The Light in Every Thing
Deeper conversation on the mysteries of Christianity with Patrick Kennedy and Jonah Evans, directors of the Seminary of The Christian Community in North America.
In this podcast we engage the great questions of life and do this through a spiritual approach to Christianity made possible through contemplative inquiry and the science of the spirit known as Anthroposophy.
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The Light in Every Thing
Eve in Us: Self-Will, the Snake and How Submission Heals What Power Cannot — Episode 52 in the series, “The Letter to the Ephesians”
Our journey through Ephesians brings us to chapter five's controversial teaching on submission—a passage that has caused immense pain when wielded as a weapon for oppression.
We begin by examining our culture's understanding of protection: whoever has the most power, money, and control supposedly lives in safety. Yet Christ reveals a radically different path. By submitting to authorities, Jewish leaders, and ultimately death itself, Jesus transformed reality through selfless love rather than domination. This paradox challenges our core assumptions about how to live safely in an uncertain world.
Diving into Genesis, we uncover spiritual archetypes that illuminate Paul's teaching. The creation narrative reveals God's nature containing both masculine and feminine qualities—the hovering, receptive Spirit and the active, illuminating Word working in harmony to generate life. When humans are created in this divine image, they too contain this complementary wholeness.
The garden story takes an unexpected turn when examined closely. The woman emerges as the principal actor—drawn to wisdom, making independent judgments, and taking initiative. This drive toward godlike knowledge represents humanity's necessary advancement toward consciousness and freedom. Yet this independence brings consequences, including God's confronting pronouncement that "he shall rule over you"—suggesting the break in equality, the submitting to another, could be seen as something medicinal rather than original to creation.
Marriage becomes a powerful metaphor for healing this division. As Paul quotes Genesis—"the two shall become one flesh"—he reveals this points to the profound mystery of Christ and church. Through voluntary submission and sacrificial love, what has been separated can be reunited in transformative wholeness.
Whether examining your own relationships or wrestling with difficult Scripture passages, this episode offers fresh insight into submission not as oppression but as medicine for our self-willing spirits. Join us next week as we explore what God says to the man and how this reshapes our understanding of who exactly is submitting to whom.
The Light in Every Thing is a podcast of The Seminary of The Christian Community in North America. Learn more about the Seminary and its offerings at our website. This podcast is supported by our growing Patreon community. To learn more, go to www.patreon.com/ccseminary.
Thanks to Elliott Chamberlin who composed our theme music, “Seeking Together,” and the legacy of our original show-notes and patreon producer, Camilla Lake.
Morning Jonah, morning Patrick. It's always morning in the podcast.
Speaker 3:That's true. Mostly we rarely. You know, that's probably my fault because I'm not a night guy.
Speaker 2:That's true, right, that's true.
Speaker 3:These conversations would be so different if we tried to be Be much more you, it would be so, jonah, as you nod, off. My bedtime is 9 pm.
Speaker 2:So whatever time you're listening to this, hope you feel a little morning With us.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the light in everything when two priests try to deepen the mysteries of Christ Jesus in our time, and we will begin with the Gospel of John, as we do in Chapter 8. Again, Jesus spoke to them saying I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, we're nearing the finish line. Jonah and listeners, we've been on an incredibly rich and pretty thorough journey through the letter to the Ephesians from the New Testament that is written from someone concerned about the forming of Christ community at the very beginnings of its formation in history. So it's a window into the gestation moment, the becoming of what all that means. And we've had this incredible path through where we started at the end, in chapter six, and really went into the famous armor of God imagery there, this call to put on a new kind of protection, a Christ-formed and forged protection, and Christ formed and forged protection and standing in this world with that spiritual armor. And then we went to the middle and we went into this prayer for the community in chapter 3, where Paul goes upon his knees to pray to the Father for the community, praying that they might be filled with all the fullness of God. It's such a beautiful, powerful prayer.
Speaker 2:All that comes in there has been this theme of the ordering of the world and which powers should we be afraid of, so that this community is aware that there are many gods and how do we know that Christ is the one who actually is above all of them and will bring all things under his ordering, healing, loving will, ordering, healing, loving will, that we can count on this one to be the supreme power in the midst of all of these powers all around us.
Speaker 2:So that's very much also the beginning chapters, where he describes how he was the spiritual power at the beginning of creation and that we were there in him like seeds, all of us gathered up in him, and we have fallen out of that divine primal beginning into a separated experience, but that his incarnation and then subjecting himself to the power of death and thereby also overcoming it through his faithfulness to God, he was elevated up to the highest heaven. So he's up above all of the powers. That's something he then says in chapter one, and he's taken a part of us with him to reign on that throne, so that everything that now continues to take place in the course of world history is being guided by him, in whom our own highest self is active, by him in whom our own highest self is active.
Speaker 3:That's just a phenomenal picture.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that everything that is now taking place in our personal earth self experience also has something in it, which is Christ's guiding power and our own true being coming towards us through everything that takes place. Oh, my goodness. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, a totally new understanding of the sovereignty of God and our inclusion in in the mystery of world destiny. So it's chapter six, 1 into 2 and this rightful orientation in that ordering which is such a big theme throughout, and then also this mystery of submission. What is the power of submission? Because in all of this, this, this feeling that comes up right is where do I find true protection? Yeah and the off. The the thought would be, if I look around me as well, true protection is through dominance.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You get the biggest gun, the best armor and the most money. Whoever has the outer access to the levers of power and can cause everyone else to submit to them, that's the one that's actually safe. That one is protected. So the path of protection in this world would seem to be amass power, prestige and use it to protect yourself.
Speaker 3:And, it's true, in a certain way right. The protection would be contained in the elements of less pain of a certain sort, less threat of a certain sort, more comfort on a material level, more independence in terms of being able to kind of enjoy whatever you want to enjoy, whenever.
Speaker 2:Of course, all at first blush.
Speaker 3:All at first blush and all on a purely materialistic lower self-gratification level.
Speaker 2:And then you look at the stories at the time of Jesus, also of those who tried to get there through that like a Julius Caesar and you find he's stabbed in the back by his own protector. You see, it doesn't actually protect you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and even when you're sitting in the top of your castle with everything totally independent, there's also an emptiness and a aloneness and a depravity in the heart of your soul. That is perhaps even worse than all the things you've been trying to escape and dominate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course that's such a key icon of the whole Christian story in the gospel, with the person of Herod, yeah, as an icon of the one who tries to get to the throne of protection and of power, of protection and of power. And to get to that throne in this world, all of the intrigue, deception, murder that you have to do to even get there and then, when you get there, you don't feel safe at all Because you know, if I had to do that to get here, I've got at least 20 people all around me trying to get to the same spot, doing the same thing, I'm ever under threat.
Speaker 2:yeah, and so christ really is in part. This is one of the lenses right to understand who he is and trying. What he's trying to bring to humanity is what is true protection, what is true power, and it's the story of someone who submits, who submits to the will at work in the universe that we, in our tradition, call the Father, because we experience a birth process in our relationship to him. He submits to the will of the Father and doesn't assert his will over reality. Pilate's the one who's governing Judea. He's under trial by Pilate.
Speaker 2:We were just talking about this. He honors and submits to Pilate's authority the Jewish leaders who do not acknowledge him as Messiah but mock him and slap him, the one who is the son of David, meant for the throne of his people. He doesn't start a rebellion, get rid of all of them and place himself on the seat of power. He submits to their judgment and he submits at last, as the Lord of life, to the King of death on the cross. And in all of that submission, work changed reality since that time. Right reality since that time.
Speaker 3:Right, it's also what I see. There is also a kind of another way to describe that would be I'm going to actively do something that is completely not. That's so. It's selfless in such a way that it's not going to meet any of my materialistic lower needs. I'm doing this. Why am I doing this? Submitting? I'm doing this for the well-being and victory, healing of a body of beings, including the earth, that is not going to necessarily give me anything in return for my lower needs. It's not going to take care or protect me with its powers at all. So it's a completely active, selfless deed. Yeah, so it combines this submission to something like oppression and death with an active, with an active, complete selflessness of loving the other and having its well-being in mind, fully as myself.
Speaker 2:Loving the other fully, as if it were myself.
Speaker 3:As if it were myself, without the lower needs, so to speak. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Just the higher self of it and experiencing thereby a self in him that this world cannot destroy, because it's actually operating in a new law, by laws that have nothing to do with the laws of selfish protection. No.
Speaker 2:So it doesn't extinguish. It actually emerges on the other side, raised and elevated by reality, by the God of the universe, saying this is the future. This is actually the thing that will be protected. The selfish mode will not. That's actually what you think is going to protect you by clinging to things and seeking to protect yourself. That is what will go away and has no future. So he himself is therefore the medicine. He is the new self, the new human that goes about it all in a totally different way, right?
Speaker 3:So active, selfless deed plus deep submission to a different kind of power seems to be the verb of the new self.
Speaker 2:Hey, ooh nice, yes, amen. And these early Christians experiencing and reality through the resurrection. Oh, we have witnessed that's what's being elevated by the Godhead. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:And the Caesar self is no longer at all what we should be looking towards as a hopeful image of the high human being. That's a corrupted image, that is full of the bite of the enemy, of the true self, this selfish self. Yeah. So that theme, that mystery of orienting towards what has God elevated to the highest power, that kind of person, that being who has humbled himself in the deepest way. So this is the highest and the lowest mystery being brought together. The last shall be first, this reversal of everything that Christianity experienced, that the early church experienced through this event. So that's permeating, I think, this letter and that's the background of what we're getting into here. Then and have been working on now. In Chapter 5, two episodes, we looked at the theme of submission it's been beautiful to walk through it again and then began to get into these difficult portions of the passages in this letter that have been used by the Christian of loving, self-offering in seeing the other as myself, but actually putting people in their place and cosigning abuse and oppression.
Speaker 2:Amen this is just saying it right now. I can't believe how much that hurts that, this image of who the people of God is called to be in Christ Jesus, that we've just talked about how the same texts could be used as a tool of the Caesar self which of course shouldn't surprise us, because we know the devil knows scripture really well.
Speaker 3:Exactly. But it is deeply painful, in a unique way, because something that is so holy to be used as a weapon for what is anti, this true self. Yeah. It's just, it is deeply piercing.
Speaker 2:So even that, to know recognize that the Bible isn't a protection either. No. No, not from pain. The. Bible can be used by the enemy. Yeah, not from pain. The.
Speaker 3:Bible can be used by the enemy. Yeah, not from pain.
Speaker 2:So all of that is to lead up to then, in chapter 5, as we're closing in on the final portions of the letter that we've been working on how Paul picks up this submission theme versus 19, 20, 21. He speaks about the life of the community, the whole community. They gather it would be women and men and children in various kinds of forms, and the holy meal and song and worship. So he gives this picture of that early church and song and worship. So he gives this picture of that early church Addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. So this festive, loving, song-filled gathering, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart. There's just a bursting, a spring energy in this festival of gathering. Giving thanks always verse 20, and for everything to God, the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. So a Eucharistic, thanksgiving community. And at the foundation of that joyous festival, verse 21,.
Speaker 2:Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ, so that worship, life with God is equivalent. Also expressing itself how we submit to one another Submit, order ourself under the other. Remember we looked at that word to order ourself under, look up and serve. The next line, verse 22. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. Order yourself under your own husbands as to the Lord. Now, as the church submits to Christ, so the whole community is in a submitting relationship to Christ. Also, wives should submit in everything to their husbands. So you and I talked about last time and I thought you really remarked on that beautifully how verse 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31. All the way, all of that is instruction for how the man in that relationship the husband-wife picture has to do some work. Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're just like basically two verses for the wife. So Paul seems to think they need a little more instruction. So it'd be really great. I do want to look at that, but I feel like we're going to hit the stumbling block over and over until we deal a little further. Why is that even there at all? He does not say then and men, submit to your wives. We'll look at how I think he does in another way in the mystery of the Christ, submission right. One hundred percent.
Speaker 2:He doesn't use that word. No, We've talked about it. You can feel like all of the men in the community, be like good man, because I don't know these ladies. They're feeling too much freedom here, too much inclusion in everything. They have all the same privileges that we do. And Paul has these women ministers working with him. And what's this guy doing? Is he shaking up the whole social fabric? Oh good, Especially also the Jewish community members, but most definitely the Roman and Greek ones as well. That was the ordering. Yeah, the men are the head. Right, that's what it says. Go back to it. This is the famous headship theology in the church, the biblical based church, which uses this very strongly for traditional roles verse 23,. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its savior. So men save women and are their head. Yikes, I mean, how can you not but cringe at this stuff? It's just difficult. It's difficult.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is. I laugh, but I don't mean to laugh it off, so to speak. Yeah, it is difficult.
Speaker 2:So you had hoped last time, Jonah. So this is all just still kind of remembering where we are. It's been a couple of weeks you had hoped last time. Hey, I really want to get into the details of like how does this apply actually in our relationships, and particularly male-female married relationships? Could we talk about that?
Speaker 2:And I was like well hold on Can we go back to Genesis and do some work there, and so we ended up the whole time, basically in Genesis 1, a little bit into Genesis 2, bringing in these big archetypes that the Godhead made the human being in its image male, female. God made it, him and them, the single human being as a male-female entity, like a flower that has the male and female organs inside it, the human being in this original generation. God apparently has male, female in god's self. Of course, of course, because god is the creation of all things. Everything is an emanation of god's reality, right? How could we be an image? What? Where does the female come from?
Speaker 2:from god what is that so obvious right, we shouldn't have to even talk about it. No, so God contains all of that, and if we're an image of God, then the image of God is male, female.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I loved at least how it lives in me from last conversation. Part of the archetype of the feminine is this spirit hovering over the darkness, kind of brooding sometimes. Brooding bird, just being present and holding, and perceiving, and recognizing, and carrying in a way Listening to the situation, yeah, and caring, in a way, listening to the situation, yeah, and you have this spirit hovering, it feels all-encompassing yes, it feels like it's large.
Speaker 3:Yes that's beautiful, the gesture Big, and that as a kind of surrender gesture, it seems to me Active receptivity, active receptivity, presence. Then the kind of element that you pulled out of the archetype that goes further is when God says let there be light. He brings a word, a word, and God says let there be light.
Speaker 2:He brings a word that guides a process, that starts a whole creation, a word which we know from the Gospels is a seed.
Speaker 3:The seed is the word of God, and then how those two interact, creates a new day. Creates a new day, a new reality, so that seems to be also helpful.
Speaker 2:Right, so that primal archetype of the divinity in a male-female activity that is generative and creative.
Speaker 3:Right, and I think it's also important that the word that God speaks isn't satisfying anything of a kind of I mean, it's ridiculous to even say it but of a lower nature, yeah, of a lower nature. Yeah, it's fully for the creative process of this earth, this humanity, this other being so to speak.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's first coming towards a situation of chaos and darkness and unformedness, and that's asking for something. It's in need and the word spoken adds light, and then there's a shaping and ordering, and God says it's good.
Speaker 2:This light that has been added is good. Let's incorporate that with the night, with the darkness, and name it, order it and it becomes a day. So trying to bring something to the circumstance that completes and forms something new and incorporates everything involved banishes nothing, yeah. So that's why I just I found meditating on that first day just bears so much fruit so much fruit.
Speaker 2:So that divine archetype of creation is of course on the minds of, yeah, all of the early Christian writers. God's presence in my life is an experience of a hovering, attending, circumference-holding presence, and a word that illumines and makes whole.
Speaker 3:Right, it's also just coming to my mind. It's interesting that one of our main teachers, rudolf Steiner, to the priests gave the direction when you're caring for your church, your congregation your church, your congregation. Look and help people's hearts. Learn to hear the spirit word for its health, heart circulation, heart health. Learn to hear the spirit word.
Speaker 2:And for your circulation, respiratory health, the actual bodily health here, yeah Well.
Speaker 3:And then he talks about the lung. Look to how you're holding the social process, how you're brooding. Is the breath? Is that a health? Are you trapped in worry or are you digesting your brooding forces caring for the social situation? Those are the only two directives he gives at the final cycle of autumn, so to me it's just very interesting that that's where he directs health. Gosh, that's beautiful, jonah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the cycle at the bottom for our listeners. That little phrase is this course of lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in this year 1921, to this possible founding of a new priesthood and sacramental life of the christian church, the renewal of the christian church, that is our movement, the christian community 1921. Yeah, so that are so funny. How, like we go back towards the archetypes. We just need to brood over them, meditate on them, right, that's so interesting yeah, that's why I found it so helpful that you it's so interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's why I found it so helpful that you just paused a little bit and went to these deep pictures.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then we looked at that second step. Actually, when God populates the sky world with stars and moon and sun, he places light-emanating beings that's day one reference who are ruling and ordering within the day processes and the night processes. So there's a second representative of God in the sky realm, the shining ones, and there are two ruling powers, one to rule the night and one to rule the day. And then that third step was and now, when God makes the earth rulers, calling them to rule, bring the divine egohood which has the capacity to be an inner ruler serving the well-being of all creation on earth, then God makes an image, being a being made in the image of God's self. And then again, we're not surprised, it's male-female, so male female, again double-natured, called to rule and called to rule here on earth.
Speaker 2:Image God's loving, brooding, just as you said if you're working in community. Image God's loving, brooding, receptive, active receptivity, and word that brings light and shaped into wholeness. This is the picture. It's like, ah. And then there's shalom, and there will be shalom at the end, day seven, and true rest and peace.
Speaker 3:So that's all beautiful right, and there we are.
Speaker 2:And then this incredible experience in chapter two of Genesis of yeah, but there's more apparently to develop, and and part of what happens in all of the seven days of creation is separation of things into new wholeness. That's also core creative activity of this being. Light and darkness are also separated and then incorporated. Yeah, male, and female Day and night.
Speaker 2:Separated Sun they're separated, yeah, but they make a whole day. They carry the seasons, yeah, they carry the signs, they give light in the places that are needed, and it's all equal. It's all equal, complementary. There's no over here until we get to chapter 3. So in chapter 2, we looked at a beautiful image that Paul is going to quote in this passage. Maybe we should go there real quickly just to remember Back to the letter of Ephesians. Or he suddenly quotes Genesis 2.
Speaker 2:After the creation of woman, the male is in this somnambulic, deep trance sleep, while out of the side is shaped this, the woman, the female, isha, who is supposed to be the Ezer, the divine helper, complementing perfectly. So this equal, fitting parts that make the whole, the divine helper, complimenting perfectly. So this equal, fitting parts that make the whole. And then they are brought together. And then it says verse 31 in Ephesians therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast, cling, hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh, the new body, the new wholeness, the new singleness born of a separation and then reunion. And that's Yusuke gave this absolutely beautiful summary Like this is the mystery of marriage as medicine, marriage as medicine, marriage as medicine and we just said, yes, this is the secret of the rest of the story of earth.
Speaker 2:How does what is separated reunite in a marriage process into a new wholeness and new creation? This mystery is profound. Paul says in verse 32, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. So he's saying there, the individual process of the marriage, all the instructions I've just given you, men and women, you are actually picturing to the universe the mystery of the church of Christ and the bride.
Speaker 2:The holy marriage, the bride and the bridegroom, the secret of the salvation of community, and we know from the book of Revelation. It's also the secret of the salvation of the cosmos, heaven and earth newly reunited. Okay, those are the archetypes. So what happened what's with? Why do the wives have to submit to the husbands? Why is that even a theme? Why has that been there in history at all? Just because there are bad men? That it's a one simple explanation. Yeah there are there who use, overuse their physical power to establish that dominance.
Speaker 3:So, male caesars, we, we, just we talked about that yeah, and and the, the thought, the strong thought, which is understandable, is that this is, then, just not a divine inspiration. The Bible, yeah yeah, it's just a way to continue that. It's a product of a powerful man that wants to create a spiritual reason to keep his power. Oof, yeah.
Speaker 2:The tool of the patriarchy. Yeah, the Bible as a tool. Has it been used as a tool of the patriarchy? For sure.
Speaker 3:Yes, it has, and you can see that you can see this easily could be understood in that way.
Speaker 2:And I would just throw this book away or these parts away, if that's all it was doing.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, oh, it would be horrible. It's great evil if that's the only reality.
Speaker 2:So now these two men who are in this room would like to try with our listeners to see if there could be something else going on. Yeah. And we have to go back to the situation in the garden. So the way in which the Hebrew sages, and that comes down to us from Moses, try to tell the story. Jonah is, as you know, to tell the story. Jonah is, as you know, after this episode of the creation of woman and the two humans, now the separated single human into two. They're there in the garden.
Speaker 2:They're called to work and to keep it, cultivate and tend and guard it and to nourish themselves in what's available there, except they should please avoid eating from one particular tree. There are two main trees in this garden. Full of trees, it's actually a, and the name for it actually means like a grove, a garden, like an orchard. And there are these two main trees. One is the tree of life. God doesn't say anything, they can't take that at all. So they're living apparently from this life tree, but from the tree of the knowledge, of good and evil, so a wisdom tree that leads to the wisdom around morality, good and evil. They shouldn't eat from that one. If they do, they will experience death. Sounds good, god, we're going to avoid that. So they do, they obey, they submit to the guidance given by the one who made the garden. And then there's the story. There's another creature inside there and this creature is the cleverest or the most intelligent of all creatures the snake. And suddenly there's a scene, and it's the snake and the woman. Where the man is, we learn at the end. He was kind of around, but he's not the actor here, he's just a passive background figure. It's the one who was taken from the side while the man was in a trance sleep. So the one who is connected to also a night mystery, the moon mystery, the side, this night, one is drawn to knowledge, called to the voice of the one who's full of intelligence, and that one speaks to her and said what did the snake say?
Speaker 2:Let's go to chapter three of Genesis. Right at the beginning, he said to the woman did god actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? You say so. He says a word that isn't accurate. It's such a brilliant move, drawing out of her God's law. Did God actually say you can't eat of any tree here, and it naturally calls up no, no.
Speaker 2:And the woman said to the serpent we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden. But God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die. Shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman you will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So he asks a question and says a word that causes this one to question reality. Huh, maybe there's a power trying to oppress me, keeping something that's amazing from me, not letting me have something that would make me like that one. Maybe God is actually the great patriarch who's using this rule as a tool of oppression, Rather than, maybe God has made this rule for our protection right. Is that interesting? It's pretty radical yeah, right.
Speaker 3:So casting doubt, and also not only casting doubt, but bringing a new idea, and a new idea that god could be depriving me of my rightful glory. Yeah, the full possibilities.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's very powerful. So into this scene. Then the next verse is the woman looks for herself and tries to judge what she thinks. It's an amazing passage for me, Verse 6,. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, so she looks and she judges. This is also a Genesis chapter 1 practice.
Speaker 2:God is always doing work, stepping back, looking and judging it was good. God makes a judgment by looking at things, discerns. So she tries to look at the fruit and make her own judgment. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes it's beautiful, pleasurable to look at and that the tree was desired to make one wise, this fruit leads to wisdom she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her and he ate. And she also gave some to her husband, who was with her and he ate. He's a totally passive actor. She is the leader in this situation in every way. She goes to make her own judgment to have a conversation with a serpent spirit being who can talk, looks and makes this judgment about the fruit, takes of her own initiative, eats it and passes it on. Yeah.
Speaker 3:In doing that, what has she done? She's broken her agreement to surrender to submit To the guidance. To the guidance of God. Yeah, Among other things.
Speaker 2:Would you call that an advancement or a fall?
Speaker 3:Both.
Speaker 2:It's interesting, right? Yeah, you read the story. I think the natural human thing is like hey, good on her. She's got initiative, she wants to judge things for herself, she has ambition, she wants to gain godlikeness and she wants to gain wisdom. She wants to enjoy pleasure. Who's to say what she can?
Speaker 3:and can't do and not be under the thumb of God, so to speak. Yeah, and then it's also a fall, because in a way, you disconnect yourself from God.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so she advances towards independence, self-motivation, self-judgment. She's becoming more of her own person. Yeah, and that's an advance.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if one of my daughters went through a process like that, so to speak, where they were feeling, you know, kind of entranced by a certain rule, and then looked at it again and made their own judgment and came to their own conclusion and took a step, I'd be like you go, girl, and you're grounded, and you're grounded. Right.
Speaker 2:It's like the rebellion energy. Has you want to see your children step into independence and strength? Oh, yeah, so bad right.
Speaker 3:And then it's so often the case that you see a spark of that strength and that self coming out and you have to bring a consequence at the same time that you're feeling like, yes, good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because, but the consequence in this it has to be like if it's reality, you need to know where this kind of path to independence leads.
Speaker 2:It, it it's. I'm not punishing you. It, it it's. I'm not punishing you. I'm gonna let you taste and feel. When you, your own path to independence is at the expense of the well-being of reality, that's going to have consequences. There's going to be pain there, there will be death involved in this, because you're falling out of the lawfulness of the universe by coming into yourself. I had a dear friend who was my boss in college, named Trent, and Trent was a lifelong deadhead, grateful dead Every day, got home, filled up his bowl with weed, sat down with his beautiful stereo and put in some amazing live digital recording of some concert of the dead, and just healed from his day of work in the library, shout out brother trent, wherever you may be, whether you're on the other side or not, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I was, you know, 20 years old at the time and he was a lover of the work of Nietzsche and he claimed to be a Buddhist and I was already out as a Christian. So we had some very powerful conversations. He was very open to real conversation, respected me because he could tell I at least was a thinker and didn't hate Nietzsche. And and he said to me, the last 5 000 years of history were a mistake, last 5 000 years of history, so back, basically, to the beginnings of egyptian times. The emergence of the individual ego is the ruination of all reality. So it's a fall Back. When we were then in true, where the powers of the nature that guide things into a harmonious relationship were just working in us, it was good, yeah. And the minute we start moving in the Western tradition towards the individual, self it all goes to hell.
Speaker 2:That was his assessment of reality, true and you and I are saying thank god for this woman yeah she's starting a process of independence.
Speaker 2:And again, where is adam? Where is the man? He's kind of asleep, he's not there. Yeah, he took the oh thanks for the fruit, just eats it doesn't even like. Uh, hey, you remember that like rule that we heard before. Like I'm not sure this is a good idea. I was here before, or what nothing. So the lead actor in the story is 100 the woman.
Speaker 2:So the results, of course, are very powerful. They go in many different directions which we don't have time to get into. The eyes of both were opened. They knew they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves like this shame. They noticed their nakedness. They hear the sound of the lord and rather than going out to welcome him, they hide. They hid themselves from the presence of the Lord and rather than going out to welcome him, they hide. They hid themselves from the presence of the Lord. God among the trees so that God can't find them. Where are you? By doing this, they've made themselves less accessible to God.
Speaker 2:God does a little investigation of the situation. Who did what? There's a lot of blaming involved, and once he figures out that the serpent was the one who got this whole thing started. He has a lovely few things to say to the serpent, including the first prophecy of the whole Bible, verse 15,. I will put enmity between you and the woman, not you and the woman and the man.
Speaker 2:So the snake story was between you two, this wisdom work that was between you two. So I'm going to put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. The seed of the woman, her seed, oh, snake, is going to bruise your head or crush your head and you shall crush his heel. So suddenly there's a prophecy. There's going to be a seed of the woman who's going to deal with the snake. So something is going to come from her that is actually going to overcome the wisdom issues of this creature. This is the first messianic prophecy. She is going to bring forth someone who's going to actually make up for what the snake did and handle the snake.
Speaker 3:That's powerful, amazing.
Speaker 2:And that guy is not involved. No, he's not mentioned. No.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:He doesn't get a prophecy. No, you'll see something said to him which is, you know, outrageously different. But then he turns to the woman, and here it is. But then he turns to the woman, and here it is. I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing In pain you shall bring forth children. Your seed, your desire shall be and nobody really knows how to translate this for your husband or contrary to your husband. So be this kind of tension-filled experience between you and the man, and he shall rule over you.
Speaker 2:So that, according to the story of humanity given in the Hebrew scripture of our time, in the garden where we were in shalom first and balanced harmony, the snake gets involved. She gets drawn towards wisdom and knowledge, takes it for herself out of her initiative and ambition to be like God, and the way God sees to deal with this issue with her is to tell her that the man shall rule over you. So the complement equality situation. Prior to the scene, god is now saying the result is you're going to have to be in an unequal situation. Wow, we have to have that part of the story because that's in the background.
Speaker 2:Yeah, jonah, okay, in this last bit of time time. It took a while to get there. Why do you? How do you read the wisdom of god at work just this morning, in that this, that this consequence that god brings to this person person in the story that we've just heard would in any way be balanced out, or the right, exact, fitting medicine for her deed would be, you're going to now need to experience the man ruling over you. Hmm.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, I find it very helpful that you've beautifully elucidated the mysteries of the archetype of the feminine, the archetype of the female in this story, that it really is the archetype of the self-willing individuality and that's kind of counterintuitive, in a certain way, to what we normally think, that the one that's ruling or the one that's supposed to be in charge, the active one, or the male, the white male who's talking about this right now, is meant to embody and be the archetype of the individuality, the active asserter. But in this picture, if we really take the whole story, the woman is the picture of that spirit, the spirit of the birth of the individual self wanting to know for itself, wanting to discover for itself, wanting to be freed from unconscious chains, right consciousness.
Speaker 3:And so if I think of the medicine, well, if that tendency that can then become egotistical, selfish and dominant in its self-centered perspective, I think, then the medicine for that would be two things. If I look at my own experience Pain there's nothing that has brought a kind of humility more in my life than unsolvable pain and having to learn to being again and again confronted with needing to overcome my self-will and submitting to a greater will, those two things. So it's interesting then if I just look at my own experience and activate a kind of inner feminine in me, and what I mean by that is this active, independent individuality.
Speaker 2:Who wants to know for itself and has the ambition to become like God.
Speaker 3:Yeah, which is again counterintuitive maybe to the archetypes that we're used to, which would be feminine. But the origin of this in the scripture is that, but that the medicine for that overactive individuality would be pain in my own experience and overcoming myself in submitting to a higher will that is wiser than me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and maybe that last part is the challenge, because we don't have anything to give us the impression that the man is a wiser will than us, and so this is where I think I'd that's where the rubber hits, because it was so beautiful, by the way, how you first of all prevented yourself from falling prey to thinking this is a story about women, yeah, rather than the two natures of the human being, yeah, showing themselves, yeah. So the part of us that comes from the middle of who we are, from the side, apparently, is able to go into the realm of the garden and interact with the wise snake being in the night realm and seek secret knowledge of God in the night realm and seek secret knowledge of God. So this pursuit of divinization and apotheosis that the human soul longs to become divine, longs to judge for itself and reach true independence, which God is. How could we be images of God and not be free, independent beings? God is utterly free, and any lover of God in the Bible who would come in here and say to me, no, no, no, we're just supposed to submit in unfreedom, we would never be fulfilling the task to become images of God. God is the most free and independent being that there is, you can't. It's unthinkable. It's unthinkable.
Speaker 2:And God has created a circumstance in the garden where this could happen. In God's wisdom, but in the choices made, god also hovers over that situation. I feel like it's a great example. Okay, what happened? You did this, you did that, learning what all took place. And then speaks a word. What will be the medicine for this situation? Yo Yo, there's been this darkness here and chaos started. What will rectify and give, what will get you to Godhood and you won't be a menace to society? Right, if I can give you a path that will lead to humility and bowing before the other, then Godhood will be good in you. But we got to get you out of this garden before you eat the tree of life and become a god too fast.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we don't want you to be eternally an egotist. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I was thinking, as you're talking too, how Rudolf Steiner, in his own works, would say at one point, in many ways, actually multiple times but true wisdom is born only of pain. So the seed of the woman, the children that are coming from us, have to go through labor pains for them to be good True wisdom. So this wisdom that she takes selfishly is not true wisdom. No, you've stolen something that's not yet yours, true wisdom.
Speaker 2:No, you've stolen something that's not yet yours, so I'm going to give you a road to go through things where you will have the sense. These are my children and I've suffered to bring them into being, and that will be a healing balancing. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's beautiful and you know what's not in there.
Speaker 2:Jonah Tell me that she's going to die. Aha, there's no death. Yeah, she's going to suffer in labor and she's going to submit to someone. Yeah, so cliffhanger for next week is what does God say to the man, mm, who she's supposed to submit to? Because we need to understand now who he is. I feel like we've got a bit of a feeling of who she is in each human. That's, for me, the gift that you gave us today. Who's he? Who's he? What is he up to? Who is he in me and who's submitting to who? When, where and how does that? Yeah, because apparently he needs a lot of instruction Right Now. He gets a whole load here for a word from God and then Paul's going to give him even more. As the man in relationship, I look forward to it.
Speaker 2:Me too.
Speaker 3:Okay, nice. Thank you, patrick. Thank you, Jonah © B Emily Beynon.