When I think of the garden of Eden I think of beauty, peace, happiness, and harmony.

It doesn't really matter to me whether it is a real place or a place in the mind/heart/spirit.  Sometimes I think of it in one way, sometimes in another.

In my evening ladies' bible study we are studying Genesis, and had quite a discussion on our first study which was the story of creation, and of Adam and Eve in the garden.

I think it was/is symbolic of a Utopia that was attainable but was lost because of human failings and failures. May not be correct in asserting that it has become an archetype for subsequent failures through the generations, including the present.

I didn''t want to be first to jump in here. I think of the garden of eden as a lush green place...warm and sunny...no ravenous wild animals to fear, no illness, everybody gets along, music and arts and culture and happy families.  A Utopia.

It's interesting because everyone has a different idea of what Utopia would be like...to me...some space age Star Trek  fantasy full of laser beams and holograms and transporters and weird gadgets sounds like hell...but to those into sci-fi, maybe not. 

GARDEN OF EDEN: A romanticised cultural memory of hunting and gathering origins; a time when, imagining back, life is naively and mistakenly thought to have been  simple and less morally taxing.

EVE'S GARDEN: My great aunt Eve and her big, half-wild, unmown and totally overgrown back garden in New Zealand with chooks (chickens) free-ranging through the heaped geraniums and perching in 20-foot high poinsettas; where I could find patches of sweet fruiting cape gooseberries (physalis), tangled passion-fruit vines, and the little orchard near the back fence with russet apples and sour mandarins, sweet blood oranges and fat yellow grapefruit. I knew where I could usually find wetas and, cupping my two hands together, I'd take them to show my parents as proof of my bravery. Fantails flickered about it the little openings of sunlight. And I knew where the centipedes and huhus lived. And there was a blackboy peach tree that piled the ground with cotton-staining deep, purple-fleshed fruit... walls of blue and pink hydrangeas (the driveway and one whole side of the property was lined with them; the other side was thick, impenetrable agapanthus)... and, close to the acmena hedge at the back, if you knew just where to look (past the feijoas), there were blackcurrants. It was an overgrown, tangled wonderland, bursting with treasures and discoveries. I remember it as igniting my love of adventure and solitude. I could vanish there and never feel alone, or fearful or under-stimulated; everything in there was vividly interesting and exotic; everything there stimulated my imagination. I think I felt very "whole" there.

Maybe "Eve" and "Eden" come together for me too...

I think Eden is purely metaphorical. It began as a story, a myth, of the Hebrew people but can, today, be taken as a powerful symbol for a state of spiritual grace and connection with the forces of creation. We lose that state through failing to recognize the presence of grace and connection in our lives, leading to us being "cast out of the garden". The teachings of Jesus and the myth of the Christ represent one way to get back to that state and, hence, back to the garden. There are, however, other routes, possibly as many as there are humans.

And why in Social rather than R&F, Inanna? That might be an interesting discussion unto itself.

Mendalla

For me, Eden is my 'happy place' where I go to unwind for any stresses or to help me sleep at night.  It's a place of soft sunshine and clouds that drift on a faint breeze...gently rolling hills of green with wildflowers of every colour dotting the landscape.  Sometimes there are birds or animals but most times it's just peaceful and serene.  There's a lake where I can drop a line, sit against a large oak and do some fishing.  I don't remember ever catching anything, but it's relaxing.  That's my 'Eden'.

My swamp.  My Garden of Eden....

LB

---------------------

This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house
       William Shakespeare, Richard II, Act II, Scene 1

Ooo! A new symphony of science song! Awesome!

I think of ancient Sumer, of E-Din in Iraq: the land before cultivation, when the gods first created man, before they put man to work.

...and of this scene from Northern Exposure (can't find on Youtube):

Joel:

Why did I listen to you?
Why did I let you drag us out here?
 

Maggie:

It's beautiful. It's a jungle.
 

There are tarantulas here.
Tropical diseases. Did you ever
hear of elephantitis?
Your leg swells up like
a-a telephone pole. We didn't get shots.
 

We don't need shots Fleischman. It's paradise.

Better cover your head. I'll bet you...
...these banana trees are full of primates.

Fleischman, would you relax?

- Yeah, a-ha!

- "A-ha" what?

Well, a snake, O'Connell. It's a snake there.

Isn't it a cutie?
 

You don't touch it. It  could be poisonous.

Look! Apples! Mm! Pippin.

No, it's a Mclntosh. Pippins are green.

You want a bite?

Not bad. Interesting. A red pippin.
I've never actually... - What?

- You're naked.
 

You're right.

What? Oh!

You know... ...usually I, I don't like
being naked in public, I get self-critical. Embarrassed.
But I don't feel that way now. - Do you?

- No. Actually , I feel very......very... Mm.
 

Interesting comment MikePatterson, cultural memory, naively, mistakenly... maybe... More natural? More animal? Less civilized? I wish I could ask them. It seems to me to be more natural. Smaller living groups... Things had been like that for millenia, no, tens of thousands of years, maybe even 160,000 years, if we go back to the dawn of Homo Sapiens... couldn't it have been better having lasted so long? It's got to stick, having so much roots in that way of life.

I guess you're right that we are wrong to remember it as paradise. It certainly wasn't that. Is it simply a grass is greener nostalgia? 

Agree with most of that Mike. I still think certain life circumstances can be sought for greater Eden-ness. It does remind me of Chris McCandless though, who went out into the woods in search of his Eden, and starved to death. Did you see that film? Into the Wild? Ripped my heart out.  Lets not confuse heaven though, with Eden. I think they are different concepts. Eden is an origin, a primal-nes, an innocence. Thanks for your reply.

No... didn't see the film.

Heaven, though, IS within... as is "Hell".

I remember my grandfather's old cabin by a lake. It was built in the early 1900's, had belonged to my great grandfather, and unfortunately was sold and torn down when my grandpa died. There was a screened "veranda" at the back, with hummingbird feeders. i remember sitting there wrapped in an old wool blanket watching the rain collect in the rain-barrel outside. The cabin smelled like the old wood stove. There was a wooded (birch trees) path lined with blackberry bushes leading down to the beach. The whole place just had that sweet rustic smell that I can still remember vividly. I think that's my eden. One of them. Another would be Wickanninish Beach in Tofino BC. Stunning.

The best photo I could find of the same beach near my granfather's old cabin and I feel so nostagiac!. Imagine walking down the path into the clearing there, about 100 meters or so through the wood.

Wickaninnish photos that don't even do it justice, because it's sooo beautiful there:

Elanor: Would you see, say, videogames (hypereality) as relevant to your observation:  "I still think certain life circumstances can be sought for greater Eden-ness."? I think that seeking "real" life circumstances can be a terrible trap; there is a need for some perfection of balance between a fairly courageous open-ness to what "is" and and very careful manipulation of the "real" to achieve what might be. Every action has consequences. We are easily tempted to act out of ego or greed or entitlement, rather than love… and we muddy up a good few waterholes with our splashings about after stuff that leads to disappointment.

I have a view that beauty is God's language of love, and requiring oneself to seek out and enter into experiences of beauty is the key to all of the "Edens" around us. They enter us when we allow then to — we don't enter them.

And curiosity, to me, is the key to the mystery that opens us to "Heaven". Heaven is what we enter when we open to the fullness of mystery.

And we are surrounded by both — beauty and mystery — every waking minute; we close the door to "heaven" when we "know"  or "believe" in fixed ways, and we destroy our capacity for love (the air that's breathed in "Eden") when we damage what is beautiful in our attempts to transform material reality into what we think — in our ignorance — we want: "stuff" (basically, "stuff" is just damaged reality).

As we say on my other board, "QFT" (Quoted For Truth). This is really how I see the universe, even if I don't associate with a "God".

Mendalla

Mike: Agreed, heaven and hell are within, but I wouldn't say that about Eden.

quote " We are easily tempted to act out of ego or greed or entitlement, rather than love… and we muddy up a good few waterholes with our splashings about after stuff that leads to disappointment."

True, but we should always try. Like Kimmio tries to get to Wickaninnish, and like you lived in New Zealand. I try to get to England, and to have a house (I do have a house, hooray!!).

quote: "and requiring oneself to seek out and enter into experiences of beauty"

DEFINATELY agree. : ) This reminds me of the vacant lot covered in waist high grass beside the factory I used to work at. I would walk to the bus stop through the grass and sing the song I made up about how beautiful it was.

No no no, not stuff. Heavens no! All this talk of heaven is making me smile. You and I have much in common. : ) There's no need to look for differences. I too am a lover of beauty, mystery, heaven and love. : )

Videogames, they bring joy and escape to many. They are not Eden to me. Eden to me is the source, the beginning, the pure and primal. When I think of trying to return to Eden, I think of nature, of hunting and gathering, of getting sleepy in the winter and invigorated in the  spring. I even think of contact with the gods, the Sumerian ones, because of my Sitchin readings, they made quite an impact.

I think you might find Into the Wild interesting Mike. It's about a young man, of my generation, who throws away his university education, and burns all his money to follow his dream and live free and natural, according to his philosophy. Futile, sadly, and naive, but he did it and we get to see what he learned before he died.

Into the Wild was a fantastic movie! Hard to watch at times.

I've just seen it the once. I've seen it on the shelves in stores, and been afraid to watch it again. Holy powerful movie! It's as if I knew him, his thinking hit so close to home.

Lovely photos, Kimmio and LMB

Wherever she dwelt was Eden.

-Mark Twain

Tread carefully

This land,

Our land,

Holy Land.

-Arminius

Hi Arminius!!