The metaphor of eating an apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as original sin has been interpreted in many ways, including as a eupemism for sex. The elders at the temple of truth are more inclined to look at this parable as a reference to the concept of spirituality. The problem with identifying a particular behavior or person as spiritual is that everything that is not placed in that category then becomes by default non spiritual, and that then leads to all kinds ideas about prohibiting certain behaviors or refusing to engage with certain beings who are considered part of the outgroup.
The drive towards spirituality is really just a sign of insecurity. When you feel connected to the universe, you don’t need to earn your place in it by being good. This does not mean that you can’t benefit from morals and values that help guide you in your interactions with others as long as you don’t hold onto them so tightly that you can’t adjust with wisdom in each moment. It simply means that whatever self-inquiry you do is because it serves you on a practical level and not because you are trying to earn your way into a state of nirvana or a place in heaven. It’s also not because you are afraid of bad karma or hell. Practicing self-inquiry, meditation, and prayer are all wonderful approaches to help you connect with the way things are if you approach them with wisdom. However, there are many more paths to connecting with the way things are than that. Some people get in tune while washing dishes, some while surfing, others while out on the road on a bike or in a car. Some play music while others practice yoga or pranayama. The truth is the way things are is alway the way things are regardless of what you are doing and whether you notice. When people asked the person that is referred to as The Buddha if he were enlightened, he is purported to having replied that he was not enlightened, just awake. He wanted to share that with others because he valued the experience of being awake. At the temple of truth, we also want to help those who wish to be awake to notice that there are already little moments of awakeness in your life, it’s just that you are probably too distracted or tormented to notice them.
There is a trend these days for some teachers to tell you that you don’t have to do anything to wake up. You don’t need a practice of any kind. However, many of those same teachers who tell you that you don’t need a practice had a practice of their own for many years before they let it go. We have a different point of view at the Temple of Truth. We believe that the years of practice got those teachers to a place that they didn’t need the practice anymore. It’s a lot like using training wheels to learn to ride a bicycle. You don’t necessarily need training wheels, but they are nice to have. Once you don’t need them anymore, it is easy to look back and tell yourself the story that you didn’t need them and to tell others not to waste their time using training wheels, and yet if you used them to good effect, why wouldn’t you want others to have the same benefit?
This same type of logic is sometimes found on websites where people who claim that they can cure your cancer will tell you that they had surgery or other medical interventions, but then they will claim that the only thing that cured them was their special diet and supplement program that they want to sell to you. One very well known person who claims to cure cancer actually tells his potential clients that if he had it do over again he would not have done surgery. So he is trying to keep people from getting the helpful treatment they need in order to sell them his program.
At the Temple of Truth, we like to think that there are many different paths to waking up and we certainly would not wish to minimize our own practices that have helped us with our own processes of awakening. Once you do wake up, it becomes so obvious that the practices that got you there seem quaint, but even so sometimes they still have value. For example, the Temple of Truth speaker was a daily meditator for years and years and then slowly over time various aspects of the way things are became clear to her. She describes it in her own words as things “revealing themselves” to her.
One of the first revelations she experienced was that the concept of spirituality itself is a mental trap because it creates a split between that which is spiritual and the rest of life, but life is a total experience that cannot be split up into anything except for the convenience of meeting someone someplace at a specific time. The idea of a self, the idea of a location, and the idea of a time are all incredibly useful concepts on a practical level, but they don’t change the way things are. The way things are cannot be added to or subtracted from, but in our own minds we do add and subtract from the way things are, and that is what causes us to feel separate from the universe, and consequentially to feel separated from each other.
This blog is not finished yet….
Thank you for your patience.