Good, Evil, God And The Devil (IV)

God has no opponent, no rival, no equal and no superior. God is the power on both sides; the yin and the yang; the black, the white and every color in between. God does not play dice with the universe. God does not attempt to outsmart God, or go into battle with God (because that in itself is impossible). God knows where a tree is going to grow, how big it's going to be and what the fruits produced will look like...long before the seed is even in the ground.

Spirituality is about discovering God, knowing more about God...and this journey begins from within you. You don't take one aspect of spirituality and base everything else on it. God's nature, the entirety of which is really impossible for the human mind to grasp, is not based on any one thing. God is experienced through prayer. And prayer is not an act (definitely not the kneeling down and clasping our hands ritual that we've been made to believe for so long). It is the opening of yourself to Divinity, spiritual and infinite; and it doesn't depend on what position your body is in. You don't discover God for any reason less than that; God is not mocked or deceived. You also do not discover God deciding with a particular intent in mind. You come to God on God's terms, not yours or what you think God's terms are. God is like a master conductor who's creating the perfect harmony from a blend of voices and instruments. Any voice or instrument that sounds higher or lower than expected, or is out of key altogether, threatens the harmony of the choral and the conductor cannot have that. Come with an open mind, expecting to understand more about yourself, more about your life and the relationships within it, and more about what you need to do to live your best self.

There's a reason why everything that's happening to you is happening exactly the way it is. Discover God...for only in this experience will you find the answers you're looking for (and we're all looking for answers). And when you do, you will also come to realize this most profound and deeply exhilarating truth: the voice of God never condemns.

Good, Evil, God & The Devil (III)

Who then is the origin of our evil side? We've all come to accept that our good side originates from God. That's pretty easy to do. Now I dare to disagree that the Devil is the origin of evil, as has been taught to us for generations. God is, and will always be, the origin of all things...everything good and evil, everything light and dark. Take one of the components away, and you've created the image of something less than God. So what role then does evil play? In its simplest form, it is that side of the two-edged sword in us that draws experiences toward us; experiences that ought to either shape or refine us for the better, or awaken us to the fact that we all have a dragon within us that needs to be tamed.

Does God therefore not reserve the right to express whichever of these two is more necessary at every given moment to be used to accomplish purpose and fulfill destiny? If God is indeed sovereign, then this is indeed true. Why then do we call it evil if it originates from God? Is it really evil because that's how we've chosen to see it? Is it not in reality a different kind of good? Could it not be referred to as the dark kind of good? Is black any less a color than white? Is night any less important than day? Yes, evil hurts when it happens to us...there's no doubt about that. But do we not, in those times of pain or sometime afterwards, begin to see life a little differently than we did before it happened?

The God of Light is also known to dwell in thick Darkness. Can this dark side of God's goodness be referred to what we've come to know as evil? Tell me something you've come to define as evil, and I will tell you it is something that God allowed to happen for a specific purpose, whether we know/understand that purpose or not. If we deny this, then we really deny that God is truly Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient.

A knife is a useful tool to have in the house, because of its often-time sharp edge that we need every now and again. But when you see a little child playing with that knife, at that moment you understand as an adult that an enemy is present, that "evil" is present...because there is a threat to safety and the possibility of harm is made evident. Do you then rid your house of all the knives you have (and resort to the tedious task of tearing meat with your bare hands in the kitchen or at the dinner table) or do you simply put them (and other potentially-dangerous things) out of the reach of that child until he's old enough to handle them properly? How we as adults see knives in the home, is how God sees what we refer to as evil in the world. Everything that happens to us, evil inclusive, has a purpose in our lives. And the fact that we may not understand it when it's happening doesn't make it any less purposeful. Usually, with time, we actually come to understand these things better...if we let ourselves.

Good, Evil, God & The Devil (II)

Good and evil co-exist within the same realm. Taking a cue from the biblical story of creation, in the same space where God comes to commune with the climax creation Man, also came the Devil. There is no written record of where the Devil came from or how the Devil arrived there. Becoming aware of this co-existence, the question that then arises is, which will prevail? That which prevails per time depends on the inclinations of the soul in question. Remember, it is with the soul that we express ourselves to the world around us.

Let's use the example of a room with a functioning light bulb. There are times when we want the room lit, to read, to search for something or to just enjoy the ambiance of light. For these and other reasons, we switch on the light. What happens is, the light shines and the darkness that was once everywhere now recedes, almost immediately, but it does not disappear as we've been made to believe over time. It just recedes into the corners or behind any structure, as made evident by any shadow that is cast. And if we want the room dark, again for whatever reasons, we just switch off the light. The light does not disappear either. It just remains in its source, sort of like on standby, waiting to be activated again when required. But the truth remains that there are times we want the room lit, and there are times when we want the room dark. Our soul is like a sword with two edges. The edge you need is the edge you use. And usually, the edge which is sharper is the edge you use. The side you lean more toward is the side you express, because it's the side of you that you're more familiar with and more prone to showing. And the side that you express ultimately becomes the side that you're known for and characterized by. But regardless of which side of the sword you're using, the bottom line is that we all have the two sides of the sword at our disposal.

And taking another cue from the story of the room and the light bulb, a truth is this: that there are some of us who want the room lit most of the time, and there are some of us who want the room dark most of the time. The need for more light or more darkness rests heavily on who we've decided in our hearts that we want to be. That person can only be hidden for so long, because eventually, the rest of the world around us will begin to see us for who we truly are...bringers of light, or harbingers of darkness.

Good, Evil, God & The Devil (I)

All the potential for good and for evil lie within each one of us. Just as out of a man can come such good, likewise out of the same man can come such evil. The side of this double-edged sword that we decide to use depends on whom we have chosen to become, starting from the time when no one is watching. It's amazing how over time we've come to blame the Devil for the evil that we find ourselves expressing from time to time. This is not at all surprising. The concept of the Devil was a very easy way for man to stop being responsible for his actions & words, and subsequently blame someone (anybody) else for whatever he has done or as a result, brought upon himself. And because of this age-old blame game, we do not see that we have simply activated the Law of Attraction and are therefore under its influence; or that we are the result of what we think in our heart over and again; or that we say one thing and really believe something else. As a result of this, our minds are terribly under-developed & untrained, and all we're doing is getting older & more foolish. An enemy has done this, yes. But the enemy is within us, not without. Then comes the question, "How then can good and evil reside in one entity?" The answer is, that's how we're wired; that's how we began.

Time and again, captivating moments consisting of the written, the read, the spoken, the heard & the felt, have tried to help us understand this truth, whether we are aware of those moments or not, that God is the source and origin of all things...everything. Everything seen and unseen, mortal and immortal, good and evil, beautiful and ugly, wet and dry, modest and outrageous, quiet and loud, sexy and naive, big and small, dangerous and harmless, savage and tame, sweet and bitter, bright and dull, comes from God. Everything we like and do not like, everything we understand and do not understand, everything we know and do not know (and there's a whole universe of stuff that we still do not know about) comes from God. The moment we say "everything except this or that", then we strip God of a title that was never even needed to be given in the first place. And if we attempt to decide what is and isn't a part of everything, then we begin to lie to ourselves about who God truly is. And then we take the next step and begin to teach others those lies about God that we've begun to believe. This begs the following question, "What exactly do we believe about the God whom we profess to wholeheartedly believe in?"