If I had to label this week in my spiritual Journey, I would label it “Epiphany Week” since it was the week following Epiphany Sunday. Oh what epiphanies I have experienced this week. I hope you have too.

My friend Annette is a very talented artist. She had shared earlier last summer a work she was starting on which depicted a woman holding an orb. The initial draft of the work depicted her holding the orb below her face with both hands. Even though it was just a rough sketch and rough painting, it spoke immediately to my soul.

In it’s initial simplicity and unfinished state I could immediately see Vladbimir Soloviev’s Sophia-Soul of the World which he referred to as “the intelligible collective Soul of humanity which comprises the many selves of human beings.” (Schipflinger, Thomas Sophia Maria – A Holistic Vision of Creation, 249). Annette’s finished work depicts a woman of all cultures, from all time, from the beginning of creation holding the earth between her hands while she gazes on it with a tear in her eye and the clouds of creation out of chaos swirling above and around her as if its her hair. I couldn’t help but think of Eve.

I am not one that interprets the creation story of Genesis literally, nor do I interpret Adam and Eve’s fall from God’s grace and expulsion from Eden literally. Too much energy and effort through Judaeo-Christian history has focused on judgment and faulting woman for the cause of the fall in persuading Adam to eat of the “forbidden fruit.”

With that said, Annette’s painting, which she titled “Soul of the World”, spoke deeply to me and helped me understand the Adam and Eve story from Genesis on a much deeper level than the literal.

After seeing that painting, I was listening to the Awakening Code Radio podcast, a great podcast about shifting your consciousness and preparing for the new era of awareness of the connectedness of all, the shift back to unity consciousness. I have been binge listening since I missed a few episodes over the holidays. In this episode, one of the hosts, Eric Rankin, said off to the side something about, “Eve’s decision was not so much about the fall of humanity as it was shifting from unity consciousness to private consciousness. From living and knowing how everything is connected and acting based upon that knowledge. To disregarding that connectedness and acting based upon preserving yourself.”

This comment spoke deeply to me and reminded me of Annette’s “Soul of the World” painting and Eve. What if the Soul of the World, a force I truly believe that is holding all together in the cosmos and helping individuals not destroy the earth, is not some deeply mystical unknown force, but Eve herself paying penance for her and Adam’s decision to “eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil”, to abandon being in God’s Grace and living with unity consciousness to living for private consciousness?

So this week, during Epiphany Week, having seen Annette’s “Soul of the World” painting and listening to Awakening Code Radio, I had an epiphany that transformed how I knew and understood “the fall” and transformed me by encouraging me to continue along the journey of unity consciousness and not fall prey to journeying along with a more private or personal consciousness world view.

I hope your Epiphany Week has been just as rich and meaningful and transformative.