The Problem of Evil

. . . is yet another problem of thought

Only love can be shared. Our fear of evil is really a fear of joining others in order to learn that love, not fear, is our reality. When we are scared, we are alone.

stay together, together is the answer

It is the ego's goal to keep us separate - from ourself, from each other, and from Creation itself. Believing that evil is real, and that we must therefore defend against it - including by attack - is a powerful weapon in the ego's arsenal.

Faced with evil, what should we do?

The short answer is: recognize that you are doing this to yourself, and in that way become responsible for projection (e.g., mind wandering). Our sole job is to recognize we are fearful, and that we want another way. This recognition allows the Holy Spirit to undo the fear for us by relating us to all our brothers and sisters in love. Which He will do for exactly as long as we insist on believing we are separate from each other and from God.

The slightly longer answer follows.

One way to think about ego and separation (and, by extension, salvation) - admittedly a difficult way - is that the kid who shoots up the school isn't the problem. The adult who thinks the kid is the problem is the problem.

This is another way of saying that the problem (of the kid shooting up the school) is a problem of thought, and it's the adult who has to fix it. The kids - all the kids - are victims.

In this analysis, you are the adult and everybody else is the kid.

With that in mind, a question. Every bad thing that ever happened ever, what is one characteristic they all share?

The answer is: you. Or rather, your awareness of them.

This point point matters because we have to see the way in which we are implicated in all the heinous shit that has ever happened ever. Nobody likes doing this. Everybody resists it. But if we are serious about inner peace and its externally manifesting symbols, then we have to do it.

I hear you: "But Sean, my 'awareness' is a very tenous link to, say, Dachau or the 2004 tsunami. I don't see how my awareness is causally-related to those things at all."

This leads us directly to two major tenets of A Course in Miracles.

That (not unreasonable) argument assumes two premises the Course says we can't assume - first, that time moves uni-directionally (i.e., I can't go back in time and warn people about a tsunami) and second, that we are bodies (i.e., I wasn't physically at Dachau, I wasn't even born then, yeah it's pure evil but . . . not my fault because I wasn’t there).

This intuition about bodies and time is not grounded in fact. It is grounded in perception, and reinforced by assumptions about perception that we were trained to make (i.e., we are bodies and the world of perception is the real world). Challenging entrenched conditioning is hard to do. Ask any decent therapist.

Again, the simple suggestion is, can you notice how every bad thing that ever happened exists within the confines of whatever your mind is? Whatever awareness is - whatever consciousness is - that is where the bad stuff is?

Can you see how absent that mind / consciousness / awareness the bad thing can’t exist?

Don't reach for an explanation! Don't try to talk your way into it, or talk me into being wrong. Just see if you can see the fact of it. See if you can feel the fact of it. Absent mind . . . no evil.

Absent mind, peace.

The point of this exercise is not to indulge the supernatural (I can go back in time) or metaphysical speculation (Time isn't real) or narcissistic drama (I transcend time) but rather to appreciate, in an object-level way, that the existence of evil is not separate from our own existence, and that this therefore creates in us a responsibility.

Evil, when it appears, is a cry for love, to which the only just and merciful response is love (e.g., T-12.I.3:3-4). It is our responsibility to remember this, and to act accordingly. Nothing else will do and nobody else can do it. We are all crying out for love; we are all learning to respond to that cry. That is what life is, love remembering love.

If the only thing we can muster in response to evil is, yeah that sucks but it's not my problem, except maybe in some abstract way that absolves me of having to actually respond to it, then we do not yet understand what A Course in Miracles is trying to teach us, which is that we are doing this to ourself (T-27.VIII.10:1).

There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this:

I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself.

Yet in this learning is salvation born. And What you are will tell you of Itself (T-31.V.17:6-8).

Meditate on this: the statement the world most fears is a statement of powerlessness. What the ego fears most is not that we win our war with it but that we just stop fighting. It's not trying to defeat us; it's trying to keep us engaged.

We want to appear strong, focused, devoted, and clear. Spiritual heroes, unwavering peace activists, intellectual heavyweights. And the Course is saying, forget about all that. You're weak. Just be weak. Weak is the answer.

Which is exactly what Saint Paul was getting at when he pleaded with God to remove his suffering, and God responded “my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9).

Hence the not-so-mysterious mystery of the crucifixion. You don't die on a cross because you're powerful, you die on it because you're weak, as a symbol to other weaklings not to get ideas about recognizing shared interests and acting on them in cooperative nonviolence and love.

Which message Jesus and friends subverted - which subversion we are called to share and extend - through radical acceptance. You can’t kill me; I'm not a body. You have no idea what strength is. Et cetera.

What the world - what the ego - calls strength is weakness. Only the innocent are truly strong because only innocence is strength.

No one is strong who has an enemy, and no one can attack unless he thinks he has. Belief in enemies is therefore the belief in weakness, and what is weak is not the Will of God (T-23.in.1:5-6).

If we don't understand that in a way that transforms our living, it's not because it's complicated, it's because we don't want the responsibility. We’re like the adult who thinks the kid shooting up the school is the problem. As if kids grow up in a vaccuum untouched by adults, including us.

Projection teaches me that whatever is wrong, it's always somebody else's fault. I have nothing to do with it. I’m studying A Course in Miracles, growing my own vegetables, reading and writing poetry, becoming more and more vulnerable in therapy and study groups and teaching, all of it.

And yet the bad shit keeps happening. Why?

Here is why: somebody nailed somebody else to a cross and waited for him to die. Some of us still are. And that is a very scary place to be.

There is a better way. Take my hand - especially when I’m too scared to offer it - and let us walk away from crucifixion - and every other symbol of fear the ego cherishes - forever. I hear it’s easy when we do it together.

Love,
Sean