We forget so we can remember. Remembering, we’re changed.

The world’s Creation Myths (for example, the Book of Genesis and the Garden of Eden) share the basic notion that, as human beings, we started out in one place where we were united with God. Then we came here to Earth where we got separated from God. The main task for all humans, then, becomes how to get back to where we were – to our true state, aligned with God.

My own spiritual experience has shown me that actually the whole journey into separation and home again occurs in consciousness – i.e., in our perceptions; in what we’re aware of and how we feel and act. We actually never leave God, ever. This world – Earth – is a just place where we experience ourselves as separate, until we do the work to remember that we’re not.

In the struggle to remember, we make lots of mistakes. We experience pain and suffering. As we find our way, we learn about love, forgiveness, compassion, detachment, balance and justice.

We can rebel, resist and be pretty darn stubborn and thick headed, for that is the nature of free will. But ultimately, we cannot lose our way. That promise is built into the system of growth on earth itself.

Finding our way home is essentially a slow, steady process of attaining greater and greater awareness of our true nature. As our individual consciousness is transformed, we give up our false notions, selfishness and attachment. Our suffering diminishes. We attain wisdom. We learn to love.

The final goal is to BE love and peace

Our basic job on Earth is to change first our consciousness and then our experience of life itself so that love is all we see, know and are. Our lives become ongoing gestures of God’s love and peace. In this way, we return Home.

So universal, it’s in all the holy books

This final goal is so basic and true to human nature that it appears universally in the world’s holiest scriptures:

• “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Jesus Christ.” New Testament, Philippians, 4:3
• “God invites you to the Home of Peace. He guides whom He will to a straight path. Those that do good works shall have a good reward, and more besides. Neither blackness nor misery shall overcast their faces. They are the heirs of Paradise, wherein they shall abide forever.” Jonah, The Qu’ran
• “It is God who has sovereignty over the heavens and the earth. To God shall all return.” Light, The Qu’ran
• “Only that yogi whose joy is inward, inward his peace, and his vision inward, Shall come to Brahman and know Nirvana.”  The Bhagavad-Gita
• “Return at last to the origin of your own origin. Although this world has you still in its thrall, in your heart you’re a hidden treasure. Open now your inner eyes, the eyes of Love: Return at last to the origin of your own origin.” Rumi: Odes
• “O tranquil soul, return to your Lord, so pleasant and well-pleased! Enter among My servants and enter my garden!”  Buddhism. Anguttara Nikaya v.322
• “I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. Look to him, and be radiant; so your faces shall never be ashamed. This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord, and was saved from every trouble. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them. O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.” Psalms 34:4-8

The system guarantees that we won’t get lost. Now let’s look at how that system works.

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Thomas Cole, The Garden of Eden