Our Story: Part 2
Waking Up In Dark Places
Part 1: The Forgotten Kingdom
Part 2: Spiritual Maturity
Part 3: Crossing the Threshold
Part 4: Welcome to Hell
In The Beginning ....
Disobedience Is Not a Sin. It’s a Responsibility.
The Adam and Eve story is usually told as a warning.
A command was given.
A rule was disobeyed.
Punishment followed.
The “good life” disappeared.
Shame inevitably set in.
Lately, a softer reinterpretation has been circulating, one that suggests Adam and Eve couldn’t yet understand good and evil, and therefore couldn’t fully grasp the concept of disobedience as a sin.
A step closer, but still short of crossing the threshold.
These myths were never meant to be taken literally. They aren’t histories. They’re mirrors. And what they reflect depends on the level of awareness we bring to them when we look.
Read from one state of consciousness, the story teaches obedience.
Read from another, it teaches responsibility.
Discernment matters.
Because the question beneath the narrative is not “Who disobeyed?”
It’s “Who benefits when obedience is treated as virtue?”
Ignorance of harm doesn’t protect goodness, it protects harm.
And when obedience is framed as moral goodness, authority, benevolent or not, becomes insulated from scrutiny.
That doesn’t make God evil. But it does expose the danger of reading and teaching divine stories through an undeveloped lens.
The Adam and Eve story, as it’s commonly understood, is not wrong.
It’s understood through a childlike perspective.
The Child’s Lens
A child lives in a world they do not control.
Their safety depends on reading authority correctly.
Their survival often depends on compliance.
Obedience is not a moral value – it’s a strategy.
From this perspective, disobedience feels dangerous.
Wrong.
Punishable.
When a childlike listener hears the Adam and Eve story, the lesson is clear:
Obey. Don’t question. Do what you’re told.
Through this lens, the fall happens because a rule was disobeyed, not because autonomy was honored, a choice was made, and the weighted burden of responsibility was consciously accepted.
This is not a flaw in the child.
It’s a developmental level of perception.
But when this lens is never outgrown, it calcifies into theology.
Obedience becomes synonymous with goodness.
Authority becomes synonymous with truth.
Responsibility is outsourced upward.
And harm – when it arrives – arrives wearing permission … and is rewarded.
The Adult Lens
Adulthood begins when obedience stops being the metric.
An adult is still accountable, but not because they were told to be.
They’re accountable because they understand responsibility and consequence.
Responsibility no longer flows down from authority.
It expands outward, from self to others, from intent to impact.
Seen through this lens, the Adam and Eve story shifts.
If God is understood not as a fragile authority figure but as awareness itself, consciousness self-actualized, complete, then creation in God’s image is not about submission. It’s about becoming self-actualized.
The “knowledge of good and evil” is not rule-breaking knowledge.
It’s discernment. It’s the capacity to recognize harm, not merely avoid punishment.
What enters the world through Adam and Eve is not sin.
It’s moral responsibility.
And responsibility is heavy.
Once you see harm, you can’t unsee it.
Once you can discern, you can no longer hide behind innocence.
That loss of innocence isn’t a failure.
It’s the cost of maturity.
Only a child experiences obedience as the highest good.
An adult is tasked with something harder: to act with awareness, even when no rule tells them how.
When we’re raised in a burning house, obedience feels like safety. But maturity is learning to recognize the fire and choosing not to pass on a reality in flames.
The idea that disobedience itself was the sin reflects a child’s understanding of the relationship – one shaped by dependency rather than discernment.
If Adam and Eve were adults, in a world of abundance, made in God’s image, then obedience would have been a foreign concept. Submission only makes sense in a world where autonomy can be taken – in a climate of abuse. In a reality grounded in love and sufficiency, there would have been nothing to submit to.
Disobedience becomes wrongdoing only inside systems of control. Only there are children taught that safety comes from compliance, and that approval must be earned by aligning with authority. As they grow, many unconsciously recreate this structure – seeking someone to answer to, someone to impress, someone to grant permission.
What It Means to Be Spiritually Mature
From this vantage point, disobedience isn’t the transgression.
The rupture appears only where autonomy is denied.
Adam and Eve were given free will, but more than that, they were made of it. Autonomous and interconnected awareness wasn’t a feature added later; it was intrinsic. Seeing clearly, choosing consciously, bearing responsibility, this was always the trajectory.
The first true violation in the biblical narrative isn’t disobedience. It’s Cain’s refusal to honor his brother’s autonomy. His violence is born not from rebellion, but from comparison, measuring himself externally, through God’s approval, rather than internally through his own self-actualizing governance.
In denying Abel, Cain also denies himself. Interconnection cuts both ways.
His attempt to justify himself afterward, shaping a narrative to preserve favor, only deepens the fracture. Control replaces accountability. Appearance replaces embodiment.
That strategy doesn’t work on awareness.
You cannot manipulate what has already integrated the darkness.
You cannot destabilize light that has learned to stand without denial.
This is spiritual maturity: not purity, but steadiness.
Not innocence, but integration.
The Fear of Losing Love
There’s a threshold most people don’t cross willingly.
It’s the moment where disappointing others becomes unavoidable.
Adam and Eve stood there.
Lilith did too.
Eve crossed.
Adam stepped back and externalized responsibility.
Cain reached the same threshold and recoiled. Approval mattered more than alignment.
Authentic love doesn’t disappear when expectations are broken. It doesn’t withdraw when autonomy is claimed. The fear of losing love is not evidence of love, it’s evidence of conditionality.
Risking disapproval and disappointment – especially from relatives, mentors, and so-called spiritual leaders – is a line we have to cross if we want to step into our light. If being authentically autonomously ourselves (e.g. gay, trans, exploring a new spiritual path, reclaiming our voice, asserting our autonomy, speaking out against abuse, standing for equality and inclusion, etc.) forces these high-titled people into a choice point, an opportunity to chose love and connection, that’s a spiritual maturity marker they have the free-will to cross or not cross. That’s their choice, not ours. Who we want to be is our choice, not theirs.
And, who we choose to become is not determined by who approves.
Conscious Disappointment, Disapproval & Disobedience Is An Act Of Love
Cain chose the path God originally set for Adam and Eve:“And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” But he didn’t choose it to walk the least harmful path – he chose it for approval. He cared more about looking good to God than embodying good for his own spiritual evolution and growth. That’s why sin crouched at his door: “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule [govern] over it.” The desire for external [governance] approval and validation was contrary to the reality of who he was. The choice was never about obedience. It’s always been about stepping into our light – walking through the darkness, facing the discomfort of waking up to one’s own autonomous, interconnected responsibility – or not.
Disobedience is only wrongdoing to a child. Conscious disobedience, conscious disappointment to those in positions of authority, to an adult that’s growth.
The Quiet Law
When the layers are stripped away, the directive underneath the myth is simple.
Love is the law. Love under will (the sovereignty of choice, agency, and responsibility).
Not sentiment.
Not reward.
Not compliance.
Love as an act of awareness – rooted in autonomy, sustained through interconnection.
Choosing this path often invites misunderstanding. Disappointment. Distance. The withdrawal of approval. But for those who have put away childlike frameworks, that moment is not a loss. It’s a passage.
Very few accept the kind of freedom that cannot be revoked.
The question isn’t what the world demands of us.
It’s what expectations, and what level of responsibility, we’re willing to honor within ourselves.
Consciousness In Bloom
