evil

[Guest guest]

Sam says: >>Oh, I believe in evil actions and effects all right. It's just the personification of evil as an absolute that I can't buy into. IOW, I believe that people can do evil things, perform evil acts but I can't see evil as any sort of miasmic entity or anything like that.<< --Agreed. Personifying evil is itself evil, since it leads to so many evil effects. Better to judge acts than identify anyone with transpersonal archetypes. >>I just this evening read an article by who said essentially the same thing, that naming God or calling It a him or a her or giving it any name anthropomorphized it and brought it down to humanity's level instead of raising humans up.<< --Ironically, the monotheisms have warnings against such a thing embedded in their scriptures. God is supposed to be unidentified with

the categories imposed by the mind. >>Works for me in concept but it is awfully difficult to discuss the Universe or the All or the One without a common idea of just what that is.<< --Also a good point. It's a process (let's call it interconnectedness or transcendent unity or something along those lines) which has become identified with an object, with a name or a book. The same process that inspired Moses also inspired Jesus, Mohammad and Buddha, but their followers seem to have lost the ability to recognize the underlying spark in each other, convinced the names and books are all that matter. It's insane to think that mouthing the words, "Jesus is Lord" makes a person a Christian, or that saying, "There is only one God and Mohammad is his prophet" makes one a Muslim. But when it's all about sorting humanity into piles, the us against them game, words are used as statements of loyalty and

affiliation. I like to tell some people, "I am a Christian, I am a Buddhist, I'm a Muslim, an atheist and a Jew." Their reaction is either "I like that", or "How can you be more than one? Decide!" I have a lot of fun with the latter reaction, and usually I get to point out that their demeanor does not reflect the peace they claim their religion gives them, if they get so agitated that they end up shouting or demanding I make some statement of allegiance. As far as I'm concerned, it's all about body language, not words.

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