The Garden of Eden: Humanity’s Womb

{ April 9, 2009 @ 1:58 am } · { Uncategorized }
{ Tags: Crosby Stills and Nash, Garden of Eden, home, postpartum, separation anxiety, Symbiosis, the Fall, Woodstock }

While the analogy of the Garden of Eden as a womb for humanity is not a perfect one, it does provide for us a way of looking at our earliest human habitat, our quintessential homestead. There is something about the word “home”, that resonates deeply within each of us. For those whose first earthly nest was one of love and peace, there are heartfelt memories that are cherished for a lifetime. For others raised in a dysfunctional home, there is a longing deep within to know what was missed … what a true home would be like.
In the deep recesses of our preconscious there is a collective longing among all human beings for our first home, the Garden of Eden. Though it was a home where none of us lived, it remains in our mind as a kind of phantom calling us back. That first home was in a Garden. The first man was absolutely ONE with God. His life was sustained, nurtured, and protected by his Father, his Maker.
A mother’s womb is a human’s first home. In the mother’s womb, the pre-born child and the mother are essentially one. The child is fully dependent on every aspect of the mother’s life-support system. There is a symbiotic relationship. Symbiosis means “living together” (sym meaning, together, and bios meaning, life). In the case of the unborn child, it means much more than just physical proximity, it means total physical dependence. The unborn child is completely and utterly a contingent being whose life in every aspect is provided by the mother.
Then the child is born. Some mothers experience a postpartum depression. Notice the word “postpartum.” It literally means “following a separation.”
As the baby begins to grow and produce a personal past, there is an evolving sense of something absent. In the unfolding future there is the developing notion, at first only a shadowy anxiety, of impending death over which there is no personal choice.
This is the existential plight of every human.
The advent of this separation between mother and child is the beginning of a life of trying to once again find the feeling of Oneness. All of our fears, frustrations, anxieties, guilt and distress, are a result of this unconscious feeling of separation.
I wonder if that is what Crosby, Stills, and Nash meant when they sang:
“We are stardust,
We are golden,
And we’ve got to get ourselves
back to the Garden.”
(quoted from the Love Ethic: Rediscovering our Moral Compass, by Terry Bell, Advantage Books)
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