In the parable of Adam and Eve eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and thus being evicted from the garden, we find an interesting concept to explain why our world is so materialistic as well as how to master our mind and increase the brains capacity.
Without knowing the difference between good and evil, one could commit all sorts of atrocities and evils with a clear and peaceful conscience since one would not know that it was bad or wrong to do such things.
When Adam ate the apple, he knew what was wrong and as the story goes, for example, he and Eve became ashamed of their nakedness and hid from God.
Then they were evicted from the state of mind of a clear and peaceful conscience, which is a very precise description of paradise. And thus the beginning of suffering.
Suffering is not as much committing wrong acts as it is feeling guilty for those acts. The guilt is the suffering. If one has nothing to do, it will dwell on ones negative actions and become depressed among many other options of self-deprecation. Another true quote although I am not religious but there are some good sayings; “Idle hands are the devils workshop.”
And so, as it is written in other ancient teachings, we were made to work for our food and shelter to keep our mind occupied so we could not dwell on our separation from God and paradise or constantly feel guilt for our actions. One of the other problems is that if you are constantly in pain, you will deaden your sensitivity and thus allow yourself to continue doing more damage. So a break from pain is very important for many reasons.
Being forced to work to pass our day and then being too tired to have time to just think is the gift of sorts that relieves us of constant rumination on things that we regret.
The problem is that humans are very adaptable, and so eventually long ago, we adapted to working and can still think negative, depressing thoughts.
As we adapt, they eventually came up with the internet and smart phones. You can defend the benefits easily but we must also look at the immense number of automobile accidents caused by phones, or the wonderfully sad but amusing video which caught a ‘woman falling into a fountain in a shopping mall while texting’, google that. The ability to distract us with our phone is blatantly evident, all you need do is watch friends or couples in a coffee shop and wonder if they are texting each other.
Shifting to another lane of thought to expand this highway, one of the instructions of Buddha was to ‘not sleep on a high luxurious bed’. That could be taken literally but the addition of the word ‘high’ gives it another implication. High station in the world, not just a bed.
Beds are used to sleep, thus become unconscious and unaware of your self. And so we can deduce that a ‘high luxurious bed’ is actually saying to stay away from a wealthy comfortable materialistic lifestyle because it puts you to sleep and you will forget yourself, day and night.
We find that the God of the Adam and Eve story did not want them to eat of the knowledge of good and evil because as He said to the other gods or angles or whoever He was talking to; “Lest they become like us”.
When they ate the apple, they were made to live a life such that they could not have time or energy to focus on their bad deeds which they were now aware of, which of course would eventually and naturally make one less inclined to commit wrongdoings so one could return to ‘paradise’. The return to paradise is to become a god, self aware with full mastery and control of ones thoughts and actions.
Imagine what one could do if one had control over the full power of the brain, to which science tells us we use merely 5% of. It is clear that using 100% of the brain would give one very god like powers, and perhaps become a challenge to the gods currently in control who tried to prevent it.
On the other hand, Buddha teaching us to return to the state of what we could call paradise, or as he termed it, ‘nirvana’ says; ‘stay awake and aware so that you are conscious of your wrong doings so you can refine and improve yourself.’ Every religion gives us rules to live by so that we do not do things we regret. Religion simply presents a code of moral conduct.
I should put a note here for those who do not know, Buddhism says there is no god. There is a godhead, but there is no one individual god who created all that is. Our ultimate end is for each person to return to their original pure state of being, which one could call god.
The ultimate method of such form of self-improvement is to eliminate all negative emotions and guilt, to live with a clear conscience, so that one’s full attention can be focused at will. This peaceful state of mind will allow the further activation of the capacity of the brain. The analogy of breathing and its power is very clear.
Normally, humans breath in their chest and if they breath in their stomach, it is restricted by tense muscles. Internal martial arts masters a power termed ‘FaJing’. I have personally experienced this power on the receiving end. Simple physical contact, meaning I was not punched or pushed, I was pushing on my teachers shoulder, and my body felt the equivalent to a lighting bolt of energy as I was propelled through the air well over a meter away.
This power is developed through breathing exercises as the core of its acquisition. Without being able to fully relax the stomach and abdomen muscles to allow for full and relaxed breathing, it is impossible to develop FaJing.
It is not difficult to imagine that if one could harness a power of this physical nature by the relaxation of the correct muscles of the body, then what would happen if we could relax and focus the full power of our mind. Certainly we would become just like the gods.
As a note to religious people who take this as blasphemy, consider for a moment that being able to tie your shoelaces makes you like a god to a little child. Godlike powers or being as a god is relative. A short diversion of the topic is to reference the mythologies of the ancient Greeks or Egyptians and many other mythologies, have many indications which could be interpreted that the gods were people from another planet with advanced powers compared to humans. Thus having god like powers or being as a god does not imply that you would be equivalent to the One and Only God.
In summary, the materialistic aspects of the world and the requirement to work is to keep our mind occupied so that we cannot think about our wrong doings so that we cannot work diligently to improve ourselves so that we will not cultivate the full capacity of our being because we will remain lost in negative emotions. New and greater distractions will constantly be created to make it harder and harder to overcome these distractions from awakening.
If this was an intentional design and if so, who did it is only answerable if we overcome this obstacle and increase the capacity of our mind to the point where we are capable of finding out, become like the gods and you will know and understand the gods.
Of all the goals one could have in life, the hub of the wheel of anything you can perceive is to master the mind and emotions, and all else will easily follow. Thus we can say the best business training course is one which works on the psychological and emotional levels.
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