The Sacred Ache and another re-telling of the Garden
Between the modules, a mini study session
Before we begin, a note: In the Sacred Ache Workshop this week, we are discussing the Garden of Eden. This post is an in-between-the-modules study session… because once I start writing and thinking about one of the themes in our workshops, the ideas and invitations (for you) bubble up and I have to share them.
Another Visit to the Garden
Last week, in our Sacred Ache workshop, I posed this question:
What if the story of Eden was not about banishment, but about awakening?
How might that shift the way we experience the world?
This week, we step further into that question through two powerful retellings—one from Ireland, which I included in this weeks’ module here. One through the lens of Jung and Kabbala, which we’ll explore now.
Both of these perspectives are rich in meaning and both challenge the fixed nature of the stories we think we know. Which is the best way to approach a sacred text — not as holy writ, but as conversation. At least I think so.
And apparently, so does my friend Judith who teaches courses in Jewish Mysticism. In response the question I posed last week, she sent me an essay of which she said, “I wrote this when I was attempting to connect my Jungian studies to the well-worn stories in the Torah.”
I have reprinted that essay here, with her permission, to invite you to receive the ‘well-worn’ story of the Garden freshly—to see it archetypally, mythically, as a living text, vivid with complexity and symbols.
Judith Rose’s Essay:
The telling of Adam and Eve in the Garden clearly provides our earliest understanding of the continuous cosmic play of contraction/expansion in a world marked by duality and contrast. It is a world where every synonym has its antonym, and every “black” its “white.” The eating from the Tree of Distinctions brings awareness to Adam and to Eve of their ultimate separateness, hence the sudden realization of their mutual nakedness. Each sees the other now as The Other.
The Primal Human, with this realization, climbs out of original, edenic infancy and begins to see the world as it is in all its conflicting realities.
The snake, representing the erotic impulse, is a necessary component in the story. Eros is the drive that motors the flow of life as we know it. It is the primal pulse of will that can beguile us, and oftentimes confuse and delude us, but ultimately inspires us to create in the image of God. This, in the end, becomes the spark plug that fires and propels us toward connection—first with the Other, and ultimately, with the Divine.
It is important to note that God does not exhort Adam and Eve to avoid the Tree That Will Grant Eternal Life. Perhaps that is because Endless Light is not contracted by jealousy or threat of Other. The prohibition is rather given to avoid eating from the Tree That Will Bring Awareness of Distinctions.
Does not the Divine Father/Mother know that this warning will not and cannot be heeded? Take a good look. Is this not the way of conscious parenting? Children are given the opportunity to explore and discover life with guided independence. The loving, insightful parent puts forth warnings but does not prevent the child from taking the perhaps precarious but ultimately necessary growing steps toward individuation.
This all happens in spite of the parent’s own difficulty in witnessing the falls and losses the child must surely experience along the way. Ultimately, the parent knows the world of paradox that the child has entered—and can only pray that her little one does not get lost, as she sometimes does, inside the garden.
Through This Archetypal Lens, the Garden Becomes a Story of Awakening. Let’s take a look.
TzimTzum: The Divine Contraction
In Jewish mysticism, there is a concept of TzimTzum, the Divine Contraction, which suggests that in order to create the world, God had to withdraw—a divine contraction, making space for something new.
Imagine it: at first, there is only light — endless light. Infinite presence. Then, something shifts. God pulls back, creating an opening. A first breath. In this space, something is born.
What if this story is pointing to the moment when Adam and Eve, like God before them, are invited to step into the space of a new creation? You could say it like this: before the apple opened their eyes, they were one with God. After the bite, they were here and God was there. They were themselves and God was Godself. They were separate.
After the apple, they were invited by knowledge Herself, to leave the known (unity) and enter the wild unknown of multiplicity. In other words, to go forth and multiply- and make the world.
What if their departure is not exile but expansion?
What if, without it, there would be no world?
On Distinction: The First Awareness of Other
"The Primal Human, with this realization, climbs out of original, edenic infancy and begins to see the world as it is in all its conflicting realities."
Adam and Eve awaken to their separateness, to their bodies, to the space between them. Before the apple, there was no Other. Now, they see.
This is not a fall from grace; it is a step toward seeing the world as it is—in all its beauty and contradiction.
It is a step, also, toward longing—the longing which, at the foundation of life itself, made and continues to remake the world: Eros.
On Eros: The Primal Pulse of Will
"The primal pulse of will that can beguile us, and oftentimes confuse and delude us…"
The snake, far from being a deceiver, represents something essential: the force that propels life forward. It beguiles, confuses, and sometimes misleads—but ultimately, it inspires us to create.
This is the divine spark at work—the urge toward connection, the hunger to make something new.
The Wise Parent
A wise parent does not truly expect a child to obey forever.
They warn, knowing that one day, guided by their own instinctive curiosity, the child will take the step.
Knowing that when they take that step, the world will change.
Judith Rose urges us to question the text, to step inside it, to challenge it.
To consider:
What if God always knew we would eat the fruit?
What if God, in God’s wisdom, made us this way—in God’s own image?
What if leaving the garden was not an exile, but an evolution?
What If We Were Always Good?
For thousands of years, the Eden story has been interpreted as evidence that we are born broken—that we inherit the stain of the first woman, Eve.
We are taught that there is nothing we can do about this except endlessly try to redeem ourselves.
But what if we were already good?
What if we were born good?
Reframing the Core Beliefs
The Serpent as Deceiver?
What if curiosity and the urge toward connection—with beauty, with one another, with pleasure—were built into us by the very God who made us — in his own image?Eve’s Temptation, Adam’s Fall?
What if men and women are not dangerous to one another? What if we are made from the same clay—the Creator’s dream of love?Expulsion from Paradise?
What if, when we encounter challenges (as every human will), we interpret them not as punishment but as an invitation to learn?
For thousands of years, the Eden story has been told through patriarchal, colonizing cultures, framing it as a morality tale about obedience and corruption.
But what if it was never about being good or bad?
What if it was about the first moment of seeing the world as it truly is?
What would it mean if Eden is Not a Place We Were Cast From? What if it is the space we are called to expand is this world, another sort of Eden.
You may feel like writing in response to the ideas I’ve presented here.
Here’s is a prompt, if you’d like one: How do I feel about what I just read? How did my body feel, reading it? Some people feel excited that things which have seemed to be set in stone, can move. Some people don’t feel comfortable (or even safe) to consider such ideas. You may even feel angry, as if something inside you is defending the text. Consider: How did this land with you?
However it lands, I invite your reflections on these things. I invite your questions. You are welcome here - so very welcome.
xxoo
Amy
Smart and worth it: and this from a writer of literary memoir and fiction, and a profound believer in word from the heart.