if you’d rather listen to me read this, click here
is evil real? have you ever pondered that? i have pondered it many times over. in the beginning i was somewhat younger and had subscribed to the rosy-glasses society chanting positive thoughts and positive actions telling myself and others that that would make positive results.
knowing i used to be that way makes me cringe but recognizing i was that way turned my world upside down. that was a rough year. i realized anger is real but still, i had no better understanding of evil. i think it’s important to note that ignorance keeps you feeling safe. ignorance is a comfort zone.
if i closed my eyes to the possibility of evil then it didn’t exist. but then I realized one day: all of the scary movies with a malicious evil doer were written by SOMEONE. if the thought of evil is there, doesn’t that verify the existence of evil?
i still didn’t buy into evil really existing, i just realized that humans are capable of thinking evil thoughts and, in some not-quite-as-bad-as-the-real-thing way, were acting out those thoughts to tell a compelling story.
for no reason i can explain, i had these preconceived notions that evil was reserved for demons not for man. i was so attached to the notion of this quote that “everyone is doing the best they can in their own state of consciousness” but now i see that evil inserts itself between us and our consciousness.
remember old school cartoons where an angel and a devil would appear on a character’s shoulders with two very different points of view? the angel would always guide with truth towards love, acceptance, compassion, and understanding. and the devil… the devil would always guide from anger, hate and fear and aim to uproot comfort & happiness.
the angel is consciousness. the angel sees all, feels all, and blesses all despite any perceivable flaws. the devil, animalistic in nature, sees he has the power to get what he wants, feels a need to gain power to have more, and aims to conquer.
our consciousness seems to come from some extraordinary source, but the body comes from nature—the beautifully tragic thing we call life. the brain belongs to the body, the mind belongs to your soul consciousness.
nature is chaos. nature is what holds the possibility of evil. nature allows the potential for evil. evil inserts itself between the mind (the consciousness) and the body (the brain).
a mindful person understands both body and mind. the conscious choice to aim for continuous learning inadvertently gains mindfulness. but what is the other side of the coin? the other side of a mindful person is… a mindless person. all body, no mind. fully open to evil potential because there is no mind to see, to feel, to bless, to clear out any obstacles in the way of seeing truth.
the angel on your shoulder is your own mindfulness using truth to clear the path of evil that tries to continuously insert itself between your brain and your consciousness. truth is what is. what can you do with what is? accept, love, appreciate, understand, absorb, trust, see, observe, become…
the devil on your shoulder pulls your strings, as if you were a marionette, pushing buttons on the animal that you are. the animal wants, craves, is wild and primal, angry, capable of maliciousness, fearful, irritable, doubtful, and uneasy. the animal that you are is much much more than all of that, but the truth is, none of those things are bad or wrong. they are what is. they are truth.
consider these words by Maya Angelou: “I don’t know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes — it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, ‘Well, if I’d known better I’d had done better’, that’s all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, ‘I’m sorry’, and then you say to yourself ‘I’m sorry’. If we all hold onto the mistake, we can’t see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can’t see what we’re capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one’s own self.”
what you are capable of being = what is
you may be capable of making terrible terrible mistakes, that’s truth — that’s what is. but you are capable of miraculous magic as well and that’s the truth — that’s what is.
there are these two words to describe the relationship between evil and truth fairly well. as “duality” evil and truth are always at war and inevitably one side is always winning. but i prefer to look at evil and truth and call it “polarity” because to recognize truth, evil exists, and to recognize evil, truth exists.
to clear the evil from your own thoughts words and actions, witness truth as well as evil within yourself and you will come to realize they are two sides to the same coin. evil will keep you in a cage. truth will set you free.