The Culture Egg is a hologram of space/time where future holds the meaning of life. The illusion is that in future you can break out of the Culture Egg and be ffee. But Future is the creation of the Egg. Catch 22.
The Idea of Sin is a hook that does not pull us into God’s boat but into the Vicious Circle of Culture, karma and Sorrow.
My life story (since I’m 80 and have a bit of a story) is written in a decade after decade struggle to solve this question of sin. I was fortunate that my parents, namely my father, planted a strong seed of Unworthiness in me, a Sin Seed I had to get out. Like a deep weed, we spend our efforts pulling on the leaves, then the stem, but always the root seed remains to sprout again and again.
We never get to the root seed because that is the Source of Sin…and it is me. My very idea of me is this Idea of Sin that has been planted in me…but my parents who were the gardens of the culture that planted the seed in them. So I do not blame my parents, but I thank them….for if it had not been for the Seed of Sin I would not be free. Oh…Happy Fault.
We’re exploring the heavy weight of Sin (or the floating feeling of anxiety, that something is wrong with me and/or the world. As long as we are inside the Culture Egg we cannot find the cause and remove it. As Culture, as a microcosm of the macrocosm, I can’t find the cause external to me, for as Culture I am the Seed…but it has been planted in me. What is my face before my parents were born? But the blame is not on my parents because they two were just transplanting the Sin Seed in my innocent soil.
Any one who has a heartfelt longing to find this seed and pull it out, we discover the Crack in their Cosmic Egg. It will come as an Idea of Light, a revelation, a single Idea that drops into the dark cave of the mind that illuminates the whole landscape all at once. This Idea of Light can be small or large, a candle or a searchlight. The Enculturated Mind jerks to attention as if it had been confronted by death. And Light Seed has the power of death because it is death to one’s darkness in the Culture Egg that is lit by artificial light.
Once your Light Seed is planted,—if you nourish, palm it with your hands so the wind of darkness will not blow it out—more Light Seeds will come from outside the Culture Egg. The Light Seeds meld themselves together, creating a brighter light in the heart. Like a GPS Navigator you learn to follow its directions instead of the flat map in the Culture Mind.
The Light Seed directs you upstream and against the Sin Seed’s light, in the opposite direction given by the Culture Egg’s map. You are brave enough to travel alone.
Just as Theseus in the Labyrinth, you follow the thread of light out of the maize of Culture, leaving behind. your own idea of your self, the self conditioned by the Sin Seed. One goes, not so much against the river of Culture, but against the more powerful rive your own own conditioned inclinations. You begin to replace the First Responder of Culture with the First Responder of your own heart.
And this is why I ended up in Buddha Dharma. Here in this tradition I found my focus to be on my own Enculturated Mind instead of external causes. Mindfulness is the practice of making one’s subjective Idea of self objective. Awareness opens up a vast space in which the Culture Mind thinks and emotes, so you can just become aware of what you internalized Culture Egg is doing. Only in mindfulness are you free from the judgment and sin of Culture. If you can see without judgment your thoughts of being unworthy, you are not those thoughts…You are freedom itself…and in Mindfulness the Seed of Light blooms into a Lotus.
It is not easy to change our First Responder from mind/brain to heart/brain. The Culture Egg holds our mind hostage, conditioning it from birth, and it is the Knee Jerk First Responder to experience, registering everything as either something to eat or something that is gong to eat us. This is the Old Testament Judgmental God of Jehovah who punishes his disobedient children.
So it is not easy to change this first responder to Jesus or Heart as First Responder. One has to go against the Law of Culture. When free of Culture, we discover that the Law and the Heart are the same Father. “I and the Father are One,” said the Son of Man.
But in the Culture Egg it is a sin to say I and the Father are One. (Who do you think you are, Jesus Christ?) In the Culture Egg you and God are ontologically different, separated by a chasm only a god can leap. All. you can to is try your best to love God with all your heart….
Oh, wait….that is a double-binding commandment. Love is spontaneous, You can’t try to love, to be spontaneous. The only way to live in the Culture Egg is as a hypocrite.