| | Moral Simplicity and The Role of Good and Evil
Category: Religion and Philosophy I was about to write something in keeping with my guest on The Spiritual Envoy this week, Clive Doucet, who wrote the book Urban Meltdown, about making spiritual choices and keeping morality simple. Then it dawned upon me that I have already written that in my book The Next God, so I decided to include this short chapter instead. I've never taken a chapter out of the book and published it in some other form, because I've been afraid it would not be able to stand alone. This chapter requires that the reader have some understanding of the chapter before it, which is about making choices and choosing door number one, two or three, and it requires some acceptance that I speak to many spirits that are unseen. Otherwise, I think it can stand alone, so here goes. Hope you enjoy it!
Eva
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE ROLE OF GOOD AND EVIL
Without doubt, this is a volatile and misunderstood subject, the significance of good and evil. Please remember that what I am writing is a compilation of my understanding of discussions with God, as well as other spirits. In an ultimate sort of way, good is the mechanism we use to become our best spiritual selves. However, it is also subjective which is why so many religions exploit the concept in order to further their own agenda. Good, according to one culture, is not the same as another culture, so it may be difficult to discern the usage of this term. The same goes for evil. Therefore, clearly the terms and their usage cannot be used in an ultimate sort of way to describe an ultimate state of being, like being our highest or best spiritual selves. However, they are tools to help us get to this state, but only tools and not the goal.
Even writing this feels like writing a riddle, and I know what I'm talking about, so I can imagine how difficult a concept this is from someone else's perspective. I'll try and explain. There are many factors that relate to this.
For lack of a better manner in which to evaluate these ideas, the Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language – College Edition; 1953 definition might be a good place to start. It is important to note that it does not give examples of what it defines as evil, like in sentence usage. It defines evil as follows:
" adjective - 1. Morally bad or wrong; wicked; depraved. 2. causing pain or trouble; harmful; injurious. 3. threatening or bringing misfortune; unlucky,; disastrous; unfortunate, as, and evil hour. 4. resulting from or based on conduct regarded as immoral; as, an evil reputation. Noun – 1. anything morally bad or wrong; wickedness; depravity, sin. 2. anything that causes harm, pain, misery, disaster, etc."
While all of these definitions have some validity, they are based upon subjective reasoning, supported by cultural biases for the most part. However, there is a definition that stands the universal test and applies to any culture or method of thinking that I believe should be applied to our understanding of this concept. Bear in mind that of all the talks I have had with folks from the other side, and with God, they do not use the term evil, unless they determine that I cannot comprehend what is being said otherwise, and even then, it comes out something like "what you might think of as evil". In fact that was in the beginning of my communications, and now that I no longer think that way, they no longer have to communicate with me in such simplistic terms. Their choice for some spirit gone awry is to say that they are "misguided". Usually I try to use that term as well, but will use both for these purposes.
So if we have a misguided spirit, in this life or on another plane, they always have one thing in common, at least from my observation of them. They always execute some form of action that seeks to impose their will over another person's, or group of people, or objects or positions in our plane, and sometimes in the next, resulting in the oppression of another's rights. Anyone who suppresses another's rights can be evil even if that person is not attempting to in fact, exact misguided behavior upon them. That, to me is the true definition of evil. Morality and all the other systems Webster uses to define evil fall under this larger action.
Most evil is difficult to comprehend and hard to identify if you are not an independent thinker, because people who operate in evil, seldom mean to, and rarely recognize their own misguided behavior. M. Scott Peck in his book "People of the Lie" best explains the concept and state of evil in everyday people. It does not always look like something demonic, like the obvious folks such as Hitler, Idi Amin, and Jeffrey Dahmer. It is also in the will of a husband to control every action his wife takes, or the will of a parent to protect a child by giving them over-the-top information like "if you tell a lie, a monster is going to wait until you go to sleep and come out from the closet and eat your toes".
What these actions do is build fear and take away another's right to connect to God and be their best spiritual selves, because they are too busy trying not to be eaten alive, either by real monsters or imaginary ones. The evil occurs in the creation of the fear, and then the resulting immobilization of the spirit that occurs as a result of that fear. Most true evil is very subtle, and almost unrecognizable if you aren't paying attention. I'll bet that parent has no concept that their actions have an evil effect on their child, none. But the terror can be long lasting and thwart the development of a normally developing spirit being, and give them more to conquer. While that may be part of the tests that God puts before them, the choice to choose door number one – the lazy choice on the parent's part (tell a ridiculous lie to a five year old that will stop all undesired action like getting up in the middle of the night so the parent can sleep); and/or struggling to believe (the easy choice and door number one for the child) or not believe (the hard spiritual choice and door number three for the child) this absurdity as a five year old, the spirit who makes the most difficult choice, is probably going to make the most spiritual progress. That goes for the child and each parent. We all make our spiritual journey alone to some degree, even when we are together as humans. However, without doubt, to utter such words and impose fear upon another being, even for their own safety and sake, is evil/misguided because its dishonesty promotes fear. From what I've been told, the goal of this exercise is to overcome the evil and choose to be your best spiritual self – always. In that manner, good nor evil is the ultimate goal, but only the mechanism to achieve the ultimate.
In further explanation of this, mass evil has become so regular that we no longer recognize it if we are not clear about our connection to God. For example, the following is the definition of evil found in the Encarta World English Dictionary; 1999:"
ADJ.. - 1. morally bad – profoundly immoral or wrong. 2. harmful – deliberately causing great harm, pain, or upset as in "This evil act is clearly the work of terrorists". 3. Devilish – connected with the Devil or other powerful destructive forces as in evil spirits. 4. causing misfortune – characterized by, bringing, or signifying bad luck as in an evil omen 5. malicious – characterized by a desire to cause hurt or harm – an evil mood 6. disagreeable – very unpleasant – What an evil smell!
NOUN 1. wickedness – the quality of being profoundly immoral or wrong 2. evil, Evil force causing harmful effects – the force held to bring about harmful, painful, or unpleasant events as in a struggle between good and evil.
What happened between 1953 and 1999? Why has a public information source decided to bias the thinking of the reader in this manner. Why didn't Webster do it before? What is happening here and who is seeking to influence whom in this situation? What door did the person who cleared the words "This evil act is clearly the work of terrorists" choose when presented with doors number one, two and three by God?
These are United States books according to the copyright information. Presumably, they are created by US, or at least English, people, and are primarily for U.S. domestic distribution first, and then foreign distribution. The US has one of the worst track records of human rights violations of any country in the world against African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans and women. Native Americans have been killed off intentionally with "small pox blankets" and poisoned water supplies, hunted down and slaughtered en masse – men, women and children; African Americans have been enslaved, beaten, hung, shot, sprayed with water, bombed, slaughtered on slave ships, pregnant stomachs of black mothers slit open while they were still alive and hung, and Asian Americans have been imprisoned, killed and degraded at will in the history of this country. And yet is there anyone who thinks that this dictionary is alluding to US citizens when it refers to terrorists? Not hardly.
This is a clear example of choosing door number one, the seemingly easy one. Someone in Encarta who had final control, decided that this not so subtle dissemination of biased information was appropriate, thereby influencing who knows how many minds that take in this data and supporting popular thinking about who terrorists are as it calls on the popular version of a definition of a terrorist – which at that time was foreign (from another country), usually a person of color, politically or religiously driven, and anti American or European. But what does that do to all those minds absorbing this information? So the logical question becomes whether or not the word "terrorist" in association with "evil" further explained the meaning of evil, or did it just give us something to focus on that furthered somebody's agenda in this situation. There is no mention of the etymology of the word or its origin country, which happens to be France. Below is the Wikipedia version found on the internet under "define terrorist - etymology", at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorist.
Main article: Definition of terrorism"
The term "terrorism" comes from the French word terrorisme, which is based on the Latin language verbs terrere (to frighten) and deterrere (to frighten from). It dates to 1795 when it was used to describe the actions of the Jacobin Club in their rule of Revolutionary France, during the so-called "Reign of Terror". Jacobins are rumored to have coined the term "terrorists" to refer to themselves. Acts described as Jacobin Club "terrorisme" were mostly cases of arrest and execution of opponents as a mean of frightening the "enemies of the Revolution".
The United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention has proposed a short legal definition —that "[an act of terrorism is] the peacetime equivalent of a war crime." A US court found that "the malice associated with terrorist attacks transcends even that of premeditated murder." Flatow v. Iran: Order. CA No. 97-396 (RCL)"
Both the Webster and the Wikipedia version have more broad and inclusive points of view about this subject area, but Encarta seems quite comfortable making the choice of delivering somewhat biased information as if it is neutral. In fact it seems to use this methodology often when defining what it seems to consider subjective definitions which define manner of thinking or seeing the world, and yet does not do the same thing when defining seemingly less flexible definitions
What does all this mean in the spiritual sense? Somebody or bodies at Encarta opened door number one, and bypassed doors number two and three. They did not challenge themselves and their beliefs in order to deliver the most neutral explanation of "evil", and then built further on their lack of neutrality with the supporting definitions. Why? Was it so much work to try and give a neutral point of view considering the weight a dictionary has, or did someone, or some people make the choice to stop at their own limited thinking and agenda? Part of why we are going to hell in a hand basket as a world, is because we have become spiritually lazy and arrogant. From a spiritual standpoint, they might have taken what looks like the easiest door. Each action, that each of us takes, affects so many more than just ourselves. Think of all the young minds that have been influenced by this limited point of view, and loaded direction.
There is one more thing about this kind of slant toward uneven actions. God looks for us to correct ourselves and choose the right door. What is happening lately, is that too many of us, too often, choose door number one and so the world is all out of whack and destroying itself. We have been mislead by some religions to believe that magically, God will save us and we will all be alright no matter what kind of mess we create here with our bad decisions. Think again. I have it from the horse's mouth so to speak. It ain't necessarily so . . .
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