05/29/03 09:25pm

As I emerged form the shower this evening my thoughts drifted across those spaces of consciousness that are so often only apparent when we take the time to truly relax and let our inner spirit flow. My thoughts were of Eden, that mystical long time ago when we were one in garden with the flow of life that we later came to call God.

I have never been a follower of the mainstream thought that Eden was a place.
For me, I have always pondered Eden as a state of mind. A time when we were not yet sentient. A time when we were as the creatures of the forests, deserts, oceans and plains existing simplistically, instinctually participating in the flow of life that is mother earth, flowing instinctually in the balance of the macrocosm of the universe.

That our expulsion was not from a place but from a state of being. Cast forth into the realm of sentience, aware of ourselves, our actions, and the consequences of those actions. Grasping desperately to understand what it is that we are and further groping in our infancy of sentience to what it might be that we will become.

I am reminded of a sentence from a paragraph I read on the Album jacket of Jethro Tull's "Aqualung" "In the beginning God created man and he him"..
This may well have been the case in our infancy. Seeing the world with new mind we groped for explanations to the things we were now aware of that had been before only events in the flow of which we'd been part and party to like the plants, animals, birds, fish and insects that are like the sky, the land, the sea, and the interstellar medium that lay between all those suns whose energy fuels the flow of the biospheres like this one in which we live. All existing in perfect and harmonious balance as our species did in the time of legend we call Eden.

Our bodies are still a part of this flow for we are mammals like all of our other warm blooded cousins. It is only our perception that sets us apart, confuses the daylights out of us and causes us to wear the facades we so often do when interacting with each other and the universe we are still a part of but so often fail to realize.

I am reminded of a quote from Deepak Chopra…

"Your body is in dynamic and constant exchange with the body of the universe,
Your mind is dynamically interacting with the mind of the cosmos,
Your energy is an expression of cosmic energy.

The flow of life is nothing other than the harmonious interaction of all of the elements and forces that structure the field of existence."

If this is true and at this point in my travels through that which I might call my life, I ask the question. Is this why we are so drawn to garden?
Our quest for Eden born in that dynamic and constant exchange we are a part of but are only half aware of? Did we ever really leave Eden or did we just think we did?
I often wonder if this is indeed so when I am in the landscape and the sun's energy, the rain's moist touch or the wind's kiss touches my face and I find myself in that timeless interaction with "all of the elements and forces that structure the field of existence" :).

That place where all things that have been, are, and are yet to be exist at once.
That place, space, perception, if you will, that I feel so blessed to visit but know that I am not ready to live in.

My personal test for truth…

Truth. If a supposed "truth" is indeed true it will stand true in all cases to which it is applied.
If it does not then the "truth" must only be a part of the truth and the truth itself is yet to be discovered..

I do know from my interactions with the many of us who garden that that feeling of inner peace and tranquility, the feeling of oneness with nature, that feeling of "Eden" is commonly experienced when gardening.

As I have often said, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all take a bit of that peace we find in the garden back out with us and share it where we can, causing a ripple of Eden to flow across the ocean of humanity. :)

Al Funke