I bet you didn't know that was a loaded question, starling, with an answer that packs an enormous punch! LOL!
I'm familiar with symbology of many kinds, including numerology, and 8 is a powerful number. In fact, it symbolizes power itself. I had a message/vision years ago, when I started out on the conscious path, wherein I was shown shooting the 8 ball into the left side pocket on a pool table, and once accomplished it would be the end of "the game". This was a very joyous event, and I blew on the end of the cue stick with a big smile and a light, happy feeling.
The number 8 on the ball became sort of zoomed and magnified, and was just like the one on the truck I saw yesterday. The "8 ball" analogy or metaphor felt very much like the sense of victimization that lives in the human condition because of circumstances humanity cannot seem to fully grasp or truly break free of. Somehow, the implication was that I would discover a route to doing that, and when I did... the game would be over.
So "8" is the symbol of power, and its misuse is the bane of mankind's existence. Never quite understanding how to get out from behind the 8-ball, this unlimited power turns against man, rather than serving and supporting man in the realization of his Divine Heritage. Once the distortion causing misuse is untwisted from the held back life flow at this level, man becomes free and his power is unlimited.
After all of this "8 talk" yesterday, I had an inspired inkling of the potential hidden source of this age-old relationship to life here, and it had to do with guilt over "willful disobedience". The idea that mankind's low self-worth, sense of eternal guilt and shame, and the struggle to break free from it, stems from a shameful status of being unable to stop willful disobedience that rises in self. And that this desire to stop it is actually fear, which eventuates in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Letting go is the answer, but fear prevents it. All kinds of "valid reasons" for the fear rise, and man invests in the lie once again.
It's a dualistic notion of course, but the sense was one of feeling victimized by one's own nature. No matter how hard one attempts to control or understand or "love" this part of oneself that seeks to defy all that is good and right and healthy - or at least all that is believed to be so (belief issues are key in this) - there is never a proper understanding of it nor a freedom from it's negative-seeming influence.
I'm aware that most awakening folks attribute this essential glitch in humanity to some outside influence by nefarious beings, perhaps tweaking DNA or programming our minds or what-have-you, but believing such things will never resolve the issue. It leaves us beholden to something we can never claim in our own purview, and that isn't truth.
Centering back on "All is One" and remembering that our true heritage is not as victim but rather as Creator, is the starting point for exploration. With that base, one then realizes quickly that some level of ourselves chose the status quo that exists here. Chose to embody it and exist within it, and participate willingly. And did so knowing it was not an insurmountable problem, this predator/prey consciousness distortion. Daring to start here as one explores the archetype, rather than swearing by god that one would never choose "this" (said with disdain, disgust and fervent denial), is paramount.
Unfortunately, most attempt to explore this distorted factor in the human psyche from the outside/in instead, believing at the onset that this circumstance is borne of something other than Self, from something outside the Self… and it only perpetuates the myth and cycling pattern of victimization. It is an inherent belief in "All is Two" rather than "All is One".
In fact, such outside/in beliefs are also borne of this self-same inherent-seeming victimhood consciousness that is untruth at its base. SO... there is something more real and true beneath it, and most don't go there. Tagging a villain is enough for most. But again, it doesn't resolve anything to live from this notion. The finest minds attempt to resolve this conundrum of life at this level, but do so from a faulty premise. And never see that the premise of their logic is not sound. They start from a secondary plane rather than the essential level of the problem, and never find resolution. But man, what strategies and fighting tactics and ideas have come from such folly!
The story of Adam and Eve (and other such myths) is not a beginning of anything, it is a depiction of an already engrained status quo in consciousness that causes what mankind has come to call "the fall". The implication in the story is that which man still believes to this day: That life – any life energy – could ever actually tempt mankind outside of its nature. That there could ever even be something other than The One Self, something separate, that could do such a thing, is ludicrous.
But not to a duality invested consciousness. So man believes, under the construct of religion, science and intellectual pursuits of all kinds, that this "something other than the One, inherent within" is not only possible but is the crux of the problem they face daily here. Never realizing that the very mind being used to explore the problem is fueled by a distortion of truth (fear, at its base). Never quite going to that level in their explorations, the level wherein fear and ignorance is admitted and a higher source is sought to depend upon for revelation. No, instead choosing to seek out the villain at every level, and learning how to "best" it, as if fighting self will ever take one home.
Eve's temptation was not unnatural, is the point. In fact it was inevitable. And not from a "fault" or "flaw" in nature, but from an unrestrained love-based desire to Create. It occurs continuously in Nature/Creation from a knowledge that there is absolutely nothing to fear in letting loose and daring to allow Creation to flow unimpeded and uncontrolled, because all there is, is the love that gives anything birth.
But mankind is still stuck under a false or distorted understanding of the creative force. He believes there is something inherently sinister in the feminine aspect of life, that pool of potential that often generates unintended and unwanted experiences and manifestations. And my sense is that this interpretation of the feminine is what's at issue, not the feminine itself. In other words, it's a distortion of truth that keeps us locked into a pattern of life experience that can actually be rectified.
As per another recent thread post, the rectification is done inwardly, at an archetypal level, getting at the essential energy itself, rather than any outward manifestation. And it's not done with a mental process, it's done at the feeling level. The mind is used to choose to allow the feminine, this very root of "evil", so to speak, to finally flow unimpeded in one's energies. To be felt fully in the self, literally daring to face infinity. Doing so without censor, allowing that energy to be unfettered, finally, and giving it voice, will reveal its innate wisdom that was missed or misunderstood since the beginning.
The pain experienced when any of us allows our "willful disobedience" to have play in our energies (eating that dessert when we're diabetic and "shouldn't" but wanting it nonetheless, indulging in activities and behaviors that we know aren't "good" for us, etc.), is not a result of a true, unimpeded flow of creative life force. It is a result of a distorted crimp on the flow of life, a misunderstanding carried in the mass consciousness at this level –that says that life flowing unimpeded is not wholly natural and based in eternal love. If the truth were invested in, rather than the all-pervasive lie that makes duality a truth for so many, the experiences so familiar to us in living at this level would change drastically.
But again, one can't get there with the mind alone. Even if it becomes graspable intellectually because another says it… it has to be felt and resolved in truth and love, which lives in the heart. It takes trust, faith and the heart to do such a thing. Especially here at this level. Full support of the Divine Source is what one must "lean on" to face infinity unflinchingly in this regard. The irony is that mankind does not trust Divine Source completely… so there's the rub. It takes a leap and a lot of courage to dare. Every hidden fear will rise to be faced in the doing, too. Because all fears are borne of this one: that something actually went wrong somewhere, somehow, and we've been paying for it ever since. Something's out to get us. It's a lie, but it sure gets a lot of support at this level.
What we're fighting is ourselves.
So… that, in my sense of things, is what this 8 symbol all over my experiences lately, is all about. Me writing about all of this, where I haven't in a very long time out of fear of the rejection and denial I used to face (internally, and therefore externally reflected in others flaming me), is an outplay of the very thing I'm advocating for anyone else stuck in loops of dissatisfaction in their life. And while I'm writing this, I'm feeling and facing all the "caution" energy of fears that used to hold me back, trying to do so again. So perhaps this is how I end the game for myself.
Thanks for asking, starling! 
Sowelu
"The most important decision you have to make is whether you live in a hostile or friendly universe."
~ Albert Einstein
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. ~Marcel Proust
The evolution of humanity is an evolution of the heart. The path is through the heart.