Abraham and sarah

[shawn]

The deconstructing Genesis thread has kind of inspired me to add some more elements here, So I will start with this:

The story of Abraham is the story of the growth of faith in our lives and the tests that we draw to ourselves to make us grow.

The story of Abraham is allegory, even Paul emphasizes this in Galations 4:23-26, ".....Which things are allegory: for these are the 2 covenants (promises); the one from the mount Sinai which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar (Hagar).
For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answers to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.
But Jerusalem which is above is free. which is the mother of us all."

God told Abraham that they would have children, yet they did not believe at first and so Sarah gave her handmaid Hagar to achieve the result.
This tendency with us all to look at the first thing that makes sense, is reasonable to our materialistic ways of thinking.
We try to find answers in the outer world before we are willing to look inwards.
We attempt to find satisfaction in the outer, the lesser and miss the greater.
Hagar means stranger in Hebrew.
The materialistic thought is always a stranger to the spiritual thought.
The reference to Mt Sinai is a reference to living under the Law of the 10 commandments, The Law of a people in bondage.
It was clever of Paul to differentiate between the Jerusalem which now is and is in bondage (to the Romans, at the time) and the Jerusalem which is above, which is free and is the mother of us all.
The obvious Jerusalem, the city in bondage to the Romans is all that most people see,
The Jerusalem which is above is the consciousness of Peace that comes from complete reliance on the inner Source (God),
This consciousness is always free and is the mother of us all....the faith that is the beginning of everything.
(To be continued)
Work tomorrow, time for bed.

 

[wil]

Namaste Shawn,

There is another important point here. When you look at the stories and the metaphor/allegory/metaphysics a lot hinges on the meaning of names... And the names G!d was dealing with here were Abram and Sarai, who later changed their names to Abraham and Sarah...the name changes are significant as they have different meanings.

I once questioned this stuff, this meaning of names. And then I was standing in line at a grocery store and there was this book of baby names and their meanings to assist with expectant mothers in finding appropriate names for their child. And then I was invited to a baby naming at a synagogue, as the old tradition was you didn't name the baby until it displayed a trait or some happenstance at birth indicated an appropriate name....sometimes this ceremony and the naming was months after the birth. And then I found my dad's old bible and in the back was a glossary, containing names of people and places and their meanings. When I reviewed these with my Metaphysical Bible Dictionary I was not so cynical as to its validity.

I look forward to your continued remarks.

 

[shawn]

Abram stands for faith in the invisible power of the Source (or God if you prefer).
Sarai stands for the feeling or emotional side.
(Every wife in scripture is metaphor for the subjective side of the consciousness which is represented by the husband)
Sarai here in this story represents emotions that faith is afraid to acknowledge.
Gen 12:5
And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.
The Hebrew for Sarai is contentious.
So we have faith taking along negative thoughts: contentious feelings and dark negative thinking represented by Lot, as well as the spiritual awareness it has gathered in Haran.
Haran is an exalted state of mind.
Faith and its not yet purified thoughts depart for Canaan (the lowlands of materiality)
In Sichem, (burden bearing), there was famine, as there always is in this kind of thinking.
Famine means a state of mind where there is no spiritual inspiration upon which faith can be nourished.
It is in this now impoverished state of mind that one will look to Egypt for relief, the fleshpots of Egypt stand for bondage to materiality.
The Egyptians stand for the kind of thoughts which dwell in this state of mind.
So, Abram had built up his soul consciousness to an exalted state (Haran), yet shortly thereafter, he entered into a state of famine consciousness and went so far as to look to Egypt (bondage to materiality) for his good.
It is of interest to note that he was not sent there through guidance by God, but rather by his own confused thinking.

 

[shawn]

12:10 And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land.
12:11 And it came to pass, when he was come near to enter into Egypt, that he said unto Sarai his wife, Behold now, I know that thou art a fair woman to look upon:
12:12 Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see thee, that they shall say, This is his wife: and they will kill me, but they will save thee alive.
12:13 Say, I pray thee, thouart my sister: that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee.
12:14 And it came to pass, that, when Abram was come into Egypt, the Egyptians beheld the woman that she was very fair.
12:15 The princes also of Pharaoh saw her, and commended her before Pharaoh: and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house.
12:16 And he entreated Abram well for her sake: and he had sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she asses, and camels.
12:17 And the LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai Abram's wife.
12:18 And Pharaoh called Abram and said, What is this that thou hast done unto me? why didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife?
12:19 Why saidst thou, She is my sister? so I might have taken her to me to wife: now therefore behold thy wife, take her, and go thy way.
12:20 And Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him: and they sent him away, and his wife, and all that he had.

Briefly, this story means that we are continually taking our faith, as yet unproven, together with our feeling side and our remaining negative thoughts, back into bondage to fear.
In turning to the Source we give lip service only to our awareness of God/Source and have within us a heap of rubbish that comes from putting our faith in the little ego self.
This kind of conflict always causes a famine in the land, the state of consciousness where there is no spiritual inspiration.
The entire story of Abram becoming Abraham is the story of the unfolding of faith in individual consciousness and the various experiences that come through proving faith.
God had promised Abram (faith in the invisible power)
that he would be blessed forever and his seed (ideas)
would inhabit the world.
But with his negative thoughts and feelings which still remained, faith seeks the security of sense consciousness (Egypt).
As we go about proving our faith, it is important that each one of us understand some of the pitfalls along the way.
In the beginning, we will come to a place where there is famine, that is, we seem to lack the spiritual inspiration that we have had in our exalted state of mind.
The answers to our prayers just aren't coming through as we would like and we are inclined to doubt.
We then do not really trust our spiritual inspiration, and fearful that our faith will not stand up, we permit our feeling side (here portrayed by the wife) to be taken over by the ruling thought in sense consciousness (Pharaoh)
This ruling thought may be a belief in hard times or any other sense of separation from our highest good.
The feeling or emotional side is always receptive to the intellect.
We cannot, at any time, forsake our direction over the subconscious mind.
To do so is to hand over our dearest possession to the dominant thought in sense consciousness.
Great troubles come of this.
To let someone or something else take charge of one's own thinking is the most dangerous thing we can do.
It leads only to destruction.