Jasmine's Journal: Liberating Eve

Dear friends and readers, the concluding selections to Just like Eve are now back.  If you are new to this series, you can get an overview here, or start at the beginning, or start at the recent set of selections between Jasmine and her friends for her most recent discoveries. 

Colorado Springs, CO, August 5, 2012

“The wise or knowing nature” of the “healthy woman” is to speak and act on one’s behalf, to be aware, alert, to draw on the innate feminine powers of intuition and sensing, to come into one’s cycles, to find what one belongs to, to rise with dignity, to retain as much consciousness as possible.”

(Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women who Run with the Wolves, p. 10)

"To retain as much consciousness as possible.  Jasmine records the final phrase a second time into her journal, after quoting Estés’ classic, recommended to her by Gabbie.

“To retain consciousness or gain it back?” Jasmine writes into her journal.  “Didn’t I have consciousness and then lost it?  When I was chided for ‘thinking at odds’?”  Jasmine lifts her pencil and wonders whether “retaining consciousness” means triumphing over conditioning. 

Perhaps a very few brave or lucky children never lose it.  But Jasmine wasn’t among them.  Over the years of her adolescence, chided for thinking at odds, or seeing eyes roll over for her questions and insights, or scolded for being just like Eve, little by little Jasmine permitted herself to be conditioned into silence. At first, it wasn't silence but delayed speaking, carefully considering her words and delaying her insights.  She still saw heads shaking and shoulders shrugging and eyes rolling, and she trained herself into silence. In time the silence of her mouth also grew into silence of her mind. She coached herself to quit thinking at odds.

In college, away from her family, Jasmine began to think at odds again, and sometimes, she made the error of speaking her thinking.  Remarkably, among some of her college friends, that was okay.  She could speak her mind. But perhaps their encouragement gave her too much confidence and she forgot, and spoke her mind again at home or at church, and this time, the chiding turned to scolding. She's a young adult. Shouldn't she know better by now what she can and cannot say?

So Jasmine rebuked herself, vowing to think at evens, yet unsure how she could learn such a trick.  Then she met Tim, the archer, who was very good at thinking at evens, and he liked her too, and his body felt delicious as he stood right behind her, touching his whole body to hers, teaching her to position every limb and every part of her body for perfect aim.  With him, she could shoot that arrow straight into the bullseye.  With him, perhaps she could also think at evens.

And now the very quality that drew her in is sending her away. Tim may have succeeded for a time to help Jasmine think at evens, but such an target, that he didn't even know he’d been given, and nor did she for that matter, carried with it a deadly side effect: the loss of Jasmine's own wise and compassionate consciousness. 

Then Davie came along -- after Jasmine had already married Tim, and after Davie had already married Pam.  But Davie helped Jasmine recover her own consciousness, her thinking at odds that he loved.  As Davie’s celebrated her thinking, Jasmine could see the loss of her consciousness began with her inquisitive and compassionate spirit.  She had wished to know why Noah let God drown the world: a question of compassion, for which she had been scorned, called “just like Eve.”

She and the church, Jasmine has come to realize, have differed on their fundamental value system.  The church values obedience at all costs to the authority it believes in, while Jasmine has valued compassion and has questioned the value of obedience without it.  Of the church, however, she remains perplexed.  If the churches truly believe in “obedience,” would they not wish to obey their master?  Jesus?  “Wasn’t it Jesus who said, ‘Ask, seek, and knock’? And didn’t the writer of Hebrews call for us to discern between good and evil? 

“Isn’t Elohim, who forbids such knowledge, inconsistent with them?”  Jasmine has already learned the character called ‘God’ is Elohim in Hebrew, with its feminine root, “power” and its masculine plural to translate, essentially, to feminine and masculine “powers.”  Once again thinking at odds, Jasmine makes a radical break from her tradition and reads this figure as a simple character in a simple story whose name is Elohim. 

Their own church, terrified by the attraction between Jasmine and Davie (Pastor David), sent Jasmine out of church and ordered Davie to quit attending their Mixed Doubles group.  Now that Jasmine is out of church, she figures they think however they do; they can think Elohim is “God” and stay blind to the inconsistency of this character with the one Jesus calls “Father,” who encourages questions and compassion.

For Davie Jasmine longs every day.  Her divorce with Tim is almost final. She prays Davie returns to their tennis group.  But even if he does not, and even if he stays with Pam, Davie has given Jasmine a priceless gift: he has given her the key that opens the door to redeem her consciousness.  And now Clarissa Pinkola Estes is walking with Jasmine through that door, confirming to her that she has found the right place, and that many have gone before her.

Through myths and legends, Estés relays the stories of the feminine version of the hero’s journey, and Jasmine decides to read Eve’s story the way Estés reads the stories she relates.  The myth most like Eve’s is called “Bluebeard,” after the groom who woos the youngest of three sisters.  Soon after they wed, he departs for a trip, hands her a set of keys, and tells her she can use all but one, which, of course, is the one she most wishes to use.  When her sisters come to visit, they make that their mission: find the door that uses this key. When they finally succeed, they find a room full of corpses: Bluebeard’s ex-wives.  With the help of her two sisters and their three brothers, the young bride’s next task is to escape before he kills her too, and she succeeds.

“’Bluebeard forbids the young woman to use the one key that would bring her to consciousness’ (Estés, p. 47).  Isn’t that what Elohim did?” Jasmine asks into her journal.  “Forbid Adam and Eve not only from knowledge, but also from something Eve perceived would come that is far more valuable?  Wisdom? When I read the story of Eve in its plain text, its message is clear, but disturbing.  But only if we think the figure who forbids is ‘God.’” 

Jasmine smiles at Estés’ analysis of Bluebeard, who looks very much like Elohim, both of whom forbid consciousness: “If she attempts to obey Bluebeard’s command not to use the key, she chooses death for her spirit.  By choosing to open the door to the ghastly secret room, she chooses life (p. 47).”

“She chooses life.”  Another final phrase gets written twice into Jasmine’s journal, first from the quote and second from herself.  “Is life also not what Eve chose?  Elohim said eating of knowledge would bring death, but wouldn’t both choices bring death?  Either extermination or non-life in blindness, lacking in wisdom?”

Jasmine sets down her pencil, reflecting that not only compassion, but also wisdom, are values far higher for her than mere obedience.  She beats to a deeper drum.  She, too, wants wisdom.  So she asks questions.  Starting to feel vindicated, Jasmine adds into her journal what Estés says about questions: “Asking the proper question is the central act of transformation—in fairy tales, in analysis, and in individuation.  The key question causes germination of consciousness. . . . Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open” (48).

            “For Eve, the question was prompted by the serpent, who told Eve she would not die for eating the fruit,” Jasmine writes into her journal.  “He suggests Eve does can choose life.  It will come at a cost: her ‘eyes will be opened’ to her vulnerable nakedness and to evil and to suffering.  But she will also gain a real, authentic life with wisdom.”

            Who is this serpent in Hebrew? Jasmine wonders.  She’s already learned the Hebrew word translated as “God” is Elohim, and the word translated as “helper” in Gen 2:18 is ezer, better translated as “life saver,” and the word for Eve is Havah, or “life-giver,” making Eve’s name and title a play on words that has been lost in translation.

To understand the serpent in Hebrew, Jasmine knows she must turn to Jewish resources, and from the Jewish mystics, she makes an astonishing discovery: the serpent, nachash in Hebrew, shares an energetic affinity with messiah, mashiach in Hebrew, in their system of gematria. In Hebrew, every letter is also a number.  Scholars add up the letters of a word to form a number, and words of the same number share an energetic affinity.  Nachash (Nun, 50 + Chet, 8 + Shin 300 = 358) and mashiach (Mem 40 + Shin 300 + Yod 10 + Chet 8 = 358) add up to the sa energy of 358.

“The serpent carries the energy of the messiah?” writes Jasmine, stunned.  If any biblical figure is more demonized than any other, it would be this serpent.  But Jewish mystics connect this figure with messiah.  Thinking very at odds, Jasmine continues journaling: “Like a liberator? I suppose so. He liberated her from the non-life of blindness into an authentic life, one with both pleasure and pain, with joy and suffering. For better or for worse, the serpent-messiah offered Eve a full, authentic life.”

Jasmine wonders why this remarkable clue into the serpent as a messiah figure is not well known.  Then again, she remembers even the second two curses to Eve, written clearly in English, without errors of translation, are also not well known. 

Perhaps later Jasmine will also connect this nechash to the saving force Moses calls upon for the Israelites in exile from Egypt, or to the one Jesus tells Nicodemus must be lifted up to enter the kingdom, or even to modern medicine’s familiar image of the caduceus with two snakes wrapped around a pole, representing the kundalini energy that heals the body and opens the mind.  But today, Jasmine is early in her discoveries.

It will also be time before she learns that her quest, like that of Eve, is that of the sages of all time, like the Norse god Odin, who sacrificed his eye for all-seeing wisdom.  Nor does she know that many who have gone before her have been persecuted.  Those in power, perhaps not consciously realizing it, are threatened when people start thinking for themselves.  They might lose their positions of privilege and authority.  Hence, many of the texts that liberate into consciousness have been lost, buried and burned, most infamously in 48 BCE from the fire of the library in Alexandria.  Meanwhile, many of those retained, either written or oral, have been carefully repackaged to undermine liberation and embolden the authorities of the world.   But the mysteries can be unburied, as Jasmine has done.  Many scholars have interpreted the story of Adam and Eve in many ways, almost all of which are far more rational than Augustine’s, villanizing Eve, that still permeates Jasmine’s tradition.  

But Jasmine need not examine those, for her journey has been for those like her: raised into the paradigm of her religious tradition and its reverence for the Bible and methods of reading it: literally, but consistent, and with a study of the words and meanings in the original text.  Hers is a simple quest: to see the ways this story interpreted as she's been taught is not only internally inconsistent and harmful to wisdom, but even relies on the mistranslations of its principle characters and concepts from its original Hebrew text.  In essence, the evangelical interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve violates the very rules the same tradition teaches to read the Bible.

Into her journal entry, Jasmine concludes, “The church leaders might have intended an insult when they called me ‘just like Eve,’ but now I see a woman who bravely risks her life for something more valuable: wisdom.  Her ‘eyes were opened,’ and, therefore, she suffered.  Truth is painful, and so is wisdom.  We don't see without a cost, but it is worth the cost to suffer and live.  Perhaps Eve still should have done as Abraham: challenge Elohim for a better deal.  But if her only two choices were existence in blindness or wisdom with open eyes and suffering, Eve made the better choice, and I find her vindicated.”

Jasmine closes her journal, deeming herself also vindicated.  No longer insulted by centuries of misunderstanding, Jasmine is grateful to be just like Eve, to think at odds, to be a ball rolling down a hill, and to beat to a deeper drum.  Tim, her family, and her church can join a marching band together and drum in obedient conformity, while she strums to her own rhythm.  A sly smile comes across her face, one that can be seen only by others who also beat to their own drum.

Continue to Davie's Return, Part 1 

Start at Jasmine's newest discoveries

 © 2022 by karina.  All rights reserved.  Please ask for permission and/or link to this blog post.

The Inner Feminine: Life-giver, Life-saver, Life Force?

 Glendale Racquet Club, Colorado Springs, CO, Saturday, May 19, 2012

             “Where’s Davie been, Jasmine?”  Gabbie is stretching her left leg at the front of Court 1.  ”BD says he’s taking a break,’ but it’s been over three months.  He’s still going to Men’s Night.  Why’s he not coming to Mixed Doubles Night?”  

Jasmine bends forward and touches the floor between her straightened legs, wondering how she might reply.  The four friends have Court 1 reserved most Saturdays for their own doubles game.   On Thursday evenings, Glendale reserves half of its courts for Mixed Doubles Night, where Jasmine has been Davie’s standard partner.  For men’s doubles, he partners with BD.  

“BD said I should ask you,” Gabbie continues.  “Do you know what’s up with him?”

             Mindy shoots her partner a worried look.  Jasmine pulls herself up and slightly squeezes her left cheek and lip as she looks back at Mindy.  The truth can be concealed no longer.  She stands up, cups her chin with her thumb and two fingers, and turns to Gabbie.  “We kissed.  The church is mad.  They don’t want us to see each other.”

             “You kissed?” Kristin’s mouth widens. 

            “You?  And Davie?” Gabbie picks up a ball, bounces it, and shakes her head.  “And the church?” 

            “--is freaked out.  He’s the youth pastor.  He’s not supposed to do stuff like that.”

             “So they’re punishing him by taking away the sport that keeps him sane from them?”

             “They don’t see it that way,” Jasmine sighs.

             Mindy taps Gabbie on the shoulder.  “They’re punishing Jasmine even more.  They’ve kicked her out of church.” 

            Gabbie turns to face Mindy and scrunches her eyes.  For real?  Mindy nods. Gabbie shifts to stretch her right leg and turns to Jasmine.  “How do you feel about that?” 

            “I was steaming mad,” Jasmine replies, adding that she was judged without a hearing, then sent off.  “What Bible do they read?”  She shakes her head, perplexed.  In a voice so quiet her friends can barely hear it, Jasmine mumbles her own answer.  “Not the one I read.”  But now, she is resolved.  She lifts her head up.  “The real punishment is not seeing my partner, my friend, and--” Jasmine sighs, “--the one I can’t quit thinking about.” 

            Kristin quietly pulls out a can of balls, bounces one, then bounces it to Jasmine with a smile.  “Let’s play.” 

            Since their opening conversation distracted Jasmine, Gabbie and Kristin take decisive wins.  As the friends walk into The Alley, Glendale’s sports bar, for lunch, they see four large screen TVs showing Tiger Woods making a putt on The Alley’s ESPN station.  “We’ve got to hear about that kiss,” Gabbie teases, while pulling out her seat to sit down.  “Order a real drink on me.”  She smiles and winks at Jasmine.  “But get your own lunch.” 

            Jasmine points to the daiquiri special on the table’s triangular drink menu.  “Daiquiris for us all!” Kristin lifts her right hand with cupped fingers, like she’s already holding the drink, and raises it to a toast.  “Is this your first?” Jasmine usually orders pop, while the others order beer or wine or something more fun.   Jasmine smiles.  “No, not quite.”  

Leaning over the table so she can whisper, Jasmine tells her friends about the kiss, its magic, her nightly recollections of it, and confides her longing for love-making with Davie. 

            “So you do fantasize sex with him?” Mindy teases.  Jasmine blushes.  Time to shift the topic.  “I’m trying to scheme a way to reconnect with him.  I can’t go to Men’s Night. I’ve been blackballed from church.  Where else can I find him?” 

            “You can’t just text him?” Kristin asks. 

“What would I text?”   

            As hard as it’s been to have been cast out of church and to go three months without seeing Davie, Jasmine shares she’s been learning more than ever before: about herself, Tim, her marriage, why it worked when they got married and why it’s not working now, and also about women and what the church says the Bible says about them that the Bible doesn’t say. 

            Gabbie and Kristin stare at their friend.  “That’s a lot.”  Gabbie takes a long sip of her daiquiri. “Why did your marriage work when you got married, but doesn’t now?”           

            “Tim was the rock I needed then, and now I’m more like a ball rolling down the hill, rolling further away from that rock.” 

            “I get that, Jazzie.” Kristin smiles.  “But I’m curious.  What have you learned the church says the Bible says about women that the Bible doesn’t say?”  Kristin had been raised in a conservative, Christian home, and in middle school, she refused to keep homeschooling.  Then in high school, she rebelled against the church altogether, a choice she and her parents still argue over. 

Jasmine moves forward in her seat and rests her arms, crossed, on the table.  “I started at the Beginning, and I can’t even get past those first three chapters of Genesis.  The writer – or writers – of these chapters were so forward-thinking, but the church has turned the story upside down, especially when they demonize Eve, and then leave out how she was cursed, and they leave out their responsibility to repair that curse.  Right there, in that story we think we’ve all read, Eve was cursed to be ‘ruled over’ by her man.  You won’t hear pastors admit that.” 

Kristin chuckles.  Jasmine nods and says she’s just discovered something new, a tantalizing play on words the translators missed.  “You know that pesky little verse that calls the woman the man’s ‘helper’?” 

“Yeah, like we’re second-class,” Kristin groans, “here to ‘help’ the gender that really matters.” 

“I think it’s an error of translation,” Jasmine whispers.  “For centuries, the translators haven’t known what to do with the actual Hebrew word, ezer.” 

“How do you think it should be translated?” 

“Let’s start with Eve.  In Hebrew, Eve, or Havah, means ‘life-giver.’” 

“She gives birth, so she gives life,” Mindy replies. 

“It fits, right?”  Jasmine takes another sip of her daiquiri.  “And ezer means ‘life-saver.’”  Jasmine tells her friends ezer is used 21 times in the Hebrew Bible, and in every instance other than its application to the creation of woman, ezer suggests warrior-like power and strength.  It’s usually applied to God Himself as an ezer to the people of Israel or to David or to Moses.  Moses even named his second son Eliezer and gave this reason: “The God of my father was my ezer and delivered me from the sword of Pharoah.” 

“Powerful.”  Kristin is impressed with her friend. 

“In Psalms 33, 70, and 115, King David often called the Lord his ‘ezer and shield’ or ‘ezer and deliverer,’” Jasmine continues.  She pulls out her phone, opens her Bible app, and reads out of Deuteronomy 33, where God “rides the heavens to your ezer, or salvation,” and the Lord “saves” from the root ezer, like a “shield” and a “sword” with enemies “cowering,” while He “tramples their high places.” 

“That’s more than a mere ‘helper,’” Mindy says, shaking her head. 

“No doubt.  From these other uses, it seems as if ezer is more like a life-saver, and a play on words for Eve as ‘life-giver.’” 

“Wow, that changes everything.”  Kristin shakes her head in disbelief.  “Our identity as women takes on a whole new perspective."

“I don’t feel like a life-saver, though,” Mindy confesses.  “I think I’m looking for a man to be my life-saver.” 

“That’s also interesting, Mindy.”  Jasmine takes a breath.  “Eve was given three curses.  We all know the first: child-bearing.  The third is that chilling one that Eve’s man would ‘rule over’ her.  But the second one is the most interesting to me: that she will ‘long for’ or ‘desire’ her man.  Maybe what you’ve just said is part of it.  Maybe she longs for him to be a life-saver to her.” 

Gabbie’s eyes widen.  She slowly nods.  “So it works both ways?  Both men and women can long for one another to be each other’s life savers?”  Gabbie ruffles through her hair, searching her memory.  “I think I remember learning that the Hindus say that Shakti, the feminine principle, represents the life force.” 

Jasmine raises her head.  Life-force? 

“Shiva, the masculine principle,” Gabbie continues, “is said to become a corpse without Shakti, his life-force.” 

"Shiva is the masculine, active principle, the one who acts in the world," Gabbie tells her friends.  "Shakti, the feminine, represents the life force, enabling the masculine to act.  Both are within us.  Our inner masculine relies upon the life force of the feminine within each of us.  Our inner masculine, the one who acts upon the world, is the initiator, but the feminine gives the masculine the energy and the impulse to initiate."  

The merger of Shiva and Shakti, as Gabbie understands the teaching, point to something deep: "our inner feminine and our inner masculine need to harmonize themselves with each other."  The friends, silent, keep their eyes on Gabbie, who takes a drink and continues. “Unless both our inner masculine and our inner feminine are alive and well, we’re stuck.” 

“So what you’re saying,” Mindy muses, “is that Eve might also represent our inner feminine, our own life-force, and that Adam might represent our own inner masculine, our internal initiator?” 

“If so,” Kristin replies, “any blame of women for whatever people think Eve may have done, even if she did exist, must be misguided.” 

“Very true, Kristin,” Gabbie nods.  “Yes, Mindy, that is what I wonder.  Carl Jung says the same thing, using his own words of ‘anima’ and ‘animus’ for the inner feminine and inner masculine.  They need to merge within us.  We need to let our inner feminine be a life-saver to our inner masculine, so it can initiate.” 

Jasmine takes a long slow sip of her daiquiri.  Is her head spinning from the daiquiri or from what Gabbie is suggesting?  No, her mind is too riveted.  “Life-giver,” “Life-saver,” “Life Force” as the “inner feminine”?  For both men and women? 

These notions are like nothing Jasmine has been raised to believe, yet they suggest truth more genuine than anything she’s been taught.  She feels her spine tingle with electricity.

Continue to "A Truly New New"

0 Jasmine's Journal: Who is Eve? God? What is the Fall?

       Now that I, Jasmine’s author, have shared some of the many mysteries of the Adam and Eve story outside of the scope of Jasmine’s quest (due to her Evangelical reading of the Bible as she was taught: literally) Jasmine, having reached the end of her quest, is ready to record into her journal some of her discoveries.  Now, to Jasmine, and her journal in Jasmine’s words . . .

 Who is Eve? God? What is The Fall?

 Dear Spirit,

       How little I understood!  Had I not been ex-communicated from church for asking for accountability after my kiss with Davie, I might never have learned what’s beneath what the whispers have called “centuries of misunderstanding” about Eve.  I’ve learned not only about Eve, but also about men and women and our relationship to God, actually named the masculine/feminine/plural Elohim, our duality, our illusion of separation with the divine, which has been called “The Fall,” and our potential to transcend this illusion.

       My no contact order with Davie has tortured me, Spirit.  So have my two decades of burying my questions after being reprimanded, at age 11, for being “just like Eve” – just for asking questions -- and then scared away from asking any more.  Perhaps healing can come as I record what I’ve discovered:

 1.      The irony that I was reprimanded at 11 for doing just what Jesus calls for us to do: “to ask, seek, and knock.”  But Sunday school teachers don’t like it when we ask inconvenient questions that make God look bad, like why Noah let God drown the world, or why God commanded Joshua to commit genocide, or why God would forbid Adam and Eve from something good: knowledge -- knowledge even of what is good and evil.

2. The quick assumptions of the church elders to immediately judge me as a temptress violated basic biblical steps of accountability even for those who have not confessed needs of accountability, let alone for those like me and Davie who did. (My author hasn’t written this yet; please be patient with her.)

 3. The church elder missed and entirely violated the spirit of the very verse he quoted, 2 Timothy 2:22, by omitting the second part: to pursue righteousness with those in our church body, upon fleeing the very lusts for which we were seeking accountability. (My author wrote about this in “Always the Thorn?”)

4. Never in church do we hear that Eve had two additional curses to the only one we ever learn, pain in childbirth: “you will desire your man and he will rule over you” (Gen 3:16).  As my author wrote in “Synchronicity,” I was flabbergasted the Bible actually says this. That last one, “he will rule over you,” chills me so much, Spirit, I don’t even know where to begin, as my author showed in “Space. Get it?” I’ve spent more time on that middle curse, “you will desire your man,” which my author showed me beginning to mull over in “You Complete Me.”

5.      I’ve further explored the middle curse, “desire your man,” as an obsession for some women, as my author showed in “The Ancient Obsession,” and one that the fashion, cosmetics, beauty, and romance industries capitalize on to their great profit, as my author developed in “Girls’ Day Out.”

6. Sometimes, the woman’s obsession can get under the man’s skin; therefore, as my author pointed out, sometimes he just needs his “Space.”

      Although these are some significant discoveries, Spirit, even more astonishing ones are to come, and my author has yet to write them!  I hope her readers will be patient.  But, I, her heroine, have the prophetic crystal ball of what I have yet to discover, and these are on their way:

7.      The character translated as “God” into English in the Adam and Eve story was called Elohim in the original text, written in Hebrew.  The -im suffix shows this figure to be a plural entity, and the name contains both masculine and feminine parts, suggesting this “God” power is masculine, feminine, and plural.  Why, Spirit, are we not taught this?

8. The word translated into English as “helper” or “helpmeet” is ezer in the original Hebrew, for which a better translation is “life-saver.”  How many English speaking women, Spirit, have any idea the woman was created to be a life-saver?  (My author hasn’t yet let me discover this, but she has shared this mystery on her blog in “In the Beginning, Part 2.”)

9. This same Elohim figure forbid something good, something the New Testament later calls for: knowledge of good and evil.  Why would a “good” God (or Elohim) forbid something good that would later be called for?  Why, further, would a good God/Elohim punish his subjects so severely for taking something that ought to help them progress further in their human evolution?

     10.  As I further reflect on this mystery, I will perceive that the problem of the tree may be less about “knowledge” and more about “duality”: good and evil.  I will reflect that a more fitting name for the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil might be “Tree of Duality.” Duality leads not to death, but to suffering and to the illusion of separation.  (Even though my author hasn’t yet let me discover this, she has written about it in “The Tree of Duality” on her blog.)

     11. According to the Jewish mystic system of gematria, the serpent (nahash: Nun (50) + Het (8) + Shin (300) = 358) holds the same mystical energy of 358 as the Messiah (Meshiach: Mem (40) + Shin (300) + Yod (10) + Het (8) = 358), suggesting the carry twin energy.

     12. The illusion of separation can be transcended by finding “completion” not in a human man, but in the heavenly man, Christ, the Christ within (Luke 17:21, KJV); “the mystery is this: Christ in you” (Col 1:27).  This mystery is too complex for the scope of my quest in this book, but my author plans to have me at least ponder it.

Stunning revelations You’ve given to me, Spirit.  Most of these came by way of reading the Bible the way I was taught, beginning back in Sunday school, as my author began to show in the “BE Filled Forever” context selection.  Having completed this quest, I have one more significant discovery: perhaps the reason I was so unreasonably reprimanded for asking the questions I did was because my questions implicated God.  They made God look bad.  Therefore, the church leaders preferred that I be not “just like Eve” and seek not knowledge.  However, by seeking knowledge the way they taught me, through a literal reading of the Bible, I have discovered that possibly – just possibly – the divine forces, “God” if you like, may have permitted an unfriendly version of himself to be presented in the Bible to test us to see if we are willing to wrestle with him.  (My author has Davie hint at this idea in “Love 30, Part 3” and my author explores it more clearly in “Obey or Wrestle?” on her blog.)

 Therefore, Spirit, perhaps we should not read the Bible literally, but wrestle with it instead.  Do I thank You for letting me learn all of this through the hardships You’ve permitted?  I’m not yet sure, but I’m getting there.  Stay tuned, Spirit, for my future thank You journal entry to You, and until then, please be patient with me!  

 Begin "Just like Eve" at 1: Why did Noah let God drown the world?

© 2020 by karina.  Please use with permission or a citation with a link to this blog post.

Reposting Introducing "Just like Eve"

Originally posted in April, 2020.  Reposting.

Breaking from its traditional non-fiction format, whispers of mystery is currently following Karina’s fictional novel, Just like Eve. Karina began the themes explored here in 2008, in a non-fiction book she titled The Feminine Mystery, alluding to Betty Frieden’s 1963 classic, The Feminine Mystique, which explores what Frieden calls “the problem that has no name” -- a problem Karina believes is Eve’s second curse to desire her (earthly) man, not sexually, but as a completion to her.  As she kept discovering more and more, she realized her discoveries were too controversial for non-fiction, and decided to clothe her message in fiction. For years, she tried many storylines and faced much writer’s block. In late 2017, she birthed Just like Eve, mixing the main storyline with a backdrop she could write about with her own sport of tennis.

Storyline: Heroine Jasmine, 31, is judged several times in life for being "just like Eve," first in 5th grade for asking off-limits questions, like why Noah let God drown the world. Now she's judged again with the same "just like Eve" line. She and 30 year old Davie are both married to others, are USTA mixed doubles partners, attend the same church for which Davie is the youth pastor, fall for one another, briefly act upon it, and seek accountability from the church leadership. It backfires. The church can't handle it. Jasmine is kicked out of church, thought to be a temptress. But was she? And what about Eve? And what might Eve really stand for? Jasmine is on a quest . . .

Among her discoveries for humans in general are these: (a) Eve risked her life for something that could potentially build her character and was later encouraged (Heb. 5:14); (b) this choice opened her eyes, but brought her suffering; hence the Tree from which she ate could be called "The Tree of Duality" -- it brought suffering, but a move forward; and  (c) this duality brought the Illusion of Separation.  To transcend this Illusion of Separation is the true Human Quest.

Among her discoveries for women are these: (a) the word translated into English as "helper" in Gen 2:18 is the Hebrew word ezer, and a more accurate translation of ezer is Lifesaver; the patriarchal translators did not wish to call woman a "lifesaver" for the man; (b) Eve was cursed not only for childbearing, but also to "desire her man" (Gen 3:16); that's a desire literally for her earthly man, not for sex, but for the man himself to complete her; and (c) most chilling of all, Eve was also cursed to "be ruled by him" (Gen 3:16); yes, how many pastors admit a curse to Eve is that her man would "rule over" her?  And Jasmine kept making discoveries

Click to start Just like Eve at the beginning

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