The Fall as a Lifespan Myth: Construal Through the Stages of Consciousness

1. Birth / Immersion in the Collective (Infancy)

At this stage, the meaner has no concept of separation. The world is a seamless field of experience—Edenic, in a very real sense. The Fall is not yet needed; it hasn't occurred. The self is not yet individuated from the world. The myth is dormant, waiting to be activated.

Function: Latent. The Fall is not part of the lived world because distinction has not emerged.

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2. Social Initiation (Childhood)

The child begins to encounter prohibition, limits, and the idea of a world outside the self. The fruit becomes tempting—not as a symbol of evil, but as the first glimpse of choice and consequence. The Fall now functions as a warning and a rite of passage: a necessary breach from innocence.

Function: Normative. The myth teaches about boundaries and consequences—the cost of individuation.

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3. Crisis and Departure (Adolescence)

Here the myth intensifies. The Edenic harmony of childhood is shattered by self-awareness and existential disorientation. Adolescence is the Fall, replayed: the loss of innocence, the birth of self-consciousness, and the sudden burden of knowing good and evil.

Function: Pedagogical. The myth explains what just happened: “You are not broken—you have awakened.”

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4. Integration and Return (Adulthood)

Now the adult begins to reconstruct meaning. The Fall is no longer a catastrophe—it is a beginning. The exile from Eden becomes the ground for cultivation: the world must be tilled. Knowledge brings responsibility. Relationship is re-established, but now with awareness.

Function: Cosmological. The myth maps the shift from unconscious union to conscious participation.

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5. Eldership / Witnessing

The Fall is now seen not as a single event but as a permanent feature of the human condition. The meaner recognises that every construal is partial, that all knowing is bounded. But this is no longer a source of shame—it is a source of wisdom. The serpent is not the villain—it is the symbol of transformation.

Function: Mystical. The myth reveals the paradox: we fall into awareness. Meaning is born through separation.

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6. Dying / Dissolution of Form

At this stage, the self begins to release its individuated position. The Fall is reinterpreted again—not as loss, but as necessary differentiation that prepares one for return. Eden was never lost; it was never separate. The fruit was always meant to be eaten. Death is not punishment but reconnection.

Function: Transfigurative. The myth collapses into itself—revealing Eden as the potential that has always underlain every instance.

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Myth as a Mirror of Construal

The brilliance of the Fall is that it can be read as:

• An origin story (for the child),

• A crisis (for the adolescent),

• A foundation (for the adult),

• A wisdom (for the elder),

• A return (for the dying),

...and at each stage, it actualises different potentials in the meaner.

This is what makes myth more than narrative. It’s a mirror, a recursive unfolding of meaning across the phases of life—each construal layered atop the last, each stage remembering the Fall anew, from where it now stands.