Every day we humans face the one thing that distinguishes us from the rest of creation and that is the operation of the one thing we truly own, the only thing we will take to our grave – our choices.

There is hardly not a moment that goes by in our life where there is not some kind of decision that we have to make; when to we get up, what do we wear, what do we eat and so on. Life is made up of choices, small ones and large ones.

Several times in life we are faced with a choice that is life changing. And some of these life changing choices even impact those around us, our family and friends.
It all goes back to the beginning, in the Garden with the first two humans. They were given a choice – two Trees were put before them, one they were told was off limits but the Creator did not put a fence around it. He left it wide open as to give the couple the opportunity to make a decision, a choice.

I will be doing a short series of blogs on the subject of the Two Trees and delve into my own meditations on what we can learn from them.

Part 1
The first thing we learn is that our free will, our choices we make begins with the eye. We scope things out, we look at the situation, and we look at the pros and cons. Our choices are made on what we see or what we perceive to see.

Bereishis/Gen. 3:6 “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat;”

We live in a physical world and thus we react to things mostly from physical stimulation.

The Creator tells us that man falls from Him with our heart and eyes – the Sages of Israel teaches us that the heart desires and it sends the eyes out as a scout to search and find what it desires. When the eyes have located what the heart desires the choice is then made by what is seen, the decision is not made from the heart but the eyes.

If one would truly look at the ails of this world one would see (pun intended) that the bulk if not all of the problems and evils stem from the eye – this is where sin (missing the mark with the Creator) begins.

Adultery, theft, murder, coveting, hatred and so on are all evils that begin with the wrong use of the eye.

How one chooses to use the eye is in direct connection back to the Two Trees. The Two Trees are the foundation of how we use the ‘free will’ we are given.

In the midst of life stands Two Trees – we all are given a choice to make.

Terry W. Hayes

6/2015