Responding to David George on FaceBook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/357759654282474/posts/28443001351998261/?comment_id=28443880828576980
We each are born into an innocent state. Part of the reason for the veil of forgetting is so that we can be born into that innocent state.
But we bring our personalities with us, including some talents, abilities, and natural interests. Some talents, abilities, and natural interests derive from the circumstances of our birth and our first few years, but some we bring with us.
We also bring limitations.
We had progressed as far as we could before birth, having achieved a limited form perfection, and we could not progress beyond that without breaking that perfection.
The circumstances of our birth breaks that perfection. In that sense, we inherit from the fall of Adam when we are born.
But we are born innocent, which is the Garden of Eden state.
Breaking that limited perfection allows us to grow. But this is still not conscious choice.
Adam and Eve actually both understood, by the time that they partook of the fruit, that it was necessary to fall to grow. I think both were waiting for Father to say it was time to choose. Lucifer tried to gain power by jumping the gun, but both Adam and Eve chose to turn to the Father for further instruction instead.
We each have moments when we make conscious decisions to break the limits of the limited perfections that we have achieved. These are our real moments of fall, and these moments do take us away from Father.
Repentance is choosing to return to the Father after we have broken those limits.
This is the pattern of Eden. When we break those limits, we end up out in the wilderness. That's where we gain the experience and wisdom necessary to subdue the earth and ourselves and gain righteous dominion per the final section of D&C 121. Or where we choose to depend on unrighteous dominion instead and lose the powers of the priesthood and the doctrines of God.
We do not inherent the blame of Adam and Eve's choice to leave the Garden. We are not punished because of them.
We do inherit the conditions that give rise to repentance and spiritual growth. This is only a curse if we choose to make it a curse. If we choose to return, not to our limitations, but to God, then the conditions and trials of mortality are a blessing, not a curse.
