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B o o k e x c e r p t
The Den
“And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.”
Genesis, Chapter 2, Verse 8
There exists a familiar state from which you originate called timelessness. The Garden of Eden is a metaphor for this state. “Before” and “After” are connotations of Time. The Garden of Eden is not a place that existed before, nor will it exist after. It has never been a physical place, nor will it ever be. It is not a place that disappeared “earlier” only to reappear “later” in some archeological excavation.
You have experienced this condition of timelessness at one time or another: Have you ever been so involved in something that you lost track of time? Have you ever experienced a moment in your life, when—lost in thought—time seemed to have no objectivity or state of being?
Well, it is true! Time has no state of being (and you never really lost anything). Actually, you find a certain state of mind. You discover what has always been, but is only forgotten. You are now experiencing what you forgot. This is a state of timelessness. You have had a glimpse of the Garden.
The World, as it turns, seems so real.
As it turns out,
It seems the World is really an illusion.
The Garden of Timelessness has always been here and has no intention of leaving. It is current. It remains all around you. As it continues to exist, it endures a lonely existence. The Garden appears an uninhabited, quiet place. It patiently waits for you to return from your journey—a return from Night back to the Light of Day.
Your journey—through illusion—appears to be hazardous with its injuries, losses, and fleeting moments of acknowledged connectedness. But, for you, illusion has its uses, and the Garden, being a reality, has its reasons for employing such a service.
{Illusion means: Ill-use-ion.}
The Garden is reality, but its ill-use-ive state exists only to educate you, to help you grow into higher awareness. It is also a means by which you are intended to express. The Garden has no other purpose. Here is an example of reality's use of illusion.
It's as if—upon a blank canvas—you choose to portray an image; an image that you desire most to convey. This image you may instill with a kind of animation; the depiction seeming to leap on its own from the surface of the canvas. It may seem to radiate its own life force, causing you to be drawn, inadvertently, into its own kind of reality, its own kind of truth.
The image seems real, but its portrayal is, in reality, only a fabrication of your mind. Upon closer inspection, the actual and only true reality—The Blank Canvas—slowly begins to emerge. You begin to see that reality is what lies unwittingly beneath the portrayal—the vacant backdrop patiently permitting the expression of your image. You notice how this reality lovingly assists and supports even as you explore the nether regions; how it quietly observes—without judgment—as your thoughts and ideas congeal into pattern and format; as you cast non-shape into shape and formless into figure.
Reality, in its wisdom, honors your decision to formulate your world of illusion; a world wherein an occupation of space seems to be the object of life, and life seemingly subjected to the perils of time.
Even Life seems to have its own agenda, diligently going through its own paces, possessing a keen awareness of its own purpose within the illusion of time. Life takes care of whatever business is at hand, simply distributing whatever it seems to know how best to deal, and never, never questioning its motives. Life—often hard—continually coerces you into performing daring feats of bravery; feats intentionally designed to challenge and test your faith, thereby strengthening it.
But the Garden of Reality never loses sight of its knowing. It is aware of these patterns being not of authentic configuration. It knows them instead for what they are: tricks designed to distract and confuse. Tricks of Light played with a co-conspirator, Dark.
The Garden watches as their flickering exchange creates in you a trance-like state, a somnambulistic condition inclined towards hallucinatory imagery and depiction. It is spellbinding, a condition ripe for suggestion and influence. It is a sleep where shadowy dreams darken your eyes and dull your senses, rendering you almost senseless (only five to be exact). Dreams that install a meandering of labyrinths and mazes, corridors of fun-house-like distortions that bend and twist reality, exaggerating its shape and design. You stumble along these corridors, confronting images that you project, engaging in misjudged ideas of fantasy that lead you to lures of perversion and snares of corruption.
From these gross misrepresentations, the Garden suffers these delineation's of character that belie its true nature and organic integrity. The Garden tolerates its illusory condition while it grieves over your absence. From its erroneous state, the Garden beckons you to awake and come home; to lay aside the tools of your labored dreams and toil no more; to know genuine rest while tending to its needs, feeling comfort and at peace, languishing among its scents, its scenes, finding refuge in its private shelter. To be one with it again.
This Garden, this State of Timeless Perfection is your safe harbor, your Den and Holy Sanctum. Yet to find this utopian Shangri-La, you need not search for it among designs that constitute an occupation of space; nor should you look for it cast as an element of form. For the eyes, alone, may not gaze there. It is not a “place” to be found. The Garden of Eden is a condition of Spirit, of Psyche—it is a place to find. You may discover the Garden, not along the periphery of self, but within the interior core of self. For the Garden is self. It is the Garden of your soul.
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