The Laser Beam, Part 2

All things call for a single-minded focus,
a laser beam and a microscope,
and then all things are celebrated.

~ The Laser Beam whisper, October 3, 2024

 

            The LaserBeam message had already kept my attention for a few hours, quietly dropping hints in surprising spurts to life-long questions.  I call these the “Enigma”: Why, on a planet so abundant, fully capable of nourishing all, is there widespread poverty?  Unnecessary suffering?  And why has God allowed it?  

When I posed these questions to church leaders, they said humans were at fault and then created “in sin.”  Contradictory and unjust, is this not?  Not, they said in tones convinced and condescending, tricking me into thinking they know more than me.  My observations of the world and the teachings of the church both opposed my intuition, keeping me baffled. 

            The Laser Beam vision arrived unexpected on a day off, like droplets of rain, each followed by a pause of silence and time for reflection.  By this time at least many of my questions about God had been resolved through my own intimate connection with the divine, my whispers of mystery, my own research and finally simply trusting my own intuition.  Still, I battled over the other part of the Enigma, the widespread, unnecessary suffering, especially the propensity of many humans toward violence.   

The Laser Beam message began a reply.  Any who wish to see the full first part of this message can click  here for Part 1.  Otherwise, here is a synopsis, beginning with this whisper: 

There are objectives within the Cosmos
that can only be accomplished in the darkness.

            A pause. 

In the heavenly places of perfection, there is much that is unknown:
courage, perseverance, love in spite of pain, forgiveness, gratitude,
and the seeking and finding of beauty within a sea of ugliness.
Endurance through despair: perfection knows not that.

             Another pause. 

Only in physical places can single-minded focus be achieved.
In all other places, omniscience and connectedness exclude any capacity
to focus intently into a single direction and within a single, isolated being. 

            Then came the vision: a dark background like the night sky appeared with a man standing on a laser beam.  Then a few others formed into view, each on their own beam.  The beams were of various widths, some wide like a surf board, some narrow like a balance beam, and others everywhere in between.  One especially narrow one, like a tight rope, was the focus on the next few messages which told of the “single minded focus” of humans. 

            Along with a few more whispers came a quick flash of a parallel metaphor: a microscope.  We see tiny details, like a microscope.  From this, the whispers replied to my question about those who commit violence: 

The violence caused by the perpetrators comes as an effect of the laser beam.
When the single-minded person is distracted from the laser beam,
the single-minded person gets agitated, angry, and then becomes violent.
It is not that the person is made violent;
it is that the person is made single-minded,
and violence is the outcome. 

            What a refreshing contrast to the church teaching that humans were created “in sin”!  No, humans are like laser beams, and violence is an effect. 

            Finally, they surprised me with another whisper, the focus for this post: 

All things call for a single-minded focus,
a laser beam and a microscope,
and then all things are celebrated. 

             To celebrate all things.  Wow.  

The whispers continued: 

The purpose of a single-minded focus, an obsession,
is to celebrate the obsession.
When a being has cast a laser beam onto some creation, any creation,
then the entire Cosmos is invited to celebrate that creation. 

Remarkable.  I never learned that in church.  “The entire Cosmos is invited to celebrate that creation.”  

The whispers furthered explained, 

Only a being with a single-minded focus can do this,
and only an isolated physical being on a physical planet can have a single-minded focus.
Therefore, physical beings with single-minded obsessions
are needed for the Cosmos to celebrate all things. 

If in the Cosmos, omniscience and connectedness exclude “single-minded focus,” then surely the special celebration of any particular creation is also excluded.  Humans serve an especially grand purpose.  

While drafting this piece, I watched a video that included the mind-boggling discovery of the “observer effect” by quantum physicists from their double slit experiment.  They wished to understand the behavior of photons, but they never expected to discover what they did.  If unobserved, they ripple as waves.  In relation to the Laser Beam message, the photons behave like the Cosmos: harmonized and connected.  But when scientists set up their equipment to observe, study and measure them, they behave as particles.  In other words, they behave the way humans see and they transform into separate dots of light.  

Fifteen years ago, when I learned of this experiment, which has been repeated a great many times, always with the same outcome, I, like everyone, was astonished by it.  We, the humans, create the separation of waves into particles by our mere observation.  Now, fifteen years later, I had forgotten about that experiment, and yet, by divine synchronicity, I was led to a video that reminded me of it and the discovery of the “observer effect.”  The observer effect hints at this grand purpose of humans.  The Cosmos sees only the waves.  We humans, generally, see only the particles.  For the particles to be seen, humans are needed. 

Finally I was given a reason for human nastiness that I could embrace.  Humans are needed to observe in detail to assist the Cosmos in celebration, but this detailed focus can also lead to conflict.  In reply to my Enigma, conflict appears to have a purpose, an unintended effect of the grand purpose of humans: All things, all creatures, all plants, all creations are intended to be celebrated.   

Think of those biologists who spend their lives studying some small insect.  These biologists are wired to be fascinated with a tiny creature or the mysteries of its unique features in part to assist the Cosmos in celebrating a creature that might otherwise be ignored or unnoticed.  Scientists in fields from microbiology to astronomy and everything in between are captivated by the thrill of discovering something new: to be the first to discover a new particle or a new fish or a new dwarf planet.  This thrill, this burst of adrenaline, that we humans experience when we discover some new creation has a purpose in our grand Universe: to celebrate.  It can be about anything -- an invention, a political structure, a system of productivity, a country, a town, a religious order, a single theological concept, a relationship, a technology, or, for my dad, a mathematical formula. 

As a young girl, I watched my dad work out calculations on his yellow vertical notebook, then later on his laptop computer.  Why was he fixated on math problems?  I asked him one day and he said he was plotting formulas in his field of expertise: Data Compression.  That meant nothing to me at age twelve.  Little did I understand then that my dad’s math helped get not only him, but all of us, from that yellow vertical notebook to that laptop computer.  Others in his field have since brought us to videos on the Internet on our palm sized cell phones.  My dad’s fixation on math, along with his colleagues, birthed something amazing. 

My own “laser beam” focus had been on the portion of the human condition of suffering and conflict that I perceived to be unnecessary, especially of those so prone either to commit violence or to needlessly suffer, and often, both.  The laser beam message felt as if my head had turned toward an entirely different laser beam focus of human creation.  Humans, unlike what I had been taught, were not created “in sin.”  They were, instead, created to focus very small, some especially minute, in order for the Cosmos to honor, dignify, respect and to celebrate all things. 

Now that is something I can celebrate.

 

© by karina.  All rights reserved.  Please use only with permission and/or a link to this post.

p.s. I first learned of the double slit experiment and the observer effect from this great animated explanation: Dr Quantum Double Slit Experiment 

The Laser Beam, Part 1

Other Metaphors of Life

The Smorgasbord

Artificial Sweetener 

The Deep-end Diver and the Backstroke Swimmers 

The Bumblebee and the Hawk

The Oyster

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.

Jasmine's Serve

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, or click the hyperlinks within the text for the selections referred to.  

Saturday, June 30, 2012.  Glendale Racquet Club, Colorado Springs, CO.

             “Tim and I have made a decision.” Jasmine is bouncing a ball onto the court she’s walking onto with her racquet.  She and her partner Mindy are switching court sides with their friends and opponents, Kristin and Gabbie.  It’s Jasmine’s serve. 

Mindy smiles.  She knows Jasmine’s news, but their opponents, Kristin and Gabbie, are waiting in anticipation.  Could she be pregnant?  Moving?  Splitting up?

At the baseline, Jasmine adds that she and Tim have been to seven marriage counseling sessions.  She positions herself behind the baseline, bounces the ball three times, says, “We’re getting a divorce,” bounces the ball one more time, announces the score 5 to 4, tosses up the ball, and serves a fast spin to Kristin’s backhand.  Kristin can’t reach it with any part of her racquet.  An ace.

            “What?!” Kristin shouts.  “You can’t say that and then serve one of those!”  Mindy chuckles, Gabbie smiles, and Kristin groans.  “Can she re-serve that point, Mindy?” 

            “You could have returned that serve, Kristin?” Mindy catches the ball Gabbie has just tossed back to her.

“Too good.”  Gabbie shakes her head.  “Your point.”

            “All right.”  Kristin relents.  “A round of daiquiris on me, Jasmine, if you give us the full scoop at The Alley.”

            Perhaps having thrown off her opponents, Jasmine serves a love game, winning the set 6-4.  Kristin has no complaints, just curiosity.

 The Alley, Glendale’s sports bar

             The friends find seats at their favorite table at the back of the sports bar.  Kristin orders a round of drinks and turns to Jasmine.  “A divorce?  Are you sure?  How do you feel?”

            “Relief, mostly.” The sweat on Jasmine’s face after playing tennis seems to reflect her relief after the uphill battle of her marriage.

            Kristin enjoys breaking rules in the religion that raised her but knows that’s not Jasmine’s habit.  “Are there any more surprises? Kristin asks, “even like you and Davie getting together?”

            “I haven’t seen him since February.” Jasmine reminds her friends that Davie is a youth pastor, still married, has been ordered out of their mixed doubles group by Quail Canyon Church, and she’s been ordered out of Quail Canyon altogether for the kiss they shared.  “I’d say that adds up to . . . probably not?”  Jasmine looks at each of her friends, hoping any of them might challenge her “probably not” reply.  No.  They each offer an ever-so-slight nod, more with their eyes than with their head.

            “How do you feel about being single?” Gabbie asks.

            “If I think about it too much, I’m terrified.”  Jasmine’s voice is now lower, slower, somber.  But when she doesn’t think about it, she feels peace.  Her chest isn’t tight and her breathing comes easier.  “My body is responding to my relief.”

            “I get it.”  Kristin replies quietly.

            Jasmine can see in Kristin’s eyes she really does understand, possibly in a way Jasmine has never really understood.  In a way, Kristin had “divorced” herself from her parents, rebelling against them when she refused their plans to continue homeschooling her in middle school.  Kristin was so young.  She must have been terrified.  How did she muster the courage?

Gabbie leans into the table and asks Jasmine what she and Tim learned from marriage counseling.

“That we are two different souls on two different paths who cannot forge a ‘truly new new.’”

That’s their marriage counselor’s term for couples with no glaring issues, hurts, or mistakes.  He says it’s unusual, but has seen it before, and has created for a goal for such couples: to forge a “truly new new.”

“Cool.” Gabbie nods.  “I like that.”

“Me too,” Jasmine nods with Gabbie.  “Not Tim.”

“Tim the Rock didn’t want a ‘truly new new’”? Mindy smiles.

“I, the rolling ball, love it, and he, the rock, hates it.”  Jasmine chuckles.  She reminds her friends that she was drawn to Tim’s rock-like nature and his archer qualities.  Jasmine’s friends all know that Tim’s training to her in archery has given her an edge in tennis.  She’s told the story often of how he wooed her with archery, standing behind her so close their entire bodies touched, as he trained her to position every part of her body to aim for perfect precision, a skill she has transferred to her own sport of tennis.

“That straight-shooting archer can hit a bulls-eye on anything.  As long as you don’t make it too complicated for him,” Jasmine chuckles, “like trying to create a ‘truly new new’.”

            “But he stuck with your marriage counselor?” Gabbie asks.

            “Yes, because I liked him so much.”  Jasmine honors Tim’s willingness to accept a counselor she likes, even if he had to consider creating something new.

            “It was my mom who really wanted us to get a new counselor, though.  A Christian one.” Jasmine tells her friends her mom reminded her of what Jesus said about divorce.  Jasmine smiles and moves in closer to her friends to tell them how she replied. “’To the male religious leaders in the first century, Mom?  You really think that’s what he’d say to me?”  Jasmine shakes her head as she recalls the conversation and relays her mom’s reply that Jesus’ words were “timeless.”

            “I said, ‘Some of Jesus’ words were timeless.  Some of his words were cultural.”  Leaning on her right arm on the table, Jasmine tells her friends what she said Jesus did say that was timeless.  “No one can put new wine into old wine skins.”

Mindy is sitting fully back into her chair with her arms are folded in front of her chest.  She smiles at Jasmine with a single soft nod.  Jasmine can tell her singer-actress friend is imitating Simon Cowell, with his classic look of “Well done.  I didn’t think you could pull it off, but you did.”  Still mimicking Simon Cowell, Mindy moves forward into the table, rests her crossed arms onto the table, and looks straight at Jasmine.  “Is it actually ‘new wine’ if you’re returning to the person you’ve been all along?”

“The true me,” Jasmine nods.  “She’s hard to find beneath all the layers of what other people say I should be and what I should think.”

“Have you found her?” Kristin asks.

“I haven’t known her since I was in the fifth grade.”  Jasmine shakes her head.  “I let my family, my church, and my community define who I am, and I married into that definition of me. That’s who I call ‘old wine.  With each layer I peel off, I find another.  It’s just as Alice says of her Wonderland: ‘curious and curiouser’ this rabbit hole is.”

Mindy nods, soft, quiet nods, all Mindy.  No more Simon Cowell.

            “A rabbit’s hole is windy and unpredictable,” Jasmine continues.  That’s a game an archer won’t play.

“The rock archer probably doesn’t play divorce either,” Gabbie says.  “What made him decide he wants divorce too?”

            “He heard my heresies.”

            “Heresies?” Mindy scrunches her eyes.

            “That’s what he calls them.”  Jasmine tells her friends she decided to be no-holds-bar open with him and told him what she was learning about Eve, women, the church, what she’s found the Bible to actually say, and about God, even the sinister way God is portrayed in the Bible.  “I told him in fifth grade I wanted to know why Noah let God drown the world, and that I gave Joshua got an ‘F’ forcommitting genocide.

            “How did he take it?” Mindy asks with sensitivity.  Simon Cowell has left the room.

            “He asked me who I am.  Said he doesn’t know anymore.” Jasmine takes a sip of her daiquiri.  “I asked him if he loves the new me.” 

“He took on Rhett Butler’s voice and said, ‘Frankly, my dear, no.’” Tim shook his head, closed the door, and went for a walk.

A week later, Jasmine confessed to Tim that her questions were deep, and to be married, she needs a man who loves her for asking them and no matter what she finds.  “Then I told Tim I know of one, Davie, and that I’ve fallen in love with him.”

            Jasmine takes a long sip of her drink.  “Tim was hurt and cynical.  He said Davie would never come back and I need to get over him.  I said even still, he’s sparked something in me that isn’t going away.”

            The friends sit silent.  “He went to shoot some arrows and was gone at the archery field all day.  They close it at sundown, and he didn’t make it home until one in the morning.”

            Tim might be stubborn, but he’s a good guy.  Everyone likes him.  Kristin says quietly, “This must be hard for him.”

            Jasmine nods, feeling grief.  She wants him to be okay, and she wants to be okay too.  Could there be an easier way?

To be with Tim, Jasmine has to stop caring about what’s deepest in her heart.  Tim thinks he is supposed to be deepest in her heart, but he isn’t.  Even Davie isn’t.  She longs for Davie, but there are passions within her that run deeper than both men.

“Remember my obsession with that curse to Eve, ‘you will long for your man’?” Jasmine looks Mindy, who nods.  “And I thought the curse is the woman thinking she needs a man to be complete?” (Explained more in her journal here.) Mindy nods again. 

“I know the key now: know myself and live it.”

“That’s profound,” Kristin nods, “but I understand.  We’re incomplete when we try to be someone else.”

“We need to quit trying to please everyone else, like me listening to my mom who wants me married by 30.”  Mindy muses.  “I wonder if my mom doesn’t feel complete herself and has never realized that a woman can be complete without a man.”

“Harmonizing our inner masculine and feminine,” Gabbie nods, reminding her friends of what she’s said about the harmony of the individual human’s inner masculine part with the inner feminine part.  “Our problem is everyone else keeps telling us who they think we’re supposed to be, so we can’t merge these two parts of ourselves.”

            “If I can do that,” Jasmine muses, “Can I know myself and live it?”  

           "You sure can," Gabbie nods.  "Read Women who Run with the Wolves.  You are running, Girl!  With the wolves.  Keep on running, and don't turn back."

           Jasmine opens into a triumphant smile.  She hasn't heard of the book Gabbie just mentioned, but she she'll check it, and she knows her friends understand.  She can think at odds with them, discover whatever she does, and they will always be with her.  She might still long for Davie, but, with or without him, she know herself, live as herself, and be complete.

© 2022 by karina.  All rights reserved.  Please use with permission and/or a link to this blog post

Continue to Liberating Eve

Start at Jasmine's recent discoveries

Follow Davie's story: here 1st, here 2nd and here 3rd 

A Truly New New?

Colorado Springs, CO, Saturday, May 19, 2012

         “Tim was the rock that I needed then, and now I’m like a ball rolling down the hill, rolling further away from him.”  How did that analogy enter her mind? Driving home from Glendale Racquet Club, Jasmine reflects on her remarkable conversation at Glendale’s sports bar, the Alley, where she and her friends had lunch after their tennis match.  Gabbie asked why Jasmine had married Tim, and Jasmine marvels that out of her mouth came a reply so quick and intuitive.

            How will this inconvenient truth complicate their attempts to follow through on that three word phrase everyone is calling of them: to “save their marriage”?  How might their marriage counselor respond?  He’s been encouraging them to seek ways to recreate themselves into something new and fresh, not a new version of their old selves, but “a truly new new” couple.  Jasmine smiles, repeating that lovely phrase to herself, “a truly new new.”  He’s the right counselor for her.  But what about for Tim?  Is this counselor the right one for him too, and does he also want “a truly new new”?  She lit up when their counselor used that phrase.  Then she looked over at Tim, stoic.

            A red light.  Thank goodness.  A pause for Jasmine’s mind.  Her thoughts are traveling too fast and to places too unwelcome.  To recreate themselves as a couple, it seems to her only two options exist: either Jasmine the ball climbs back up that hill to Tim the rock, or Tim the rock magically becomes a ball and starts rolling down the hill too.  Even a compromise half-way point means she’d still have to roll herself backwards, uphill.  She has no desire to stop the roll; it’s her natural, authentic expression.  And a transformed Tim makes more sense for them to become “truly new new.” 

But rock to ball isn’t in Tim’s character.  A ball is not his authentic expression.  Actually, he makes a really great rock.  That authentically outstanding rock is what attracted her to him.  Is there a third option?  Could he remain the rock and she the ball, rolling ever further away, and can they still save their marriage?  Perhaps he could become ever more excited about her, this new, adventurous ball.  He doesn’t seem to be, though, for which Jasmine is oddly grateful.  And even if he were, could she still be enticed by the rock?  When she’s traveling further away from it?

            Green light.  Time to store away that question for their marriage counselor.  Breathe, Jasmine, breathe out your anxiety.  She tries to command herself to quit troubling over that seemingly that impossible quandary, but she can’t.  Nor can her mind refuse another inevitable question.  Even if Tim feels the same way she does, if the rock and the ball no longer fit together as mutually supportive partners, how will their families, their friends, and their church community, from which she has been thankfully ousted, ever understand this? 

Jasmine lets out a deep sigh.  Jasmine isn’t yet ready to affirm to herself that she’s more worried over her community’s response to what the answer might be than to the answer itself.  Still, she asserts to herself that no blame should come upon either ball or rock for a distance that is increasing and has come upon them naturally.  And this distance is coming mostly from the traveling inexplicably initiated from within her, which is growing her, from a force seemingly divine.   

The church, of course, won’t see it this way.  They especially won’t accept that sense of hers when the elders know Jasmine accepted a passionate kiss from their youth pastor.  No, if Jasmine and Tim cannot “save their marriage,” their community will not understand, something Jasmine may need to come to terms with.

Another red light.  Saved again.  Jasmine chuckles.  She usually hates red lights.  But her conversation with her tennis friends has even more enticing nuggets, ones that aren’t so narcissistic and that are relevant for any woman, and man too.  The most relevant one for all men and women -- Eve representing an inner life force -- as Gabbie suggested, is still a little too far-out for Jasmine’s evangelical conditioning.  Perhaps in a decade, Jasmine, like her author, will be mulling over that one, but she isn’t there yet.  Her mind still operates under her evangelical training.

Yet that same training is what is opening her eyes, that training that taught her how to read the Bible, to take it seriously, to read it literally, and to examine every word.  For the essential words, she was even shown how to use Strong’s Concordance of the Bible to investigate the word in its original language and its the meanings and associations from its original language and context.

How could the very evangelical training that taught her how to read the Bible present an entirely different perspective on the Adam and Eve story than the interpretation of the story from that same tradition?  How have the evangelical leaders missed the meaning of the Hebrew word ezer, translated better as “life-saver” than “helper” for the creation of woman for the man? 

And how have they not puzzled over the character in the story, Elohim, translated as “God,” as an especially troubling, sinister character?  One who forbids something good – knowledge?   Who then severely punishes his creations for disobeying him before they had even attained the knowledge of obedience?  The text presents Elohim/God telling his creations, “Do not learn what good and evil is.”  Then when they did learn, Elohim/God said, “Now that you have learned what I ordered you not to learn, I will severely punish you.”

Naturally, most evangelical leaders would scoff at Jasmine for such an absurdly literalist reading of the Bible.  But that is what they had taught her to do.  From Jasmine’s point of view, they can’t have it both ways.  Either they interpret the Bible the way they teach, or they permit alternative ways to read the Bible, but not both.

Then there are the questions about Eve that Jasmine is most eager to ask of the church leaders: how have they missed the second two curses to Eve?  Why do they pretend those curses don’t exist?  Are the curses too inconvenient for them?

Perhaps they are, but, if so, Jasmine finds it amusing that the church should have a solution: Jesus.  According to the church, with Jesus, we are to overcome our curses, right?   With Jesus, men should no longer be ruling over women, right?  And shouldn’t Jesus be the evangelical answer to the second curse to Eve?  Should not the woman, in place of longing for her earthly man, be longing for her Heavenly Man of Christ?  Could that be why that middle phrase to Eve from Elohim/God, “your longing will be for your man,” is a curse at all?  Is the woman longing for an earthly substitute of a heavenly force?

            Not that Jasmine has learned any of this for herself, of course.  She still longs for an earthly man, and the one she longs for, inconveniently, is not her husband.  Perhaps her own curse, then, is even worse than the one suggested by the story, that she overly long for her husband.  But according to the teachings of her church, isn’t Jesus supposed to be the “answer” to her “curse”?  If she can “seek first the kingdom of God,” through her heavenly man of Christ, would she then be set free from this “curse”?

Divine synchronicity appears on the road sign ahead.  It’s one Jasmine has seen almost every day for years and has rarely paid attention to, but now it stands before her at a remarkable moment for her thought process.  “FOCUS on the FAMILY” reads the top of the billboard in great big teal lettering, with the first and the last words in all caps.  The C of “FOCUS” is wedded like a ring to its partner, the O.  At the bottom of the sign are two words, “Next right,” in smaller, but nevertheless visible lettering.  Between the heading and the directions is that very familiar smiling face, looking scholarly and authoritative in his grey-rimmed glasses and barely thinning and greying hair: Dr. James Dobson, President of this powerful organization, headquartered in Jasmine’s own town of Colorado Springs.

How might he reply to her question?  Jasmine pulls into her driveway.  Her smile takes on a mischievous curve.  Once inside, she wastes no time to visit the Focus website and book a tour for Monday afternoon.  Then she handwrites her question to give to the tour guide to pass along to the infamous doctor:

“Dear Dr. Dobson, I’ve been studying the story of Adam and Eve, and I’ve been curious about two phrases I had never known were given to Eve as part of her curse, and I’d like to know your take on them.

What do you think is meant by the curse from God to Eve: ‘your longing shall be for your man’ in Genesis 3:16?  What about the next phrase?  What do you think is meant by ‘and he will rule over you’?”

Beneath her question, Jasmine provides her name, email address, and phone number.  She takes a deep breath.

* * * * *

Postscript: while drafting the never finished non-fiction book, The Feminine Mystery, from 2008-10, I emailed Dr. Dobson the question above on these two rarely acknowledged phrases given to Eve.  A few days later, one of his staff members replied.  For the actual reply of Focus on the Family to the above question, return for the next installment of this story next month on this blog.  See you then, Karina

© 2021 by karina.  All rights reserved.  Please use only with permission and/or a link to this blog post

Continue to Eve's Test

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.