Spiritual Warfare - Good Vs. Evil: Where Does it Come From?
WHAT DO WE SEE?
What do you see every time you turn on a news program? It doesn’t matter if you are listening to talk radio, watching cable news, local news, or nightly national news, which all have their own unique agendas and biases, you will certainly be informed of some type of THREAT! A weather threat, a criminal threat, a threat in your community, or a dangerous act of some kind will be presented to you. This is a regular occurrence. The world of duality is showing all sides of the human psyche, isn’t it? Good behavior, bad behavior, evil behavior, projected ideas of morality, ethics, living well, living poorly, wealth, poverty, the list is endless.
Countries and governments puff out their chests dictating power over other nations, other leaders, and other cultures. Waging war against them to stop atrocities, invasions, to stop the bad guys because they deem them so, all of this is based on the seeming good versus evil present in the world around us. Of course, each side sees themselves as the good guys, those other people are bad. The different vantage point of the collective mind as well as the individual mind is astonishing. Each side is seeing it the way that they choose, and it’s usually guided by cultural morals, which can be very different in different parts of the world.
No matter where you look in the world, you are seeing a constant back and forth battle, and each side is striving to be RIGHT! Either that or striving for money, power, and control! In the areas of politics, religion, education, health, the environment, the legal/justice system, entertainment, down to the family unit, there is a push and pull between the people involved. Some are enforcing their views as right, while others see it as wrong.
For example, every political party thinks they have the best way to solve societies problems, federal educators believe they have a universal teaching curriculum that all students should be subject to, the pharmaceutical industry dominates health and believes its idea of synthetic and chemically driven medicine is the way to real health, the elitists rarely prosecuted for their crimes while the average citizen gets life imprisonment. For each of these instances, there are people who have different opinions, believe in completely different concepts, and they are seen as bad or evil. How do some secure the position of moral authority? Who selected them to be the officials of what is good?
RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD
All major religions of the world including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism have some form of good and evil within them. It is very clear there is a benevolent force, or God, and an adversary representing evil and darkness. Most commonly Satan, or the Devil, permeates the ancient texts. We are reminded that this Devil is out there in the world, and he can encourage people to do horrific acts. If you commit or partake in too many evil or bad deeds, you may just burn in hell with all the other scoundrels. That sounds reassuring! You mean, I don’t get an opportunity to change things? As soon as we die, we’ll be sent right to the stake! The afterlife’s view on heaven and hell is an exact replica of the worlds good vs. evil.
Religion projects evil out into the world, that there is an evil force present outside of ourselves that can affect us. Many believe this, take it at face value, and assume it’s true. Exorcism is a perfect example of believing an evil force, or evil spirit, can possess a person into unthinkable acts. You’ve all seen or heard about the original Exorcist movie, supposedly based on real events. There are mixed descriptions and witnesses of varying opinions as to what really happened to this young boy. When medical science and psychology cannot make sense of extreme cases, some people go to the possibility of supernatural possession. Shamanism also shares the notion of dark entities and other worldly, supernatural forces, being able to grab ahold of someone, and possess or convince them to behave, act, or think in certain ways. This also supports the idea that evil is real, and we all need to beware.
Even Buddhism, which is full of peaceful teachings, still believes in karma. If you commit good or bad in this life, then karma will predict what happens in your next life. No matter how you look at religion, there is an implied sense of evil amongst us and each one of us can become infected at any moment. This can leave many of us feeling worried, anxious, and disturbed about doing bad things for fear of being judged by others, excommunicated from God’s kingdom, or that the next life will be a karmic nightmare. Religion doesn’t offer alternatives to the principles of good versus evil. Either get in line with religious doctrine, commandments, expectations, and good service, or possibly face an eternity of misery and suffering.
PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
The psychological world has its own take on good versus evil. Upbringing, how you were conditioned by your family, and the environment you were in shapes your perspective. The conditioning runs far and wide. It’s deeply rooted within you it can be difficult to recognize. Expectations from others can highly influence how you choose to behave. Psychiatrists have been interested in this topic and wonder what makes a person behave well or not. What makes people listen to authority and commit the genocides of the world?
In the 1960’s a psychologist by the name of Stanley Milgram conducted studies on obedience and authority. He was curious how and why people do as they are told. He conducted shock therapy experiments over a period of time consisting of a “learner” and a “teacher.” The learners were fixed actors in the experiment while the teachers were considered the real participants. The learners were given electrodes, which were not actually emitting a shock, but the teachers believed this to be the case. Milgram wanted to know how far people would go inflicting harm on someone else if given orders to do so.
The experiment was conducted by giving each learner a pair of words. When the teacher brought up one of the words later, the learner was asked to name the word it was paired with. When they couldn’t do this, a shock was given to the learner, beginning with 15 volts and eventually reaching 450 volts. Each time the learner failed to give an accurate response, the shock voltage elevated. At the end of the experiment, they concluded that all of the participants, or teachers, followed orders and administered 300 Hz, while 65% of them went all the way to 450 Hz. Keep in mind none of these people were actually shocked, however, the conclusion drawn was that most people will obey orders when they feel someone has authority of over them.
In fact, Milgram labelled this concept the agentic state, meaning a person will do as they are told and then claim the authority bears the responsibility for the act, not them. Somehow, they didn’t believe they had a choice in the matter. Psychology seems to have its own version of where bad behavior stems from, and it still shows that people gravitate toward an outside force or authority might be responsible. If you are interested in the experiment, you can read more about it here.
Milgram Shock Experiment: Summary, Results, & Ethics (simplypsychology.org)
Other areas of psychology point to the unconscious mind, repressed memories of the past, even past lives, are the hidden treasures dictating how we behave, act, and live in the world. This concept implies that people are simply unaware of why they do what they do. The real issues are hiding deep within, whereas the surface level distractions dominate life and never lead you to the real problem. This is certainly plausible and puts the responsibility on the individual as opposed to an external evil force conducting everything.
CULTURAL AND LITERARY WORKS
Good and evil are demonstrated time and time again in Greek mythology and other cultural material. Concepts such as the hero’s journey, the person sent out on a physical journey, battling all kinds of creatures, headed into foreign lands, the underworld, getting direction from various Gods, until he has finally slayed the dragon and completed the mission. Characters are always battling something, whether it is an evil entity or themselves. Any way you look at it there is a conflict, internal or external. If there is no conflict, what story can be told? Can the world go on without conflict? It certainly doesn’t seem so because it happens every day on any corner, in any country, in any community throughout the entire world.
This concept of good versus evil lives on in today’s literature as well. Look at the epic enterprise that is Harry Potter. J.K Rowling left no stone unturned in her unbelievably popular young adult series. This fictional storyline is full of good and evil, spells, magic, supernatural forces, and the continual idea that good always wins in the end. Any book written has a protagonist and an antagonist, the continual projection of yin and yang, the major theme consistent in the world of duality. All major Hollywood blockbuster films have the battle of superheroes, reenacting war battles, animation productions, dramas include main characters at odds, and concepts of what is perceived as good and bad are repeatedly projected.
There is no way around it here. This is the world we are living in and the split conflicted mind within ourselves, the good versus evil concept, is everywhere. The real question becomes, what is really behind all of this? It seems like a game, like a pendulum constantly swinging back and forth for world domination. Who’s next to capture the flag and take control? Who is in charge and telling everyone what these moral truths are?
WHEN THE MIND BLOWS OPEN - THEN WHAT DO YOU SEE?
During awakening of any kind, your life begins to change. Things don’t seem as they appear. Transformation can flip your world upside down and nothing makes sense anymore. You begin to question everything. You start with questioning everything around you, why the world operates the way that it does, why belief structures are so rigid, and who decided the moral authority over the rest of the population? You might even feel like a young toddler again asking WHY about anything and everything! Even people around you start to get annoyed that you question everything! They might even get offended that you don’t believe anything either. Just watch what happens when you start shifting your perception of this supposed reality.
The more the doorway in your mind blows open, the more you will lose your attachments to the concepts, beliefs, and conditioning you have been subjected to. The entire notion of good versus evil may become completely obliterated from your experience, especially if you’ve had any experience that transcends time and space. You may begin to see this entire framework as a distraction from your real home in God. Everything the ego mind is projecting out onto the world stage just keeps you from discovering Truth.
Instead, many stay lured into the notion that some of us are good people and some of us are bad. It may appear that way, but is that really true underneath these bodies? Are we all subjected to outside influences with no control over what we feel inside? If that’s the case, then how can there be any hope? If everything is simply happening to us, then we are sitting ducks until we aren’t? That doesn’t make any sense. It makes us seem powerless, when we are far from it. We may not be able to move mountains, or get whatever we want, but there is a place of infinite peace and calm within that we have access to anytime.
If the doorway opens far enough, you will realize the cycles of war in the world are endless. Battles between countries or battles with individuals is still one and the same thing, a battle. Someone is believing they are right, while the other is wrong. How do you know that? Who is the ultimate decision maker? Or is there something else altogether that we are blinded by?
You can put your faith in a delusional system, or find the symbol of home within, that loving presence represented in the Garden of Eden. Eden is not a place to discover out in the world full of lush natural and eternal vegetation, it is the eternal love of God awaiting us to return home. In the Bible, Adam falls asleep in the Garden, however, where does it say that he ever woke up? Is the Bible a story of Adam’s dream down the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, into the world of duality, into the illusory ego world of opposites, that he has yet to awaken from? Are we Adam, simply dreaming, believing in good and evil, when all there really is, is the God’s Divine Love? That is for each individual person to decide on their own.