Our sense of separation has been with us as long as we can remember, and the teachings of the return journey also reach back in time, beyond our memory.

We can be certain that for at least the past five thousand years, roughly all of recorded history, most of humanity has been living in a state of feeling separate from God. When and where did our original separation happen? One possible answer is that it happened at some point in time before this cycle of civilization. To explore the mystery further, let’s take a look at one of the oldest and most familiar records of the story of our origin—the story of humanity’s fall from grace and loss of Eden as told in the book of Genesis. The legend implies that at some point in our history we fell deeply into a sense of separation from God. It suggests that Eden may possibly have been an earlier form of civilization where this was not so. If this is true, we have no conclusive record of it.

You may wonder at the relevance of this legend to modern Western humanity. Yet whether the story is literal or is even an accurate allegorical description of our origin, the influence which the story has had on human consciousness in its repeated tellings over millennia has left its mark in shaping our perception. Accurate or inaccurate, literal or allegorical, we have heard it so many times that it has become an archetype passed down through generations, and therefore it in itself holds the power to affect our mindset.

If the story of Adam and Eve is an allegory of our evolution into human form, then it is also the description of our apparent fall into separation. While the story implies many aspects of loss to humanity, the one we want to examine here is the idea that we became autonomous. We look at this in the context of our discussion because separation implies autonomy. After the fall God’s support vanished, or at least that was the impression that was created. Adam and Eve could no longer enjoy the pleasures of Eden that God freely supplied unless they worked for them. They became separate from God’s counsel and God’s support and in effect became cursed. Adam and all his descendants, due to their separation and autonomy, had to labor for their survival and to take care of themselves. At some level of our awareness we have imprinted this story as a loss of our divine connectedness. It describes metaphorically the condition to which humanity is now subject—that of having to seemingly support itself—as well as how the veils of separation came about. These are the veils that obscure the divine spark within us that is our true nature.

It is interesting to note here, though, that the story also implies that there was a gain for humanity, too, in its becoming separate and autonomous. Separation and autonomy also created the effect of our being in control, or of seemingly getting to play God in the world. Genesis 3:22-23 says, “And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil. Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.” And so, paradoxically, this experience of separation and autonomy also gives us the experience of getting to be like a god and to play at being a god in relation to the world, rather than to be one with God, which is the enlightened state. Autonomy is the apparent ability to be in control of our own lives, to be the do-er. It also makes us subject to polarity—good and evil.

At whatever date this legend began, the belief in separation and autonomy—in both its loss and its gain for humanity—has persisted in our world right down to present times. It is the prevailing belief humanity in the West holds today of its relationship to God.

Prior to the dissolution of the older goddess civilizations and prior to the dawn of the patriarchal age, which began about 3000 BC, the mindset was more rooted in nature and thus more connected to the earth spirit. In the earlier goddess cultures, a cosmology of many different energy forms and nature deities was venerated and celebrated in its prescribed and proper place in everyday life. Although the people of the goddess cultures lived in a way that allowed for something of a mystical union with the invisible realms, they were still experiencing some degree of separation between themselves and God. Separation, while less than our current time, was still present in the human mind.

As our modern era dawned with the birth of patriarchy around 5,000 years ago, what little sense of connection there was began to be lost. With the exception of many indigenous cultures, which still hold remnants of aspects of the earlier goddess cultures and whose relationship with nature and spirit has been more integrated, the modern, technological human has tended to slip into a philosophy of deep separation from spirit. We have progressively come to live this separation, barely remembering that there is any other way to be. As each millennium has crept by, humanity has been evolving a program in consciousness, leading it deeper and deeper into a state of ignorance about its true nature.

In his fascinating book Art and Physics, Leonard Shlain points out that “Beginning in the 5th century bc Parmenides divided the world into being and not being. His pupil Democritas soon followed with the strict separation of atoms and the void. Both Plato and Aristotle endorsed either-or logic, and Christianity incorporated a Manichean duality into the doctrine of good and evil and heaven and hell. Later Descartes divided the in here from the out there, and in so doing strongly influenced all subsequent philosophers and scientists.”

For generations modern humanity has been conditioned to hold God outside of itself. Despite the preaching of Jesus, who told us quite clearly 2,000 years ago that “the kingdom of God is within you,” (Luke 17:20, KJV) we are still looking outside ourselves for truth. We still hold the belief that the outside is separate and disconnected from who we intrinsically are in our bodies and in our limited identities.

It seems it has been humanity’s destiny to experience its separation and its disconnect from source and that like the journey of the prodigal son, life’s purpose is to grow back toward unity. The study of this journey is what we call metaphysics. Why we take this journey in the first place is one of the most basic and yet most complex of all metaphysical questions.

Except from the Marriage of Spirit—Enlightened Living in Today’s World by Leslie Temple-Thurston with Brad Laughlin

by Leslie Temple-Thurston

Now that we have arrived at 2012, we as seekers of Truth, need to examine how we have taken for granted and are quite attached to our “God-given way of life” and how it is no longer serving us. The American dream has become the American nightmare. The Western way of life has held us in a very seductive and privileged comfort zone that has actually hindered our full awakening. We can no longer afford the kind of latitude that these sought-after privileges give us if we are to awaken, ascend and manifest a new way of being in the world*. This is because the idea of losing them then becomes our greatest fear. Resisting change and fearing loss are our Achilles heel.

Life is about learning lessons*. This is not the meaning usually ascribed to life by the average person who tends to think that life is more about looking good, feeling good and having a good time—their own personal well-being, in other words. The overall effect of shifting this perception about life’s purpose is deceptive. It may seem innocuous at first glance, yet it constitutes a major step toward reclaiming and embodying your original or authentic Self.

Living for the purpose of pleasure, safety or comfort takes one’s life down a very different track from a life motivated by the desire to complete the awakenings that you came here for. By awakenings, I mean experiences fathomed and the resulting jewels of awareness that develop—stored safely in the soul as beacons of Truth. Lessons learned inevitably become the wisdom of the deeper meaning of life—life as a journey toward knowing who “You” truly are, toward finding Your place in the cosmos. This is a very different state of consciousness than wearing the mask of the separate self, which strives for success—to win power, money or celebrity status to protect the comfort zone of the wounded, soft underbelly of the ego.

An alternative to making things like safety and comfort our main concerns in life, is to choose Truth and to live in Truth. Embodying Truth, or holding Truth in the physical body itself, and thus living in the physical world in your authentic state of beingness, presence, love and luminosity, takes time and work. Yet during the current accelerated times in which we live, this can be done at a very fast pace, faster than ever before in human history, if one is willing to learn every lesson as it arises in life’s circumstances.

Bringing your body into the enlightened state and the enlightened state into the world is the final piece of the journey and takes longer than connecting to your real Self at a mental level. To awaken in your mind is only the beginning. Bringing the divine life through all the structures of your current world takes the unswerving commitment to live the lessons fully and to “get” the truths they offer across the board*. It means surrendering the tendency to compartmentalize work, play, relationships, career and lifestyle from your spiritual life. It also means not compartmentalizing your personal journey from the larger world around you. By this I mean seeing that politics, the environment, education and socio-economic issues that others struggle with is also part of your inner life.

To embody enlightenment you must be dedicated to the service of Truth, and Truth only. It is true that the Truth will set you free, and it is also true that first you must liberate Truth in yourself.

From Articles and Essays by Leslie Temple-Thurston

*Read about the Marriage of Spirit processing techniques (free chapters online) and the self-paced Spiritual Warrior Training Course to facilitate and support your journey to awaken.