the myth of separation
we’re not in the garden of eden anymore toto… or are we???
a myth is not merely a story from the past — it is a lens through which a culture sees reality, a pattern that shapes thought, belief, and behavior. myths operate on personal levels and collective levels, shaping what we see, what we believe, and how we act. they are potent: they teach not only what to believe, but how to perceive, how to organize experience, and how to understand our place in the world.
if the spiritual path is to be taken seriously — if we are to embrace unity by dispelling our illusions of separation at their root — we must also confront the illusions embedded in the myths we hold as truth. this includes critically reassessing the stories we have been born and raised with, the foundational narratives that shape our assumptions about morality, hierarchy, and the human role in creation. the hebrew creation story is the particular myth i was brought up with, and it is from this perspective that i examine it critically.
my own worldview has been largely informed by the myths of the old testament, framed as a kind of empirical, time-tested truth during my upbringing. in some ways, i am grateful for this: it encouraged a rational, scholarly approach to spirituality. i believe the hebrews who devised the scriptures and the proverbs were among the most attuned to rational reflection in human history.
but i also lament the limitations this rationality imposed. it conditioned me to reject feeling, to view passion or the feminine as inherently dangerous or “sinful,” as many biblical stories, including the creation narrative, appear to suggest. the notion that god could be in everyone and everything — and yet serve as an exclusionary judge — has always troubled me. i believe it is this worldview — that divinity justifies separation, hierarchy, and moral policing — which has caused immense harm in western and eastern thought alike, fueling wars, conquest, oppression, and the suffering of countless lives. it continues to underpin atrocities, including the ongoing genocide of the palestinian people, all in the name of divine mandate or chosenness. this is not abstract; it is real, it is present, it is human pain justified by stories.
this essay is my attempt to dispel the ideological roots of illusory, separative thinking within my tradition, starting with the creation myth. there is a deep irony in considering the story of genesis as my own. as a child, the myths of genesis were imprinted on me in my christian upbringing, shaping my thinking, my sense of morality, and my perception of connection and division. yet, from a strictly orthodox jewish perspective, i am considered a gentile — an “unchosen.” i cannot claim this story as mine. it is not permitted to belong to me, even though it belongs to me in experience, thought, and imagination. this hurt is not trivial: it underscores how myths can be both intimate and exclusionary, shaping identity while policing who may inhabit it. to recognize and critique the myth is also, in a way, to assert a right to engage with it, to think with it, and to move beyond it — even when tradition claims it is not ours to do so.
it is important to note that this critique is not meant to assume bad intent on the part of the authors of genesis. the most generous assumption we can make is that the creators of these myths were working from the understanding and cultural frameworks available to them at the time (in fact, the story was likely pieced together from multiple lineages over several centuries). yet the structures they established — cosmic separation, moral duality, human dominion, and gender hierarchy — have had far-reaching consequences even to this day. whether or not these outcomes were foreseen by the original authors, the narrative shaped patterns of thought and behavior that, intentionally or not, contributed to systems of separation, hierarchy, and at times, justification of violence in the name of divine authority. recognizing this is not condemnation of the original authors, but an acknowledgment of how powerful myths can be in shaping collective consciousness, for better or for worse.
❤︎ ❤︎ ❤︎
from the first words of genesis, creation is described as an act of division:
in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth. now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of god was hovering over the waters.
And god said, “let there be light,” and there was light. god saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. (genesis 1:1-4)
this act of separating, naming, and arranging establishes hierarchy: some things come first, some are above or below, and god is ultimately placed at the apex to rule over all creation, as supreme judge of what is good and what is not.
“god made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it” (genesis 1:7). “god called the dry ground ‘land,’ and the gathered waters he called ‘seas’” (genesis 1:10).
existence, from the start, is not born from union or natural unfolding, but from separation — boundaries drawn between realms by a supreme authority imposing “order from chaos.”
even life is framed in categorical divisions:
“the land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds.” (genesis 1:12); “so god created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.” (genesis 1:21).
the language of genesis trains us to see the world as segmented into binaries and types. when humanity finally appears, it is not as kin to the animals, but as ruler over them:
let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness; so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground (genesis 1:26).
the point is driven home in the divine command:
be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground (genesis 1:28).
to be made “in god’s image” is to be installed as a miniature sovereign, an echo of a divine ruler. god is imagined not as a loving co-creator or companion, as in many other myths, but as an authoritative monarch. humanity mirrors this role: not caretaker, but conqueror.
from this worldview, later cultural notions — like the idea of a “chosen people” — emerge naturally. if humanity itself is depicted as special and set apart, it follows that certain groups of humanity might be imagined as more chosen than others. as george orwell said in animal farm, “some animals are more equal than others.“ recognizing this is not a critique of any faith community, but a study of how myths structure perception of self, other, and the world.
in genesis 2, the separationalist and patriarchal framing becomes even more explicit. god forms adam (hebrew: soil creature) first from the dust and places him in the garden of eden (hebrew: pleasure/luxury), giving him a command:
the lord god commanded the man, ‘you are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die’ (genesis 2:16-17).
this introduces god’s relationship to man as a law-enforcer at the very outset, shaping human consciousness in terms of obedience, restriction, and moral separation. only after adam is established does god create woman from his rib:
the lord god caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. then the lord god made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man (genesis 2:21-22).
woman appears not as a co-creator or equal partner, but as secondary and derived, reinforcing a man-centered perspective on creation itself. genesis 2 encodes hierarchy and obedience into the very fabric of human identity — man first, woman second, command before freedom. the narrative thus intertwines gendered separation with cosmic and moral duality, setting the stage for human identity and authority to be understood in terms of rank, obedience, and division.
by the time the serpent enters in genesis 3, the conflict is inevitable: a world already defined by prohibition, hierarchy, and division demands a transgressor. the serpent does not create the fracture; it exposes the fault lines already written into the story, bearing the blame as its scapegoat.
the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the lord god had made (genesis 3:1).
by placing the agent of temptation outside of humanity — and giving snakes a bad rap for millennia — the story externalizes responsibility for the fall, implying that failure comes from a separate being rather than from the evolving human understanding of unity itself.
when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it (genesis 3:6).
the serpent initiates the chain, yet it is humanity that ultimately acts, and woman is portrayed as both tempted and temptress — the origin of man’s suffering. the story frames the consequences of awareness as exile, shame, and punishment. in this way, the serpent is not merely a villain, but a symbolic device: a reminder that duality and separational thinking are treated as cosmic truths, even though our understanding of oneness can evolve beyond the framework the myth originally conveyed.
the separation deepens in the garden. the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” places moral dualism at the heart of the human condition. to eat the fruit is to internalize division itself: good versus evil, right versus wrong, self versus other.
then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves (genesis 3:7).
awareness here does not bring harmony, but shame and estrangement. finally, the separation is sealed through exile:
“by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return” (genesis 3:19). then: “so the lord god banished him from the garden of eden to work the ground from which he had been taken” (genesis 3:23).
god is not companion here, but judge, severing humanity from paradise, from himself, and from the effortless abundance of the natural world.
the myth performs a sleight of hand. it convinces us that our very awareness of opposites — light and dark, good and evil, self and other — is proof that we are fractured, fallen, incomplete. it teaches us to see division as destiny rather than illusion. to believe this story as existential truth is to eat the apple oneself — to accept the illusion that we are inherently divided, cast out from wholeness by our own nature.
❤︎ ❤︎ ❤︎
most creation stories across cultures historically envision humanity as woven into the fabric of life. taoist cosmology speaks of yin and yang as complementary flows, not moral absolutes. hindu myths describe creation as the playful unfolding (lila) of divine energy, where destruction regenerates life. indigenous traditions speak of humans emerging from the earth, in kinship with animals and spirits.
genesis, by contrast, encodes separation at every level: cosmic (light vs. dark, day vs. night), geographic (land vs. sea), biological (kinds vs. kinds), anthropological (man before woman), theological (humanity cast from god). it defines humanity’s destiny as rule and punishment, rather than participation and harmony. myth here is not neutral; it shapes perception, values, and behavior across generations.
to see genesis clearly is not to dismiss it, but to recognize its psychological power — and its danger. by telling us we are fallen, it trains us to feel fallen. by insisting that knowledge divides, it teaches us to distrust our own minds. by portraying god as a punisher, it makes us believe separation is divine will rather than human illusion.
but separation itself is the ultimate myth — not reality. our minds may divide the world into opposites, fear the other, mistrust the unknown. yet existence itself remains whole, seamless, indivisible. the fruit of duality only has power if we keep eating it, if we keep believing in the story that says we are cut off.
deeper awareness of unity requires recognizing the hindrances to perceiving it, both individually and collectively; myths, by shaping collective consciousness, are among the most powerful, setting the imaginative bounds of what we believe is possible.
the truth is that the idea of a “creation myth” itself is a myth — implying that existence has a beginning or a middle or an end, and that it can be fully captured in story. narrative-thinking is powerful, but it is also limiting: it frames reality as linear, hierarchical, and divisible. but we are not bound by the stories we tell ourselves, personally or collectively.
it is important to note that this is not the only interpretation of genesis. mystical and spiritual readings, such as those offered by paramhansa yogananda, see the story as symbolic of inner spiritual development: the garden represents the human mind in a state of innocence (oneness), and the “fall” as falling under the sway of duality itself. gnostic and neoplatonic readings see genesis as a map of consciousness, where creation reflects divine emanations and the fall marks the soul’s descent into material limitation. kabbalistic interpretations similarly frame the narrative as the soul’s journey, emphasizing reconciliation and spiritual return. feminist and liberationist readings critique patriarchal hierarchies, highlighting relationality and co-creation rather than domination. even some modern biblical scholars treat the story as an allegory for moral and social awakening.
yet despite these alternative readings, the separationalist interpretation remains the mainstream view, and many still accept the illusion that humans are fundamentally separate from the rest of creation. genesis has endured in western thought because it does more than tell a story: it structures perception. from the first words, it separates — light from darkness, heaven from earth, man from woman, good from evil — teaching generations to see the world in binaries. framed as divine truth and repeated in schools, sermons, and literature, it has shaped how people understand hierarchy, authority, and their place in the cosmos. humans are cast as chosen yet fallible, rulers yet dependent, embedding both aspiration and anxiety. this combination of symbolic power, institutional reinforcement, and psychological resonance explains why the genesis myth has remained a central lens through which western cultures interpret reality.
yet even genesis can be read in a way that redeems its power, if approached consciously. the command to “rule over the fish in the sea and the birds of the air” (gen 1:28) could be understood not as domination, but as a call to stewardship and care. to be made “in god’s image” need not mean asserting superiority, but mirroring divine creativity, interdependence, and resilience. the garden, rather than a lost paradise, can symbolize the mind in its original wholeness, and the “fall” — eating from the tree of knowledge — can be seen not as shameful sin, but as the awakening of consciousness and moral responsibility. the story remains vivid and symbolic, but its meaning shifts: to awaken awareness, inspire care, and cultivate unity. in this reading, separation is temporary, and human experience becomes a journey toward integration, connection, and ethical participation in life. that ultimately, paradise is right here, right now, should we choose to become it.
when it comes to stories of any kind, we must ask difficult questions: which do we choose to live by? which do we keep repeating to ourselves? do they cultivate connection or deepen separation? do they truly serve us — personally and collectively — or have they outlived their purpose?
if myths shape perception, they can also be transcended. to move beyond them is not to reject imagination or culture, but to recognize that existence is continuous, whole, and interconnected. after all, enlightenment isn’t something to chase but to dissolve into. if we are to tell ourselves a story at all, let it awaken us to unity. let it remind us, individually and collectively, that we belong. let it dissolve the illusions of separation that myths have taught us for millennia. let it be a story that reconnects us with the ongoing dance of life and the wholeness of existence itself.
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