In the Garden of Eden myth, in the King James Version from which most of us hear the story, God creates Adam as child to the divinity.
God creates a woman as a "help meet" for him: Eve. She too serves as the child of the parental God. In the time after their creation, as with our own babies, they have little true sense of self. As does a baby at the breast, they exist as extensions of God the parental figure not as independent and conscious beings. The biblical God establishes the structure of paradise and the human place within it in the following:
"2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
The parental figure, God, denies Adam and Eve, the totally dependent children, access to the possession and power of the parental figure, the knowledge of good and evil which is an essential element in awareness and consciousness. When we read, "2:25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed," we read a definition of a quality of innocence, the quality of unawareness, a lack of self-consciousness. The parental quality of the knowledge of good and evil feels desirable to the growing children because they feel within themselves, as we all do, the desire to become a self. A self and exists as an entity because it attains a state of awareness and consciousness. Even though the parental figure denies we have or perhaps will ever have the maturity to deal with such knowledge, we feel the desire to know the fullness of reality and thus ourselves by becoming a conscious and aware self. Inevitably, Eve and Adam reach out as we all reach out of the paradise of the innocent being into the knowledge that will allow our self to begin to form the becoming self. "3:6 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."
The children experience two emblematic moments they had not experienced before: "2:7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons." If their eyes were opened we can reasonably derive that their eyes were closed before. Assuming the use of metaphor, we generally understand the "eyes closed" metaphor as unawareness. Their eyes closed to awareness may serve as a form of innocence, but it also serves as a barrier to the becoming self. Adam and Eve become aware of the world external to themselves even as they become aware of themselves. At that moment, they are not God the parental figure but separate beings, entities with an identity and a story that will exceed the limitations of their life of complete and utter, unaware innocence. They also know that they will die which had always been their eventual fate. It is at this point, they feel the alienation of such a state, and cover themselves from eyes outside their own.
Of course, the God knows, as all parental figures seem to know, that the children have violated the parental figure's dictum. Frankly, all dressed up in fig leaves and nowhere to hide is a very strong clue as to what has gone on. The rest comes naturally. From the achievement of consciousness comes an awareness of human alienation and suffering. They become excluded from the dubious paradise of unconsciousness in which all humans begin, and they enter the adventure and painful work of living their own lives. They have separated from the parental paradise and moved into the living world in which they make conscious choices and acts. Their lives and their selves have begun to come into being. They have realized their becoming selves.
This story of the shift from innocence into awareness replicates in the lives of almost all parents and children. The story of Adam and Eve, in which she embodies the heroic desire for consciousness, serves as a call to all parental figures for understanding and acceptance instead of the justification for parental judgment and rejection "for the good of the child." This myth of original parenting can show us that we have no need to punish. We might choose instead to offer comfort to the newly becoming and alienated children who suffer the actual consequences of awareness. They will find joy, and they will, most assuredly, find sorrow. We can serve as co-celebrants for the former and consolers for the latter. As parental figures, we can offer as much joy as possible to the child or children in our care and support them through the pain they experience, as do we, when they make choices that make for painful consequences. We can do that for them through our unconditional positive regard. In that way, they may well learn from their mistakes.