It seems that right from the start the very first mother and father – Adam & Eve gave birth to siblings with a rivalry. Cain and Abel. The good brother and the bad one according to every religious interpretation I’ve ever come across including my own religious indoctrination as a child raised in the Jehovah’s Witness community. Today we might say Cain and Abel are the classic scape goat and golden child of a narcissistic parent destined to become narcissist and co-dependent. And this is how it has always been since the beginning of time according to the source of most western religious thought, The Bible.
Today I’d like to really break down this story and understand the pattern that has been pervasive throughout our current (and arguably ending) paradigm known as the Patriarchy in many spiritual but not religious circles.
What’s interesting to me about this story which I’ll recap here for those who haven’t picked up a Bible story book since their childhood or maybe ever, is the assumption of a truth. That truth being that God preferred Abel’s offering over Cain’s. And also what’s interesting is noting who was provoked. And wondering how that happened.
The story goes like this, (from Wikipedia):
In the biblical Book of Genesis, Cain[a] and Abel[b] are the first two sons of Adam and Eve.[1] Cain, the firstborn, was a farmer, and his brother Abel was a shepherd. The brothers made sacrifices to God, but God favored Abel’s sacrifice instead of Cain’s. Cain then murdered Abel, whereupon God punished Cain by condemning him to a life of wandering. Cain then dwelt in the land of Nod (נוֹד, ‘wandering’), where he built a city and fathered the line of descendants beginning with Enoch.
So back to my inquiry. How exactly did Cain know that God favored Abel’s offering? As a child I always rather liked the idea of Cain being a farmer rather than killing animals for food like his brother. And the pictures in my Bible story book of cain’s offering – a plentiful garden harvest always appealed to my budding vegetarian spirit over the sad dead goat depicted as Abel’s offering. So why I wondered would God find dis-favor with Cain?He offered from his hard work just as his brother. I wondered as a child if God is not impartial and if he plays favorites? And I thought it was unfair to Cain.
But now as an adult I see the whole situation much more clearly, never-mind it’s probably a metaphorical analogy for something else completely. For today’s lens I’m focusing on the premise of the story. Firstly, Cain did not hear directly from God of his dis-favor of vegetables. Or surely he wouldn’t have bothered harvesting and offering them. Genesis does not say how God’s sentiment was received as in other Bible stories where the voice of God or some writing on a wall is explicitly identified as the vehicle for communicating higher wisdom directly to the ears or eyes of the receiver. No, it seems that someone interpreted God’s pleasure or dis-pleasure to Cain. It could have been Abel or it could have been one of the parents, Adam or Eve. In either case I see now that Cain was the victim of gaslighting. Can you see the scene now? “God favors my offering, you only have vegetables. I have meat!” exclaims Abel. Or maybe it went something like this, “why can’t you be more like your brother, he offered God a more favorable sacrifice than you” chided Adam or Eve.
And so right from the beginning, religion – the authority that interprets God, empowers the always good and always right narcissist. I’m putting my money on Adam or Eve as the first Narcissistic parent. They’re good and right and someone else is not because Narcissists not only need to be good and right but they need others to be wrong and bad. It’s a thing. Wouldn’t it make more sense if both brother’s offering was equally appreciated by God. The scripture doesn’t say that Cain worked less hard or offered less value or that he had any sort of bad intention or attitude about his offering. It just says that God for no apparent reason favored Abel’s sacrifice. In this scenario Abel gets his narcissistic (narcissistic parent’s) need to be right met or at least he’s safe from Adam/Eve’s need to pit one child against the other as Narcissistic parents often do and especially if they are not being obeyed equally by both. Perhaps Adam wasn’t a fan of gardening after his expulsion from the garden of Eden by his own “wrong doing.” A wound. Now he’s a garden hater projecting his wrong doing on his son. And he is not happy that one of his sons has chosen gardening as his life’s work – he feels disrespected. Adam’s narcissistic need to be right – that gardening is not the way, is met with this tale of God’s disfavor of Cain’s offering and eliminates any differing views because Adam’s view is God’s view after all.
So now we’re at the point in the story where Cain gets triggered. He’s experiencing cognitive dissonance – something he knows to be good and valuable, the literal fruit of his labor has been labeled as disfavorable by God. Cognitive Disonance is the stuff of crazy making. Holding two opposite beliefs as true. It creates glitches in the matrix. And his reaction isn’t good. He actually kills his brother. On the surface he is clearly the evil brother.
He’s not only been told by his father and/or brother that God doesn’t favor him but he’s lived a self fulfilling prophecy- who could love a murderer for any reason. And then Genesis says he goes off to wander to far away places with all of his self loathing, shame and debt to society welled up inside him as baggage. Never good enough, always needing to prove himself, substituting everyone he comes into relationship with for his father whom he has displeased in more ways than one. And so the pattern goes. From then until now. Like a dent in the mold of humanity. And not even all the self sacrificing martyrs who would come after could right this wrong. Cain probably never even realized that he was gaslit – he was trapped in the earth realm without so much as a psychology website to reference. His provocation was likely interpreted by him as a fault of his own and to some degree, yes he has to own his re-action.
But what if we go back in time and give Cain a tool. What if we help him see that his dad and brother are not right. That they don’t speak for God. His father ate the forbidden fruit of knowledge and so no longer hears God in his own heart – he thinks he knows but he only hears his own mind. And the mind is biased and right always – that’s the program of the mind.
What if we help Cain tune into and trust his own intuition and silence his own mind to hear and trust his deep knowing from his connection to God in his heart – that God loves his offering equally. Then perhaps rather than reacting when he is triggered he can be thoughtful. He can create healthy boundaries within his family. He can have empathy for his father who is wounded from being cast out of the Garden of Eden and have compassion for his brother who has fallen victim to the bully that is their father. What if both Cain and Abel lived into the patriarchy as ancestors for the rest of humanity as healed and balanced masculines refusing to be manipulated by their wounded father or mother.
What if we re-wind the story of Cain and Abel and we have compassion for Cain equally as much as the murdered Abel – recognizing both as the sons of their father, each with their own struggles to overcome. What if we recognize in this biblical story our own tendency to leave consciousness behind and blindly accept the story that has been offered to us through centuries of religious interpretation that encourages us to label Cain as a murderer and venerate Abel as a victim. No doubt upon re-incarnation Abel carried back into the matrix the covert narcissist pattern, always the victim.
I have a rival sibling, I remember as a child, well before my pre-frontal cortex was developed, having a dream that I murdered her. In my dream I could not find a good place to hide the body. I tried shoving it down between my bed and the wall but I realized that she would be found and there was no way to cover it up. And I would be in a lot of trouble and would live to regret my decision. I knew in that waking moment that my guardian angels or higher self had spoken to me in that dream. Had given me the feeling of remorse. And in my very young age, less than six years old – I heard from within my own being that killing my her would not solve the problem of a narcissistic sibling rivalry, it would only create ever greater problems. I resolved that day never to injur another knowingly, no matter how triggered or angry. This is the higher consciousness that we all must strive toward and that is what the story of Cain and Abel represents to me now. Don’t be like Cain but don’t be like Abel either. Don’t let the narcissist push your buttons until you act out of character. Manage your cognitive dissonance. When you notice the cognitive dissonance, lean in. Something more than meets the eye or the logical mind is in play. And some healthy boundaries and faith in your own connection to wisdom are being called upon.