And What of Evil?
Over my years of exploring, learning, writing and teaching I have been asked many questions, often they are the same question just asked from a different angle and I have explored a number of them in various essays. One of the most common ones I have not explored relates to the notion of evil and acts perceived as evil. Nor have all the conversations about it “gone well”, as I have had to end a number of them when the reactions of people have become so intense, even leading to verbal attacks, that continuing would do little more than create even stronger emotional reactions. This would negate any value that could be gained by discussing it.
Anyone who pays attention to the news has read about the acts of individuals or groups of people that appear to them as evil and there have been a number of these in recent months that have brought this question to the fore. I am speaking about actions to such acts as someone who kills a number of people and extend this to governments and dictators that start wars, or engage in acts such as genocide of various degrees, assassinations and so forth. Evil is a very challenging topic because it is misunderstood and for many the term itself tends to evoke strong emotional reactions. People react to what they perceive as evil though the tendency is to only notice what they believe to be “great evil” while overlooking lesser forms of it.
For instance, is it evil to want to do harm to another or is it only evil IF one does harm to another? Many would argue that the thought is not evil, only the act. However, if this is so it would appear to lead to a great paradox, namely, if all things are energy in one form or another, how can an act of thought (energy one form) be different that an act of the flesh (doing something evil)? An action is an action regardless of its type, unless one believes that a physical act is somehow fundamentally different than a thought act. How would this be possible given that both acts are the result of “energy” and a thought action precedes a physical one? The simple fact is it cannot, and this is but one of the challenges in trying to understand “evil”.
Another aspect of this discussion comes into play when one considers the fact that “good” and “evil” are opposites (1) and the fact there can be no manifestation whatsoever without opposition. Without opposition all would be the same, hence there would be no differentiation and nothing can be created. It would be nice if we could examine evil as some form of separate “thing”, but the reality is we cannot.
According to the Christian world view, evil is any action or thought that is contrary to the very character of God. But to examine this we must have an understanding of the “character of God”, which is really only possible in the abstract or metaphorically. To understand this, even in part we must have a better understanding of God. To do this we must go back to the beginning of ALL, to when there was “no-thing” manifested anywhere.
Before I get into this topic I will say that, as I indicated in the opening paragraph, I am fully aware it can be a very sensitive topic, especially for those who have very strong religious convictions or whom may have been directly affected by acts they would refer to as pure evil. When such acts occur the consequences can be traumatic mentally, emotionally and physically and they often have a lifelong impact. So I do not take this topic lightly. While I do hope that through this essay I can shed some light on the topic, my prime focus is for those on a spiritual path. The reason is that understanding the nature of evil is not just an essential component of freeing oneself from the illusion we live in it is also that the general or prevailing views or beliefs about evil are limiting.
In this examination of evil I will endeavor to explore the following questions, though not necessarily in this order:
- What is evil?
- How does evil manifest?
- How can we deal with evil in us?
- How can deal with evil we encounter?
- How can we move past evil?
The concept of evil has close ties to the nature of our existence; this is also true in Judea-Christian thought where it is seen as living against God’s nature or as opposition to God or the case of some forms of Judaism as a forsaking of God. In both of these schools of thought evil is directly related to concepts of God.
I am not a believer in the idea that God as a being separate from the Cosmos of which humankind is a part; however, to examine this topic one must bring God into the equation. There is little point in starting with vague notions about God, for we would only be discussing God’s will more or less as defined by doctrine, which is only done by description. Instead, I will share will you my view about God and to do this we must go back to the beginning of the Cosmos. Remember this is my view of God, and you are perfectly free to disagree with me, as you may on much of this or any other of my compositions.
In order for you to understand my view of God, I will share some quotes from two books that have influenced my view, though they did not define it. We will start with this quote from Chapter One of “The Cosmic Doctrine” by Dion Fortune; it is a metaphorical description of the beginning of the Cosmos (the passage is a number of pages so I have used to represent sections not necessary for the purposes of this discussion):
“The Unmanifest is pure existence. We cannot say of It that it is Not. Although it is no manifest it Is. It is the source from which all arises. It is the only ‘Reality’. It alone is substance. It alone is stable. All else is an appearance and a becoming. Of this Unmanifest we can only say IT IS. IT is the verb ‘to be’ turned back upon itself. IT is a state of pure ‘being’ without qualities and without history. All we can say of IT is that it is not anything that we know, for if we know anything it must be in manifestation for us to know it, and if it is in manifestation it is not unmanifest. Therefore the very fact that we can know it proves that it is not unmanifest. The Unmanifest is the Great Negation; at the same time it is the infinite potentiality which has not occurred. It is best conceived of under the image of inter-stellar space.
In the occult teachings you have been given certain images, under which you are instructed to think of certain things. These images are not descriptive but symbolic, and are designed to train the mind, not inform it… The Unmanifest is the only Unity. Manifestation begins when duality occurs. The prime duality is ‘Space’ and ‘Movement’.
The first manifestation was a current in space. The metaphor I must use may convey nothing to your mind. All I can say is that space was moving. You will these clues are a clue to much.
Now when space moves it has a peculiar quality – being frictionless it never loses momentum but continues to flow.
When space moves two forces are at work:
(a) The force which causes it to move, being the desire of space for momentum
(b) The force which had hitherto caused it not to move, being the desire of space for interia.
These two factors are present in all motion, but the desire for movement, being the stronger, overcomes the desire for inertia, and the desire for inertia continues as a check upon the movement. Therefore the movement is pulled upon slightly. That is why there is no such thing as a straight line in the Cosmos. All movement therefore has a slight curve in its projection, therefore, eventually it returns to the spot whence it started and forms a spinning ring.
Now, the prime movement is just a flowing of space that returns after long aeons whence it started, and then renews its journey. This sets up a spinning belt of enormous circumference. This belt spins on one plane for immense aeons of time; spins with a changeless spinning. But its tendency is to communicate its motion to the space about it, which leads more space to flow into the spinning (all this, remember, is a metaphor). The spinning in one plane continues until the stresses which it generates evokes a new movement, and a second current in space is set up at right angles to the first, and the same process is repeated. These spinning planes of force may be conceived of as resembling the Rings of Saturn.
….
Now these two Rings we will call Good and Evil; Life and Death; Light and Darkness; Spirit and Matter; Being and Not-Being; God and Devil; because each of these potencies has its root in its respective Ring.
…
The first force to arise is called “good” because, from it arises the line of force called evolution. All subsequent secondary forces are measured by that standard. In so far as they move in the same angle they are reckoned to be “good”. In so far as they approach to a right angle they are reckoned to be in opposition and are called “evil”. Evil is simply that which is moving in the opposite direction to evolution.”
I will grant you that the above passage is quite esoteric; however, what it suggests is that there are two fundamental forces in the Cosmos, and since ALL started with these two forces all other forces or energies that exist (regardless of their form) are the result of interactions and combinations of these two.
Now, some may now wonder, where is God in all this? Well, God, in the beginning would be the Unmanifest, and all that comes out of the Unmanifest, which some see as God’s creation, is also God. The Cosmos of which we are a part, came into being due to God’s desire for momentum. God is not static, God is dynamic, and God is evolving. Perhaps this passage will help you to understand this (from “The Inner Life by C.W. Leadbeater):
“God is Love, but Love itself cannot be perfect unless it has those upon whom it can be lavished and by whom it can be returned. Therefore He put forth of Himself into matter, and He limited His glory, in order that through this natural and slow process of evolution we might come into being; and we in turn according to His will are to develop until we reach even His own level, and then the very Love of God itself will become more perfect, because it will then be lavished on those, His own children, who will fully understand and return it, and so His great scheme will be realized and His Will will be done”.”
One can link the words “He limited His glory” to the words “desire for movement” in the first passage. You will notice that this passage also coincides with the first day as described in Genesis where it states:
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
In the above passage from the bible “the heaven and the earth” are the first movement of the Unmanifest and the reaction of the “space” around it. While I may have seemed to digress from the topic of evil I have not. The above passages and what they suggest are a key aspect of any discussion of evil.
I realize that these may be long passages, but in order to understand evil we must have an idea of what “forces” evil is comprised of. Further, this may seem far removed from the act of evil by an individual, but it is not. It is not because, again, all forces in the Cosmos derive from these two fundamental ones, further, “good” is the force that is called evolution, and evil is devolution or the opposite (because if allowed to prevail the second force would bring the first one to a halt and end everything).
Of course, we are aeons distant in “time” from the beginnings of ALL, hence what was relatively speaking simple is now complex. Nonetheless, we are on an evolutionary path; that is we are evolving in the direction referred to as “good”. The “evil” that people see around them are varying degrees of actions or forces directed in the opposite direction, that of devolution. Those who do evil things, be it something like stealing from someone or trying to manipulate them, or those who do horrific acts are all working in the opposite direction from evolution.
In the Bible, God’s laws, the moral codes, and concepts such as sin (which is merely a word which means going against evolution) were intended to direct humankind along the evolutionary path. You can find parallels or similar constructs in all other religions. Evil is any force which goes against the flow of evolution as described in the passage above from the book “The Inner Light”.
At this point, we have at least some idea of what “evil” is, the next question that comes to mind is “How does evil manifest?” To examine this question it is important that we consider a little more about evolution as it pertains to humankind.
For those who follow the Judea-Christian view of things, this can be problematic. These religions portray life as a one time experience. One is born, lives their life and then when they die either go to heaven or to hell. While different branches of this religious view have their own interpretation of the cycle of life and death and what follows, this is the most common in the western world. I do not hold this view, and in honesty find this perspective both presumptuous and arrogant. Why would one feel that after one life, where they likely did many acts that went against evolution, they deserved an eternity of “happiness”? Also, how can one learn all that there is to learn in one lifetime and then as a result of such limited experience earned the right live for an eternity in “heaven”?
How much can I truly learn by just being me? I cannot experience even a tiny fraction of the variety of emotions that are possible. Further, I do not deal with the every negative thought or deed I do (confession does not teach me the “error of my ways”) and I am only capable of a limited set of thoughts based on my nature and the experiences I have.
In addition, what do I know about the kinds of thoughts and emotions one would have being a beggar on the streets of Bombay, a mother of children fighting for their well being, an child who has been so brutally abused that all sense of love and kindness has been stripped away, someone who has lost everything they hold dear and has to deal with the consequences of enormous loss, a person of power who can influence many lives or someone who lives by taking from others and so forth? The answer is – I do not. I can surmise, I can assume what it is like, I can even intellectualize about it, but I cannot know and thereby learn from it. Consider that even a single emotion we feel can have many, many variations and without experiencing and learning from them my awareness will remain very limited.
I believe that we have a higher self, one that in a figurative sense is evolving and only awakens to its true nature by experiencing life from many perspectives. This awakening is gradual, for as I mentioned, there is much to learn and, we manifest a great many energies that are not “good”. In the course of our lifetimes we act in ways that go against evolution, or to use the Christian sense, we act against God.
Usually they are small acts of volition as expressed by selfishness, greed and so on (such as the 7 deadly sins); and such acts can be either in thought or include deed. When we do these things, we manifest energies, ones I have likened to friction in other essays, which are “evil”. Do we learn why they are “evil” and learn to be otherwise? And when we have done this, have we cleared the energies we have manifested during these acts? We all know, if we are being honest, that we do not. And at this point I am only referring to those acts that we commit, and not our reactions to those done by others.
Such energies do not magically vanish and this is why it takes lifetimes to get to the point where we no longer resist evolution, where we understand and act in accordance with it. In each lifetime we are given certain aspects of past experiences so that we can continue to work on them. While we may figure out and resolve some of these we also manifest new ones. I know it may be hard to accept, but we are born as who we are with the challenges we have and those we create so that, as I mentioned, our higher self can learn and awaken.
In the core Twin Powers material I focus on two fundamental “skills”. These two skills are keys to our development and which we need to work on or else we will remain stuck in the illusion. These two skills are honesty and responsibility. Honesty is perhaps more obvious as it should be quite clear to everyone that if we are not honest we cannot deal with what is, we only deal with what we “imagine” to be, which is not the same thing. Responsibility is another matter altogether.
When I speak of responsibility I mean not only the mundane responsibilities and accepting the consequences of the choices we make, I mean to accept 100% responsibility for every event in our lives even those that seem to be beyond our control. One would have no difficulty realizing that if they hurt someone by choice then they should accept responsibility for that choice or they might choose certain actions that contain risks which could be realized. It is another matter to accept responsibility for the acts of “evil” we experience that are committed by others. I would dare say many will find it hard to accept responsibility for acts done to them such as being the “victim” of either a random act of violence or even deliberate ones that appear to have no justification. However, accepting responsibility for these is precisely what I am referring to.
I have spoken about this many times and a common refrain would be such as “How can you say that?” followed by something like “She never asked to be raped” or “He never asked to have his family hurt or killed” and so on. I admit that it is challenge to accept such things as being one’s own responsibility; however, this is not because they cannot, it is often because their view of reality does not permit them to do so. Nor do you have to believe what I am saying, though if you are truly on a spiritual path I would suggest that you cannot simply dismiss it out of hand without contemplating it more fully. I would also suggest that you try to suspend judgment or analysis of what I am saying until after you have read it, otherwise your own beliefs will make it difficult for you to do so objectively.
We take our lives personally; this is the nature of “ego”. Our ego is the illusion of separateness we create by how we interpret and react to experiences. Put another way, it is the illusion we create that separates us and not only from the world around us, from the Cosmos but also from ourselves. However, we should consider that we are not here for our own amusement, or to simply go about our lives as if they are singularly important, they are not. Yes, they are important to us for one’s own life is the only one virtually all people are aware of. This is due in part to the ego we create and also by design. We cannot focus on learning as who we are now (a small subset of what we have to learn) if we remember all the lives we have led. No one could focus on one lesson as the sheer number of lessons would overwhelm us.
So, what are the sources of what is termed “evil”? By this I mean how is evil manifested? Evil is the label used to refer to that which resists or goes against evolution. One of the primary sources of evil is found in the egos of people, though another source is the result of physical issues beyond a person’s control such as mental illness. Schizophrenia is a common one but others such as other mental disorders including nervous breakdowns, early childhood abuse, fetal alcohol syndrome, PTSD and even prolonged periods of physical pain can lead people to commit acts many would term evil.
One may want to believe people with such issues should be able to override their “urges”, but this is really not the case, and what people want to believe is often nothing more than a reason people come up with to explain it or an excuse they use to of justify their reactions to what another has done. Someone with a mental illness is not able to differentiate reality from the thoughts their issues manifest in their minds. To expect them to do so is our issue not theirs.
We all learn from our experiences. We react to our experiences and integrate them based on what we have experienced in the past, subject in part to our inherent nature (that being aspects of self that we bring in with us at birth). The key governor of our experiences is the Law of Action and Reaction, which some know of this by the implied corollary of the Law of Attraction. That is, the Cosmos reacts to the forces we manifest and the negative forces we manifest occur when we resist or go against evolution. In a figurative sense, one either swims with the stream or at various angles against it.
During any given life, most of the experiences we have come from the following sources (there may be others I either do not know about or which haven’t come to mind as I write this composition):
- Karmic elements brought down from other lives: we are given lessons to work on, some of these we work on individually and some are from experiences we shared with others, which means we work on them with that person(s) as whomever they are in this lifetime
- Karma generated in this lifetime: These are the result of our acts of volition during our current lifetime
- Group karma (family, community, country, humankind): These are the elements we share with others, for example the group karma of those citizens a country that permit the death penalty
- Experiences our higher self has chosen for us: Our higher self may choose for us to experience something independent of our karma. For instance, in order to experience things a “particular way” we can be with certain physical, emotional or mental conditions. While tied to karma in that we can only learn certain lessons because of such conditions, we can also explore new areas or develop a certain way as a result of “pre-existing conditions”
Evil is any act that 'goes against' evolution, be it small or large, whole or in part. This applies to all consciousness' that are evolving versus those in a devolutionary stage. Figuratively, we can describe these stages respectively as 'ascending out of" and "descending into" matter. If we look at evil in this regard we will see it as a continuum with small acts of evil such as anger, speaking untruths and harmful acts that do not lead to death or severe harm or hardship at one end and extreme acts of evil such as rapists, pedophiles or murders, and people who commit acts of genocide at the other.
What most of these people have in common is that when they commit such acts they justify it to themselves at the time. We may not understand their justification nor do we have to agree with it. The justifications arise from their mental makeup and their mental makeup is a result of the how they integrated experiences. We can all understand this on the one end of the continuum of “evil” acts, such as someone hurt us so we strike back. Of course, it gets a little more challenging to grasp this with acts as you go towards the other end of that continuum, but it is a matter of degree not kind.
In some cases people commit the type of acts seen as evil as a result of actions that based on what is referred to as the Left-hand-path. Explaining what is referred to as the left-hand-path is not easy, and goes well beyond the scope of this essay (and I am not fully aware of every aspect of this myself). Still, perhaps this quote, also from “The Cosmic Doctrine” will help:
"…each phase of the manifested universe was built up in turn, and that these phases from the fields of development of subsequent life-waves. It therefore follows that each life-wave, at each phase of its evolution, will be conditioned by the conditions of the plane upon which that is undergone. Therefore an understanding of the planes is essential to an understanding of the problems of evolution, and of Initiation, which is simply condensed evolution."
The laws of the first, or physical plane, are being worked out by means of the five physical senses which relate to that plane and are well known to you under the generic name of Natural Science, though why man should consider one of the planes of his existence natural and the rest unnatural is a strange fruit of epigenesis (2).
These conditions, as far as the inanimate world is concerned, have been well and truly observed, and subject to these laws, life will proceed with its evolution on the physical plane. But scientific thought has made a mistake in believing that these laws are all there are and this mistake has vitiated the last hundred years of science. The ancients were wiser but not so well informed.
Certain schools of religious philosophy, however, make the opposite mistake and believe that life can work out its evolution regardless of the laws of the physical plane. This is also a mistake.
The forces of a plane are supreme on their own plane, Controllers of the plane below and, when in contact with the plane above, are in turn controlled.
For example, the laws of logic are supreme in the realm of the mind. The images of mind control the forms of the emotions but the images of the mind are themselves controlled by the spiritual forces.
Each plane is capable of independent function, or of function in a circuit, but as soon as the planes are put in a circuit it is necessary that the current should be completed by uniting the arc upon the 7th plane, otherwise the open arc will short to the Left-hand path.
For example, should the trained mind learn to control the body of emotions, and the body of emotions learn to control the physical vehicle, you have an arc in function of which one half is conscious or negative, and the other half sub-conscious or positive and the sub-conscious always gives the stimulus. If that arc not be completed into a circuit by junction through the Logoidal image on the 7th plane it will short from conscious to sub-conscious upon the 4th or 5th according to type; and the sub-conscious being the positive or stimulator will assume the control.
Now the sub-conscious was built up out of the past, therefore the past will assume control. The past lies to the left. That man will then return to an earlier phase of evolution and will be actuated by its motives while retaining the faculties of a later form of evolution.”
Note: The term Logoidal image in the above passage can be conceived of as that which is the basis of our being. We inherit certain aspects (planes of energy) and these were established as the starting point of our evolution as individualized consciousness and which form the basis of our evolution.
In occult terms, as this is the only place where I have encountered this term, the Left-hand path is the basis of black magic, which is essentially using the mind and the powers we have at the mental plane to attain what is wanted or desired by the ego. Thus black magic goes against evolution.
One does not have to be a practitioner of black magic or even be aware of any of the above to act in such a fashion, indeed, whenever we allow ourselves to let our ego based desires to guide our actions we are practicing a form of black magic, weak and impotent as it may be. I will add that without understanding the formal practices, the ability to focus their intent on the higher mental planes and having developed the skill to manipulate energy on the more subtle planes (the non-physical ones), one is unlikely to generate much power. As a result, they are working on the same plane and are not likely to create a circuit. Those that do, whether deliberately or unwittingly, are capable of causing great harm to others and endangering their own future.
I will not go into any further detail regarding the Left-hand path because an untrained mind that is not working mostly along the evolutionary path has many thoughts at the non-conscious level. This could result in one inadvertently performing actions (thought and deeds) that can lead them down this path and cause great harm. I could go into it in terms of the Right-hand path, however, knowledge regarding one would enable one to do the other as well. Further, while aware of it intellectually and to a certain extend practically, I am not knowledgeable enough to teach on this topic, at least not at this point. It is sufficient that you are aware of the concept as I have presented it. If it is on your path to explore this then it will come to your awareness when the time is right or it is needed.
So, typically, what one might perceive as evil (the few cases involving the Left-hand path aside) are typically people who have built an ego that has them disconnected from others of to varying degrees. The petty criminal or malicious person are at one end of the spectrum, while those you could describe as a violent and malevolent, those who cause great harm, are at the other. Now that we have a little better understanding of the nature of evil we can examine why evil acts may occur in people’s lives.
Any acts that go against evolution or which involve personal volition, which is making a choice at either the conscious or sub-conscious levels, generate karma. Karma is essential lessons to be learned for any forces we manifest that are the result of volition must be worked out. If you have ever been angry with someone and “paid them back” in any fashion then you have committed what people refer to as “an evil act”. Make no mistake; everyone has done such acts during their many lifetimes, though they are typically at the “mild” end of the spectrum.
If we consider horrific acts such as the Colorado or Wisconsin shootings, we see they were done by deeply troubled people who were unable to deal with life. We could analyze the reasons that led them to be this way, but the bottom line is they were unable to control themselves, were disconnected from others and acted in a way that is against evolution.
One could convince themselves that they should have been able to control themselves, but this is merely the mind trying to find ways to explain it and when failing that it can revert to concepts such as “evil”. Yes, it is evil, but not in the sense of a Hollywood movie evil or even the Biblical kind. It is the result of people with the inability to deal with their own “mental demons”. They were not possessed or guided by the Devil. They were people unable to deal with reality, who have created a very strong illusion and the fragmenting of their minds rendered them unable to prevent themselves from acting as they did.
I am by no means condoning it, nor suggesting that they should not be removed from society so they cannot commit such acts again (and I do not mean by putting them to death for “thou shall not kill”); however, those that believe them to be guided by some dark force are succumbing to old beliefs about the nature of man or to superstition. We should help them if we can, but society is still focused on punishing them or seeking ways to make them pay for their acts as a way to deal with their reactions to what they did. Such beliefs can be hard to overcome because they are the result of early indoctrination into belief structures that are not accurate. The Bible is a good book, but it is full of the erroneous interpretations that are the result of the ignorance of men.
Now all this is well and good, but one may now wonder who becomes the victims of such acts and why. This is far more complicated, but I will try to explain without writing a thesis on the topic. Earlier I spoke about two ideas, one being that we are fully responsible for our acts and the other that we are here to learn from our experiences.
You can look at this as similar to the process of forging whereby one heats up metal, pounds it for as long as it remains warm then reheats it and repeats the process until the metal is in the desired form. We are the same way, we come into life, experiences lead to reactions many of which are against the flow, which we typically do not balance out, and then we die with the lessons unlearned. We are then born again and repeat the process until eventually we “get it”.
To us it may seem that an experience such as an assault of various kinds or the death of loved ones is unwarranted, but this is in part because we see our lives as the only life and also because we fail to realize that our higher self knows full well what it will experience in a given life, with rare exceptions. It is only a surprise to us. Each experience we have leads to a reaction and that reaction is dependent on our level of awareness (how “evolved” we are) at the time. Some react with anger, hate, disgust and so forth, others feel compassion for the victims and sympathy for the poor souls who committed the act, and others try not to think about and many do not quite know what to think.
It is one thing when these acts occur to others, it is quite another when they occur to us. Just as there are many ways to react to when such experiences happen to others, there are even more when they occur to us. Like many, I have been assaulted and I have also had friends murdered. Those that occurred when I was younger resulting in my becoming angry and in some cases made me want to hurt them back. Notice I stated that I became angry, not that they made me angry. They did not make me angry, I chose to be angry, and my reaction was my responsibility.
One might think that such reactions are involuntary, they are not. While they may seem natural or one might not realize they did think about it, as the reaction occurred at the sub-conscious level, they are learned responses. It is worth noting that in some cases our reactions can also be triggered by reaction capabilities we came into this life with.
We can allow ourselves to get angry or even to hate and want revenge or payback of some form. Doing so is simply our generating our own evil in response to the evil we perceive as having been done to us. This solves nothing, though one may believe it helps them feel better at the time. This sense of relief is also an illusion. Certainly it is understandable to react that way in the moment, but we ought to work on our reactions and with our developing understanding of evil can then keep ourselves from adding to our own karmic burdens.
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” ~ Lao Tzu
This does not mean we have to allow them to hurt us again, but the fact is we attracted that experience not so we would be hurt, rather so we can begin to understand what in us attracted it. By this I mean what in us is out of balance. By being out of balance we become susceptible to influences and attract that which is of like kind.
Now, there are events that happen that are not the result of what we have done. By this I am referring to karma that is the result of group consciousnesses of which we are a part or experiences our higher self has chosen for us so that we may react to them. In my humble opinion, the only thing we can do in such cases is try to learn from the experience and to react with love and our higher emotions of sympathy, compassion and affection. Sure we can get angry or lash out but again all we are doing is adding to our own karma regardless of whether we feel our reactions were justified.
One thing to consider, also from “The Cosmic Doctrine” is the following:
“So you can conceive of evil under two aspects:
(a) That which enables you to lock up the forces of good by opposition, and so secure stability – a foot-hold. Evil enables us to get a purchase on space.
(b) Evil, if allowed to function unopposed, is the ‘Scavenger of the Gods’ therefore said the Great One, our Master, “resist not evil”. When you resist evil you lock up good. You lock up the force of good which holds the evil inert. This serves no useful purpose, unless one has a superabundance of good which shall stand upon the platform thus formed and leap up from it to greater heights. Therefore, it is not enough to meet hate with love – evil with good. This is the course of the ignorant and the reason why exoteric religion has made so little impression in the world. You must hate with hate sufficiently to cause a locking up of the force. You must hate the hate and, having rendered evil inert by opposition, the love can take its stand upon the firm platform and use it as a thrust-block.
Therefore you only oppose the evil when you wish to do constructive work – when you wish to make something new. You never oppose the evil you wish to destroy. You make a vacuum round it. You prevent opposition from touching it.
Then, being unopposed, it is free to follow the low of its own nature, which is, to join the motion of the Ring- Chaos. It therefore, passes out to the periphery of the universe until it meets the spin of the Ring-Pass-Not which it cannot get through, but it has gone to a place of such primitive simplicity that it resolves into its own elements, and these elements are drawn into the attraction of the nearest motion, which is the nature of the Ring-Cosmos, which is the nature of good.”
Note: The Ring-Chaos is what was referred to in an early passage as the reaction to the first movement of space, that being what opposed the initial desire of space for momentum.
I will provide you with examples of both of these methods starting with opposing “evil”. We do this primarily in our relationships with others. Say that within our community we have a great many that are hateful. We cannot make them change, that is manipulation and we would be generating our own form of evil nor do we get angry back for reasons I have already mentioned. What we would do instead is resist that hate with our love and compassion. This is the path that Gandhi took with his passive resistance of the British. By his actions he got others to buy into and support this idea and he made create change possible.
The second method would be one we primarily use on ourselves. Let us say we hate others of a different race or culture. That hate can consume us and in the process we will generate karma we will have to resolve in this lifetime or another. We want to destroy this “evil” or hate. One can try to not be hateful, but that merely locks up our “good energies” and only holds it in place. What we do instead is hate hating. This turns our hate upon itself and requires only our force of will and does not lock up our “good” to do so. It may seem odd that this could work, but I assure you it can. The only caveat is that we must hate the hate in direct opposition not at an angle. That means one must understand exactly what it is they hate in order to do so.
There is one last point I would like to make, and that is that there are those who are born to manifest great forces in the world. Christ is an example of one who did this on the side of “good”, that is the power and purity of his spirit gave him the ability to manifest, in a way that was clearly visible, the power of love. It is a force that is still evident today and one can touch this force if they meditate on The Christ without the religious trappings. But there are also those who have taken on the burden of teaching the world great lessons from the other angle. I believe one of these people was Adolph Hitler.
Up until that time wars were fought primarily with the purpose of annihilating the opposing forces and engulfing them. Committing genocide against your opponents was common and even acceptable to an extent by people as part of war. When Hitler came about, the world was starting to be connected in a broader way through communications vehicles such as radio, television and newspapers that were available to all not just a select few. When he did what he did to the Jews, and to a lesser extend what this triggered in the Japanese, mankind for the first time collectively witnessed the “evil” of such acts and rebelled against it. People of many nations stood in solidarity against it as we began to finally recognize that such acts were “wrong” at a very deep level.
Do such acts occur today? Yes, but it is not the primary intent of war anymore and when it is found to have happened the nations of the world resist it and try to do something about it (though we still do so clumsily).
He taught humankind a lesson that we hopefully will never forget and as a result the consciousness of humankind was elevated to a higher level. Yes, we still have a long way to go, but it was a start and we continue to learn about it as a group.
I do hope that this exploration at least gives you some ideas to consider. What can you or I do about hate in us and the world? We can start to recognize when we are acting in a way that goes against the flow of evolution, we can stop getting hateful because someone else was, even when this hate is directed at us. We do not need to condone it nor even permit it to continue if possible, but we need to learn not to react as we have for millions of years. When we get angry and hate we are generating energies that in part are cast off and left lying around. Others who are struggling with hate can have their own issues triggered when they encounter it, further, such energies collect and can become a force of their own that influences others.
It is up to each of us to try to avoid doing such things if at all possible. Of course it is a learning process, so do not judge yourselves if and when you are unable to let such feelings grow. Try to forgive yourselves and others when they are caught up in their own lower emotions. By doing so, we add less of such energies into the world and collectively become a powerful force that works with evolution or God and not against it.
© 2012 Allan Beveridge
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