsible for the eternal damnation of our soul. This entire narrative is loaded with a pair of opposites competing with true harmony in this life. There is not an ounce of truth to it when it is faced with the kingdom of God’s righteousness which has already decreed that ALL is very good – without opposite.
Religion cannot fathom how it is possible that anything can be good, without opposite, when there is so much in the world which is evidently the opposite in a multitude of situations. This has led many societies to craft beliefs which explain the existence of the opposite while defending the communal perception of “good.” These belief structures became the responsibility of a class of people who were committed to seeing that any belief which was contrary to the socially acceptable belief was suppressed and even eradicated. Such are the social norms of judgement – good for me, not for thee.
One for ALL as ALL in ALL
The vast majority of people I speak to about this issue of Jesus teaching how we are not supposed to judge is met with the same set of questions. “How is this even practical? I’m not Jesus, so how could he even suggest it is possible for me? Am I not supposed to judge anything or anyone even if I have never seen or heard of them?” The response to these questions is never what people think simply because they operate from a platform where they are thinking dualistically. In other words, they believe in an “other.”
Jesus declared in the book of John that he and the Father are one. This claim sent shockwave throughout the religious community of his day. They had placed major restrictions and punishments for anyone who identified themselves to be equal with GOD. Jesus never made this claim. There is a great deal of difference between claiming to be equal with God and stating that you are one with God.
Being one with God means there is no “other.” One is one, right? Equal is a product of two or more who never lose their distinction. Now I recognize how some of you might claim that I am playing a game of semantics, however, consider these two claims from Isaiah, “…I am God, and there is none else…” If God says there is none else, there clearly cannot be an “other.”
Now obviously this poses a dilemma if you have always considered God “and” you to be separate and distinct. (It also explains the primary reason why your prayer life sucks. But that comes later.) Whenever you throw an “and” into a discussion you are creating a judgeable situation around a pair of opposites. You, me, those around you, even those you have no knowledge of are ALL one with the Father. God is. The omnipresent God is in ALL. There is none else. In ALL as ALL.
Being one with and as ALL clearly means that there is no “other.” If there is no other, there can be no platform for judgement. I’ll say it again: There is no platform for judgement when there is no “other.”
This is difficult to accept when your entire life has been founded upon the belief in an “other.” Even to look about you and see situations which are not harmonious, loving, or abundant creates an internal tension to speak against it. But it is ALL one with God. Yes, appearances can tell you the opposite of this, but God is – not God was, or God will be – God is. Appearances are not what they seem to be.
What about you? Yes, “what about you?” is a good (without opposite) question. How do you think God would answer this? It might be time to go find out for “yourself.”
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