There's something to be said for Kitchen Table Wisdom - you know, like in the old days when people sat around the kitchen table after a meal and talked about life, the universe and the meaning of it all - as well as the gossip doing the rounds in town...

Well, that's what this place is - a place to share common wisdom, thoughts and feelings about things important and unimportant, that bring us joy, laughter and happiness and that trouble, sadden, confuse and anger us ...

What I write here is what's 'real' for me. It won't always be PC or 'nice'. We're missing out on true connection and chances to grow and change because there's too little authenticity, too little honesty, too much holding back what we really feel and mean.

Welcome to my world...

I used to have a copyright claim here, but I've removed it...

Ideas don't belong to anyone -

they come to those who are receptive and are to be used for the well being of all...

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Thank You


As You Think, So It Is - Your Beliefs Create Your Reality

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Life Unlimited!


Namaste

(the Divine in me, recognises and honours the Divine in you)

Sahila




Saturday, July 3, 2010

Does Evil Exist?


(Repost from 28 June 2010)
I was privileged to lead a breath work session yesterday...

And part of the session included a discussion about the identity and nature of the Life  Force (am staying away from terms such as God/Goddess etc, which are loaded, exclusionary, inaccurate and based in our human need to set in place a hierarchy of power and to anthropomorphise everything we don't understand!)...

Under the holographic principle, the sum of the whole is contained in each of the parts.... so, logically, if one believes that there is an originating Life Force, which is all-knowing, all-loving, infinite and omnipotent, then by extension, as its creations each one of us is also that Life Force - all-knowing, all-loving, infinite and omnipotent... which has huge implications relating to how we see and express ourselves in the world, as powerful beings or as victims?  But that's another day's subject...


Holographic Universe

Evidence from physics and quantum mechanics show that the Observor influences any event or object of consciousness, changing the wave to a particle, the formless to form. Everything is energy. At a subatomic level, all molecules are alive, moving, and conscious. Mind is not just determinative over matter, but mind and matter seem to just be energy vibrating at different frequencies.


Which brings me to the question of whether or not Evil exists...

If one accepts the holographic premise, then Evil cannot exist because all creations of the Life Force ARE the Life Force and one would then have to say the Life Force is evil.  And some might indeed think/feel this, but wouldn't they then also have to consider themselves evil?

A secondary factor to consider is our human need to label events, situations and people, to assign a value to them such as 'good' or 'bad', 'positive' or 'negative', 'ugly' or 'beautiful', 'loving' or 'hateful', 'easy' or 'difficult' etc.

I think we do this to satisfy our need to find order in the chaos, to assign definition so that we can feel secure, so that we can establish a relative place for ourselves in the scheme of things, to give ourselves an (illusory) sense of control and power.

If we were all to be honest with ourselves, this need to label is really quite a pathetic attempt to claim our place at the centre of the universe and to give ourselves an out, an excuse when we don't live up to the sacredness we carry within ourselves!

If we look at the natural world, those value-laden terms mean nothing, have no relevance at all... Things just are...

Some humans might see lightning striking, burning and felling a tree as a negative, sad, disastrous occurrence.    However, for the natural world its just an event, signalling the end of one form of life and the beginning of another, as the felled tree trunk begins to decompose and return to the earth and in the process gives shelter and sustenance to millions of small and microscopic life forms.




So if the Life Force and its creations cannot, by definition, be evil, and if value-laden descriptors are a human construct that have no significance in the rest of creation, how then to understand the "horrifying' things that happen in our own spheres of existence, in the world, in Life?

I've come to understand this from two different perspectives.

The first stems from a meditation experience I had very early on in my spiritually "awake and aware" journey.   As part of this moment, where I experienced actually being ALL THAT EVER WAS, IS NOW AND EVER SHALL BE, I came to know that the Life Force's sole purpose was to experience itself in all of its infinite potential - a gorgeous, awe-inspiring, completely loving cosmic game of "What If..."   If I manifest as this, what happens then?    If I choose this, what follows?    A joyous, wondrous, exciting experiment in CAUSE and EFFECT in which we all are participating as co-creators, as manifestations of that Sacred Life Force.



The second "AHA" moment came in a flash of insight that was sparked by the events of 9/11, took me back to seeing biblical events in a new light and then flash-forwarded to WW2 and Adolf Hitler.

All my "AHA" moments come in the shower - sad, prosaic but true!   And in this one moment when thinking about 9/11, apart from realising that this event was a logical outcome (Effect) after years of American meddling in world affairs (Cause), including responsibility for the deaths of millions under oppressive regimes the US had covertly and overtly helped put in place, I understood that all the people involved in 9/11 had come together in this co-creation to offer us all a gift.



As well as playing out whatever needed to play out for their own and their families' journeys, the 'terrorists', the pilots, the passengers, the people in the towers, the firefighters all had given their lives so that we could make a choice about how we wanted to move on in the world.    They all had the courage to be involved in this event so that we could choose a pathway forward of love, reconciliation and co-operation, not more war and death and misery.

Without the 'terrorists', this event would not have happened.   Imagine a soul - by definition all-loving because it is the Life Force - coming into this lifetime, knowing that it was going to choose and enact a path that would end in death and vilification.    Remember how acting contrary to your true nature feels like a painful, twisting inside.

    

Imagine those other souls, agreeing to co-create this 'painful' event, so that we would each, and as a web of interconnected beings, have the opportunity to step into a new vision of life on this planet...



Sadly, we did not take that step - instead we continued the "power over" game and began more wars.... possibly because, as Marilyn Waring and others before her have pointed out, war-making is a profitable business, is one tool for ensuring "economic growth".



That realisation about 9/11 spiralled my thinking back to the Bible and the place of the Life Force aspect/soul called Lucifer in the scheme of creation.



Human beings need duality to give them a sense of context and place on the continuum of life.    We need contrast to make our choices.    If Lucifer is a creation of the Life Force, IS the Life Force, then Lucifer cannot be evil, unless we accept that the Life Force is evil.    The soul that is Lucifer is serving us in the highest manner possible, giving each of us every day the chance to make choices - life sustaining choices or life destroying choices, choices which expand us further into all we can be or contract and diminish us.


Which then led to the thought that Judas Iscariot also was a hero in the story of the life of the man called Jesus Christ.    Without the 'betrayal' by Judas, the Crucifixion would not have happened, nor the Resurrection, and Christ would not have been able to show us in such a dramatic fashion that we have the choice to live life in a different, more loving manner.



Which then led me to think about all the other 'evil' people in earth's human history, with Adolf Hitler coming most prominently to mind.   Again, Adolf Hitler's choices and actions opened the door for us as a species to decide to change our ways.



I think it was an act of courage and service to us all, for the soul that manifested as Adolf Hitler and all the souls that manifested as the victims and fallen of the Holocaust and WW2 to do what they did.   (And I say these things with respect, from the vantage point of being Dutch and having had my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles all experience life under the Nazis during WW2)...

Unfortunately, the meaning and impact of those acts of courage seem to have been lost/wasted on us...


Because now we have the BP oil spill and the G8/G20 meetings and protesters, another opportunity to listen to each other, to learn from example and experience, to step into a new, holistic, loving way of being for all life forms on this planet... and there doesn't seem to be much momentum for change being enacted - lots of talk, yes, but action?   No...

Are we a lost cause, this human species?   Is that where the Evil really exists?



PS: Or are we only “lost” in this universe/reality?    Given the multi-dimensional nature of creation, with parallel realities and universes co-existing in the eternal NOW, are all the choices we didn't make in our 'now' playing out in other infinite Life lines?






Birthday Revelations: How to Step Out of the Toxic Dance

"There comes a time in life when you walk away from all the people who create pointless drama in your life and surround yourself with people who make you laugh so hard that you forget the bad and focus on the good.    Life is too short to be anything but happy."


Actually, I had the very same thought this morning as I was waking up...

There is a person who will be in my life for a long time (we were the portal/brought a child into the world together) and there is nothing but needless drama in my interactions with this person, drama initiated by his attitudes, choices and actions.

And for many reasons, some to do with my own "story" and some to do with what I thought I understood about our reasons for coming together and walking this path, I thought it was my job to hold the line, enforce boundaries...

And on a psychological level, its been about submission - he not willing to submit to a strong and abusive female, his mother, whom I represent in this dynamic.

And its been a complete energy drain for five years now...

For a long time, I have been asking my version of the Sacred for insight into how to step out of this dance.

And I woke up this morning (great birthday present!) with the determination to just "stop" engaging; put out there what needs to happen with no attachment to, expectation as to the outcome.

There is no win-win in this arena because the mother is dead.   I can't help this man with his woundedness; he's 56 and only he can decide when he's going to finally grow up and stop being a victim/martyr to his past, to his story.

In fighting me at every turn, in attempting to control me, in asserting/exerting his power abusively, he's fighting his mother, hoping one day that in conquering me, he'll conquer her.   The more I engage, the more I feed into and fuel his unfinished, unwinable battle.

So I remove myself, put out there only what really needs to be said/done and refuse to engage...

Let him respond however he chooses (not how I think/feel he ought to respond) and I'll just get on with it - live Life - regardless.

Its his journey, his consequence, his effect, his karma... Its the job of the Sacred now to find the balance... I step out!!!

Wow - what freedom... what a gift... what a way to end my 52nd and start my 53rd year of living!