Last night I dreamt of evil. Not my favourite topic but not to be unexpected when dreaming in the realms of the Gods and Goddesses. I remember taking a Studies in Religion class at University and the lecturer speaking about “the problem of evil”.
Numerous religious scholars and philosophers have engaged in this topic and I certainly don’t have any answers but in the dream I was shown the qualities of evil. It was as if I was in a scene but not part of it so that I could know that evil is real and to be aware of how it operates.
The first thing that I was shown was that evil has no power in and of itself because it’s main objective is to harm, therefore it needs something to engage with. Without anything to harm it is just a wild and wandering energy. I was shown that evil needs a vehicle to carry out its agenda and that it is a spiritual entity that in and of itself cannot manifest as matter. I was also shown that evil is a USER, in that it uses objects for its own ends. I also saw that evil places a mark on the objects it uses, and I saw people who had been touched by evil who carried these marks. I was shown that sometime these marks appear by themselves and sometimes people place these marks on themselves but that they are always the influence of evil.
One day when I was sitting and meditating by the sea years ago I received the following message:
“You to me are as the sea is to the sand, you give me my form and my shape in the world”
I remember feeling that this was a message from God, from the Holy Spirit.
In that moment I realised that in order for any form of spiritual energy to manifest in form we must be in a relationship with spirit and that it, in and of itself, cannot participate in this third dimensional reality without out consent or permission. For me this is the meaning of free will – that we have a choice of whether to partake or not in this life with the Spiritual realm. But what I noticed from my dream last night is that we are not always aware of the forces around us. That often we inadvertently open ourselves up to spiritual realms without realising it and that even if our intentions are ‘good’ this does not safeguard us from harm.
As humans we too are spiritual beings who are having a physical experience and as such we have the right to our earthly sovereignty. Our ancestral lines are both physical and spiritual and each one of us could trace our descent back to the beginning of time.
So what is it that is playing out here on this earth? What are we learning? Why are we here?
Everything is energy and the Buddhists would tell us that energy is subject to the law of cause and effect. If there was an initial cause that we call God / Source and if that God is Love then why does evil exist? Is it a result of free will, which would surely be a gift of a benevolent God?
Many cosmologies begin their accounts of the creation with the emergence of light (or the sun or an equivalent light principle) out of a primeval darkness, and conversely many mythologies describe the end of the world as a twilight or darkness of the gods, that is, the disappearance of light in a final darkness that engulfs all. But is this darkness they speak of the same as evil?
Generally speaking, light serves as a symbol of life, happiness, prosperity, and, in a wider sense, of perfect being. As a symbol of life, light can also serve as a symbol of immortality. Darkness, on the other hand, is associated with chaos, death, and the underworld.
The Hebrew Bible begins with an account of the creation of light, followed by the creation of the sun and the celestial bodies, but it has no original light or solar mythology. In due course, however, light became a symbol of divine presence and salvation: “The Lord is my light and my salvation” (Ps. 27:1); “In thy light we shall see light” (Ps. 36:10); “Let us walk in the light of the Lord” (Isa. 2:5); sun and moon will no longer be the sources of light, for “the lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light” (Isa. 60:19). The association of light and sun is preserved in many other biblical passages, especially Malachi 4:20: “The sun of righteousness shall arise.”
Early Christianity inherited both the biblical and the contemporaneous Hellenistic (philosophical as well as religious) light symbolism. Christ was the sol iustitiae (see Mal. 4:20), and hence there was nothing incongruous about celebrating the Nativity on the date of the pagan Roman festival of the “invincible sun.” According to the Gospel of John (8:12), Jesus said of himself, “I am the light of the world,” and his followers would possess the “light of life.” Easter is therefore celebrated with fire and light rituals. In the Roman Catholic rite, the paschal candle is carried into a pitch-dark church with the thrice-repeated exclamation “Lumen Christi.” In fact, the equation of God with the Absolute and the pure light essence finds expression also in the creed where the Son (Christ) is defined as “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God.” The Logos is also described as light in the prologue to the Gospel of John. Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus was a typical light experience.
The Jewish Qumran community had already divided Israel into “children of light” (to be ultimately saved) and “children of darkness” (doomed to eternal damnation)—a distinction that was subsequently taken over by Christianity. The Prince of Evil and Darkness, Satan, was originally an angel of light, and hence one of his names is Lucifer (Gr., Phosphoros ), literally “bearer of light.” The imagery is derived from Isaiah 14:12, where the king of Babylon, who in his overweening pride fell from glory to destruction, is called the morning star who fell from heaven. But the same term (phōsphoros, “morning star”) is also applied to Christ in the Second Letter of Peter. The expectation of the advent of Christ was like “a light that shineth in a dark place until … the daystar arose” (2 Pet. 1:19). [1]
These versus suggest that in the beginning there was both light and darkness but that evil is related to a ‘fall’. This would suggest that everything in existence originated from God, who is good, and then something happened out of creation. If we are made in God’s likeness, then we cannot be programmed or cloned but we must have free will to choose – this is our creative essence that opens the door to our unfolding evolution and levels of consciousness. The problem seems to lie with discernment and the rule of cause and effect. Is evil based on the law of physics that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction?
It is difficult to justify a God in the face of so much death and suffering that has been caused by the Corona Virus pandemic but we too are God. Collectively as a species, humans have a responsibility as caretakers of our world, to create an environment that supports life. We descend from both light and darkness and as such can open ourselves up to both forces. An Old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life.
“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”
He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.” [2]
It is time to bring awareness to the consequences of ‘what we feed’, the choices we make and choose a world where there is no harm. Perhaps our reason for Being on this planet is to learn to choose LOVE above all else.