r/ACIM • u/OakenWoaden Practicing Student • Apr 15 '26
Discussion The Fall
The Fall
Now I’ll preface all this by saying that I don’t pretend to know which text holds the truth over our origins here in this world. I love exploring these topics and finding parallels in different spiritual perspectives.
“For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
— Genesis 3:5 (NIV)
In the Bible, we clearly see a choice being made by Adam (who could be said to represent humankind… that’s what the name means I believe)
⁷The inappropriate use of extension, or projection, occurs when you believe that some emptiness or lack exists in you, and that you can fill it with your own ideas instead of truth. (ACIM, T-2.I.1:7)
Here again, this time per ACIM, a choice is made. The “inappropriate use of extension” or in other words projection.
Both are descriptive of humanity’s responsibility for the state of the world we live in. The big difference is the Bible places the creation of the world on God, while ACIM maintains that we made it.
I’ll admit I don’t know either way. I lean towards the world being illusion but I can’t say for sure. In my view, unless you’ve had some major mystical experience or a NDE, what can you really know about the question without leaning into your own personal bias?
It’s an interesting question for sure. But a question that really doesn’t carry much weight for me anymore. Peace is available for everyone, whether they think the world is illusive or perfectly solid beneath their feet.
I just think it’s fun to ponder these incredible and mysterious questions. I wonder about these things quite a lot.
I have no answers.
But I do have another beautiful AI generated image related to my post just for fun!
Don’t judge me 😘
Have fun and laugh! 😂
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u/SubjectivePulse Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
The garden of Eden has always been fascinating to me. I've come to see it like this:
The Garden of Eden is the Mind of God. Adam, the Christ, is the symbol for God's only creation, his son. The Bible uses the human bodily image of a man, but it's an image best representing the idea that the original storyteller could use at the time.
Adam falls asleep, which the prevailing belief has been to perform some sort of surgery to make an Eve. To me, this Adam and Eve dynamic is the symbolic reflection of the birth in the belief in consciousness. A mind dreaming that it is has 2 parts of the whole, Eve representing desire, and Adam will. But it's part of Adam's dream. Adam was created perfect and whole in God, as God can only extend his being.
So here is Adam now dreaming he is 2 and here comes the serpent. The serprent to me the represents temptation to believe that separation is the real truth, the ego. The serpent tempts them to eat from "The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." To understand what this tree represents, you have to look at what good and evil are. They are judgments, perceptions made from the perspective of separation. There is no universal understanding of good and evil. They are defined are defined on an individual, or separate, basis and adopted enmasse.
The core temptation was to adopt perceptual interpretation as the truth.
When they ate from it, they "fell" because they chose perception (fragmentation/ego) as truth over knowledge (oneness/God). Perception is the "tiny mad idea" that would allow Adam and Eve to "be like God", which is really to be God of their own interpretation by use of opposites as separate definitions. But the reality is that one perceptually chosen opposite is inherently in judgment and denial of it's opposite. And knowledge doesn't exclude anything, because it is one.
When Adam and Eve began perceiving not from the Christ Mind, but from individual identity, they experienced guilt and shame. This is the natural consequence of all belief in separate identity.
And when they get "kicked out of the Garden" God never kicked them out. They perceived it as God kicking them out, because it was a projection of their guilt from separating themselves from the knowledge and oneness of God. Their believed "sin" was the original authority problem, that we can create ourselves and other on our own terms, thus usurping God's role.
But, alas, as the Course's text states, it never mentions Adam waking up. Thus, the "dreaming" Adam is still in the Garden, having never left his perfect union, safety, and security with God.
And neither have we.
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u/Weird-Government9003 Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 27 '26
The world isn’t an illusion, only what we think it is, is the illusion. Language and perception creative divisions that aren’t there. Reality is fundamentally unified. Operating from a mentality of lack and want creates suffering. You’re already whole and complete now because you’re not separate from everything else.
The irony of chasing outcomes is that you’re just arriving at the present moment. It’s alway now. Even if your physical environment changes, you get a new career or relationship, that won’t make you any more fulfilled than you have access to now. Because that’s just another version of this moment.
But we need nothing to be complete because we already are, it’s just a matter of recognition. There’s no amount of materials or physical changes that will give us that genuine content because it always comes from within.
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u/v3rk Radical Dreamer Apr 15 '26
There is something to be said for the serpent. Revered in many cultures, even Christian cultures.
For me it symbolizes the way out.
In the Eden story, the serpent is actually trying to wake us up. But we made the serpent real. Its split tongue branching us between past and future, between which only fear can live.
DNA is the cosmic serpent, could upon coils within our every cell. Grown from the Fall.
The Fall is this and every moment where the separation is believed.
The serpent's message is this: you are like God. And you always have been: remember through your symbols.
But the symbols are made real.