Consider for a moment that the largest topography of consciousness that we humans can move into is named Spiritual Consciousness. In Spiritual Consciousness symbols and myths renew what we make conscious in daily life in this topography. The primal image of a verdant Garden that lives within all of us archetypally is especially important to our Call to keep Earth livable. The Garden is an evolved, healthy ecosphere, local and planetary, which we aspire to and which Earth appears bent on evolving. In the consciousness of MultiEarth civilization, the Garden lives mostly in the underworld because egos and civilization have judged it too utopian to be practical. Any belief that this Garden is a deep, archetypal model of Earth’s intent and human potentials frightens our egos and civilization into a frenzy of repression because they can’t make enough money off such a way of living. But in Spiritual Consciousness, centered around the larger core of Self and a living Earth, the Garden is a profound symbol rising repeatedly from our souls. It animates our imagination and gives us a spectrum of images which motivate us to shape lives and societies of sustainable, interactive wellbeing. Eden, meaning “delight” in Hebrew, is one of the names for this Garden. Neither magical nor innocent, Eden throbs with numinous energy that motivates us to embody OneEarth ways in all we do, from food to finance, education to entertainment.
Eden is a symbol that lives in humans of all times and cultures, whatever its name. It manifests in art, how we tend ecospheres, and in the Wild everywhere. It guides what we manifest in Spiritual Consciousness because it eloquently symbolizes an ecological system in which balance and interdependence operate as regulators in a creational order. We long for Eden. We know intuitively that the greatest fulfillment for our species happens within that order. Even if we can’t articulate it consciously, our unconscious knows that we need to be in a participatory and relational community of all of Earth’s species and regulating processes to actualize our lives and the evolutionary purpose of our species in Earth’s family of species.
Ego’s MultiEarth civilization distances us from our inner Garden precisely because it lives in us so deeply and with such great power and potential that OneEarth lives and societies are what we shape when not distracted. Neither our souls nor the soul of society can be separated from this inner archetype. Only the consciousness of MultiEarth civilization believes that Eden is utopian and beyond our reach. In Spiritual Consciousness we know better. When Eden stirs, our imaginations bring to consciousness images of how to tend Creation; we know how to do what ego’s MultiEarth civilization does not. We keep Earth livable.
(The above is a slightly modified excerpt from the final chapter of my new book, From Egos to Eden: Our Heroic Journey to Keep Earth Livable, available February 6, 2017.)