I woke up in the middle of the night dreaming of the Garden of Eden. How maybe it is a metaphor for enlightenment. The nirvana of the mind. The understanding that we are one with everything. And enlightenment is not this thing that you achieve, but something that is already there, that never left. We just have to sift past the bullshit to remember.

Adam and Eve were living in a perpetual state of bliss until she was tempted by the snake to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge, which she in turn tempts Adam to eat. I have never understood why her initiative was considered the original sin, because Adam was obviously a super pussy in this situation and should be the one that looks bad. Eve was a go-getter. Besides, the tree of knowledge sounds pretty enticing. It is not like it was the tree of perversion.

But what if the “tree of knowledge” is just the path of the human life. The journey we take to try and understand all that life has to offer. The pursuit for the divine truth of mental emptiness. One that may be full of temptation, but ultimately one we all must take in order to understand what Eden was to begin with. If we never had anything to compare it to, how would we know what utopia was?

So think of this myth as the story of the human condition. We were at one point spirit connected to the pure energy of everything floating around in the infinite time space continuum. Then, a man and woman came together, the guy had a crazy orgasm, hopefully she did to, maybe one more for good measure, and you were conceived. That initial bite into the apple is our birthing into existence. As an infant we still remember Eden. The knowingness of all things interconnected, which is why babies are so full of unconditional love and contentment. (Unless they are tired, hungry, gaseous, or have crap oozing down their back).

But as we teach babies language and they begin to understand this world more, they lose their memories of the Eden of the Mind. They ego forms through this process because teaching language is so deeply rooted in teaching otherness. This is a dog, this is your mama, this is a pea, and all these things are not you. As we learn what objects are, and what we are not, we start to disconnect from thinking everything is an extension of ourselves. It is then we start to feel alone in the universe and that is the common hole in your sole we are all trying to fill. Be it with booze, drugs, shopping, food, sex, violence, power, control, rage, Jersey Shore.

The challenge is to accept that just like we are all connected to everything, we all share this yearning, this longing for wholeness. Through this drive we strive to master our perception of the world, and wonder if everything we thought was real is actually just a tree with a persuasive snake. The memory of Eden coats our cells and keeps bringing us back to an unconscious desire for more beauty, more love, more peace, more togetherness, more tranquility… the endless supply of energy we are all connected to.

So we spend our lives searching for that feeling again, and when we die, we return to it. Total peace of mind.

And then I went back to bed and had this really weird dream about a giant teddy bear wearing sunglasses wanting to know if I knew a good place to get pizza because he was about to ask his girlfriend for dinner, who also happened to be my cousin. Nuts!

“He said he was out of apples…”