9)  GOOD AND EVIL

 Definition time again. “Good”. “Evil”.

These are adjectives describing something or an event. And all descriptive terms in the 3 lower levels of consciousness are in the world of duality, in other words when we utter one word we are thinking of the other at the same time. One can’t exist without the other.

Good and evil are on a continuum, a spectrum, from total “good” to total “evil”. What would be total “good”? How about everybody benefits. Unlikely, we can always find someone who is hurt. Total “evil”? Everyone is hurt, again unlikely. Most of the time, whatever we are describing is somewhere in the middle, maybe more good than evil, or vice versa, but hardly ever totally one way or the other. They are relative terms, not absolute.

When a hurricane crosses Florida, it is “bad” for the people who lose their electricity for a while, but it is “good” for the electricians from Georgia who come down and make a bunch of money working overtime.

But it goes beyond that. to even know what is “good” requires that we define “evil” at the same time. It is impossible to know one without knowing the other. They are opposite sides of the same coin. The very act of defining an attribute creates its opposite.

So where do we draw the line? What is “good” in that case. Well it depends not only on the situation, but it also depends on who we are that is viewing the situation.

Even the Bible acknowledges this. Remember in Genesis the Garden of Eden, presumably where Adam and Eve were happy all the time. And then Eve offered an apple to Adam, the fruit of a tree. What was that tree? Was it the “tree of good and evil”? No, it was “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. There are many interpretations of this in various religions, but in metaphysics it means the act of judging what is good and what is evil leads to unhappiness.

In metaphysics, things and events just are, there is no need to judge them as good and evil. To do so, causes problems. First of all there is no way that the judgement could be accurate since the terms are relative, and second the act of judging distorts the meaning of the thing or event, which could lead to making incorrect decisions.

Of course the corollary of this is that there is no all-loving God and no evil Devil, not in metaphysics. These are human inventions. In the universe the big fish eat the little fish. Is this evil? Hardly. It just way things are. And just because we seem to be at the top of the food chain, doesn’t mean that we are any different to the universal consciousness. If you want to see an uncaring universe, go to sea in a small boat during a storm. The ocean doesn’t care about us.

Having said that, I do believe that our soul cares, but not necessarily the way we would like. But more on that later.