Category: Healing

The Garden of Eden is a symbol of life the way God intended it to be.  In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve knew who they were in God.  They were aware of their belovedness which was their original blessing.  Their belovedness was enough in the Garden of Eden.  They did not need anything else.  This is why they were content in Eden, in harmony with God, themselves, one another and nature.

When Adam and Eve refused to accept their status as God’s beloved creation they expelled themselves from the Garden of Eden.  This led to the development of the ego or false self.  The false self came into existence after the fall.  It was created when the original blessing of Adam and Eve was contaminated by original sin.  The false self is Adam and Eve trying to survive outside the Garden.  And very quickly they discover that they can’t!  When Adam and Eve put themselves outside the garden they lost the experience of their belovedness, their original blessing.  Their original blessing created their true selves; their original sin created their false selves. 

Like Adam and Eve we too struggle to survive outside the Garden of Eden.  Our false self has us look for happiness in the wrong places, the wrong things and the wrong relationships.  Because of the false self we overly invest in accumulation, achievement and the need for approval.  This investment is the main reason why many of us end up exhausted, dissatisfied and with battered self-esteem.  If we have any hope of finding some of the harmony which existed in the Garden of Eden we need to claim our belovedness, our original blessing.

Claiming our belovedness involves the acceptance of unconditional love.  We need to find a way of owning the truth that we are loved and lovable as we are.  Accepting the truth that we are loved and lovable as we are, leads to deeper self-acceptance and a release from the pressure to accumulate, achieve and be attractive.

More and more people are turning to some form of contemplative practice to help them claim their belovedness. Contemplative practice is a form of prayer that allows us to be, to receive and to let ourselves be loved unconditionally.  It requires us to make some time for silence.  In silence we are able to hear the still small voice within us.  This voice assures us that we belong to God and that God is pleased with us as we are.  This is why silence can be a homecoming to our own deepest belonging.  It certainly helps to bring us back to the Garden of Eden.

Low self-esteem is all pervasive in our culture.  Within most of us there are powerful negative voices telling us that we are not good enough.  It is absolutely essential that shame does not become the only experience we have of ourselves.   We need to find a way that will allow us to experience ourselves differently.  

One way can be summed up in the three rhyming words – name, claim, tame.  We begin by naming our unfulfilled longing.  There is deep longing in every human heart.  It is difficult to know what this longing is about.  Not only can it take time for us to acknowledge our longing.  It also takes time to discover what it is for.  Eventually we come to realise that our unfulfilled longing is a longing for unconditional love.  Each and every one of us needs to know that we are loved and lovable as we are.

The good news of Jesus is that unconditional love is available to us.  Unconditional love is available to us in the relationship that God has with each of us.  God who is love, loves us as we are, without conditions, without expectations, without requirements.  This is the core truth of the Christian Gospel, the one thing we can say with certainty.   But it remains academic unless we claim it.  Sooner or later we need to claim our belovedness.

Claiming our belovedness is one thing.  We also need to tame what we call the false self.  The false self is built around conditional love.  It keeps us in the bondage of accumulation, achievement and approval.  Because of it we tend to find our value in what we have, in what we do and in what other people think of us. Taming the false self is a process of awareness and surrender.  First we recognise the many subtle and manipulative ways the false self is at work in ourselves and in the world around us.  Then we invite the Holy Spirit to tame the power of our false self.  Only the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that unites Jesus and his Father, can break the control that the false self has over us.