Man's Fall and Redemption, Original Sin and Self Realization

In the beginning, God created man, and man lived in perfect unity with Him, basking in divine paradise. Man was designed for constant communion with the Creator, knowing only God's light and love.

Yet, a desire awoke within man—to know the good and evil of this world. This choice, symbolized by the forbidden fruit, led to man's fall from divine life into worldly existence. As Genesis 3:6 recounts, "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." By choosing this knowledge, man died to the divine life and stepped into the life of the world, echoing the fall of Lucifer: "How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn!" (Isaiah 14:12).

God, in His boundless love, desired to restore fallen man. He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to bridge the chasm between God and man. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). Through Jesus, and by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, man could once again be restored to unity with God.

Within every human lies a spark of the divine, a glimmer of God's presence. Man stands at a crossroads: to live in the world of good and evil, separated from the light, or to embrace the divine life with God, basking in everlasting light. "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it" (John 1:5).

Jesus taught that to truly follow Him, one must surrender completely. "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23). This surrender means dying to the self—the sinful self. As Paul writes in Romans 6:6, "For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin."

To live as Christ describes is to let go of our judgments, desires, and attachments. The body, the world, the mind, thoughts, feelings, emotions—everything that arises must be surrendered to God. We are called to let these things be, to rest in God's presence without judgment of what arises. This state of surrender leads to a deeper awareness of God's presence, the state in which we trust fully in God for our being.

By surrendering our judgments and desires, we allow the Holy Spirit to work within us. "And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth" (John 14:16-17). In this way, man chooses God, and out of that choice comes restoration and unity with Him. To choose Jesus is to be filled with the Holy Spirit, to embrace the divine life, and to shine with God's eternal light.

This understanding is not unique to Christianity. Many Eastern religions point to the same profound truth: living in the world, but not of it. The Daoist tradition speaks of living in harmony with the Dao, the fundamental principle that is the source of all existence. As Laozi writes in the Tao Te Ching, "The Dao that can be told is not the eternal Dao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name." It is about flowing with the stream of nature, aligning oneself with the natural unfolding of the universe.

Buddhism teaches the principle of non-attachment and the cessation of desire to achieve enlightenment. The Bhagavad Gita, a sacred Hindu text, speaks of performing one's duty without attachment to the results, embodying the principle of living in unity with the divine will. Krishna advises, "You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work" (Bhagavad Gita 2:47).

In truth, the planet is home to nearly 8 billion fallen souls, identifying with the desiring self, the egoic self, the fallen self. This identification manifests hell on earth, allowing the roaming devil to sow chaos upon God's good creation. But in the midst of this, the path to restoration remains open.

By turning away from the desires of the ego and resting in the awareness of God's presence, we find our true nature. This unity with the unfolding nature of God transforms our lives and the world around us. "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2).

In embracing the divine life through awareness of God's presence, we live as vessels of light in a world often shrouded in darkness. This practice of surrender and resting in God's presence is all that is needed to abstain from the world and turn to God in this life, aligning with the eternal truth that transcends all religions and philosophies.