Editor’s note: The following article refers to spiritual concepts. Please read Lovefraud’s statement on Spiritual Recovery.
By OxDrover
In the Bible the story of Adam and Eve living in the Garden of Eden, in perfect paradise, is a story familiar to most children who have gone to Bible school at one point or another in their lives. If you take that same story, though, and look at it through adult eyes, you can see that there is a great moral to this tale, whether you believe it as a “creation” story or not.
Before the “fall,” Adam and Eve had only dealt with a loving God/Creator who had given them a wonderful place to live in peace and plenty. They were naked and innocent in this paradise on earth. They were given an occupation of “dressing the garden” and only given one warning that they must not disobey, and that was to not eat from the tree of the “Knowledge of Good and Evil,” for if they did not heed this warning, they would die.
The original psychopath, Satan, in the disguise of a serpent, like all villains shows up on the scene. We know about psychopaths and we know that Satan personified this personality disorder, because he saw someone who was happy and prosperous, but naïve, and he wanted to bring about their downfall. Not for any gain or motive we can perceive on his own part, but simply to have someone else believe his lies and suffer for that belief. He wanted to enjoy the downfall of someone else. That was his “reward” for telling the lies to Eve, to get Eve to disregard the warning she had received from God ”¦ just as our psychopaths lie to us to get us to not heed the instinctive intuitive warnings we get when we catch them in a lie, or something doesn’t feel right.
How did Satan accomplish his task? The story tells us that Satan was “more subtle than any beast of the field.” ”¦ ”and he said unto the woman, ‘Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?'” Satan knew this was not true, but he was setting her up with a conversation starter he knew she would respond to.
The woman said, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said ”˜Ye shall not eat of it’”¦or ye shall surely die.”
The serpent said unto the woman, “Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and she shall be as gods, knowing Good and Evil.” Here the psychopath, as they all do, tells Eve that the warning from God is for God’s benefit, because God wants to “keep the best stuff” for himself and that if she will just not heed the warning not to eat of the forbidden fruit, she will be equal with God.
Here Satan is creating a need in this woman, and holding the hope of accomplishing that need in Eve. Before Satan’s lie to her, Eve wasn’t unhappy, and she had no desires that weren’t met. She didn’t even desire to be “as gods,” but now she has started to desire something that Satan appears to be offering her.
How many times have our psychopaths held out to us a “prize” that we start to desire? A desire that they have created a fantasy of, and lied to us that they know the way for us to achieve this desire, our heart’s desire. Is it a perfect soul mate? A perfect love? A perfect marriage? A perfect business arrangement? A perfect child? The perfect restoration of something we have lost? What was the desire in you that the psychopath created with their lies?
“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her and he did eat.”
“And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.”
Adam and Eve immediately knew that they had been had. They knew they were naked, and they did now know the difference between Good and Evil. They knew that they had been tricked, that Satan had done them in completely, and that there was no going back to naiveté. You can’t UN-ring a bell.
While Adam and Eve tried to find a way to hide themselves from God and the consequences of their disobedience and naiveté, Satan skipped off on his merry way, having accomplished what he desired, the destruction of human kind. The taking away of the innocence of humanity. The bringing of death to the world.
However, though Satan brought evil into the world of man, humanity also received the knowledge that will protect us in that fall from grace. We have the knowledge of Good and Evil. We can choose our path.
The psychopaths in our lives who have attacked us because we didn’t have a proper knowledge of their evil intentions when they started to destroy us for their own purposes, their own selfish games, have given us the same “fruit” that Eve in her naiveté ate, the wisdom of the knowledge of Good and Evil.
While Eve in the Bible story paid a stiff price for her knowledge by being cast from paradise into the world, we also have paid a stiff price for this knowledge, some of us in terms of money and property, all of us in terms of pain and emotional devastation. Just as Eve must have berated herself for being so naïve and stupid for doing something she had been told not to, we berate ourselves for being so naïve and stupid in ignoring the warnings we also generally had all along. Why did we not heed the warnings, just as Eve did not heed God’s warning not to eat the fruit?
Just as Eve, after the fall, had to learn to live in the real world, the world that is not paradise, that contains evil people, selfish people, even her own son, Cain, who killed her other son, Abel, we as former victims of the psychopath have to learn to live in the real world and to distinguish what is good from what is evil. We have to learn from our experience with our own personal version of Satan, and our own version of our fall from grace, to know what is truly important in life. To use this hard-won knowledge of Good and Evil to make us stronger and better people.
We are no longer naïve people who don’t know about red flags of warnings of psychopaths. We are no longer willing to trust others indiscriminately or lightly as Eve trusted the lying words of her own Satan. We are no longer willing to fail to listen to the instinctive cries of our own intuition about danger.
We have knowledge that we have gotten the hard way, and hard-won knowledge is a lesson that will stick to us forever. It is up to us to use this life’s lesson in Psychopath 101 for our own and others’ benefits.
but her hair aint bouncin..
it was too long to bounce.
NOW….I keep my bouncy hair on me always! 🙂
Wow…just caught a special on tv about Charles Manson.
Final conclusion….
“Once in awhile there is born a “bad seed”…but the majority of serial killers came from dysfunctional families…psychological abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse…”
I think they are right. We need to implement programs for “parents to be”. Show people what raising kids with neglect and abuse can do.
I was abused as a child, but didn’t become an abuser. Why? Because I had outside support systems who helped me and believed in me.
I see mother’s ignoring their children in stores..then angrily screaming…”Knock it off”.
In my opinion, you just programmed that child ….his needs were not met…you react with anger…IMPRINTING BEGINS.
People don’t realize this!
I know that the socios I was with…all had neglectful and/or abusive homes..even though THEY claimed they were not!!!
I analyze everyone and everything….My recent X had the same background as Ted Bundy. Only he became a cop and bullied people like crazy…..legally.
Charles Manson said…”I’m still a little kid”
WOW…that explains it all..
The jails are full of disordered people…and so are the streets, the schools, …….
Etc.
And OUR HOMES!
The shows on this channel today are all spathy related….
He’s creepy….on a BIG level.
Charles Manson was born to a 16 yr old. What 16 yr old is mature enough to raise a child when they are still a child??
She was an alcoholic…and the father was an African American guy she met…and was promiscuous with. Great start.
Dysfunctional 16 yr old breeds another dysfunctional member of society.
Then at 13, he is sexually abused in an all boys school and runs away.
His mother is in jail and his ONLY happy memory was when she was let out of jail and hugged him.
She later rejected him..
The makings of a monster.
The endless cycle….sad.
Okay….heres where I have an issue.
WE ALL HAVE CHOICES!
I was molested as a child……..I haven’t molested anyone.
I was raped as a teen…….I haven’t raped anyone.
I have CHOSEN not to repeat or cause this pain in anyone else.
(not that these choices were tough for me)
We all have choices.
I don’t buy the excuse…….
I know how it felt/feels…..WHY would I cause that pain on another?
We ALL have a story….its about how we choose to perpetuate it.
I agree. As I said, I was abused, but I didn’t take drugs to escape the pain as my sister did. I didn’t become a child abuser as my other sister did.
Very interesting….maybe I was stronger and could deal with the abuse better. I don’t know.
All I know is that the chance of creating a healthy human being is better if…… 2 healthy, educated people plan their families….have the finances to support the children they bring into the world….and raise the children with little stress and a lot of love….are better. But, cycles live on and on.
Erin,
they want others to feel their pain because at the time they were first imprinted with it, they had no words to express it. That imprint is not imprinted as a rational thought with the word “rape” attached, it is imprinted as an emotion all by itself and it is attached to their self-worth and consequently their survival.
So I can kinda understand why they react the way they do. Infants create drama when they need attention or help. But, yeah, I know what you mean about having no desire to cause pain to others. And it’s not hard for us, so WTF? The only way to explain it, is that they are still infantile and never learned to empathize with others. Others are not real people, others are just there to serve their needs – that’s how narcissists think. That’s why its a combination of nature and nurture. Add 1 part narcissist and 1 part abuse = Charlie Manson (or my exP)
I think its genes and environment. There were 5 children in my family. Only my one brother and I were self motivated to get educated and graduated from college, became professionals, and didn’t abuse our children. My oldest sister couldn’t beat the monster, so she became the monster. She abandoned her children and her oldest son ended up committing suicide at 24! Her daughter from her third marriage hates her and ran away to live with someone else, at age 16.
My younger sister has been mentally disabled and on SSI since she is 21…has such bad anxiety and attempted suicide several times when younger.
My youngest brother lives with an abusive narcisstic wife, and is like an child in an infantile state….she cut his b__S off when they married….he has no say in anything. He is very depressed and on meds.
So, 2 out of 5 , my brother and I , were aware of the abuse and tried to beat it. I had a great career teaching and at age 35, married a charming, good looking, financially successful business owner…..had 3 kids with him…and found out he was a sociopath after slowly unveiling his mask in the 7 yr marriage.
He wasn’t a cheater…he was a liar and went into angry rages and was abusing our children. Thank God I had a teaching degree….or I might be dead today.
So, I don’t know what made my one brother and I “normal”….at least we didn’t become abusers . Maybe stronger genes?
Tobehappy,
my one older sister and I are normal, but baby sister and older brother are P’s. Here’s the weird part, baby sister was the golden child who got all the love and was spoiled and older brother was also given special privileges since he was a boy.
Other than that we were pretty much raised as extensions of my parents and not as individual.
If the extent/degree of our narcissism is what allows our thinking to objectify people, then perhaps being given special privileges is what allowed my baby sister and older brother to become spaths because it increased their degree of narcissism. Then you add the abuse that we were all subjected to and voila! instant spath.
Was it you who posted before about being very narcissistic as a teenager? I was also that way – very self-centered. I’ve heard that is normal for a teen. I know that, despite all the anger and entitlement, I was very empathetic even then, because I would send money to a little boy, Isaiah, in a “save the children” program, from my after school job when I was only 15. I’m glad I did that now because it helps put my own history into perspective about what kind of person I was before I had any judgement.