From Recreating Eden: The exquisitely simple, divinely ordained plan for transforming your life and your planet by Julia Rogers Hamrick
©2004 New Realities Publishing

Introduction

Through the Garden Gate: A Glimpse of Eden

Have you been to Paradise? Whether you can consciously remember it or not, I know you have—in fact, we all have. The Garden of Eden, the mythical Paradise of the Bible, is not a piece of real estate—it is a state of being. It is our “home” in the truest sense—it is our home of origin and our home of destiny. From the moment we departed from there, we have yearned to return and though we’ve lost our way, that yearning has driven us throughout our lives. At the deepest level of our beings, we long to be completely free of stress and in harmony with all Creation the way we were intended to be—the way we were in the beginning. We long to be whole and fully energized with Life Force. We long to have everything provided for us the way it was in the Garden. We long to experience the pure joy and total ecstasy we remember from our beginnings.

Though most of us do not consciously associate all of the longings we experience with our primal need to return to our original state of being, it is present in everything we do. Despite having lost our way home, our motivation for everything in our lives, from our careers to our addictions, from our relationships to our spiritual quests, from our creative endeavors to our eating habits, stems from our deep, largely unconscious desire to return there; to once again inhabit the “Garden of Eden” and regain what we lost so long ago. Unfortunately, for the most part, we seek to fulfill our yearning for home in ways that will never really satisfy us.

Why do we crave intimacy and closeness? Because at our core, we know what real oneness is and we are programmed to seek it. Why do we strive for money and status? And why do we steal from others in large ways and in small, or disempower others with our thoughts, words and deeds? Because we yearn to feel truly empowered and have forgotten where true power comes from and how to receive it. Why do we seek to get high from drugs? Because we know deep down what true ecstasy is and we’re trying to achieve it—but in a fashion that will never provide it for us in any authentic or sustainable way. Why do we try to escape from stress by numbing ourselves with alcohol or food or television? Because we were not designed to live in stress and we are trying to recreate the state of no pain and no stress we are so desperately missing. Why are we lazy—or tempted to be—expecting something for nothing? Because we know at a very deep level that we are, simply by the fact of our existence, supposed to be perfectly provided for without struggle the way we were in the Garden and we have forgotten how that really works.

We have forgotten that we can only experience what we are truly longing for by aligning ourselves with Source the way we were designed to be, and were in the beginning, so that we can have it all.

When we are again properly aligned with Source, we will feel that completeness, that wholeness again. We will no longer ache for the ease of our existence in the Garden, where our being-ness was all that was required of us—we will have it. We won’t have to yearn for the experience of complete, unconditional, never-ending Love—we will be saturated with the perfect Love that is the sole medium in and upon which we exist in the Garden. We will no longer have to wait to feel total acceptance without having to prove anything—we will live in that state of grace. We will not feel deprived of power because we will channel immense power—real power—in ways that enhance all of Creation. We will no longer yearn to feel the ecstasy of union as we will be fully embraced in the experience of Oneness. We will be whole and fully energized again. We will live in bliss and total harmony—when we are fully aligned with Source once again the way we were created to be.

You are designed to be able to receive all the energy, abundance, power, wisdom, grace and Love that Source has to offer—an infinite amount. In fact, before you were born, you were so perfectly aligned, you were in a state of total oneness with Source, you were bathed in ecstasy, and harmony was all you knew. But by being born on Earth, where the remembrance of our divine origins seems to be dim at best, you entered conditions that tended to separate you from your experience of oneness and from your perfect alignment. Upon your arrival here, your attention was pulled away from Source and you became more fascinated with and reliant upon the world around you. You began to perceive yourself as separate—separate from others, and separate from Source—and thus, in effect, you are. That is why you are having to tough it out in exile from Paradise—while energy-depleted, no less.

There is only one way to receive Life Force and that is through your alignment with the very source of it, but due to the loss of your perfect alignment with Source, you have received less and less of this necessary energy as you have adopted the ways of Earth-life. Without the full circulation of Life Force, your body and mind deteriorate, leading to, either sooner or later, physical death. But even more importantly, without full circulation of Life Force in and through you, you cannot be who you were created to be, do what you were created to do, or have all that you were intended to have. Because if you don’t have this full circulation, it means that you are not fully aligned with the Source of Life Force—indeed, the Source of All—and when you aren’t fully aligned, you are definitely outside of Paradise—sometimes way outside of it!

The time has come for this trend to be turned around. The good news I have for you is that, though you had a lot of help in doing so, you exiled yourself—and you can re-admit yourself to the Garden at any time. I did, which is how I know you can, too.

At a critical juncture in my life, having stumbled naively onto the Garden path, I was able to return, much to my surprise, to that rarefied state of being we’re calling Paradise, if only briefly. Through a series of simple steps I took out of desperation, not knowing where they would take me, I found myself suddenly, unexpectedly, back in Eden. The power of that experience has shaped my life and driven me toward one outrageously ambitious and audacious goal ever since—to map the way so that everyone can find it and understand how it can—and must—manifest as a sustainable state.

The place was Switzerland; the time was December, 1982. I was a twenty-seven-year-old American who had come to Zurich from Japan, where I was fulfilling an overseas-teaching contract, to enter a Swiss holistic clinic to which I had been guided. I needed help to heal myself from a critical, rapidly progressing case of rheumatoid arthritis, and to wean myself of the doctor-prescribed corticosteroids to which I had inadvertently become physically addicted. There were as well, a battery of other strong, toxic medicines I had used in a failed effort to manage the excruciating pain and rapid deterioration of my body. Instinctively, I had felt they were killing me.

Having previously tried all that medical science had to offer me, and having gone from rheumatologist to rheumatologist, who offered me nothing but dire prognoses and medicines that didn’t help, I finally realized in utter desperation that nothing outside of myself could save me. Terrified at the doctors’ predictions of constant pain, wheelchairs, and a rapid decline leading to total disability, I naively called out to what I can best describe as the God of my Protestant, Sunday-school upbringing. I had always considered this god my “ace up my sleeve,” and believed if I ever got desperate enough, I could call on “him” and he would help me. It was clear to me at that point that I was up against the wall and the time had come to exercise my last-resort option. The pleading voice that issued from me was that of a small child, calling for help from an omnipotent parent.

“Help me! Help me! I sobbed over and over again until it became an automatically repeating mantra that eventually dissolved into a primitive keening that went on for quite awhile. But after a time, the tears dried up, I became silent, and the “peace that passes understanding” enveloped me and quieted all my fears. I slept like a baby that night. The next day, I awoke feeling optimistic. Very optimistic! Immediately, I began receiving answers to my dilemma that presented themselves in amazing ways along with easily workable solutions to what I had thought were impossible challenges.

This response made it clear to me that I had stumbled onto something incredibly powerful and that my best hope—my only—hope was in banking on this new way of approaching my problems. As I began to invest my trust in this god, I was rewarded with one astonishing result after another, and I found myself relying on God instead of my own intellect to figure things out and make them happen. The more I trusted and did the often illogical-seeming things I was guided to do, and saw that they paid off in magical ways, the more confident I was in putting my full trust in this obviously higher power. This trust, born out of stark terror, with all the options I had been able to come up with on my own having been exhausted, evolved into true, unshakeable faith. In my observations since, I have become aware that desperation is often the birthplace of faith.

My new-found faith grew so strong, it became an almost tangible entity and in my mind, there was nothing that could derail me from the God-filled path I was on. Whenever well-meaning friends and associates tried to interject their mundane reality into my impossible-seeming one of hope, miracles and healing, I not only refused to entertain their doubts, I made no bones about refusing to even listen. I instinctively knew that if I was going to survive, I could only listen to the guidance within and that I had to tune out anything that conflicted with it.

I was absolutely certain that God was directing my every step and was assuring my success in finding the exit from the valley of the shadow of living death I had been inhabiting. I knew beyond doubt that putting my life in God’s hands alone was my only viable choice. And God had brought me to Switzerland.

At the Swiss clinic, my recovery and rapid weaning from the corticosteroids I had been living off of for many months astonished the doctors and nurses. Despite everyone’s doubts that what I wanted to do was even possible, my faith guided me in rebelling from the doctors’ advice, refusing all other medications in the process of getting off the cortisone, and drove me to blaze my own trail to my body’s deliverance. My inner guidance was infallible.

With help from the natural therapies offered at the clinic, including a very cleansing, all-organic, vegetarian raw-foods diet, I was not only medication-free in record time, I began to thrive and was able to move freely and without pain for the first time in more than a year. Though they had originally held out little hope for me with my renegade methods, and had preached the certainty of doom for the course I had undertaken, my quick turnaround was, of course, termed a “miracle” by the medical experts who staffed both the clinic and the Zurich University Hospital, and suddenly I had many allies in those who had once been so dubious.

Through it all, my connection with God continued to strengthen. With each passing day, with each breath, I grew stronger spiritually as well as physically until I existed in an almost-giddy state of grace and harmony each and every minute. My faith was that of a child’s—naively and completely trusting that God not only wanted me to be well but to grow closer and closer to “Him.” I was rejuvenated at every level and my joy knew no bounds.

One day while still at the clinic, I was feeling far better than I had in months—I had kicked the steroids and other medications, my symptoms were completely at bay, and indeed, I felt better than I ever remembered. I was in the mood for a bit of exploring and decided to go for a walk in the brilliant December sunshine and crisp Swiss air. The clinic was located at the foot of a small mountain and I’d heard there was a fancy hotel at the top with a petting zoo. It sounded like a nice little adventure. The fact that I’d scarcely been able to walk when I’d arrived at the clinic just three weeks before was already a faded memory.

So I set off with great enthusiasm. It was such a glorious day, all was right with my world, and I felt as though I was walking on air. Even though I was not physically in shape for walking up such an unrelenting incline after almost a year of being crippled, somehow, every step energized me further, and I was drawn toward the summit as if by magnetic force. My spirit was soaring.

I encountered other people on the way—some in their yards, some out walking, others, driving by. After a few such encounters, I began to wonder if I looked as different as I felt. Everyone I passed or that passed me seemed to be staring at me. It wasn’t a disturbing thing—in fact, I was enjoying it. I felt myself glowing and knew intuitively that the people were drawn to the energy that now seemed to be floating me along.

The higher I climbed, the more elated I became and the more electric my body felt. This rapidly expanding euphoria was unlike any phenomenon I remembered ever feeling before and a tiny part of me wanted to resist the experience, but it was quickly overwhelmed by the tidal wave of joy that was increasing exponentially within me. I told myself to “just go with it” and so I did.

Everything I saw appeared to be glowing. More than just the brilliant sunlight that was striking them on the outside, they were lit from within. Edges were becoming blurred, and oddly, my sense of individuality was falling away. Even more oddly, it felt right! As I came to the top and reached the grounds of the hotel, my surroundings became so soft and so luminous, I felt that I was in heaven. My heart, expanding with every breath, seemed to be exploding and overflowing with pure love, filling every atom of my body.

I was drawn as if by a magnet to the outdoor petting zoo, deserted of people. The animals—goats and lambs, rabbits, ducks, and chickens—were all extraordinarily beautiful and they were just as fascinated with me as I with them. The boundaries separating us were rapidly becoming non-existent and the ecstasy building within me was so great it seemed to be expanding my cells to the bursting point.

A showy rooster with vivid plumage came to the fence and seemed to beckon me to him. As I drew close and gazed into the eye of this grand, feathered being, he seemed to be seeing right through my eye into my soul, and we connected at a level that utterly transcended our differing species. Rather than a barnyard animal, I saw within him an enormous and limitless universe. Suddenly, there was no distinction between us. We were one—not just with each other, but one with everything. It was as if his eye were a gateway and in an instant, all that was physical fell away into a vast sea of pure Light where my only awareness was of utter bliss.

I would describe to you this “place” where I was, but there is no real description for it because when you are there, you are at one with it and unable to compare and contrast—you simply are. To have been able to observe it would have meant I’d have had to separate myself from it and once separated from it, I simply would not have been there anymore.

When you are in the awareness of Oneness, there is nothing—and everything—all at the same time. The closest I can come to explaining in retrospect what it was like is to compare it to the sensation I have known when newly in love—romantic love—minus any fears or doubts or human factors involved. Just the blissful, open-hearted, spine-tingling, thrilling aspect of it. And still, that is a weak description as nothing I have ever known before or since can come close to the pure, ecstatic being-ness of my “mountain-top experience.”

I don’t know how long I remained in that state of total communion with the Oneness. In the realm of what I can now identify as what the mystics call “cosmic consciousness,” there is no time as we understand it. All I know is that I would have gladly stayed forever if I could have, such was the ecstasy of that state of being. But I became aware of my insistent mind tugging at me, so eager to analyze and quantify the experience, and as I allowed my focus to shift back to my ordinary reality, things gradually redefined themselves so that I was once again cognizant of my body and my surroundings. The euphoria stayed with me, ebbing only gradually, as I walked back down the mountain, feeling so new, so transformed, so blessed, so awed.

I was, however, about to experience the excruciating pain of being in exile from Paradise.

While crossing a little footbridge just a short way from being back at the clinic, another powerful surge of ecstatic energy came and I found my steps slowing to make way for the awesome revelation about to explode in my mind. As I looked over the wooden railing to the icy creek below, the words came so distinctly and so powerfully, they nearly knocked me down.

“I AM GOD.”

It was not some large, booming, man’s voice but my own inner voice that had spoken so clearly. I was stunned and immediately overcome with shame. I was terrified of the audacity in my having proclaimed that. “What blasphemy! How dare I even consider such a thing? I am not God! No person is God! I am so bad,” I thought.

Instantly all the energy that had built up in me over the last days and weeks drained from me as if sucked out by a vacuum cleaner. It was as if I were in an elevator on the hundredth floor of a skyscraper that suddenly fell back down to the ground and landed with a jolt. The feeling of connection I had had for months, the feeling of being held and supported by the hand of God, had vanished in a second.

Where I had been full of vitality before, I now felt empty like a balloon with all its air let out, and I was suddenly very tired, my body aching as it hadn’t since before I arrived in Switzerland. My lifeline seemed to have been severed and for the first time since I had first cried out for help, I felt alone. Deeply alone and depressed. What had I done? It would take me years to discover the answer in its fullness.

The following chapters are dedicated to sharing my answer to that with you, as well as a simple strategy for all of us to achieve and sustain the amazing state of harmony I found on the way to the top of that mountain in Zurich—and ultimately, to reside in complete Oneness again.

Imagine if everyone were to realign themselves with Source to receive a full flow of Life Force, of Love, in and through them so that they were saturated with it. Imagine if everyone were completely at ease, fulfilled, empowered, whole, blissful. There would be no war. There would be no violence. There would be no greed. There would be no stealing. There would be no lack. There would be no abuse. There would be no suffering. There would be no disharmony at all. It would be Paradise on Planet Earth. And it is entirely possible for us to create it.

Because Earth is a process-oriented planet—witness the process of birth, the process of growth, the process of transformation—creating Paradise here is a process, too. And while not so long ago I would have said that this process will take a long time and that it is unlikely it will be completely accomplished in our lifetime, I’m not at all sure of that anymore. Something astounding is unfolding and a window of opportunity like none before has opened for the transformation of Earth and her citizens. A wave of energy such as we’ve never experienced is making our every loving intention in this direction pregnant with the promise of manifestation.

The time has come for Earth to be restored to harmony and there are powerful forces conspiring to make it so—making this new Eden a reality is Priority One for the many forces of Light in our universe. For our part, all we must do is commit to making the simple but powerful changes in our own lives that will revolutionize our experience and in the process, raise the planet up.

While consistently living in Paradise may seem hard to fathom given the way things are, and indeed, given our ego-resistance to giving up that which is more familiar, we merely need to begin to create a new world where Earth is as close to Heaven as possible and the momentum of this will set in motion a transformation, both personal and planetary, that is unprecedented in our experience. As this book progresses, you will see just how this can be.

In fact, the very task we have vowed to undertake by being born in this period of time is that of bringing the Paradise experience to bear on this planet and making it a reflection of our true home in the Heart of God. Our mission is to make Earth a realm where the hallmarks of Paradise are present, even as we remain individuated human beings; to make it a reality where our consciousness and our behaviors reflect our origins in Eden more and more.

You may already be aware that this is your task and traveled a ways on the path back to the Garden, whether or not you fully realized it was Paradise you were seeking to recreate. So you already know how much better life can be almost immediately once you totally commit to heading Home. If this seems to be a new concept to you, I want to assure you that it really isn’t—you just need a little jog to your deep, encoded memories of Eden and of your pledge to return to it. This book will serve as that.

Though it is surely obvious that Planet Earth and her citizens are at a critical point in evolution and change is imminent, this undertaking is not purely an altruistic mission—no, not at all. The fact of the matter is that only when your own life is one of joy and fulfillment can the collective goal of renewing our planet be achieved. And getting to joy and fulfillment is not the long process we have believed it was!

What we have overlooked till now is that because of the way we are designed, it actually takes far more energy and work to stay outside the bounds of Eden than it does to return! By coordinating with our Creator’s design for us, we are on the fast track to a new life. No longer does this need to be an arduous, s-l-o-w process of working on yourself—unless you want it to be! I don’t know about you, but I have just about had it with the “Struggle School of Transformation”! Been there, done that and none-too-impressed with it. You, too, I bet.

What I am announcing to you is a new era—a whole new opportunity for rapid growth and real, deep change, with untold benefits on the way. Like I did in the magical weeks and months leading up to my “mountaintop experience,” we can live in a state of grace and increase the harmony in our lives so that even the greatest challenges are easy to deal with—or more accurately, so that the challenges are fewer and fewer. We can bring the characteristics of Home into our lives more and more, even as we maintain our individuality and personality—though I must warn you, it is likely that your personality will be transformed and made more delightful and magnetic as the process moves forward!

Though this road we’ve been on that has lead away from Source has been hard and heartbreaking, we are, after all, human beings, with all the necessary equipment for perceiving ourselves as separate and operating that way, even if it is a very tough way to exist. The Creator makes no mistakes so apparently, we were destined to leave the Garden. It’s just that it is high time now to turn around and draw closer to Source once again, closer to the Garden. It is time to allow bliss to call us back to our origins. And with the promise of exponentially increasing energy, harmony and joy, the trip back Home will be a glorious one!

I know that comes as a relief for those of you who are thinking, “Well Paradise on Earth is an interesting concept but I’m not ready to live in a world where there is no contrast, no challenge, no work or individual recognition and certainly not one where there is no need for sex!” Worry not—this first leg of the journey simply brings more exciting contrast, more thrilling challenges, more meaningful work and dare I say it—more ecstatic sex!

It will bring more fulfilling relationships, more true prosperity, greater accomplishment and a healthier body. The farther you travel on the path back home, the more consistently joyful will be your experience. And worry not—as you draw closer, the releasing of your attachment to the old, familiar—but limiting—forms will not only be natural and far easier than you can imagine, your embrace of Oneness will be your greatest desire. It is in your very design.

Life was never supposed to be difficult. We have made it so by operating in ways we were never designed to. By making a simple change in the way you approach life, in the way you operate, you can tap into the magic of aligning with your design to rapidly transform your life and create your own paradise. And once you are in the process of doing so, you will automatically be a key player in transforming Planet Earth back into the paradise it once was and is destined to be again.

So let’s get going. There is much I need to share with you and no time to delay!

From Recreating Eden: The exquisitely simple, divinely ordained plan for transforming your life and your planet by Julia Rogers Hamrick
©2004 New Realities Publishing

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