tom32071 said:
I wrote this recently and thought I'd post it to see if I'm getting the right ideas or not. Sometimes it's difficult to do this when you don't have anyone of a like mind to talk to and bounce ideas off of.
My thoughts/beliefs/ideas;
There are such things as good and bad/evil and right and wrong. Mostly they are relative. You can do good things for bad reasons and bad things for good reasons. How good or bad or right or wrong something is depends on the motivating idea behind it. Granted there are some things that are totally bad/evil or wrong and some that are totally good or right but the reason or motivation behind it is still important. Everything is not black or white, there are shades of grey.
That comes close, I think. When thinking of someone or something intending evil and it turns out good, I think of the lessons that can be learned by those who interact with such an individual. Like Mephistopheles in Faust who is "he who always intends evil but does good" because people learn from his actions.
That's kind of like what happened with the Vinnie Bridges gang. Their intent was purely to destroy, but we took what they were doing as something we needed to study, to understand, and the result was a whole lot of information about pathology that has helped many people to be able to identify and avoid the actions of such people in their own lives.
So, Vinnie intended evil, but did good.
On the other side, I think about how much good I intended by sacrificing myself to my first marriage. I thought it was right and noble and all that. It took me awhile to understand that I was 1) not helping the soul growth of my ex by allowing myself to be used that way; 2) teaching my children to live that way also, to believe in fairy tales and lies, and so forth; 3) not being true to myself and thus to the creative face of the universe. Etc. I did a LOT of damage with my intentions to do good.
I'm sure that others can think of examples from their own lives where someone intended harm and it turned out to be a good lesson, or intended good and only later realized how much damage they were doing.
It's like a mother who thinks that she is doing good by carrying her baby all the time and protecting him from falling and hurting himself. Then, one day, she dies and the baby has grown up and doesn't know how to walk or care for himself in any way. He then is angry and hates his dead mother for no longer being there and, at some other level, for making him so helpless. I've actually seen a scenario similar to this play out in real life - more than once.
In this case, if the mother had done what might have SEEMED "evil" at various times, i.e. letting the child get his bumps and bruises and learn his own lessons, it would have been good.
So, it's the context. Sacrificing yourself for another in some contexts is good, in others, it is evil.
If I had been taught anything about life and people in an active way when I was growing up, like having experiences that were then discussed intelligently at home, or if we were taught about pathology in school and what it looks and acts like, I might not have had to go through the misery of my first marriage or the horror of the Vinnie attacks. So, even though it may sound "bad" for someone to talk about such things to children, to suggest that there are pathological people who cannot be helped, it is actually a good thing. And conversely, it was a very bad, very evil, thing to NOT teach those principles to me as I grew up. It caused a lot of grief and heartbreak and I almost passed the same mistakes on to my kids to lead them into lives of grief and heartbreak.
Then, there are the "shades of gray." Sometimes, there just aren't any perfect choices. Sometimes you have to do what is the lesser of several evils.
There's a sort of zen story about this. The student goes to see the master teacher and the teacher offers tea. The student is told that if he drinks the tea he will be hit with a stick and if he does not drink the tea he will be hit with a stick. It's an impossible situation. Thinking out of the box he can either leave and refuse to participate or, if he really needs the interaction, he can take the stick away. None of these are perfect choices, but they are less evil than allowing the teacher to create karma for himself by hitting with the stick. Of course, the individual could think that he should be hit with the stick no matter what because he wants to work off karma himself. But trying to figure out karma is a sticky business.
tom32071 said:
Is there a heaven and hell? I think so. To my way of thinking, life here on earth is hell. For a long time I thought that when you died you went to heaven, but then what of the truly bad ones that die ? OK they come back to do it again, that brings in reincarnation.
Yeah, and what if some of the truly bad ones don't have souls and never have to pay for their evil at all, at least not in the sense that we would understand paying? That may, in fact, be the case in many instances.
tom32071 said:
So, OK not just the truly bad ones come back but also the ones that weren't really that good. So that would mean that you keep cycling through hell until you get it right, then you go to heaven or at least you don't go to hell again.
I think that, based on what we know of life, coming back is not the most attractive option. We may not truly KNOW what not coming back entails, but we sure do know what coming back means!
tom32071 said:
So from what I get from the C's is that you go through life then when you die you go to 5th density to review and determine if you learned the lessons, if not you formulate a plan and go back to try again, of course when you get back you don't know that you had a plan so for the most part you just wing it, so when you die again it's back to 5th to review, etc. Now every so often some of us actually get it right and go on to 4th at which time I guess the object is to become STO oriented (actually this is the goal all along) and eventually to graduate to 6th at which time you have a whole new set of lessons and you eventually go on to 7th and union with "the one".
At which point you know everything and decide to extend some part of yourself into sleeping matter to "play" all over again.
tom32071 said:
Now to us (3rd) getting out of here could take hundreds or thousands or even millions of years while in reality time doesn't exist (except for us) so actually it could only be the blink of an eye from the time we "fell" until the time we get back(supposing that at 7th you had an eye).
OK, I may not have the preceding perfect but I think that is the general idea. So what are the lessons ??
I get the idea that the primary one (and the most difficult) is to know and understand that "physicality" is not all that it is cracked up to be and hand in hand with the is to learn to be STO oriented, when you act do it for STO reasons and not STS. And of course to not interfere with the free will of others. I'm sure there are other "lessons" but, the preceding ones are quite a plate full.
No kidding! It is REALLY difficult to know what is good and what is evil, or rather, what is STS and what is STO. Sometimes, doing something that is purely STO may look like STS to a viewer on the outside who doesn't have all the data. And, sometimes something may look STO and is really STS. And sometimes, something is STS and is transformed into good by virtue of the individual involved. Like taking lemons and making lemonade.
tom32071 said:
OK so everyone feel free to take a shot here and tell me what I may have right and where I'm wrong.
Oh and also, thanks for your input. :)
Sounds like you have the principles pretty well sorted out. The hard part is for them to become a part of your thinking so that they become the root of your actions at all levels of living.
