Esoteric meanings of Sin, Original Sin, Adam and Eve

Thanks, I appreciate the concern.

Try looking at it this way–this is an alternate explanation that brings in people who would otherwise be atheists, the ones who can't believe in a literalist reading.

It certainly doesn't promise to make you God, it allows you to get in touch with God's wisdom through an inner source.

The Bible is written so it has meaning for everyone, whether they need a literal interpretation or an esoteric one. That's one of the amazing things about it.

Been listening to a lot of Richard Rohr lately. He has a great way of expressing the underlying truths. This stuff is salve to a parched soul.

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He also wrote a number of books on the subject.

How do Esotericism and Mysticism relate to each other?

I became interested in this distinction this morning. Is one a subset of the other? Are they separate things? Is there any problem in combining them? Here's an article I just found:

• Methods in the Study of Esotericism, Part II: Mysticism and the Study of Esotericism

"This is a functional definition: What is esoteric is inner, hidden from outsiders, non-public, and in this context, associated with secret or semi-secret spiritual teachings.

"Given this functional definition of esotericism, we can see that mysticism falls naturally within it.

"Indeed, one could well argue that mysticism represents the purest form of esotericism, in that mystical experience is inherently esoteric, that is, an inner dimension of religious experience clearly distinguished from ritual or institutional religious practice even if the mystic endorses and draws upon the latter."

Obviously these days it's no longer necessarily hidden, except in the sense that it isn't widely known. No longer is it carefully guarded by secret societies with strict prohibitions against sharing the knowledge, it's freely disseminated through platforms like YouTube, and in books. I feel blessed to be alive in this time when such knowledge has become public, and that I've discovered it.

I believe I know what the danger is

I think it was in my comments under the previous entry where I mentioned a mysterious danger involved in Contemplative Prayer (meditation practice including some prayer/inner dialogue). And it's the same danger associated with Jungian Individuation (truly an esoteric/mystical practice) and in the various other methods of spiritual awakening.

It's what's sometimes called the Ego Death, or the Dark Night of the Soul. It's what was represented in the comment I made yesterday about Easter and the Flood story both referring to the same thing; the need to crucify or kill off the Ego—the carnal mind, the selfish divisive part of yourself, in order to make room for the Greater Self. In Jung's terminology the gradual dissolving of the ego and the coming-to-terms with the fact of the Self, the Archetype of Wholeness, which he also at times calls the God-Image within the unconscious. It must be constellated, brought into being gradually, through a lot of meditation or Jung's Shadow and Anima/Animus work. It's what John St Julien calls the Christ-consciousness, that grows as you get deeper into meditation practice and through contemplating the mystical/esoteric wisdom.

Whatever terms you use for it, it's a dangerous thing. If you don't have a sufficiently grounded/secure ego you could suffer a neurosis or a psychosis. That's why this must be entered into carefully–why it was said that "If you aren't ready to go all the way you shouldn't play at praying."

I suppose this has always been known, and may even have been a reason for the need to be initiated into a secret society in order to learn this stuff—so the masters can determine if the initiate has a strong enough ego structure (whatever they would have called it) to make it through.

Shadow and Anima/Animus work is "The Garbage"

This just hit me. I used to wonder why Jung's method requires Shadow and Anima/Animus work, whereas the Buddhist-related methods don't.

On a Richard Rohr video I saw yesterday I think, he said when you're doing contemplative meditation "The first thing that comes up is the garbage." Meaning that for the first 20 minutes or so you'll have to deal with all kinds of thoughts and feelings of your inadequacy, your failings, etc. Reasons why you aren't worthy of the gifts meditation will eventually bestow. Of course! This garbage is what Jung called Shadow work and Anima or Animus work. He just broke it down a little more specifically, into 2 parts.

First he says you must deal with your shadow—learn to stop projecting it out onto other people or situations and accept that it's really your own. After a considerable time of this, you'll graduate to seeing anima or animus figures in dreams, and dealing with the things they represent in your life. The anima and animus deal with how you relate—both to other people/situations, as well as to your own innermost world; the unconscious. Rohr simply combined all this and called it The Garbage. Interestingly, when you're dealing with Shadow work, you'll often see lots of refuse, dark scary alleys, and literally garbage in your dreams.

Turns out the 2 methods aren't so different after all...

How to deal with sins

Since I discussed what esoteric religion says the sins are in the post above, here's what you should do with/about them (as well as I currently understand it).

Right off the bat you'll realize some of them you already have pretty well under control, or at least better than the others. Maybe you don't have much of a problem with anger, envy and greed. So you should pay attention to the others, beginning with the one you have the worst issues with. Try to get it under control to what extent you can. Hint—the more time you spend in the meditative state the harder it is to be angry, greedy, or in fact to exhibit any of the sins except spiritual pride maybe. So as you gradually become able to maintain that blissful state longer and longer, even while interacting with people and such, your sinning should just naturally fall away stage by stage. It's only when I fall out of the meditative state that I become argumentive.

But of course we're all human—we all have egos (unless we've dissolved them through meditation) and are immersed in what the video above calls Inherited Sin (commonly called Original Sin), so it's not hard to fall into identification with one opposite and blame the other for all the world's ills. Maybe a political affiliation or a religious denomination, maybe a male/female thing, or a racial bias, what have you. Or any number of other dichotomies. If you can truly maintain the meditation state while interacting you should be able to see through all these dichotomies and unite the opposites—to see them as not really opposites but as complementary to each other, as Yin and Yang really are. That's the ineffable mystery of the Yin/Yang symbol, they're not really opposites, in fact neither one could exist without the other for contrast. That's the part people tend to miss.

This is why the meditation state is also known as non-dual thinking.

Just ran across this in the Universal Christ video I linked above:

"Mystic means to see in wholes, instead of in parts. What makes something pornographic is you just see part of it."

To see things in wholes is another way of saying to unite or reconcile the opposites, to see things not in terms of dichotomies, but as complementary to each other or necessary to each other.

Just made an amazing discovery—Fillmore Study Bible NT Dashboard

Click on the parts highlighted in yellow to see New Testament chapters with notations explaining the esoteric meanings. The whole thing is also available as an offline PDF you can download

I discovered this today when looking for the esoteric meaning of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah

Another incredible resource on the site is the Metaphysical Bible Dictionary