Copyright (c) 2010 Scott F Paradis

Imagine living in a magnificently beautiful setting, warm and comfortable surrounded by great bounty — life is good, you might say grand. Existence is always and forever in the bliss of now. No yearning for yesterday, no anxiety about tomorrow, no concern today. What is, is. For the ego however, everything is not even close to enough. The ego has an insatiable desire for more - more power, mastery, dominion. The ego seeks it all, for itself. The ego does not realize it is inseparable from others, inseparable from what is, inseparable from the divine. In the quest to have it all, the ego moves people from unity to defiance and then to domination.

Examining the story of creation in the book of Genesis we see that Adam and Eve's original sin was not so much in the act of disobedience as it was in the indulgence of ego. Adam and Eve considered and attempted to gain something they thought they did not have. They coveted a false idol - power. What they secured instead set mankind on a path to wrestle lifetime after lifetime with an ego intent on leading to ever more pain and suffering.

When Adam and Eve's eyes were opened, they realized they were naked; they were ashamed. For the first time they saw themselves as separate from each other, separate from creation, and separate from the Creator. In one fell swoop they moved from actor to judge. The ego seized the intellect, they realized they were naked and they determined their state to be bad.

What doomed them, however, was not the Creator's judgment of their act. The Creator knew they had eaten of the Tree. He offered a chance at redemption by questioning them. The responses they offered sealed their fate; they condemned themselves. The Creator asked Adam if he ate of the tree. Adam responded, "The woman made me do it." With his utterance, Adam failed to take responsibility for what he had done. The woman in turn, when questioned, pointed to the serpent as culprit (true to our contemporary form), denying responsibility for her actions.

Original sin is not a ball and chain handed down to mankind through the generations from an original act of disobedience. What we know as "Original Sin" is a state of the human condition that we may either ignore or embrace, the force of ego. We can master ego or succumb to its intent and let ego master us. Unfortunately most of us tend to believe it's not our choice — it's not our fault.