Skeletons in our Subconscious -Why Can't trust our thoughts - Part 4

The "sin" of Adam and Eve changed mankind. Before the sin, mankind's natural inclination was to choose truth. The light of truth was so clear, so obvious -there wasn't anything else so compelling to choose but truth. Falsehood was in effect a non-entity. Choices were able to be seen in an objective light not personal. But everything changed for Adam, Eve and all of mankind after their sin of eating from the forbidden tree, the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

The Sforno (A famous Torah commentator) describes what changed for mankind and their ability to choose as a result from eating from the tree - a change that would for now on, would intrinsically seem like more of mankind's "natural" inclination.

The Sforno says that from now on "our hearts" would be attracted to things that are sweet and pleasurable despite the fact that they might be not good or damaging in some for us. " - Particularly in the case of things that promise immediate gratification. Where as before we would naturally be able to see the longer range consequences of our immediate choices and as a result that would give us the ability to gauge whether or not our immediate choices are actually good for us. Now, something calls us for immediate gratification and beckons us to choose it despite if it's really in our best interest. It's convincing and screams to us impetuosity and compulsion.

Now, in addition to the existing inclination that was easily able to choose truth, good, right, correct, mankind would have a competing, additional inner voice, one that had lain weak and even dormant until now. This additional inclination
would become more attractive, attention grabbing and without any 2nd thought or deeper reflection, would appear at first glance to make more sense. This new additional inclination would make truth; harder to focus on, seem hidden and makes it harder to choose.

This new competing inclination (force) inside ones self and that makes objective truth harder to find, I'd like to call "one's desire"
(appetites, passions of the body) - a force with it's own truth, albeit false, an unquenchable thirst, a life unto itself, one that necessitates being fed. This inclination and immediate desires continues to grow in magnitude according to ones own self importance, ego and self preoccupation. It promises it's own sense of self fulfillment, completeness and wholeness. But unfortunately the result of choosing in this manner will always only net the a counterfeit and illusion of what it is that you seek.
This force maintains an attraction, drive, motivation and connection only to the external;, superficial, material and physical, leaving you wanting for the real thing.

We now have two competing forces inside, two identities, two voices, vying for attention, each one promising greatness. Both sides saying that they only want what is right and good but one voice is connected o impersonal, objective truth and the other voice albeit argues for the right motive but in truth it's choices for the sake of one's own self serving, immediate personal desires and passions.

More pernicious is that these voices are mixed up inside and it becomes very hard to sort out which voice is saying what at any given time. Each side wants to validate its own existence, presents a lens of self fulfillment, promises greatness and seeks to complete ones self

The greatest influence of how this new voice addresses itself to you -with it's false arguments and warped way of seeing things are your challenging character traits. In Ethics of our fathers it says that "jealousy, lust (desire and honor) remove a perosn from this world. (truth and reality) . What does it mean? To the extent that a person would have challenges in these character development areas would be the extent that objective truth could become obscured. The result would/could be "thoughts" that skew your own lens of how you view things, the situation, your wife, children etc.

In short (because I have to go now) - is that as a result of Adam and Eve's sin, an additional inclination (voice) became dominant inside of us, one that now obscures objective truth and reality and colors our lens of how we think, view and see things.

This last part is just the beginning of finally getting to the topic I started out 4 posts ago which why we can't necessarily trust our thoughts all the time. And lastly in short, short is that the voice inside often takes more into consideration from what is going on internally with ones self than objective truth and reality which we have difficulty seeing.

Be well
Mike