Revealing God can be appealing to everyone.

When diverse factions of Christianity experience the joy of finding the common faith, a step has been taken toward intimacy with God. What makes us divide into groups in the first place is the fringe of darkness around our understanding that keeps absolute truth from being realized. As our light expands, we feel a deeper sense of oneness with all life. Ultimate unity will not be realized by a common doctrine or some universal concept of God. It begins with the revelation that what we call God is perfection of being. Here all things are already one. An individual's journey to this perfection is accomplished through realization of what already is. A quest to perfect the universe is futile. When the light breaks through our ignorance, the division and imperfection we have imagined will melt away.

Division is taught us very early in life. My parents were Catholic and so I was brought up to believe that anything not Catholic was not God. At some point I realized that God would not forsake so many people. I learned about grace and then struggled from then until now to stop trying to earn favor with God. Now I am convinced that He was not lying when he said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." I am equally convinced that I don't have to belong to any denomination, faction, fraction, cult or any other club for those words to apply to me. No longer will I cast someone else out of the reach of God because of some outward appearance.

As foolish as it was to believe that all but the Catholics were condemned, has that elite grouping only been stretched to include all those who call themselves "The Church"? If so, we have only diminished the group we have cast into outer darkness by a few. It is evident that not all those who call themselves Christian are following Christ. The cross you must carry to wear that title is the end of your identity as an individual. Among the trappings you would then give up is your vanity that what you do or say makes you a child of God. You must also give up the authority to judge another as someone else's son, but not God's. This secular thinking would be replaced by the idea that all things are sons, or issues from God and we are no more or no less a son than anything else, but, all sons are in different stages of development from conception to maturity.

An immature son is still a full son, even though he cannot take his father's place as prince. To do the work of the father, as Jesus did, you have to grow up into unity with the father, as Jesus did. This is not accomplished by becoming something more than you are now, but by stripping off the layers of what you think you are until all that remains is what you really are.

1 Cor 3:3-7 For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man?I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.

I have developed a metaphor to help in the process of stripping away barriers on the road to oneness. I call it "Onion Theology". We can use it to model God, the universe, reality or truth, which are all essentially the same thing, or should we say, non-thing? Estimating the number of people who would struggle with the concept that God is an onion, we will apply the model to Truth.

If the Truth contained in the bible were an onion, then reading it as a mere history book would be relative to eating the outer skin of an onion. This is as far as many people get. They read the bible like it was God's version of People Magazine. The events are only historical accounts of people now dead, and very little, if any of the stories would pertain to our own lives. Eating the thin brown skin of an onion is not at all satisfying. There are many people who have read through the bible again and again, never seeing anything more than what's on the surface. The first thing one must do to go any further in Truth, is to know that there exists something underneath. So . . . let's cut the onion in half from top to bottom. Truth looks quite different as we view a cross section of the onion. We can see that there are layers beneath layers. Now, let's pick up another whole onion.

Knowing that there is more underneath that golden skin, we peel it off. Toss aside details like, the first man was created when God decided to make mud pies in Mesopotamia; or, Noah and his sons built a ship the size of a football stadium and loaded on board two of every creature on earth (except fleas. There had to be more than two fleas.). Get into the deeper layers of the stories and see that all life in the physical realm is a mixture of structure (earth) animated by spirit (breath of God); and when we are in a state of rest (Noah), tranquillity and contentment, we will rise above the destructive elements of this world, taking with us all the pairs of opposites to release them into a new earth that is free of judgment. Oh joy! This layer of the onion is much tastier than that paper-thin epidermis. Eating this layer only exposes a deeper layer. We can now ingest that one, discovering its particular flavor and texture. What's this now? Yet another layer! Smaller, but still encircling the whole onion. As we peel off deeper and deeper layers we make other observations. The amount of onion in each successive layer diminishes, but the flavor and tenderness increase. If we took the bible and listed all the stories contained therein, it would be quite a long list. This would parallel the size of the first layer of onion. If we wanted a list of the principles taught in the bible, it would be much shorter. It could be reduced to: sowing and reaping, vision and manifestation, faith, etc. The multitude of historical events would all fall under one of these principles, represented in the onion model as a smaller but still all-inclusive inner layer. Near the center of this onion is perhaps the most compact and most universal principle of them all: either the road to unity or the road to division. When we have peeled off the last layer of onion, we find within its ultimate depths . . . . nothing!

We can use this model to find that there is infinitely more to the story of Genesis than God creating a man and woman who disobey their Lord and go on to populate the world with sinners. When we peel that outer story off and discover a deeper meaning to what's being said, we can then chew and digest something that can actually help us grow, even if it gives us temporary indigestion .

Individuals perceive different layers of the onion. Instead of making this a basis for disagreement, we should always use it to our mutual advantage by discussing our diverse perspectives. We are always dealing with one onion no matter how many different layers there are. Exposing a deeper layer does not deny the existence of the outer ones.

To illustrate this, we'll pick up the Genesis onion and look at it. Remember, we aren't going to argue about our views, we are just going to present them. The first argument to lay aside is: Did the garden, the first couple, the trees and the snake really exist? Does it really matter? We are looking for the truth IN the story, not the truth OF the story. It isn't necessary for the Three Pigs to be real pigs in order for us to learn that we shouldn't build our lives on flimsy beliefs.

There is, however, more pitfalls in taking a story literally than there is using it symbolically. What happens when you accept only a literal 'Adam and Eve in the Garden' story? You blame them or the serpent for the curse that you believe is on you. The FALL, as many call the experience, is seen as a one-time event that sent the whole planet to the prison of sin, sickness and death. Then one may conclude that we are serving the sentence for another man's crime and are not responsible for our predicament. That's the danger (or the advantage) of holding to a literal interpretation. If, on the other hand, we see the story as a figurative illustration of a principle, and that principle is in operation in our lives, it transfers the responsibility of it to us. Having the revelation that all the characters and events in the first two chapters of Genesis occur within you, you can understand why a current situation is either a blessing or a curse to you. What did you do to cause it?

The point here is, there are deeper layers to the story than what we've previously swallowed. As a tale of sin and disobedience, it doesn't align with Truth. The knowledge of good and evil is part of every man's learning experience. If we are to grow up we must pursue discernment of good and evil. As it states in the New Testament:

Whew! the author of Hebrews should have read Genesis. Doesn't he know you'll surely die with that advise? Wait. Solomon seems to agree with both writers:

Are not death and life part of the knowledge of good and evil? Yes, all pairs of opposites are on that tree. Let's let an even higher authority have the last word:

After chewing on those statements, another layer of onion is revealed. We were (are) led to the knowledge of good and evil, that we might by reason of use (comparing good to evil) get our discerner in shape to choose life over death. After that . . .

Stay with me now on the same layer of onion. We aren't discussing patriarchs or the nation of Israel. This is much more important! We are exposed to a world that presents to us an image of good and evil, life and death, that we might wisely turn from both images and choose the reality of Life that transcends opposites, the Life that is God himself. Then we will return to the land that, as He promised, belongs to us and always has: the garden where the tree of eternal life stands. Once we master the material in a textbook, we put the book aside and enter into the life of the knowledge, which is the practical application of it. When we graduate from school, we apply what we learned there in the real world. The world of opposites, of sowing and reaping, of cause and effect, is the classroom of our life. The day will come when we will walk out of the school gates, and live in pure life - death free. We will experience pure good, with no knowledge of good & evil. Pure goodness is wholeness, which has no opposite. We will have returned to God, after so long a journey of imagined separation. Imagined because we saw a self other than the one Self. We never really left the omnipresent Father. He played hide and seek with Himself. The game is His pretend-life as another self. When the game is over, we all return to Wholeness. We are absorbed by God. We were one all along.

Jesus showed us you can live in a physical school, but retain a conscious union with Home (Father). He was on the earth plane, yet one with the spirit realm at all times. He is the way to the Father for us, if we learn from his example. He never partook of this world's good and evil fruit. To him everything, regardless of appearance was created for the glory of the Father. A problem wasn't a problem, it was an opportunity to bless. Lack wasn't lack, it was an empty cup to be filled with substance. (Human intellect has a test to see if you are a positive or negative person. They show you a cup that is either half empty or half full and ask you which it is. But Jesus would take an empty cup and fill it). Even death wasn't death, it was a hypnotic state that ended when Life snapped his fingers.

This conscious union with the Creator is awareness of the whole onion even when certain layers are being observed and interacted with. When someone we know is stressed out about something and we aren't, we tell them, "You're not seeing the big picture." We could have said, "You're not seeing the whole onion." The onion is always whole. It is our vantage point that makes it appear to be fragmented.

If your cherished interpretation of scripture is now shaken, you probably have some questions about the book of Genesis that all begin with, "Yeah, but what about . . .!" I had the same questions at one time or another. Why did the Lord say, "Don't eat." if He didn't mean it to be a restriction? Have you considered that the statement, "For in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die." is one that hangs from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? The irony is this: Because of that statement, Adam ate from the tree before he ate from it. If the command of the Lord was, You shall not eat from this tree., then how could Adam not make the judgment: "Eating from this tree is an evil thing to do. I was told not to." At that moment he would already have knowledge of good and evil.

If the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is symbolic of a principle, then that principle operates on all levels (all layers of the onion). Knowing good from evil is the principle of judgment. Without judgments, there can be no good, no evil, no hot, no cold, no opposites at all. The reason Adam was warned about the knowledge, is that if he partook of it, he would surely die. He wasn't forbidden the fruit of that tree, he was informed that if he ate the fruit, there would be consequences. For surely he must eat of the tree if he is to find his destiny. The Tree of Life will always be there, but only after Adam walks the long road of living and dying amidst the pairs of opposites and finds unity once again, will he be able to return to the Tree of Life and eat of it. He didn't die literally. He lived to be cast out of the garden, father children and live over nine hundred years. But with a judgmental mind, he cannot have life without also having death. With judgment there has to be a separation, or else how could you judge? One thing is invariably compared to another when a judgment is conceived.

Are you ready to go to an even deeper layer of our onion? I see the garden of Eden not a piece of property with trees and animals and such. I see the realm of all creation. The Lord is the only one really present. Isn't it said that God (Elohim, creative principle) breathed into form and what was once mere dust became a living entity? This new creation is created in the image and likeness of the creator, correct? Without the divine breath of life, there is no life in the man of clay. So there really is no Adam separate and apart from God. The breath (neshamah, vital breath, divine inspiration, intellect, inspiration, soul, spirit.) was God. It cannot be separated. God was not inflating the man like a balloon. The breath was not air from a set of lungs. It was Spirit from the heart of God. It was not a portion, facsimile, or reproduction of God. So what was it?

First, God formed the man. Then He breathed into him. Formed (yatsar) means pressed together like a ball of mud. All things are formed first as an idea or feeling. Afterwards comes the physical expression of the formulated idea or feeling. Man was not the only expression formed in the first two chapters of Genesis. Each manifestation of stars, planets, trees, animals and man was preceded by, Let there be . . ." Each idea or desire emanating from God focuses creative Intelligence into a specific pattern of energy and form. Creative potential is unbounded, unlimited possibilities. Just having the desire is enough to manifest physical stuff from spiritual non-stuff. Like sugar molecules floating invisibly in water until a string is dropped into the water. With the string as a point of focus, the molecules are drawn to it until a form appears bearing the image of the sugar molecule and the likeness of the string. The physical attributes of the large clump of sugar conform to the structure of the sugar molecule and to the path of the string. The rock candy which our senses perceive as various forms, is the image of God Himself in the likeness of His thoughts and desires. The man in the Garden is still God alone. God simply and deliberately thought Himself into the shape of a man. Becoming a creator is as easy as knowing that you already are one.

What the Lord does to creation, or what creation does to the Lord is irrelevant. What the Lord did, he did to himself, he did for himself. The account of God appearing as a man is free from laws, sins, punishments, rewards and condemnation. See it as the Creator playing a game of discovery and adventure. As he defined light by drawing it out of the darkness, he reveals oneness against a background of division. The Tree of Life is understood when the joyful/painful process of living/dying by judgment is experienced. We learn that death follows life, but that life also follows death. When we understand that there is no difference between good and evil, we will be partakers of the Tree of Life. To see all pairs of opposites as contrasting extremes of the same neutral center, we can see that they are inseparably one. By breathing His life into patterns of energy and form, God has demonstrated that he is not unwilling to experience pain for the purpose of increasing joy in the universe.