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This episode of Living Myth begins with the uproar occasioned by the Supreme Court draft opinion on overturning Roe v Wade. Michael Meade turns to ancient stories in order to find ways to imagine breaking the spells of division and find ways that we each can bring a piece of lived truth and learn ways to more consciously inhabit the same story again.

Chaos can mean “disorder, confusion or conflict,” but the old Greek word can also mean a “gaping abyss.” Given all the confusion and conflict in the world, it makes sense that we can feel increasingly on edge and fear that we are at the abyss. That sense of the abyss arose in me as I followed the storm of emotions, feelings and fears that were unleashed by the Supreme Court draft opinion on Roe v Wade. As one report said, the leaked draft has “become the new milestone in America's seemingly inexorable journey from the United States to divided states.”

As another wrote, the demise of Roe v Wade could “drive the biggest wedge yet between what appears to be two irreconcilable nations existing under one flag.” The sense of ever deepening divisions explains why we can no longer understand America by looking at polling averages. Polls consistently show that somewhere over sixty percent of the public remain in favor of keeping laws protecting women’s reproductive rights. Yet, that is not the way to understand the current chaos or the growing chasm that divides America.

David French, an influential Christian conservative writer and First Amendment lawyer, said in recent interviews that “the root of all this extremism is a kind of cultural panic inside conservative political and religious views.” The panic arises from a sense that the culture wars have been “irretrievably lost,” leading many in the right wing to conclude that they must now “exercise raw political power.” What makes it all worse, he stated, is a sense of emergency arising from a “hyped sense of impending Armageddon” being the essence of the story now being told on the right.

Seen that way, the abyss is partly formed from the Apocalypse story in the Christian Bible that many believe predicts the End-times now come upon us. And that coincides with the rise on the political level of ideologies that divide people, not simply into the right and the left, but also into the righteous and the damned.

By now, the twin offspring of the modern era can be seen as great uncertainty on one hand and absolutism on the other. As the future of the world becomes less and less certain, people desiring certainty at any cost become more absolutist in terms of both religious beliefs and secular ideologies. Ominously, the two become aligned in ways that divides everything and everyone.

There are many stories about how chaos, confusion and conflict came into the world. One is an ancient tale from India, which is currently suffering its own version of cultural division and internal conflict. In the old story, Mara is the ancient god of destruction, who spreads ignorance and promotes conflict and delusion, thereby wreaking havoc, and sowing bad karma all over the world. One day Mara was traveling through some villages with the usual group of attendants.

They came upon a man practicing walking meditation. He was looking down when suddenly his face lit up with wonder. He had just discovered something on the ground and picked it up. Mara's attendants asked what the meditator had found that lit him up. Mara stated that it was a piece of truth. “Oh, evil one,” the attendants asked, doesn't this upset you when someone finds a piece of truth?” “Not at all,” replied Mara, “for right after finding a bit of truth, they usually make a belief out of it.”

It is a common mistake to confuse singularity of vision with a genuine worldview or way to deal with life’s troubles. However, fixed beliefs and ideologies cannot hold any more than a bit of the truth, much less can they provide meaningful ways to unite diverse people. People can insist on a single-minded vision of reality; but in order to do so they must project their own inner conflicts and dark feelings onto others.

Those who proclaim to the outside world that they have found the one and only way to see things are usually hiding a deep division within themselves. Fundamentalist attitudes grow where one part of a person becomes devoted to the letter and rule of the law, while the other side judges and castigates whoever acts or believes in a different way. How many self-righteous religious and political leaders eventually become exposed for some hidden behavior that they were condemning in other people?

Increasingly, people have been led to see a world of binary choices, so that many now insist that clearly complicated issues be simply decided one way or the other. One result of blind, binary thinking is that people refuse to accept that life involves paradoxical situations. Another result is that people feel as if we are not all living in the same story. Yet, paradoxes have been present from the very beginning.

In the old story of the Garden of Eden, paradise turns out to be a paradox. At the very beginning there is a garden of tranquil beauty and complete contentment. Everything anyone could want appeared near at hand and in great abundance. However, one wrong move and everything could be torn asunder. Break one rule, take one taste of the wrong thing and exile is but a step away. Paradise presents both the original unity that people continue to long for as well as the original split that continually arises and can divide the world to this day.

Once the original couple tasted the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the split between eternity and time, between God and humankind, between right and wrong became a condition of life on earth. Meanwhile, in true paradoxical form, there was another tree that is essential to the story of paradise that is often forgotten. At the center of the original garden the Tree of Life stood, representing the underlying unity of all that exists.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was also known as the Tree of Division, while the tree at the center was also called the Tree of Remembrance. Thus, the point of all the longing and searching has always been to find again the holy, living tree that unifies all that becomes divided in the world and all that is divided within ourselves.

The problem is that once the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil makes an appearance, it tends to take center stage, especially in the hands of those who have picked up just a piece of truth. In psychological terms, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is a starter tree. It marks the place of separation that begins the long road of self-discovery and self-awareness that is intended to lead from painful separation to healing and inner unity of the soul.

The old wisdom idea was that if any path to unity is to be found, the original split must consciously be faced again. Seen that way, the center that everyone acknowledges has gone missing is not simply the political middle place. Rather, what we are lacking involves a deeper understanding of the original split and a greater imagination of unifying symbols and stories. We are not simply in two different stories or in eternally divided states; more like we are on different sides of the forgotten tree at the center of life.

Finding genuine unity typically follows a season of oppositions, even a period of exile where we become caught in the thorny issues of life on Earth. Maturing the fruits of genuine knowledge requires bearing the tension of the opposites long enough to find creative ways of healing and making things whole again.

Choosing one side of a dilemma, and holding tightly to it, means being one-sided, single minded in the wrong way and thus being blind to greater, more inclusive truths. That's what the story about Mara, the god of ignorance, confusion, and destruction points at. In the dark times, when we each must face the abyss, there's a strong tendency to just grab a piece of the truth and claim that it is the whole thing.

One way to view the recent history, especially of the Western world, would be to see it as a painful struggle to awaken from the spell of the Tree of Division. Breaking the spell allows a return to the original center, where everyone can be seen as descendants from the living roots of the Tree of Life and each can bring a piece of lived truth as we learn ways to more consciously inhabit the same story again.

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