Non-Dualism
Good and evil, desirable and undesirable, adaptive and non-adaptive, are all contrasts that typify the dualistic philosophy. The seven deadly sins, the ten commandments, redemption, atonement, salvation, all would be superfluous if the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil had never been eaten. This story, of course, of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, is analogous to the simplicity of of sentience prior to the programming of the cultural mores learned through interactions with parents, teachers, the media, even our language.
Life is not dualistic, neither is it linear, these are characteristics of thought processes, not beingness. Thought tends to operate in a linear fashion and our basic conditioning that programs our mind is dualistic. We avoid what we judge to be undesirable and we desire that which we judge to be desirable. Never achieving the desire (as it is desire) and never avoiding the undesirable, as death, disease, and a variety of other calamities, are inevitable.
In the Garden of Eden story, paradise and eternal life, were seemingly traded for the "godlike" sense of right and wrong, discernment between the desirable and the undesirable. The Tao Te Ching reads, "life flows from the formless wherein is no death". It is the understanding that life is the flow, god is the flow, and the present moment is to be embraced, not judged and discarded because we do not like it, or because we might like something different.
The Tree of Life is a symbol of this flow, just as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is a symbol for the false will we exert to choose that which is desirable and avoid that which is undesirable. the richness of this life lies between these poles, not on one side or the other.
Radical acceptance of all that flows with life, all that flows from the formless dimension is a sudden return to paradise. The present moment becomes all there is. The future and past dissolve into the present and time ceases to exist.
The mental processes of judgment, interpretation, perception,and hence choice become unnecessary. The energy extended into the future in hopes, dreams, and expectations gathers into the present. The energy relating past experience, knowledge, and beliefs from the past is also gathered and becomes available in the present.
The current of life, god, is the only reality, despite our feeble attempts to change what is into what could be in expectation, or what used to be in nostalgic remembrance, or into what should be in arrogance. If the judgments and attempts to modify the present moment, what is, are suspended what is left is contentment. Bliss and joy become possible when strife and struggle are abandoned to the present reality.
