About a year ago, it seemed a mystery to me that the feeling of a “Lost Paradise” is so common. It is a strong theme in Jewish and Christian literature, and appears elsewhere where people remember and long for a lost time when things were so much better. Augustine of Hippo relied heavily on the idea of “original sin” to explain how humans had lost their place, their inheritance in an idyllic universe.
I think this feeling of my having lost paradise comes from the memory I have of when I was a baby. My first conscious experiences were of being one with the world. There was no sense of separation, no real sense of self. I was part of the universal Glow, and that was all I knew.
Then I was born, and the first trauma of separation was in the expulsion from my mother’s body. I was ejected forcibly from my own paradise. I began in that moment to get the first hint that I was separate, a lesson first taught me by my mother. My sense of being totally connected to the world began to weaken and fragment. There was no going back.
In that moment of birth, I began a long process of turning in and developed a growing sense of self distinct from the world. My feeling of an intimate connection with everything began to dissolve. Society continued to teach me that I was separate, and should keep it that way. My senses began to send me information that was at first scrambled, but gradually my consciousness fashioned its own fragmented structure to make sense of things. My mind developed constructs, and they became the organizing forms that my universe was squeezed into.
It has taken years for me to give definition and shape to my universe. It is a process that, I think, evolved in humans, and it allowed humans to survive and become strong. Humans have built their own world out of the superior mental tools given their species over time by evolution. Humans have risen to dominate the world to the point of smothering it. They have chosen to exploit their mental inheritance and not turn back. Humans have done this in the name of progress, with varying levels of success.
For me it is time to turn my world around. I am discovering that there is a chance to go back. I am able to reenter the paradise I remember only faintly, the paradise of unity I began to lose when I was born. As I grew, I began to lose sight of part of my inheritance. I gradually forgot that I am rooted in a place of harmony, unity and great joy. My reliance on my human way of thinking has developed a world of images, built out of my own imagination.
There is a way back. There is a way to uncover the intimate connection I have with all that is. That is the lost gold of my inheritance. I have been paying my way through life with small change begged on the street corners of society. All this time, the treasure has been hidden in the basement. It is such a pleasure, joy-filled path to go back, to find the treasure that seemed lost. It is slowly being found. It is good to find my way back home.